BCC Minutes 01/24/2007 S (AUIR)
January 24, 2007
TRANSCRIPT OF THE MEETING OF THE
BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS
Naples, Florida January 24, 2007
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 11 :30 a.m. in SPECIAL
SESSION in Building "F" of the Government Complex, East Naples,
Florida, with the following members present:
CHAIRMAN:
Jim Coletta
Tom Henning
Fred Coyle
Donna Fiala
Frank Halas
ALSO PRESENT:
Jim Mudd, County Manager
Joseph Schmitt, Community Dev. & Env. Services
Marjorie Student-Stirling, Assistant County Attorney
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COLLIER COUNTY
BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS
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Annual Update and Inventory Report (AUIR)
AGENDA
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
9:00 AM
James Coletta, Chairman, District 5
Tom Henning, Vice-Chairman, Commissioner, District 3
Fred W. Coyle, Commissioner, District 4
Donna Fiala, Commissioner, District 1
Frank Halas, Commissioner, District 2
THE COLLIER COUNTY BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS (BCC)
WILL MEET AT 9:00 A.M., Wednesday, January 24, 2007, IN THE BOARD OF
COUNTY COMMISSIONERS MEETING ROOM, ADMINISTRATION
BUILDING, COUNTY GOVERNEMENT CENTER, 3301 TAMIAMI TRAIL
EAST, NAPLES, FLORIDA:
NOTICE: ALL PERSONS WISHING TO SPEAK ON ANY AGENDA ITEM
MUST REGISTER PRIOR TO SPEAKING. SPEAKERS MUST REGISTER
WITH THE COUNTY MANAGER PRIOR TO THE PRESENTATION OF
THE AGENDA ITEM TO BE ADDRESSED.
COLLIER COUNTY ORDINANCE NO. 2003-53, AS AMENDED REQUIRES
THAT ALL LOBBYISTS SHALL, BEFORE ENGAGING IN ANY LOBBYING
ACTIVITIES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, ADDRESSING THE
BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS), REGISTER WITH THE CLERK
TO THE BOARD AT THE BOARD MINUTES AND RECORDS
DEPARTMENT.
REQUESTS TO ADDRESS THE BOARD ON SUBJECTS WHICH ARE NOT
ON THIS AGENDA MUST BE SUBMITTED IN WRITING WITH
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January 24, 2007
EXPLANATION TO THE COUNTY MANAGER AT LEAST 13 DAYS PRIOR
TO THE DATE OF THE MEETING AND WILL BE HEARD UNDER "PUBLIC
PETITIONS."
ANY PERSON WHO DECIDES TO APPEAL A DECISION OF THIS BOARD
WILL NEED A RECORD OF THE PROCEEDINGS PERTAINING THERETO,
AND THEREFORE MAY NEED TO ENSURE THAT A VERBATIM RECORD
OF THE PROCEEDINGS IS MADE, WHICH RECORD INCLUDES THE
TESTIMONY AND EVIDENCE UPON WHICH THE APPEAL IS TO BE BASED.
ALL REGISTERED PUBLIC SPEAKERS WILL RECEIVE UP TO FIVE (5)
MINUTES UNLESS THE TIME IS ADJUSTED BY THE CHAIRMAN.
IF YOU ARE A PERSON WITH A DISABILITY WHO NEEDS ANY
ACCOMMODATION IN ORDER TO PARTICIPATE IN THIS PROCEEDING,
YOU ARE ENTITLED, AT NO COST TO YOU, TO THE PROVISION OF
CERTAIN ASSISTANCE. PLEASE CONTACT THE COLLIER COUNTY
FACILITIES MANAGEMENT DEPARTMENT LOCATED AT 3301 EAST
TAMIAMI TRAIL, NAPLES, FLORIDA, 34112, (239) 774-8380; ASSISTED
LISTENING DEVICES FOR THE HEARING IMPAIRED ARE AVAILABLE IN
THE COUNTY COMMISSIONERS' OFFICE.
1. Pledge of Allegiance
2. Review of the Annual Update and Inventory Report on Public Facilities,
Category A and Category B.
A. A UIR Overview - Randy Cohen
B. Collier County Population Methodology - David Weeks
C. Impact Fees Related to the AUIR - Amy Patterson
D. County Roads - Norm Feder and Don Scott
E. Drainage Canals and Structures - Gene Calvert
F. Potable Water System - Jim Deloney/Phil Gramatges
G. Sewer Treatment & Collector Systems - Jim Deloney/George Yilmaz
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January 24, 2007
H. Solid Waste - Jim Deloney/Roy Anderson
I. Parks and Facilities - Marla Ramsey
J. County Jail- Chief Greg Smith
K. Law Enforcement - Chief Greg Smith
L. Library - Marilyn Matthes and Marla Ramsey
M. Emergency Medical Services - Jeff Page
N. Government Buildings - Len Price and Ron Hovell
3. Recommendations and Adoption of 2006 AUIR
4. Adjourn
INQUIRIES CONCERNING CHANGES TO THE BOARD'S AGENDA SHOULD
BE MADE TO THE COUNTY MANAGER'S OFFICE AT 774-8383.
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January 24, 2007
January 24, 2007
MR. MUDD: Ladies and gentlemen, if you'd please take your
seats.
This, Mr. Chairman, Commissioners, is the start of our AUIR
Workshop. It's an annual requirement that you have in your Land
Development Code in order to do that process.
And we normally start all the meetings with the pledge of
allegiance, and I would say that because we didn't do it earlier today
when we were in our continuance, this would probably be a good
time.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: This is a new meeting, a new day, a
new start. Let's go.
(Pledge of Allegiance was recited in unison.)
MR. MUDD: This is the AUIR presentation of the 2006 annual
update and inventory report on public facilities, as required by, again,
our Land Development Code. And the AUIR overview, we'll move
right down the agenda that's on paragraph three.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: I'm sorry, before we go, Mr. Mudd, I
just want to make one point. A number of people have made plans,
staff and commissioners, to go for lunch at 12:00 to 1 :00, so we'll
break at 12:00 for lunch.
Item #2A
AUIR OVERVIEW
MR. MUDD: Yes, sir. And we'll start with the AUIR overview
with Mr. Mike Bosi.
MR. BOSI: Good morning, Commissioners. Mike Bosi,
Comprehensive Planning.
I've prepared a power point presentation for a basic overview of
what the AUIR -- everyone has been through this process. I will just
try to hit the main points in terms of trying to be as expedient as
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January 24, 2007
possible.
The AUIR identifies capital needs for both facilities to serve the
projected population growth as well as replacement of public facilities
that will no longer be adequate in the five-year AUIR time frame.
The AUIR, it's an annual one-year snapshot in time that projects
needs and required improvements from all infrastructure and service
providing departments based upon population proj ections against the
BCC-established or adopted level of service standards.
And it should be noted that the AUIR is really, it's a snapshot in
time. And it changes on a daily, weekly and monthly basis as the
changes in that demand equation change.
As County Manager Mudd indicated, Section 6.02 of the Land
Development Code requires the county to provide that public facilities
and services meet or exceed the standards established in the CIE
required by Section 163.3177 of Florida Statutes and are available
when needed for development.
The AUIR is really -- it's a blueprint for concurrency and
traditionally is the preparatory document for the annual update of the
capital improvements element of the GMP for Category A facilities.
This year's AUIR will not provide the basis for the update for the
'07 CIE due to the population methodology utilized in this AUIR is
not the methodology that BCC has directed staff to utilize within the
EAR-based amendments, which will be adopted before the Board of
County Commissioners on the 25th and 26th of January.
This year's AUIR will serve as a general planning tool for
Category A facilities and a benchmark for the established level of
services for Category B facilities.
Within Category B facilities, there's impact fees associated with
those and impact fee studies. Within those impact fee studies, there's a
floor established, and the AUIR assures that that floor is never -- is
never fallen below in terms of the amount of public facilities or
infrastructure that's provided.
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January 24, 2007
And like last year's, this year's AUIR has a heightened degree of
importance, due to the financial feasibility requirements of Senate Bill
360.
As you go through the AUIR process, there are a couple different
subcategories within the AUIR that have revenue deficiencies. Within
those subcategories the board's charge will either be to identify
alternative revenue sources or to lower the level of service standard.
The Category A facilities are roads, solid waste, drainage canals
and structures, parks and rec, potable water, sewer collection and
treatment.
Category B's are jails, law enforcement, libraries, emergency
medical services, government buildings. And this year we have the
addition of the two dependent fire stations, which is Ochopee and Isle
of Capri.
And another difference within this year's AUIR is the
productivity committee heard the AUIR with -- in joint conjunction
with the planning commission. So within the individual summary
sections of each individual component of the AUIR and attached as
exhibits to the executive summary, the specific recommendations of
the planning commission and the productivity committee has been
provided.
And I will point out at the end of this -- at the end of the
presentation, there are specific questions as to the level of service
standards that are established by -- within this AUIR and whether they
are the most valid source or means of measuring need within the
county. And these are based on recommendations from the planning
commission and the productivity committee.
And the productivity committee, within the letter that's attached
to your executive summary, has asked for some significant changes
that would have ramifications on the AUIR process.
We will -- we are going to look to the Board of County
Commissioners to provide some feedback upon some of those specific
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January 24, 2007
recommendations.
And with that, I'll introduce our Planning Director over at
Comprehensive Planning, Randy Cohen, who's going to address the
population in relationship to the shifting of the methodologies.
Item #2B
COLLIER COUNTY POPULATION METHODOLOGY
MR. COHEN: Good morning, Commissioners. For the record,
Randy Cohen, your Comprehensive Planning Department Director.
If you'll recall, back in December I came before this body to
address you with respect to the existing population methodology that
we have in our comprehensive plan, and also the comments that were
received as part of our ORC Report from DCA with respect to our
EAR-based amendments, and them asking us to change the
methodology.
This particular AUIR is based on the existing methodology as
adopted in our comprehensive plan, and in consultation with legal
counsel is the proper method to do an undertaking of this particular
AUIR, because we do not have an official change in population
methodology in place.
What you'll see in the EAR-based amendments tomorrow and
then Friday is a new methodology, which we'll explain in detail to
you, that addresses the direction provided us by this body, as well as
the analysis that we undertook in coming up with, as Commissioner
Coyle said, a methodology that would best befit our county and our
needs in this particular county.
So I just wanted to point out that this AUIR itself is based on the
old methodology as set forth in the comprehensive plan. As a result of
that, what would happen is, and I explained this as part of the
population methodology analysis back in December, we can't go
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January 24, 2007
forward with a CIE based on a population methodology that we know
DCA would not accept based off of this AUIR.
However, the CIE that you see as part of tomorrow's EAR-based
amendments will contain a valid population methodology in which
they will evaluate our capital infrastructure needs.
So in essence what we have here is this A UIR is a planning tool
that you can rely on, and the AUIR process, which we started for 2007
which will start relatively quick, will incorporate the new population
methodology as it interfaces with both the Category A and the
Category B facilities.
It's a little confusing, it's a little cumbersome. It was -- for the
productivity and the planning commission when they were dealing
with the AUIR and the EAR-based amendments together, the overlap
was kind of confusing at times.
And I just kind of wanted to briefly touch on the fact that when
we look at this AUIR, just please remember that it's based on the old
methodology. And when we get into tomorrow, we'll be dealing with a
new methodology which adequately actually reflects the way our
population growth is occurring.
And if you have any questions with respect to that, I'll be more
than happy to answer them at this time.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Mr. Chairman?
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Yes, go ahead.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Randy, when you're talking about
the new population estimate, are you talking about the estimate --
estimating process that has been recommended and/or approved by
DCA?
MR. COHEN: What DCA recommended is that we change from
our high BEBR methodology that's in place to a methodology using
medium BEBR numbers plus a seasonal adjustment.
What this body asked us to do was to go forward with that
methodology but look at the seasonal adjustment and come forward
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January 24, 2007
with something based on the best available data, okay? Not that
something that DCA necessarily would approve, okay, but something
that we know actually reflects the seasonal influx of visitors and
residents into this county. And that's what we've done.
Has DCA approved it? No, DCA will see it as part of our
EAR-based amendments.
I think it would be improper to ask them to approve something
without this body to direct us to do so prior to taking action on it.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: But what you're saying is that we
have a good reason for making any adjustments to their suggested
methodology.
MR. COHEN: Their methodology suggestion was, and if you
read the language provided to us, it says medium BEBR plus a
seasonal adjustment. They didn't give us a percentage, they said
Collier County, come up with your own seasonal adjustment, and
we've done that.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Now, one final question about this.
The productivity committee made the very valid observation that
demographic changes concerning the growth, the population in Collier
County can have an impact upon the kinds of services that we need to
provide to our citizens. You get more young people, you have one set
of services you have to provide. If you're getting more retirees, there's
a different set of services that we need to provide.
Is there any consideration given to that in this year's AUIR?
MR. COHEN: No, sir. And the demographic data that's relied
upon when we talk about looking at age, when we look at gender, we
look at race and other factors, even housing size, is all based off the
2000 census. We won't get a general feel for any change in terms of
those demographics until the 2010 census is completed. And then
we'll get an idea if there's been any trend analysis occurred in certain
areas.
I would anticipate that there would be some trend analysis that
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January 24, 2007
occurs in terms of household size, based on the changes that occurred
between the 1990 and 2000 census, as well as the influx of different
population groups in the county, as well as geographic distribution.
So there's a lot of things that are transpiring that we know are
happening out there. But the ability to actually incorporate them into
the AUIR is virtually impossible without having a wide-scale type of
census that's done in the county.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Okay, thank you.
MR. COHEN: You're welcome.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Commissioner Henning?
COMMISSIONER HENNING: The population is just
projections until we get the U.S. census; is that correct?
MR. COHEN: Yes, sir. And what transpires with the Bureau of
Economic and Business Research -- and this is kind of an example of
how this can work: We will get an annual proj ection from them. And
a lot of the time it will approximate a certain number. And this past
year is a very good example of the number that we got from them.
Initially based on their trend analysis that they do, they projected a
number, if I recall, somewhere between 12 and 13,000 people as an
Increase.
But when we looked back and they took a look at our certificates
of occupancies and our building permits, they scaled that back, I
believe, it was eight or 9,000.
So they give us first a projection and an estimate, and then they
actually go back and they looked at what really occurred, and they
adjusted our population accordingly.
So we do get a projection, but then we get an adjustment that
occurs afterwards.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Okay. And Commissioners, I
think what I received in the planning commission's recommendations
and the productivity, everybody has a problem with how we provide
services to the public based upon population.
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January 24, 2007
And I don't disagree with that. I think our transportation
department is doing a wonderful job by putting out counting stations
to capture what the needs is -- in this case, transportation -- and then
adjust their CIE according to the needs. And I think that's one tool
that we can utilize is capture the data under the elements of their CIE
by what the demand is. And then I think that's very simple to do.
And I hope that's where we can eventually direct our staff to do is
to provide that type of information to the productivity committee and
the planning commission so we can hit the target better in how we
provide services to our residents.
MR. COHEN: And Commissioners, it may be jumping the gun a
little bit, but in the executive summary that Mr. Bosi did, if you look
at items four and five under the recommendation, it takes into
consideration those particular items that Commissioner Henning just
referred to.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Four and five in the executive --
MR. MUDD: The recommendations on Page 8.
MR. COHEN: Yes, sir.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Page 8.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: I'm not going to belabor that. I'll
look at that while you're speaking. Thank you.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Please continue.
MR. COHEN: That's all I have on population. If anybody else
has any questions, I'd be more than happy on move on forward into
the impact fee section.
Item #2C
IMPACT FEES RELATED TO THE AUIR
MR. MUDD: Next item then is impact fee related to the AUIR.
And Ms. Amy Patterson will present, I believe.
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January 24, 2007
MR. COHEN: Well, actually I'm going to go ahead and address
the impact fee. Because it would more than likely be a repetition of
what Ms. Patterson provide to you last year.
She's here to answer any questions that you may have pertaining
to the memorandum and the synopsis she did, which is basically the
same as last year. And if you have any questions, she's here at your
disposal.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Thank you. Any questions?
(No response.)
MR. MUDD: Okay, then we'll start on Category A and--
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Whoa, whoa, whoa. Ifwe're
passing the executive summary, I do have questions.
MR. MUDD: We're not passing the executive summary. We'll
come back to that after we're done with the categories and the briefing.
And then we normally come back to the board and seek your direction
on the particular issues.
When you say are we passing, we're not going to vote on it till
the very end.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: No, there's an executive
summary before we get to Category A. And if we're coming back to
that, that's fine.
MR. MUDD: That's okay, if you have a question on it, let's get it
done now.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Commissioner Coyle has got a
comment.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Yeah, I just wanted to point out
that Amy Patterson has made the observation that because costs are
going up fairly rapidly, it might be appropriate to have more frequent
updates of the impact fees.
What is the staffs recommendation concerning that?
MS. PATTERSON: Amy Patterson, Impact Fee Manager for the
record.
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January 24, 2007
Our ordinance requires that we revisit the impact fees at least
every three years, specific to which -- Mr. DeLony is here, but
specific direction was given related to water and sewer.
As far as the other facilities, how we've operated up until this
point is when we see things -- we visited this last year on the Golden
Gate library -- when we see the costs have accelerated far beyond
what's contemplated in the study, we've made that report to the board
and asked for direction, be that to go out for a new study or to proceed
on.
The other thing to take into consideration where we will be
coming forward with this spring is a change to our indexing
methodology to try to better capture those changes in construction
costs.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: You're actually indexing it on a
much more frequent basis than once every three years.
MS. PATTERSON: That's correct.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: That's what I wanted to get to,
okay --
MS. PATTERSON: Yes, yes, we're indexing in the two years
between. And as we've seen, the indexes we've been using up until
this point, the CPI or the Engineering News Record for construction
costs have not been an accurate representation of what we've seen in
Collier County.
And the board gave us direction to go out and hire a consultant
and try to develop something that better represents what we're
experiencing in Collier County. Weare in the process of doing that
now and will be coming to the board with those recommendations and
findings. And hopefully that is going to help some of this in those
mid-years.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: And when do you think you'll be
able to come to us with a recommendation, and how long will it take
you to implement the appropriate --
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January 24, 2007
MS. PATTERSON: We're anticipating that the study should be
done in like March, which would bring us to the Board in April, and
probably the second meeting in April.
Now of course we're -- we still fall under the 90 days, so we
would need to layout the indexing, because we do have 12 impact
fees, and certainly we want to see how best to spread those out. And
then you have a 90-day implementation after that.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Okay, good. Thank you.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Mr. Feder?
MR. FEDER: I just wanted to point out in addition to that, every
three years a full study, then indexing in between and refinement of
that indexing, which is the process we're following. Where we find
that in fact because it uses three-year prior data that increased costs
have accelerated so quickly that we're out of line.
We do go through a new update, which is what we're doing in
transportation. Rather than going to a first year indexing, we're going
straight to a new update.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Mr. DeLony?
MR. DeLONY: With regard -- Jim DeLony, Public Utilities
Administrator.
With regard to water-sewer impact fees, at midyear review of our
budget in June, typically we'll sit down and look at the assumptions
that were made during the last impact fee study and then validate
those assumptions to be consistent with our go-ahead plan. That's in
June for us. And we will be looking at that.
We're in the second year, for example now of our past impact
fee. I intend to do a full analysis and see if we're on track. If we're
not, if the types of costs versus the impact fee nexus are not being
followed somehow or another because of the things that Amy
mentioned earlier, then I believe it's my obligation to come to you and
request an earlier impact fee study than just a calendar-based once
every three years minimum.
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January 24, 2007
I see that as an event driven scenario, sir, as opposed to a
calendar driven one. And that's the way I've treated that since I've
been here at Mr. Mudd's direction.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Commissioner Halas?
COMMISSIONER HALAS: Yes, both -- this is a question both
for Norm Feder and also Jim DeLony.
What has been your experience as far as the construction
percentage increase in the last year? Do you have any idea?
MR. DeLONY: Norm's got that probably better than I do right
now, because he gets a lot of help from the state DOT on tracking
construction costs, both regionally and statewide.
We have -- and I've brought every executive summary in here.
And for example, one recently that I can just recall -- and I really am
not as prepared as I should probably to answer your question -- we
asked to go back and renegotiate, because our bids were so much
higher than what the engineer estimate was, primarily due to material
and labor escalation.
There were some costs associated with rights-of-way or easement
acquisition that were part of that, but -- and then we convert it to a
negotiated process able to find some savings on that particular project
that was a pipeline proj ect.
I really can't give you a percentage. I can tell you that we look at
every one of them and we look at those estimates. And that's the
reason in June I need to look at that history vice (sic) what we had in
the assumed capital program for that impact fee and look at it on a
case-by-case basis. And that's when I intend to do it. I'm just not able
to give you a percentage today.
COMMISSIONER HALAS: Norm, you're closer to where the
rubber meets the road. Can you tell us what the increases have been?
MR. FEDER: Yes. What I'm putting on the overhead is, first of
all, Florida DOT puts out what their changes and costs are over the
years. And of course we're in district one.
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January 24, 2007
Now, if you remember when the state came in and pulled their
money out of Davis Boulevard and other issues shortly after Statute
360 was implemented and required them to stay to a solid program,
we were noted as being the higher cost even within District 1.
Jim, you can flip to the next?
What we did, and we presented to you a while ago is what we
were experiencing here in Collier County based on projects from the
various years. And the numbers are rather phenomenal. And that is
the reason, as I mentioned to you, that rather than going to an
indexing, even an updated indexing, if you will, we felt we had to go
to a whole new impact fee. And we're in the process of that update as
we speak.
Particularly if you remember the last time we indexed it a year
ago we added in utilities. And utilities are becoming a very, very
much larger part of our impact fee as we go to relocation of existing
utilities, county utilities that we have to cover without impact fee
because we're requiring a movement with our road project.
And as well, obviously, construction costs over the last two
projects -- and this gives you some idea about the components,
embankment, other issues of the sort. Dirt is no longer dirt cheap, I
think I mentioned to you then.
So you've got an idea of costs. They've gone up significantly
over the course of the last two to three years.
COMMISSIONER HALAS: Thank you very much.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Commissioner Coyle?
COMMISSIONER COYLE: My question has been answered,
thank you.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Okay. Are we starting a new subject
at this time?
MR. MUDD: Yes, sir. We're going to -- we're now going to go
to Category A -- Commissioner Henning had a question on the
particular executive summary.
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January 24, 2007
COMMISSIONER HENNING: When we got to opening
statements, I thought they were opening statements. I didn't know that
we are addressing the executive summary.
But I have a question on Exhibit C, which is the population
methodology. And on Page 3 of Exhibit 3, the top table refers to
coastal population, Immokalee population and peak population.
Is the coastal population basically anything west of and south of
U.S. 41?
MR. MUDD: Randy, are you getting up to do this?
MR. COHEN: Yeah, Mr. Weeks always provides that particular
calculation.
Normally what you get is you get a breakdown of what's in
Immokalee, and then anything that's not in the Immokalee area is
considered to be the coastal, you know, Collier County population.
It's done more from a -- yeah, just different planning areas. But
it's done more from a definitive standpoint of letting you know what's
in Immokalee and what's not. And that's what it's there for.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Okay. Would it be fair to say
that we should change that to other than Immokalee?
MR. COHEN: There would be a variety of ways of doing it in
the future. We could provide everything to you by planning
community. That may give you probably a better general idea of the
way we actually calculate population and where that growth is
occurring. We do provide those calculations anyways. I would
probably recommend that in future AUIRs, that we provide it to you
on a planning community basis.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: And when you say planning
community basis, there is one for Marco Island, I believe. But I'm not
sure if there is one for Naples.
MR. COHEN: There's I believe nine of them. And it would take
into consideration the Naples area as well, too.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Okay. So that's everything
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January 24, 2007
except for Immokalee. Thank you very much.
MR. COHEN: Yes, sir.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Before we continue, we'll break now
for lunch. One hour, be back here at 1 :00.
(A lunch break was taken.)
MR. MUDD: Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats.
Mr. Chairman, you have a hot mic.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Okay, please continue.
Item #2D
COUNTY ROADS
MR. MUDD: Commissioner, that brings us to county roads,
Norman Feder. And we're starting our Category A items.
MR. FEDER: County Manager, thank you. For the record,
Norm Feder, Transportation Administrator and of course Don Scott
your Transportation Planning Director.
Let me give you a quick overview and then ask Don to go
through the details of what you have in your AUIR package.
We went through a process last year and the years before,
nothing really has changed in many respects. I wanted to give you a
quick background.
In 2000 we had basically half the revenues to meet our needs.
Because of that and because of the fact that half of those needs were
already existing backlogged deficiencies, we went out to try and
establish another revenue stream. That was unsuccessful.
So then we bonded what was half of our revenue stream at that
time, which was our gas taxes, and then later brought about 24 million
a year in revenues from ad valorem.
The pie chart that you see here, I need to put a little bit into
perspective, because as you see that sort of orange color, 29 percent
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January 24, 2007
being carry-forward and bonds, those are encumbered funds. They're
pretty much already encumbered. And they are reflecting the fact that
we have a payout curve, whether it be, particularly construction or
right-of-way, that takes some time before all those funds are fully
expended, even though they're fully encumbered.
Also, that 1 7 percent there that you see in the purple color are
DCA advancement reimbursements. We're going to discuss that in
some detail with you, because while you don't see us on the list of
additional monies required to meet level of service, that's because we
have approximately just under 180 million shown in our program,
based on potential revenue streams, which we want to discuss in some
detail with you. And it was an issue brought up at the planning
commission and at your productivity committee and was in direct
response to the board's direction to us to continue on our production
and not to pull back based on our current revenue stream, wait for the
AUIR and get into that discussion in detail with you, which we're here
to do today.
What I want to do in that overview is just to tell you that in the
past couple of AUIRs, we've had to pull back a little bit on projects
and on limits to try and keep costs feasible. We're probably not in that
position today now that the bonds have been used up or fully
encumbered and other issues, because we are facing somewhere over
$180 million shortfall to meet the needs to meet concurrency.
As I said in the past, we've reduced and we've even in this work
program that you see with that level of shortfall had reduced the limits
on some projects and pulled other projects out. Previously we pulled
out Green Boulevard that we had in there for funding.
We had in for funding on Vanderbilt Beach Road extension over
to Wilson. Now it's right-of-way but no construction in that program
that you see in front of you.
We had 951 from Golden Gate Boulevard, the next section from
the north, if you will, slated to go next year, hopefully, or at least
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January 24, 2007
production ready next year, down to Green Boulevard. That has now
been reduced down to Pine Ridge Road.
951, which is a project that we have, and probably the one we're
about to let, and we have everything ready to go, but we wanted to
wait until after this AUIR before we let that project.
From 951, from 41 up to Davis was originally up to north of 1-75
or up to the canal. And that last section has been pulled out of that
because of cost estimates, and is a project that we've been discussing
with you that we need to find a way to try to bring into the program.
So those items aren't in there and still I'm talking to you about
180 million. So I wanted to put that into perspective.
Why are we facing that? How did we get here? Well, essentially
we've got a number of reasons. I've mentioned to you already we only
had half the funding in the beginning to meet our needs. We then took
what was a major source of our revenue -- no longer, unfortunately,
because you can see up here, gas taxes are about a quarter of our
revenue stream.
And actually our collections are a little bit down this year over
last year. One would assume that that's because oil prices went up and
people either went into more fuel efficient because the volumes don't
show that they've driven less. But nonetheless, they're down a little
bit. Our impact fees are about 50 percent of our revenue stream. And I
just got that orange and purple, as I had mentioned previously. And
then the 24 million a year ad valorem is about a quarter of our revenue
stream.
With that, our impact fees -- and this board has given us strong
direction and strong support in trying to make sure that growth pays
for growth. And we've brought to you impact fees as aggressive as
they can be under methodology to do just that. The difficulty is that
you use prior year actions as a way to show that your methodology is
valid and to make it supportable for what you're going to implement.
In the case of the one we did just over a year ago, essentially
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January 24, 2007
we're looking at projects over a three-year period and reality a little
longer then that. Because some of these projects, the dollar
commitment for construction and some of those issues was even pre
that three-year period, because the bid went out before then.
So over that three-year period, and as I showed you earlier today,
over the last year and a half we've had phenomenal increases in cost.
Weare going back to an update of the impact fee again. Last year that
was a feeling for a lot of how we were going to address some of those
shortfalls is that that impact fee was increasing and we expected we'd
get more income. The COAs will pay 50 percent up front and the
other 50 percent coming.
We do have about 28 million coming back to us in COAs now
that three years have elapsed from the beginning of that, but our
revenue stream and impact fees is remaining at about 50 million.
Basically we borrowed from the future to pay to cover some of this
backlog, which Don, if you can show them there, since 2000 either
completed or under construction, very, very significant amount of new
lanes miles added.
(Commissioner Henning enters the boardroom.)
MR. FEDER: But now we're in a position where, as I said, we've
encumbered a big part of that pie and the revenue streams that we
have right now are not going to meet our needs coming up in the
future.
They're not going to meet it as well as we start to go out into the
Estates. We first told you we had half the resources to meet the needs
back in 2000. We didn't have a very aggressive or a very accurate
reading of the demands and the needs out in the Estates. Growth has
gone very rapidly.
Mr. Mudd has, along with the board and their direction, strategic
planning, emphasized having a good set of planning out in the Estates.
And for your metropolitan planning organization you now have a plan
that truly, I think, looks at what's happening out in the Estates at some
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January 24, 2007
of our needs.
Added to that is a very different climate as we go out into the
Estates. In the urbanized areas in many cases we're working with a
PUD or a large development where, through the board's efforts there
was a reservation of that future corridor need. Whether or not we had
to provide them impact fee credits in the future was set at that date and
time that that PUD was approved and therefore the right-of-way
acquisition, both in administrative costs for one big parcel as opposed
to many small and the costs were lower.
As we go out into the Estates, we're finding, because we're no
longer dealing with a business decision, we're dealing with a very
emotional personal decision and much higher administrative costs as
we have to continually, according to Florida Statute, pay for the
attorneys, the appraisers and the expert witnesses for each parcel that
we acqUIre.
So what I'm trying to do is give you a perspective as to why the
numbers have changed. They've changed both in the nature of our
more detailed planning. They've changed because we now have
design work underway for major projects like Golden Gate Boulevard
from Wilson on out to DeSoto, where we had estimates based on prior
basic unit costs or impact fee level that no longer hold today, and now
we have design, we've got a lot better feel for the right-of-way costs
out there. Same with other proj ects. We've got design moving on
sections of 951 and the like.
So we can go through and give you an idea where that 180 came
from. I can tell you specific projects, their changes in costs as you
look at one program from another. But generally wanted to use that to
put into perspective.
Okay, what do we do? We've got the option today, as we're
going to discuss with you, of additional dollars. That's a pretty hard
option, because I don't have an answer for where that comes from.
But that's an option.
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January 24, 2007
Another one is expanded public-private partnerships. And that's
part of what we're looking at in trying to expand our efforts with
developer contribution agreements and with what you just passed a
while ago, somewhat under requirement but nonetheless in
proportionate share, and in particular hopefully developer contribution
agreements as the focus.
But even those developer contribution agreements are going to
require some additional funding for us to be able to follow up on some
of our end of those issues, as you saw when we looked at a proj ect
that's not in here but is rather to take up for the fact that the state
walked away from their obligation on Davis Boulevard not but two
years ago.
So we have additional funding, public-private partnerships and
the two end up working with each other.
If we don't do that, then our option is to have basically
concurrency deficiencies and just acknowledge that we can't allow any
development to go until those deficiencies are resolved.
Now, that should hopefully get us back into the developer
contribution agreements, which also go back into us needing some
additional funding as well.
When we have those deficient segments, though, and Don's going
to go through exactly where on that, we also face at some point in time
having to respond if we don't allow development to proceed and no
answer comes forward and we don't have the resources to be able to
provide the answer, then we have to be in the position of declaring a
moratorium.
What we have in here now is probably pretty close to that
situation. So I doubt that all the funding resources are going to come
to bear today in that a transportation concurrency management area,
that we consider our central and east, which is basically in the area of
Santa Barbara over to 951 and from Pine Ridge on down to Davis, that
TCMA area was just basically barely making it, as you have in your
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January 24, 2007
AUIR. And I need to give you that update, as we mentioned earlier.
Right now Golden Gate Parkway, between Santa Barbara and
951, only had a few units to go before it was deficient. And it's
basically in that mode now, which puts us in a situation that in fact we
have to treat it link by link.
And as Don goes through the particulars here in the AUIR, he'll
show you what that has for implications, one of which is, as we
discussed yesterday, 951 cannot proceed and -- in that area, and Davis
Boulevard in particular cannot proceed.
So the other option we have at our disposal is reduce level of
service. Well, we're basically in our six-lane section of level of
service E. We're at 250th highest hour. Now, if I go to 500, I don't
create a lot more because our season has expanded so long now in our
peak.
If I go to level of service F, I don't know what I'm saying to
anyone on that. I could take the orientation that some have taken and
establish a 1.67 volume to capacity ratio; in other words, self
regulating.
My worst conditions are about 1.2 today. That means I have
about 20 percent more traffic than capacity of those lanes. And if you
get much past that, it self regulates, so you don't ever get to it. Some
people do it that way. That's not the way this board has sought to do
it, nor staff has brought to this board to respond. But that's one option
we have is reducing level of service.
Other options out there for you to consider is whether or not we
ought to reduce the level of service on state facilities only. State
facilities, when I first came here, weren't even considered in the
concurrency, what level of concurrency was being looked at then, but
wasn't even looked at in the AUIR. The feeling was, well, that's for
the state to address.
I think we all know the practical aspects of assuming that, since
the state has done little to address nor looks like with their revenue
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January 24, 2007
stream and issues that they're likely to address some of these state
facilities, even though we have some of the least of any county in the
State of Florida on the state system.
But we have East Trail, 41. You're going to hear from that more
from Don. We've got 951, some sections. We've got Davis. We've
got 29. And that's the state system, other than 1-75.
And unfortunately on just about every one of those we have a
deficiency problem or issue, and yet no prospects of revenue from the
state.
If you lower the level of service on those facilities, which you
can't do to 75 -- it's on the strategic intermodal system, and we don't
pull that into our equations anyway. But if you lower it on the state
system, then you allow more development to continue. And that
development is also going to spill over with impacts to other roads
besides just the state road.
What I'm not doing is giving you a lot of good answers. I know
that's supposed to be my job. And I will try to get to that point. But
I'm trying to paint the picture as best I can. I'm not trying to paint it
bleak, I'm trying to be very open to you as to what the issues are and
what we've dealing with.
With that in mind, there are some other things I can hit on, but I'll
ask Don to go through the specifics in the A UIR and then open it up
for discussion, and both of us are available for any questions --
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: We have some people I think that
have questions at this point in time, if you bear with us, Mr. Feder.
And I'm going lead off, if I may.
You mentioned the fact that some road proj ects have already
been scaled back?
MR. FEDER: Yes. Right now you've got, for instance, Santa
Barbara Boulevard, we originally had that going up to Green, if not up
to Pine Ridge. As we went through and as estimates increased, we
reduced that from Golden Gate down to Davis. That has been let. We
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January 24, 2007
had a number of years of continued debate over the design, which
ended up essentially at the original design.
But in that period of that discussion with the community, what
was about a $36 million estimate to go from Pine Ridge to Davis
became a $62 million proj ect from Golden Gate to Davis that you just
recently approved and has been let and construction is to start shortly.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Which other projects, sir?
MR. FEDER: Examples, the prior year we pulled Green
Boulevard out between 951 and Santa Barbara Boulevard.
Another example is 951, which in the second north section, if
you will -- because we've got the north underway from Immokalee
down to Golden Gate Boulevard -- but the next one that was slated to
come up was from Golden Gate Boulevard down to Green. With
Green out of the program, that has been shortened to Pine Ridge rather
than all the way down to Green.
Another one is 951 is about to be let. But as I said, we held,
pending these discussions today, it's ready to go and was slated to be
production ready this year.
There's 41 up to Davis, but originally it was up to the canal or
north of 1-75. That's been pulled down to up to Davis to try and keep
within the program as strong as we could. And we still had to identify
about 160 million that mayor may not come from different developer
contribution agreements and other issues.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: With the program as you're referring
to and the amount of money that's available to build.
MR. FEDER: Uh-hum.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Okay. And these items all came
before us as the MPO or --
MR. FEDER: They've come to you through our work programs
that we presented. Previously in the AUIR it was Green Boulevard,
others I'm presenting to you today.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: And by not doing these roads, do we
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January 24, 2007
exasperate the situation with our concurrency?
MR. FEDER: What we've done is given you ones that -- and
Don will go through the list there of specific concurrency issues and
why the projects are in there.
They don't exasperate it, but they don't help us as we try to stay
caught up or, never ahead of the curve, but caught up in years to come.
But they do allow us to meet the more immediate needs and to work
on what I calljust-in-time inventory, hopefully, if we can continue
doing that.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Commissioner Henning?
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Thank you. And what you see
on the screen that Don's going to talk about.
But I asked the county manager for some information, which he
did provide for us, for me. I think he provided it to the other
commISSIoners.
Last year the board seen unencumbered funds. And we allocated
some of those funds to particular projects. But there was a substantial
amount left over not dedicated to anything. The county manager
provided me -- that equates to about $11 million.
Personally I hope the board directs that we put that in there. But
I would like to see us do more. And it's really a policy decision by the
Board of Commissioners.
And my top priority has not changed, and that is to get the roads
done in Collier County. We cannot do that if we keep on pulling
proj ects out year after year and hit the priorities, which we should be
doing.
But I want to try to get proactive in that and look at other funds.
Look at our priorities and say -- say to the public and say to our staff,
transportation or expanded roads is the number one priority on the
board's list. Look at other things within our capital plan, what we can
move up.
And I'm going to leave that up to the board, but I'm going to
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January 24, 2007
really be pushing, at least for that $11 million to go to the
transportation, so we can start getting back on track.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Commissioner Fiala?
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Mine was just a simple comment.
When you were saying something about what a bleak picture it is, I
was just going to say I'm glad you're painting the picture that -- a
realistic picture, rather than giving us something nice and then later on
we have to, you know, be kicking ourselves for not seeing the real
picture. Thank you.
MR. FEDER: Hopefully we've done that throughout. What I did
note is the bonding kept us for a while. We've caught up with that
other end of that picture that we expected we probably would be at
even back in 2000, and we're pretty much there now.
Because even that about 180 million plus, even with some other
things that we pared down a little bit, we're in a situation where almost
half of that seems to be a recurring theme, is items that were
production ready and should go today. I should tell you that what we
had in production readiness, our program is -- this program as the
board's directed and you told us to continue production readiness,
trying to bring the projects forward. We're ready. That means I have
all permits, all right-of-ways, and I'm ready to go on 951 between 41
and now Davis, okay.
We also made a commitment under developer contribution
agreement for two sections of Oil Well, the western section from
Immokalee on over to Everglades, and then from east of DeSoto in
front of Ave Maria over to Camp Keis.
We also had County Barn. The project's been in and out of the
program for a number of years, and that one has all of its permits and
all of its right-of-ways ready to go. The Oil Well is getting close to
that statement.
And so what I'm here to tell you is that's roughly a cost right now
of almost $100 million worth of projects, especially the Oil Well's
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January 24, 2007
estimates of increase. And yet what we have is about 20 percent or 25
percent of that available, enough to move probably on the 951 project,
but not on the other three that we have production readiness or
planned for this fiscal year.
Don?
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Commissioner Coyle?
COMMISSIONER COYLE: I think it's very significant that the
major problems we're having difficulty with are state roads.
MR. FEDER: A major part of them.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Yeah. And part of the reason is
that we haven't gotten our share of the money. In fact, we've gotten
money removed from us, not added to our budget for doing something
with those roads.
I do believe we've got to look for other sources, but I don't think
we can look internally for all those sources. We've got to go out and
get money from the state. We've got to demand our share of that
money. We should have gotten it; we didn't get it. We've got to find
out why.
Commissioner Henning is correct, if we don't look internally and
solve as many problems as we can internally with respect to getting
funds, we won't have much of an argument for getting those state
funds.
But the point is, even if we do reorder our priorities and divert
the existing $11 million or so that we have available for capital
projects, even if we do that, that's just a drop in the bucket and it's not
going to solve our problem. But we must do it. We can't go to the
state and argue for funds if we haven't done everything that we can do
to get the funds internally.
This is ultimately going to result in an undesirable property tax
increase if we cannot get the state to give us the funds. But that's
where the state has been driving us all along. We saw that during the
Senate Bill 360 debates, we heard it from legislators. They've been
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January 24, 2007
driving us toward a property tax increase for years.
And I don't want to go there. I don't think the taxpayers want to
go there. But I will make sure that taxpayers understand how we got
there, if that's what happens. It's because state legislature has
intentionally driven us in that direction.
So what is the implication of declaring a transportation
concurrency problem on a state road?
MR. FEDER: I don't think there's any problem, as long as it's in
the SIS. And if that's what we're facing, that's exactly what it is.
Togo back to what you said, and I want to make sure that the
public who may be seeing this, listening to this -- I used to work at
DOT. I used to do their work program. We went through an effort
when a major portion of the funds under decentralization were coming
to the district, then back to the counties. And we tried to make sure,
and I went through a fair share formula, each county, to make sure
they got their monies.
Just before Senate Bill 360, the state went and developed what's
called a strategic intermodal system. It took the state and federal
dollars that they get and then distribute out and put 75 percent of them
under their statewide decision-making, not even to their districts, for
use on that limited system. And I say limited because it's the interstate
plus, and in our case it's the interstate. And if we get lucky someday,
29. It's on the merger, it's not actually on the SIS.
So we've got a very limited system and 75 percent.
Then what they did -- and Don Scott, I've got to give credit to
and other people on the staff have been very aggressive in going after
that other 25. It no longer is so much coming to the counties, it's a
portion of it that does, the urban funds. But essentially became
discretionary funding items.
We hear we've gotten grant money. That's trying to get our own
money back. We've been very aggressive in trying to do that, but it's
only 25 percent. And in most of the write-up of those grant
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January 24, 2007
requirements, you have to show how you're relieving and assisting the
SIS. Ideally you're putting it on the SIS from the state's perspective.
We've been creative enough to show that we're relieving the SIS.
Since we don't have it it's real hard to relieve it. But nonetheless we
are. And we've been fortunate that Don and folks have been very,
very creative and brought some of those funds back.
But unfortunately what has happened is with the SIS as a focus
and as an almost exclusive focus of the state of federal funds, all of the
urban transportation issues and the system that is on the state highway
system that is not strategic intermodal is effectively being handed over
to the local governments.
Years before there was an effort by the state to remove some of
the roads from the state highway system, which there aren't many in
Collier, by the way, and it's called functional reclassification.
Four or five different years of different efforts to try and address
that didn't get anywhere to the point where they finally threw up their
hands and said it's by mutual consent. Which means the state will
never agree to take on anything else but if the locals want to take on
one of theirs they'd be happy to do it with them.
Well, they found a way outside of that right now with SIS and
with 360. So I listed off some state routes: U.S. 41, Davis Boulevard,
951, maybe 29 north. But all those aren't on their strategic intermodal
system. And unless we get a piece of a grant that we can say we're
doing there to help that, we're not likely to see a lot of dollars from the
state system.
So what do we do? We are spending our monies wherever we
can to meet the needs. That's why we had the discussion about what
do we do about Davis Boulevard that's on the state system, 951.
What do we do about 41 East Trail? You're going to see some of
the state routes. But you're very correct, sir. That's why the last few
years we've been shading in those deficient segments that are on the
state system.
Page 29
January 24, 2007
I'll let Don go to that. But I did want to make sure the public
understood the magnitude of what you're saying. The state has
focused all of its attention on the SIS.
And to the other end of it, their usual statement, which I never
accepted when I was there and I definitely don't accept now, because
we're not the ones that permitted development, so it's not our problem,
it's working fine. Well, maybe in the dark ages it was, because it
wasn't working fine before. And in many cases, like Davis, they put
money finally on it after five years of us putting it as top priority for
funding. And then after we allowed development to go, they pulled
that funding away.
So it rings rather hollow, but nonetheless what you hear
continuously out of Tallahassee is well, locals are the ones that permit
development, they get to control it.
And the other one you hear is you're one of the richest counties in
the State of Florida, and your ad valorem rate isn't that high. Now
your collections may be one of the highest in the state but nonetheless,
your rate isn't that high.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: That's exactly the message I've
been receiving from legislators who say you guys have plenty of
money, all you got to do is tax your people more. And they just fail to
recognize that property values are so high here you attack people more
-- you know, it is not fair and we have a lot of people living on fixed
incomes. We're forcing them out of their homes, and that is not the
way that we should be doing these things. And we're going to have to
get the legislature to understand that.
But, well, we've gotten them to understand some things from
time to time, but it's going to take voter emphasis and interest and
perhaps even charter government, if we decide to do that.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Very well put, Commissioner Coyle.
I'm going to chime in, if you don't mind, for just a second.
You want to go first.
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January 24, 2007
COMMISSIONER FIALA: If you don't mind.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: No, I don't at all.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Do you think that this new cabinet
with the new governor will change some of how the money is sent
down to us? Do you think that there's a possibility that we as a county
can work with the new people in transportation?
MR. FEDER: I see Commissioner Coyle leaning forward, so I
may be ready to defer to him because I think he's probably closer to
those circles. But obviously with a change in administration, you're
going to want to raise your issues again to find out whether there's
avenue.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: I got a very good point I want to
bring up. They're at the point they're ready to appoint a secretary of
transportation at a state level. And a good friend of ours is being
considered for that, and that's Mr. Kant, Stan Kant.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Stan Kant?
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Yeah.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Oh, he's a good candidate.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: And what I'd like to do is have this
board direct me as the Chair to write a letter to the Governor and
mention the fact that we're in support of him for that position.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: And I think you need to talk with
Norm --
COMMISSIONER COYLE: I'd -- if you're going to do that, I
would also send a letter to Mr. Kant saying we're recommending you
because we want you to get us some more money.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Well, he'll know, because we'll copy
him on the letter. I mean, that's the purpose.
MR. FEDER: I guess my reaction was, just as was noted, the
editorial board, before a candidate gets endorsed, gets to be able to
talk what their platform is. You might want to ask -- and you've got
an MPO meeting coming up very shortly. I don't know if that's before
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January 24, 2007
of after --
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: It will be too late at that time. He's
on the short list at this point in time and a final decision could be made
at any time.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: When's our MPO meeting?
MR. SCOTT: February 9th.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: It's not going to work. Either let me
do it today or --
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Could you talk with Norm before
you do that, just --
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Oh, yeah, of course --
MR. FEDER: I have no reason not to recommend you do it.
What I was saying, it would be nice to let him know that our
endorsement is because we're looking forward to his assistance. But I
think you can still do that if that's the board's desire, and giving
Commissioner Coletta that direction. I think it needs to be made clear
to him that we hope that his knowledge and sensitivity are issues that
in Tallahassee he can even do more to try to be responsive to our
needs --
COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Yeah, we'll draft a letter--
MR. FEDER: -- and he was able to do it --
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Am I so directed?
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Yes.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Yes.
COMMISSIONER HALAS: Yes.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: The other thing -- do you have
something else, Commissioner Fiala?
Couple of things that I wanted to go over. One, Commissioner
Henning is right, and thank you for saying it again in so many exact
words. Since 2000, the commissioners have been steadfast
recognizing the roads as number one priority. And they reconfirmed
this continuously through all these years.
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January 24, 2007
And even today, even though we have spent millions of dollars
and we made tremendous progress, we still realize that what we're
doing falls short of what needs to be done.
And I think as we get into this process and the budget process,
we're going to continue to go in that direction. The reason I'm
repeating this again is we can't get this message across enough to staff
and county manager and to budget that when it comes to it, there's
many different ways to do it.
And we know that we can't put all the blame on the state for the
lack of funds coming in, and we can't use them for the crutch for not
building the roads because they didn't give us the money. We have to
find creative ways to get this done.
And my hat's off to you, Mr. Feder and to your staff and to Don
for coming up with some of these extremely clever contribution
agreements between developers that are out there. We're going to
need more of them in the future, undoubtedly.
But still, we're going to have a shortfall and we're going to have
to know what that shortfall is so that we can look it square in the eye
and figure out how we're going to be able to do it.
We've got to be able to do it in a way that's equitable and that's
not going to put a burden on our taxpayers, a direct burden on our
taxpayers in a way that's going to hurt them worse than they are now.
One other question I do have. The direction that we're going,
where we are at this moment in time, we have a number of people on
the Vanderbilt Beach corridor who have this fear, and they keep
putting out rumors that the money's running out and they're going to
be the first ones that are going to be cut off, that those that are going to
have their houses taken are going to be stuck in their homes to that
point in time in the future for the budget, when it comes up and we do
have the money in some distant year.
What can I tell them, Mr. Feder?
MR. FEDER: Right now we've maintained a right-of-way
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January 24, 2007
program in there. We're working to negotiate. Where we've been able
to negotiate reasonably and effectively with folks, we've brought that
to you. As I said, we have one. We have two others coming, others
that we're negotiating with.
We do have some folks along that corridor that unfortunately the
study came out right in the peak of the market and that still have the
perception that they wanted to cash out at that level. That's not where
we are today, nor where we realistically were probably then, as the
market itself is showing.
But having said that, we are trying to work very strongly with
folks. And where we can negotiate a deal, we'll bring it forward to
you. And we do have money earmarked for right-of-way acquisition
In --
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: That's what I need to know. And I
realize that we have a certain negotiating procedure we go through. I
also realize that Florida is the most generous state when it comes to
reimbursing people for takings.
MR. FEDER: That's true.
I would like to turn it over to Don. And that will probably spawn
other questions for he and I.
But I think he's got a couple things here. First, Don's going to
review with you where we do have some deficiencies, how we're
addressing it in the case of TCMA, possibly where we're not, and what
the implications of that are.
And then we also need to discuss that within this program that I
just mentioned, I've got about 180 million that Don has come up with
different potential strategies for what might happen in the future as far
as those development contribution agreements and the like. And he
could give you an idea of the source and nature of those for you to get
a feel for how comfortable you are or how not, and whether or not we
are financially feasible with that 173 million, I think it is, included in
the program.
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January 24, 2007
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Thank you, Mr. Feder.
MR. SCOTT: I'd actually like to state what Commissioner
Coletta said a little bit differently.
Having a concurrency system, having the issues that we had has
made developers work with us on items, and that's with the support of
the board, too.
The 163 million, I identified some of the developer contribution
agreements. But back in my office -- and we're not all coming up with
them, the developers are dropping some on. They stopped by and they
said, hey we're looking at doing something. I have about $400 million
worth on my desk.
Now, that sounds good, but it's all over the county, and it might
be more directed in certain areas that at the time maybe we're not
interested in doing any improvements or might be earmarked more
towards something they want to do more so than we want to do.
But all that's on the table for as we move into the future trying to
address some of these problems.
Specifically, for instance, U.S. 41 to the east, that PD&E study is
moving slowly, and design is programmed in FDOT's five-year work
program. But there is a group of developers down there that would
like to widen the first couple of miles. And they've submitted some
points as to how they'd like to go forward.
And I'm dealing with the FDOT's consultant to figure out if some
of the things they're raising are reasonable. Because it's a little bit
different typical section than FDOT's studying at the moment.
Obviously trying to look at it from a saving money standpoint and
making it go further out than at least what is originally entailed.
Let me just touch on from a -- touch a little bit back on between
the planning commission and the productivity committee and the
board, there was some recommendations that we've implemented that
came out of that.
One of the things was we had grants in the future based on what
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January 24, 2007
we knew was coming in the future. And what they said we ought to
go back and look at is what did we really get, an average of over the
last couple of years. Because you look at a future year and it might be
$2 million. But we've done better than $2 million a year.
So I looked at the last four years. That worked out to be 15
million a year, and I've put that in there as an assumed revenue source.
The other thing was, to be conservative we had -- and this was
with the budget office and ourselves, we had impact fees that, you
know, like 50 million in the current years and then it was dropping
down to about 35 million in the future years. I've raised the lower
level of at least the impact fees and COA to 40 million in the future.
Obviously we're going to look at raising them again, or at least CPI
(phonetic) increases, if not anything else.
And it's -- though some development has slowed down, we've
still been averaging about 50 million a year for at least the last three
years.
So I'm trying to look at it more realistically from a revenue side
also, not only the cost side, which has been going up dramatically.
One of the last things that the planning commission raised was --
and I know the board's touched on this in the past, too. The
Immokalee loop at one time was going to be included in the
Immokalee Road widening, which would mean it's underway right
now, which it's not. And obviously we've had the conversation before
about federal highway wanting FDOT to do that as part of 1- 7 5.
They said we ought to identify that as a problem, if the loop for
some reason didn't go forward. Now, right now we're moving
forward. Obviously next month we'll see what the bid is and if there's
any problems from that aspect.
But as been correctly noted, we don't know if that's at the
beginning of the project, which I don't think it is, because that's zero
percent design, or middle of the project or even the end of the project,
which is a three-year project. So they said show that as a problem, if
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January 24, 2007
we don't do that.
I've looked at some of the things that have happened over the last
couple of years, projected that as a problem in 2008, if that doesn't
happen, even with the six-lane widening that's happening right now.
I think it's probably best I jump to the deficient road segment
map. And you're going to hear some of this again tomorrow. Because
one of the things in our response to DCA is -- I get the impression
from some of the questions they've raised that we're not doing
anything anywhere to any of these projects, which is untrue.
Do I have construction for all these projects? No. But are we
working on design, are we working on developer contribution
agreements, are we working on other items to try to bring these
projects forward? Yes.
So even from a standpoint of 41 to the east, that's not ready to be
constructed next year. It's not even designed yet.
So what I've tried to do for responses for DCA is identify all the
different roadways and what we're doing and where we're at and some
of the things that might be positive, to bring those forward.
And essentially in the -- if you look at the screen, or in your -- on
Page 1 7 in your package, those are the roadways that have been
identified to you that are either deficient or going to be deficient in the
next five years.
Now when I say going to be deficient in the next five years, it's
based on looking at the last couple of years with vested trips in there
and proj ecting out the growth as they've gone forward.
N ow something you didn't see last year was Radio Road from
Airport out to Santa Barbara and also Golden Gate Boulevard from
Collier out to Wilson.
Now, Golden Gate Boulevard, from Collier out to Wilson, it's
hard to imagine that, but that's been growing about 200 peak direction
trips per year. Now, if that keeps growing at that rate, it will be
deficiency fairly soon.
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January 24, 2007
I think -- I say this, I think when Immokalee's all done and we get
more back to a regular pattern, that that will drop back down again. I
don't think that is really growing at that rate based on house growth.
Oh, it's big out there at that level. But I've been identifying
things based on that trend.
Now, just like Golden Gate Parkway in the city, that had, let's
say, less than 100 trips available last year. What I mentioned earlier
this morning is that based on some proj ects that are going forward
right now, they'll end up dropping below level of service standards
specifically on that road.
If you look at the next table on Page 18, what you do in a TCMA
is you look at the average percentage, essentially what is operating
above accepted level of service and what's below level of service.
And the average of those lane miles, essentially 85 percent of them or
better are supposed to be working to use the TCMA area.
If you take Golden Gate Parkway area out of that, that drops
down to 81 percent, and then that TCMA is essentially failing. So
anybody coming in has to go by link-by-link analysis.
Now, that would mean that with Santa Barbara widening, with
the thing, if you're on Santa Barbara, that's assumed that as long as the
trips don't go too far on the road you could go forward.
Meanwhile, with Davis Boulevard failing, if you were on Davis
and you tried to go forward, you wouldn't be able to go forward.
I know from one aspect of this that's been raised is should we
have a concurrency. We have a concurrency system that will stop
development in certain areas. 41 East, that's why they all got together
is because there are a bunch of them out there that want -- some of
them want compo plan amendments, some of them want zoning, some
of them want site plans that are stopped by the concurrency system
right now.
I don't think we have to do anything more efficiently than that,
but that can be raised. But obviously it's easier. As our outside
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January 24, 2007
attorney used to say, is call it a concurrency restriction, don't call it the
M word.
We -- some of those things aren't ready to go, but obviously that
still holds people back from going forward.
MR. FEDER: Don, if I could, that's an important note. We've
got a concurrency system. If we end up with a deficiency, we're not
allowing people to move. And that's the case in different parts of the
system.
So the system is working. We've got issues about when and how
we address other issues earlier in the approval process. But
nonetheless, at that time and effort to go, it is working.
But at some point in time if you have an area that you don't allow
development to go and no answer comes forward, then you're
probably going to need to get into the more formalized process.
But the longer you're not in that process and you continue maybe
to look at interim, like we did on a section of 951 south of 41, which is
on this list, because it hadn't been finished at that time when the AUIR
was done up but now is, in the interim, there are things that can be
done, spot interim in some development, but others then continue to
get stopped until there's a better solution or further solution.
I think that's important to you because once you establish a
moratorium, an ASI, if you will, then you've got to find your answer
within a period of time. And the answer comes in a question or the
desire comes more directly back on us.
Right now we're trying to do developer contribution agreements,
find creative ways but appropriate ways of having interim proj ects
other than improvements that allow development as it can to go. And
if it can't go and there is no good way to provide that extra capacity,
then we're telling folks no, and we'll continue to.
MR. SCOTT: And obviously with the direction -- it hasn't been
approved by DCA and we'll see what happens. But with the direction
of the board we've pushed out project that aren't under -- you know,
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January 24, 2007
haven't been bid and accepted out beyond the two years. And that's
why there's so much in the work program in the future years versus
what's really ready to go at that time. And that also helps with the
concurrency standpoint side of it.
I will agree from that aspect that Commissioner Coy Ie is right,
DCA -- we sit here and talk about are we doing something to fix the
problem. And I'll argue all day long that yes, we are, but we don't
have every solution to it, but we're working towards that.
On the opposite side I get the feeling when you read the
comments that they either want you to raise your taxes to pay for
certain projects or lower your level of service. Which is very
questionable. How low can you go, essentially.
Some of the roadways, I'll go touch on them. The U.S. 41 that
shows deficiency south of -- I mean 951 south of 41, that is
substantially complete and open to traffic. But we have not finally --
or FDOT hasn't finally accepted that roadway segment. Until that
happens, I'm not taking that off the list. Essentially the CO on the
building, unless it's all -- they're dealing with a noise wall issue down
there at the Holiday Manor and some other things, and until all those
issues are addressed, that will still show up as in progress but not done
yet.
Obviously 951, Norman talked about, that's almost ready to go
bid-wise.
Davis Boulevard addressed in here, we're working towards that
with the board. We had discussion yesterday and we'll have a
discussion in a couple of weeks on that.
County Barn Road, that's a deficiency shown on here. It is
almost ready to go to construction. But even if it doesn't go, Santa
Barbara extension, one of those two projects will help that from a
concurrency standpoint.
Davis Boulevard, the section -- and you'll see more of those fill
in later on, the four-lane sections are getting pretty crowded. And that
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January 24, 2007
is designed, that's programmed in FDOT's work program. That's the
good part. The bad part is we still have a long list of state proj ects to
go before we can even get near funding to fund that section.
Radio Road has been growing fast. You know, we've discussed
this before, with Livingston ending at Radio, there's not much choice
from there. It remains to be seen. I see some aspects like Golden
Gate Parkway interchange opening at 1-75 where that might reduce.
And the opposite aspect is when Three Oaks and Imperial hook
up with Livingston. And I-75's under construction, you might see a
lot more traffic on Livingston Road, too. So we'll wait and see what
happens there.
951 to the north, all the sections -- it's different years, but all
those sections from essentially the canal up to Golden Gate Boulevard
are being designed right now. Though the first section from Golden
Gate Boulevard down to Pine Ridge is what is essentially programmed
in the five years. But we are identifying the design beyond that,
because we're going to -- we're trying to make sure that if we have
some pond sites or some other issues, solve the draining and all that in
that area, that if there's any opportunities come up with some
developments where we can get ponds sites in that area, that we
address that when we're ready to be able to go to construction in that
area.
Green Boulevard, that was programmed before, and is a
projected deficiency. And some of these roadways within the TCMA,
if we were widening them, would help you with that percentage
identified before. But again we're, you know, being funding
constrained.
Golden Gate Parkway, we've talked about.
Golden Gate Boulevard. Boulevard out to the east is shown as a
deficiency. That's in design right now. I think we're heading towards
a public meeting. And that will move on sometime in the five-year
work program.
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January 24, 2007
And then lastly with the loop, obviously hopefully at the next
board meeting, I'll be bringing the agreement for the SIB (phonetic)
loan. I say hopefully, because they've addressed -- essentially to get
this loan I have to have a backing to it. And I've offered, you know,
okay, this is what we have. And they say, well, they can't use that
funding because it might go away, like impact fees or something like
that.
We're dealing with the budget office to try to address some of
their issues to be able to bring that agreement forward to finalize that.
So when the bid openings opens for 1-75, that can at least proceed at
whatever rate it ends up proceeding.
The last one in here is Pine Ridge Road. Hopefully if it doesn't,
then we'll still stick with the concurrency system. But obviously with
Golden Gate Parkway and 1-75 opening up, hopefully we'll see a
reduction in traffic and a much better operation on that. If it isn't, you
know, we'll go out right after it happens and keep an eye the traffic
counts and see what kind of effect that has.
MR. FEDER: And bottom line, with the work program we have,
even with the 180 million -- and I want to go back to it in a minute --
you have identified and we have concurrency deficiencies, especially
with the TCMA no longer able to cover.
Why don't you list those off. That is Davis Boulevard, that is a
section of 951 from Davis up to the --
MR. SCOTT: That would be Davis Boulevard from Santa
Barbara out to County Road 951. That would be Golden Gate
Parkway from Santa Barbara out to 951. Green Boulevard from Santa
Barbara out to 951. And then some of the other ones would be
coming up later on. Essentially County Road 951.
MR. FEDER: The development directly impacting those
segments would be under concurrency deficiency today. Other
development not directly on but impacting those segments could also
fall into that category.
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January 24, 2007
MR. SCOTT: Well, it depends on what stage they come in.
Obviously if it's zoning we look out five years. And if I can't
guarantee how these -- that some of these aren't going to be operating
in five years, the answer is no.
But you'll see some coming forward pretty soon, because there's
a lot of areas like South 41 where some people want to bring forward
stuff, and we can't guarantee that within the next five years we're
going to be delivering that project.
MR. FEDER: Going back to something I gave you, I think what
we're facing right now is I've got 180 million. Basically assuming
developer contribution agreements, that public-private partnership.
I think that our program, no question about it, needs to rely more
and more heavily on that. This board has been very, very effective in
supporting good developer contribution agreements. And we're only
trying to bring the good ones to you, and sometimes they're not even
good enough for you and we'll go back and make sure that they are.
But having said that, those agreements also require a level of
support funding as well. An example and point is the agreements with
Ave Maria. We have sections of roadway that are slated, at least by
developer contribution agreement, two sections for '07 construction.
Costs have gone up, production is getting close to that ability for
production readiness, but our current revenue stream doesn't allow us
to go forward.
Now, having said that, our estimated costs are significantly
higher if it weren't for those agreements, and that level of fill that
we're getting, retention ponds, the right-of-way being provided and the
like.
So even today I will tell you it is a very good agreement, but it's
also one without revenue streams and the cost of proj ects where we're
facing a situation where we need some additional funding to go
forward on what I think is another strong part of the strategy that we
have to follow and that is allowing the development community to
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January 24, 2007
also help us come forward with this program.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: We have two commissioners here that
would like to ask you some questions.
Commissioner Coyle first, then Commissioner Halas.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: In all fairness to everybody
involved here, it's difficult, I would imagine, for any property owner
or developer to even come up with a proposal for a contribution unless
they understand that there is a transportation concurrency deficiency
in the area that impacts their proposed development or their property.
So it appears to me that we could do everyone a service if we
specifically identified all of these segments as transportation
concurrency deficiency areas, segments. So that everyone would
know where the problems are, and then those people who wish to
proceed along any of those segments any time in the next five years
would know that they're going to have to contribute something to get
that done.
The problem is that just like the problem with the state, where
they want us to advance the funds and they're going to pay it back
later on, if we advance the funds on this or we even estimate what we
think it's going to cost, and the developers then provide us that money,
and then over a period of three to five years we start doing the work
and we let the contracts and we find out they're twice as much as we
expected, we're right back in the same boat. And that's a very
significant risk.
So I like the model that you followed at the intersection of 41 and
Collier Boulevard where we just say to the developers you guys want
to get together, you want to build a road to our specifications subject
to our acceptance, please feel free to go do that. And they can control
the costs. They're in the construction business. They can do it I think
faster than we can -- well, maybe not, okay. But they can do it. And
we have -- our taxpayers have less risk under those circumstances.
MR. SCOTT: I think you'll see more of those. Because like the
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January 24, 2007
ones that we're talking to, like 41, they want to build it themselves.
They have like an arm that's a construction company side of it.
Even Oil Well Road, we've raised this to Barron Collier that, you
know, we're having funding problems and it might be hard to deliver
those. They've raised questions of, well, can we bid it ours -- can we
do this, can we do that. I think all of those are on the table for that to
happen.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Good.
MR. SCOTT: And I think you'll see more of them constructed.
MR. FEDER: Nothing is off the table, but nothing is agreed to
until the board agrees to it.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: What would we have to do to
formalize this process then?
MR. FEDER: Well, first of all, I think you are formalizing with
this. But if you want us to, and I think we've got other folks here that
will help you with that. We'll make sure that folks know it.
But they do, the industry generally knows this. We have a
concurrency system. As we said, the AUIR is one shot in time. Our
concurrency system is out there, it's available to any developer, any
property owner. They know where we stand.
Even when you saw the figures here in the TCMA, you see the
ones that are getting close before and what could trigger (phonetic),
which unfortunately one has now.
So that information is out. We're doing it even with intersection
improvements. You heard issues, because it's not even major road,
we're having to do it.
So it is a process of making sure that those that are creating the
impacts are not only with the impact fees but near the processes
(phonetic) that we're developing a way to get it done together.
Recognizing that we have to come to the table reasonably with our
effort, but they need to come to the table as well; otherwise, it's not
getting done. And if we can get the third party there, we'd all be set.
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January 24, 2007
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Commissioner Halas?
COMMISSIONER HALAS: Yes. Norm, I look at the chart that
you gave us here, and wasn't too many years ago that we completed
Golden Gate Boulevard. Now you say it's failing. We're presently out
there widening Immokalee Road.
With the added density that's being put out there on almost a
weekly basis, when do you project the failure of Immokalee Road?
MR. FEDER: First of all, I think Don hit this one. On that
Golden Gate Boulevard, we think we have quite a bit of diversion
because of the construction that's been underway on Immokalee Road.
So you may not see as severe a increase that we've seen out to the east
where we need to get to the added lanes, nor necessarily from the
section basically from Wilson on over to Golden Gate Boulevard was
four-Ianed, should have been six-Ianed, but nonetheless was
four-Ianed and now is seeing some constraints.
I think what I'm saying in answer to you is, you're going to have
demands on Immokalee. We've shown Immokalee functions at six
lanes with a loop that takes care of that problem of all the traffic --
COMMISSIONER HALAS: Do you know when that's coming
in?
MR. FEDER: And that's why, consistent with what the planning
commission asked that we show that on our deficiency, future
deficiency list.
Now, having said that, the other approach to that is the other one
that was mentioned, Vanderbilt Beach Road extension. But right now
I don't have construction, I only have right-of-way. If I can get that
constructed out to Wilson, that's another further reliever.
But for right now we're showing on Immokalee some deficiency
because that loop is in other hands than ours, the state's hands with the
interstate construction.
And we're showing Golden Gate Boulevard, even that four-lane
section, because of the growth trend that we've seen, which as I said I
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January 24, 2007
expect to change once the Immokalee work is done.
And again, to try and answer your question, the six-lane should
work well into the future. But if we get the loop, it will continue, but
it won't go without something like the Vanderbilt Beach Road
extension, you need another reliever, because we're continuing to get
more and more growth out that Immokalee corridor.
COMMISSIONER HALAS: You're hinging everything on the
loop. And that's not really the question I had. We're in the process
now of widening this Immokalee Road all the way out to the
fairgrounds, okay. We're approving additional PUDs out there.
My question is, at the rate we're going, when will this road fail
from the six-Ianing?
MR. FEDER: I'm going to ask Don to give you the numbers.
But in answer to that, with what you've approved today to what's
in -- forward, it is not set to fail. But it will further out in time without
the Vanderbilt Beach Road extension.
Where are we right now, Don?
MR. SCOTT: That depends on where you jump in time.
Because if you look at the long-range plan, it assumes that sections of
it are working in 2030. But you also have additional roadways you
don't have right now, like Livingston east-west, or Veterans Memorial
Boulevard from 41 all the way out to I think it's Tarpon on the other
side -- actually over to Logan in the future. You have Logan
extension, you have 951 extension.
It all depends on -- and I can run different scenarios essentially, if
this roadway wasn't done, what happens at this point.
MR. FEDER: Don, do you have right now, with what is already
out there today and what has been approved, what portion of that
capacity of six lanes -- forget about the loop for a second, assume the
loop is in, because that takes care of the problem. But with or without
the loop, do we have where we stand on what portion of that capacity
is already consumed? I think that's what the Commissioner is asking.
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January 24, 2007
COMMISSIONER HALAS: Exactly.
MR. SCOTT: There's a huge -- I mean, if you look in the table.
Let me see if I can find it here.
MR. FEDER: Yeah, it should be in the details.
MR. SCOTT: Yeah, in the details, Immokalee Road, I-75 --
COMMISSIONER HALAS: What page is that on?
MR. SCOTT: It's on Page 12.
It shows you the bank that's in there. Some of that trip bank on
Page 12, say Immokalee from I-75 to Logan, that trip bank is 1,500
trips.
MR. FEDER: Don, what number are we using on this one?
MR. SCOTT: That is 43. Number 43.
MR. FEDER: Down your left-hand side, number 43.
MR. SCOTT: And if you look at the trip bank, that's essentially
based on the vested trips that are out there. That's about half the
roadway. Essentially half of a six -lane roadway is trip bank out there,
what's already been approved in the area.
MR. FEDER: That means it doesn't exist today, but it's approved
development, and we're acquiring that --
MR. SCOTT: So if you say like the reality of -- and this is where
I get in with DCA too, say 1.1. I'm assuming our concurrency system
goes with bank trips. But sometimes they ask, well, what is your
actual operations right now? Not what's in the future, but what's your
actual operations? But I know all those trips are coming in the future,
too.
COMMISSIONER HALAS: Within five years.
MR. SCOTT: Now, some of them might be further out than that.
MR. FEDER: Depends on build-out. Different ones will build
out different times. Some before five, some after five years.
MR. SCOTT: I mean, we've assumed vested developments, like
we've talked about from the beginning, but also Golden Gate Estates,
assuming that's vested at a certain rate per year too. Because I
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January 24, 2007
essentially assume I can't stop that.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Okay?
COMMISSIONER HALAS: Yeah.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Commissioner Henning?
COMMISSIONER HENNING: This is all a great discussion, but
I think it's time for us to fish or cut bait. And I feel like fishing
myself. So why don't we see if we can give some direction on this
part of our AUIR, Mr. Chairman.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: That's fine.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: I would like -- Commissioner
Coyle brought up about applying our transportation concurrency on
the state roads, which we don't presently, correct?
MR. FEDER: We do.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Okay. What was the --
Commissioner Coyle, help me out.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Yeah, I would like to make -- get
the board to approve that and just designate all these roads where an
existing deficiency occurs or one is proj ected to occur within the next
five years, given the current level of funding, and just officially create
a transportation deficiency on those road segments.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Yeah. That's good. I agree with
that. But here's the problem. That -- you're not going to see DCAs
come in for some of those.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: That's right.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: And those are the ones that we
need to address. And also, we also need to address the ones that will
become deficiency -- you know, we need to leave that up to our staff
as far as what the fix is and how to fix it.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: That's right. I agree.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: But that $11 million, I would
like to -- I guess part of the motion, if that's appropriate, Mr. Chairman
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January 24, 2007
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: I'm not too sure without it advertising
beforehand.
Mr. Mudd, any guidance here? A motion to take the $11 million
that are in --
MR. MUDD: Commissioner, you can do that. You just heard
the -- we just heard the attorney today basically say during
communications you can take motions.
My answer to you, it's a discussion item the board's got in front
of the dais. You're doing it anyway --
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: That sounds fine--
COMMISSIONER HENNING: It's going to have to come back
to the Board of County Commissioners for a budget amendment.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: That's correct, it will.
So go ahead, Commissioner Henning.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: So I'm going to make that a
motion. And also whatever Commissioner Coyle said as part of my
motion also.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: So we've got a marriage of motions.
You want to clarify what you were just offering?
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Yeah, I was suggesting that the
board officially designate a transportation concurrency deficiency for
all of the road segments that are identified here that are either --
currently have a deficiency or proj ected to have a deficiency within
the next five years.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: And that's part of your motion?
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Yes.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: And that's part of your second? You
didn't know you made the second.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Whatever it was, yes.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Okay, anybody want to talk about the
repercussions of what we're talking about doing?
COMMISSIONER FIALA: That's why my light's on.
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January 24, 2007
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Oh, yes, Commissioner Fiala, you go
ahead and ask the question.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: It's all good, but does that then mean
that we won't be able to finish the two libraries which we were
banking on for some of that money?
MR. MUDD: Commissioner, if our experience on the Golden
Gate library, where the construction bid comes in higher than the
estimate, and I believe it will, then you're right, we won't do the south
regional library . Not this year we won't.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: So I lose my library with this.
MR. MUDD: Ma'am, I can't -- I don't know what --
COMMISSIONER FIALA: I know, I'm just asking that
question.
COMMISSIONER HALAS: And an EOC building, right?
MR. MUDD: You could, sir. I don't have those bids yet. I can't
tell you what they're going to come in.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Well, I don't want to do that.
But, you know, we need to do something.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: And I agree.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: We know what we have before
us today. So I can amend my motion to direct staff to find the
appropriate funds for expanding our roads.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Commissioner Henning?
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Yes.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Possibly it might be they could come
back with a menu of pick and choose, we can blend things together?
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Well, you see, I don't want to
get into a Commissioner against another Commissioner. I do not want
to set that up. I think the -- part of the other things that we get into
just pulls it apart, and I don't want to do that.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: That's fine, I agree with that. Your
instructions are is to go out there and come back with a
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January 24, 2007
recommendation. That recommendation may include cutting
something out, somewheres along the way, or do you want to exclude
something from this?
A little more guidance I think might be appropriate.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Well, my fear is it's going to
come back and pit commissioners against commissioners.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Then do you want to take your fears
and put them into some sort of words so we can either avert it or do
you just want to --
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Commissioner Coyle's going to
help me in a second.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: I'm sure. He looks like he's ready to
go. Commissioner Coyle?
COMMISSIONER COYLE: I hope so. I don't know how to
deal with the EOC, but let's just deal with the library and the roads
right now.
Would it be acceptable if we took that pot of $11 million we've
got and have the county manager determine how much additional
money the library is going to cost in Commissioner Fiala's district and
allocate enough money -- enough of that money to complete the
library and the remainder goes to the roads?
Is that okay for everybody?
COMMISSIONER HENNING: I have a better one yet. The bids
-- when is it going out for bid? It's pretty soon. I think it's --
MR. MUDD: Yes, sir, I'll have the results back to the board here
by the end of March, I believe.
No? Ron?
COMMISSIONER HENNING: All right. Well, why don't we
just hold off. Because I would hate to see them set a pot of money
aside only to determine what the bids are going to be for the library.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: I'm sorry, hold off what, the whole
motion, or --
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January 24, 2007
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Yeah -- well, not the whole
motion, but after the south regional library comes in for bids, give us
where we can get that monies to complete the projects for the roads.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Commissioner Henning, we're talking
about this limited pot of money or are we talking about other
alternatives that might be out there also?
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Other alternatives to finish the
transportation needs, the expanded roads.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Okay. So in addition to the money
that we have in reserves there, you're talking about other alternatives
also.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Correct.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Okay. Good motion.
Anything you want to add to that, Commissioner Coyle? You've
been helping with it.
Silence.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: How will this impact the issue of
providing additional EMS units on the road? Where was that funding
intended to come from?
MR. MUDD: Well, EMS, when you increase the service, they
come from impact fees. Because you're adding--
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Do you have impact fees to support
the --
MR. MUDD: Well, we'd be taking loans out in order to -- and
then pay them off with impact fees, yes, as they come in.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: It wasn't envisioned that you were
going to take any of this general fund money to do that?
MR. MUDD: No.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Okay. So we don't have a conflict
there. I'm okay.
MR. MUDD: Commissioner, the only two uncertains I have
right now on this pot of money is the south regional library and the
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January 24, 2007
emergency services complex.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: You can guide us on that.
MR. MUDD: Yes, sir. And then we can take a look at priority
things that are out there. I mean, if you're talking about road
expansions, even in Norman's budget you can talk about things that he
does, landscaping, you know, he's dropping -- you just -- there was all
kinds of things on your consent agenda yesterday where that was his
whole year's worth of building during the wet season. They design in
the dry season and they get ready to go in the wet season when we
don't have the visitors here, in order to get those accomplished.
You know, if you looked at yesterday's agenda there was at least
a half dozen items on there that totaled probably about $5 million.
You want to expand roads? We don't have to landscape. I know
where I can find $5 million.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Transportation, roads, more
roads, lane miles. That's my priority.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Okay. I think we'd better get a little
more -- Michael, you got something to add to all this, or are you just
standing by waiting for us to ask questions?
MR. SMYKOWSKI: No, I'm standing by. But I think we could
live with the discussion.
MR. MUDD: But there's all kinds of things we could look at.
And what we'll do is -- I'm not going to make those decisions, I'm
going to come back to the board and say okay, here are ways that we
can tighten belts and get the job done, what do you want to do,
Commissioners?
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Do you think we need to do this in
the form of a motion, or do you think we just instructed county
manager?
COMMISSIONER HENNING: It's his understanding that we're
going to -- our priority, number one, is lane miles in Collier County.
And take a look at how we can tighten the belt, get skinny to make
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January 24, 2007
that happen.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Good move, Commissioner Henning.
MR. FEDER: Mr. Chairman?
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Mr. Feder?
MR. FEDER: If I could, just for this discussion -- and if you
have a motion, I think if you move forward on it, you have to make a
recommendation on this section of the AUIR and for what we're doing
on some of the other recommendations on concurrency deficiency.
But one thing I want to point out to you, on Page 9 --
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Can we get rid of this motion?
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: We still have a motion--
MR. FEDER: The reason I'm raising it is because of the motion,
just to make sure if you want to consider this.
On Page 9, you've got at the bottom of that page where you see
the revenue streams, there's an assumption of 60 million in '08, about
the same in '09 and about 52 in '10. That again is that potential
revenue stream of agreements and items that may come in.
The only reason I'm raising that to you is if you take action here
and basically approve this AUIR as-is and then ask us to come back
with other funding options, I want to make it clear that if this gets
transmitted, it's understood by this board that should this funding not
come available or other funding streams come available to cover this,
we would then go in probably your direction and seek to cut back in
other things for transportation and/or projects, as necessary.
I don't want somebody saying, where are you going to raise your
ad valorem, as an example, to fund these dollars? The answer is that
we're looking at revenue streams, we're assuming developer
contribution agreements, very aggressive efforts, and we hopefully
will get that through other funding sources, or we'll have to come back
and make other cuts, possibly even in projects.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: I'm sorry, Commissioner Henning,
you want to --
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January 24, 2007
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Yeah. Are you under the
assumption the board of -- the commissioners wants you to get some
of those projects that were off -- fell off, to put those back on?
MR. FEDER: I am under the assumption you want me to deliver
this program and the other things that need to be done, which includes
some things that fell off. But I'm also saying I don't want to put you in
a position with the submittal that I've given you that shows the
revenue stream of 173, 180 million, if you will, that unless we do find
a revenue stream for it and for these other things that fell off which
would add to that figure, that I don't want you forced back by, let's
say, DCA coming back and saying okay, where is that revenue
stream? That's too general, we want you to commit ad valorem if it
doesn't come forward.
And I just want to make sure it's understood that we would then
probably have to take some other approach, because I don't believe
you want to put yourself in that position.
MR. COHEN: Commissioners, for the record, Randy Cohen.
I'm probably going to maybe say it a little bit stronger than the
way Norman's stating it right there, because this discussion's going to
come up tomorrow as part of the EAR-based amendments with the
CIE for transportation as well, too.
If you include an item in your five-year plan and that five-year
plan is supposed to be financially feasible and you identify certain
financing mechanisms for that five-year plan, the assumption is is that
those financing mechanisms exist.
If those financing mechanisms don't come to fruition, it's
assumed that you're going to have to find alternative financing
mechanisms to make up for those deficiencies, okay?
We have some items in there from a financing perspective, which
Norman has discussed, that mayor may not come about. And it's
obviously a concern for Norman and Don in that regard.
DCA, in the numerous conferences and discussions I've had with
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January 24, 2007
them, have stated on the record that for items that you know for sure
that you can fund in your first three years and you've got identifiable
funding resources -- and Norm as well as I took place in a few of those
conferences -- put those in the first three years.
Be extremely careful with years four and five, if you have either
recurrent funding that's not guaranteed, grants or other items that you
can't guarantee are going to be funded in those time periods.
So I guess what Mr. Feder is saying is you don't want to back
yourself into a corner with projects that you cannot guarantee that you
can fund. And I want to make sure you don't go down that road as
well --
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: I understand what you're saying. But
I think Commissioner Henning's direction to county manager was
pretty explicit. I'm sure we can balance all these concerns out.
But with that, Commissioner Henning, I'm going to hit some of
the other commissioners who are waiting to talk.
Commissioners Fiala, then Coyle and Halas.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Okay. One of the things that
dropped off as far as the East Naples area goes is County Barn. And
in talking with the people along County Barn, they don't really care
that it's dropped off. I know that you're going to be funding Santa
Barbara instead, the extension. That's great. And I know it won't be
costing as much as it would have on County Barn, and I would --
MR. SCOTT: It's still actually in here.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: But you're hoping to drop it off,
right?
MR. SCOTT: Well, it's -- I guess it's one of the options.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Because actually the more important
of the two is the Santa Barbara extension, because that will then lead
from Rattlesnake Hammock all the way out as far as we can go with
that. And that's just great.
MR. FEDER: Commissioner, let me rephrase that. It was slated
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January 24, 2007
as production ready to go this year. Funding-wise, it doesn't look like
it can go this year, even though production ready. It's not actually in
our program out for a couple of years, as the board directed.
What we're looking at is in fact the Santa Barbara extension from
Davis down to Rattlesnake. Its production is sped up, while Davis has
been slowed by acquisition and permitting.
With that in mind, it makes sense to do Santa Barbara extension
first, and therefore to defer to later in the five years. But the need is
still there to do both.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Well, I agree. I agree. What I'm
trying to get at is I was going to continue to say I know that
landscaping doesn't seem like it's very important to some, but it has
been a signature for Collier County all around the state. And I know
that the people who live along or even travel on the landscaped roads
feel it's very important. And I would hate to see that dropped. I'd
rather give up a road for a couple of years like County Barn to use that
funding to continue on with our signature.
What I'm doing is probably offering that so that we don't have to
lose our signature for Collier County.
MR. MUDD: Ma'am, the board's asking me to look for
contingencies to come up with $180 million, okay? You're asking me
to come up with a miracle. And what I'm going to tell you is what --
my recommendations are going to hurt, okay, and they're going to hurt
-- they're going to be huge. There isn't going to be a commissioner on
this dais that is going to like my recommendations, I can guarantee it.
When you tell me to come get 180 million bucks and make it happen
just in case we got an issue.
Now, I can't tell you it's going to all come to fruition, because I
could get that illustrious grant from the state.
What I would recommend to you, as part of your dialogue that
you had yesterday, I think it was yesterday, where we talked about the
Davis Boulevard issue that sits there with the state, and the state was
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January 24, 2007
going to go back and come back with $20 million that you're going to
have to fund to go forward. It's a state road. You just told Norman to
bring it on into your concurrency.
Under Senate Bill 360, the state can't take money away from you
after you've already committed to development things against that
particular road.
So my recommendation to you is you put the state at odds with
each other. The Department of Transportation and DCA, let them go
head to head. Because DCA is saying transportation, you can't take
$30 million away from us that you promised on your five-year plan.
And they did it. And you lock them down. You want to get your
money back? I'll tell you how you get your money back, and that's
number one.
Because the state's not really giving you any money that I can see
in your program for anything else. So you lock them in and you let
them know that pending the 13 February decision that you have, that
they've got a real issue. And if it doesn't go the way you'd like it on
the 13th, then they're going to have themselves in a moratorium on
Davis Boulevard, and then they're going to say you've got a year to get
it out. And you're going to look at the state and say we wouldn't be in
this issue because you took $30 million out. We'd have been done.
And so it's a state issue, and the state needs for figure out how to
get out of it. That puts them in a real dilemma.
MR. FEDER: And Jim, I need to point out your point is well
taken to get the state involved in some of the solution. That's why I
said the third party needs to be brought to the table.
But please understand, the State Florida DOT and DCA are
walking hand in hand. The two together wrote 360. And the state,
just before 360 was written, had provided what you relied upon and
must be retained. The year before that legislation came out pulled out
the $30 million.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Commissioner Halas?
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January 24, 2007
COMMISSIONER HALAS: I think we were pretty much told
yesterday that we're not going to get that money . We're not going to
get that money whatsoever. I think that when the man was up there
and told us 2013, that was a stall tactic, and we're not going to get that
money. Just like they pulled the $30 million away from us.
MR. FEDER: They work on a five-year work program that they
need to balance, and then they rebalance each year --
COMMISSIONER HALAS: Well, they rebalanced 50 million
taken -- took right off the plate for us. So --
MR. FEDER: I understand. What I'm saying to you --
COMMISSIONER HALAS: -- we're just -- this is pie in the sky,
Norm, let's face it.
And the other thing I think that Commissioner Fiala mentioned,
yeah, we can make it as difficult as we want. But let me tell you what:
This room was filled about three years ago with people that wanted us
to landscape the roads after we completed six-Ianing those roads. I've
got people in my district that are waiting to get that road landscaped
on U.S. 41. And I'm sure there's other commissioners in their districts,
maybe not so much Commissioner Coyle's, but he may have some
areas where we're finishing up some projects there, and they're gong to
want to landscape. Well, probably on Goodlette- Frank, okay.
So let me tell you, those people are waiting. And let me tell you,
if they don't get their fair share and somebody else got theirs, we're
going to have a roomful of people in here that are going to be very
irate, okay?
MR. FEDER: Understood, Commissioner.
On two things, let me just be very quick. On the second one, on
the landscaping, I think what Jim was telling you, and this is just an
illustration of it, that part of the solution has to come out of my own
program, because add lanes has to be the top priority.
When I first came down here and we didn't have the funding
stream, we hadn't yet bonded our gas tax, we built sections of road,
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January 24, 2007
which I knew were not what the board -- the new board with me -- or
the community wanted, and that was without any landscaping.
As soon as we went to the bonding, had a revenue stream, we
came back and landscaped Pine Ridge, Airport and others that we had
built without the landscaping. So we don't take it lightly either.
But what I think Jim said to you is it's going to be a very, very
tight fit. And we have to identify all those. The board will have to
give us direction.
To the other issue on DOT, I think the point to be made is that if
we get them in agreement now that 360 is under way and they put it in
their program and you go through a JP A, then you've got them locked
in. They managed to walk our way with that 30 million just before
that legislation required them to hold it in.
COMMISSIONER HALAS: So the end result was -- and I'm
just throwing it out there, I'm the devil's advocate today -- and that is
this rollback in taxes, we could have used that money now to address
our road program.
MR. FEDER: Yes.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: That's a good point, but that's past.
The one thing is, this is getting easier by the moment, correct, Mr.
Mudd? You following all this?
What I'm going to do, Commissioner Coy Ie, if anyone disagrees
with this, I think what we're going to do is go by all the commissioners
one more time, come up with final direction and then get --
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Well, we've got a motion.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: -- on to the next item. Huh?
COMMISSIONER HENNING: We have a motion.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: We do have a motion. I thought it
was direction, but if it's a motion on the floor, Commissioner Coyle,
your comments, then we'll go to the --
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Yeah, my comments go directly to
the motion.
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January 24, 2007
The issue that Mr. Cohen raised about guidance to Norm Feder
on the transportation element here was that we have to be careful
about what is included in the first three years, and in fact the first five
years, of the capital improvement element.
Now, I was surprised to learn that some of the items there are not
guaranteed. I thought the board had already issued instructions for the
preparation of the capital improvement element which would not
depend upon any funds unless they were absolutely guaranteed. And
it would not list any projects unless we could guarantee that we could
get them funded and completed within the specified time frame.
MR. FEDER: And Commissioner, we did follow the board
direction, came out of the last AUIR and restructuring our work
program. We presented to you I think a couple of months ago the fact
that with the increased cost of projects, particularly brought Santa
Barbara forward as a second of those escalating projects, that we're
facing a situation where we may need to start pulling some projects,
more than just the minor ones I mentioned -- not minor at all -- but the
few that I mentioned out of the program.
The direction we got from the board was don't do that at this
time. Continue production. We'll talk to you at the AUIR. That's
what we're doing. And that's why that 173 is to balance the program.
And that's why I made that caution, before you move forward, if you
want us to pull that out, I need to pull some proj ects out.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: We've got to pull it out. We don't
have any choice. It's got to be pulled out.
MR. FEDER: And that's why the direction you're giving us to
find other revenues and to come back to you needs to also include to
make sure that we're financially balanced at the end of that statement.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: That's exactly right. If you don't
have a guaranteed source of funding and if you don't have an absolute
certainty that you can fund the projects and complete them within the
specified time period in the CIE, they shouldn't be there. Just
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January 24, 2007
shouldn't be there, right?
MR. FEDER: Commissioner, I agree. And that's why I raised
that before you went through with your motion.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: The motion maker was Commissioner
Henning. Commissioner Henning put that in, right?
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Yeah, we could do that. We
could have done it separately, too. Yeah, remove those ghost DCA
agreements from the balance sheets.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: And your second agrees?
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Yeah. And in fact, any funding
that is not absolutely certain.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: You already said that.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: It might be DCAs, it might be
something else. I'm just saying that any funding that is not absolutely
certain should not be in that capital improvement element.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Right, you made that very explicit
and Commissioner Henning agreed with you.
So I think we have a motion. We have a second.
Is there anything from County Manager or transportation that you
want to cover, or do you think we got this with enough direction that
you can bring it back?
MR. SCOTT: Well, I think this gets to the meat of it in what
we're going to send to DCA. I mean, I have some ideas of projects
that I guess we will push outside the five years when we submit them.
I don't know if you want to talk about them right now or not.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: No, I don't think we do.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Can we take some funds from
113, since they have a surplus, and put those into transportation?
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Let's leave that to the county manager
to bring back. Because I think your motion was pretty explicit. You
covered a whole bunch of things. And we're going to drag this out
until the end of the day. It's pretty close, but we're going to take the
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January 24, 2007
motion first.
COMMISSIONER HALAS: Why don't you have the motion
reread exactly what we're voting on here.
MR. MUDD: Commissioner, you've told me to find appropriate
funds to fix our road funding issues that have been addressed, and part
of that is to tighten belts to get it done.
The second piece is no matter what happens in that particular
issue, to make sure that our CIE that we send forward to the state is
financially balanced and it has guaranteed funding behind any project
that's on that list.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Beginning to end. I think that covers
it.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Only one small adjustment, and
that is that any proj ect placed on that list, we have certainty that we
can complete it in the budget within time schedule.
MR. MUDD: Yes, sir.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: And for the listening public, the
reason for this isn't to eliminate projects from our program, it's to be
able to make it so we come up with funding to do it and still protect us
from the ravages of state government.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: That's right. You got it.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: With that, I'm going to call the
motion. All those in favor, indicate by saying aye.
COMMISSIONER HALAS: Aye.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Aye.
COMMICOMMISSIONER FIALA: Aye.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Aye.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Aye.
Opposed?
(No response.)
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: The ayes have it 5-0.
We're going to take a short break and be back --
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January 24, 2007
MR. MUDD: Commissioner, can I add just one comment? I
don't want clarity, you gave me clarity. I just want to make sure I give
you a heads up.
Our favorite senator in the Florida Senate, Senator Bennett, has
submitted a bill for impact fees so impact fees will only get paid at
CO, okay? There isn't any pre-payment, there isn't any when you draw
a permit, it's when you get CO'd.
That will put us probably in a box for at least two years worth of
deficit as far as our impact fees are concerned as we catch up with
that.
So I'd ask you to watch that bill. I'll try to keep you up to speed
on it. I got to read it yesterday and it does gut us for a couple of years.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: This doesn't make --
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Charter government is beginning to
look better and better every day.
MR. MUDD: I don't think you can stop a--
COMMISSIONER COYLE: We can do some other things.
MR. MUDD: Yes, sir.
(Recess. )
Item #2E
DRAINAGE CANALS AND STRUCTURES
MR. MUDD: Commissioner, I'm going to deviate a little bit
because Gene Calvert isn't in the room and I can't -- I've got his stuff
up for stormwater on the particular screen, and -- that's on the thing,
but he's not here at this particular juncture, so if I could --
MR. DeLONY: I can do it.
MR. MUDD: -- beg your indulgence, I'd like to go to potable
water systems with Mr. DeLony and Phil Gramatges, if that's okay
with the board. And then we'll come back to stormwater.
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January 24, 2007
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: That's fine. Whatever gets us through
the whole thing.
MR. MUDD: Well, guess who just walked in the room? That
elevator is killing us.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: What's the level of service on that?
MR. MUDD: Gene?
I think it's W.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: We need an impact fee for that.
MR. FEDER: Commissioners, I appreciate your giving us a
chance on stormwater. I'm going to be extremely brief on this, but I
did want to tell you that one thing that became evident as we worked
with both the planning commission and with the productivity
committee, that what had been used as the form for years and years,
which was essentially number of miles of canal, as an example, really
didn't tell us much of anything.
And where that really came to light was a question that was
raised as to why does it seem to be the reconstruction costs are about
the same as your new costs per mile? And essentially the answer to
that is when I have basically a canal that is about four foot wide and
one foot deep and then I establish it as a 20- foot canal and five-foot
deep, its cost is essentially starting from scratch. And yet I still only
have one mile of canal starting and ending, which doesn't speak
anything to its carrying capacity, its ability to retain water and to
recharge the aquifer. And so we really don't have the right kind of
standards in here to truly look at our level of service within the AUIR
that's been used for many years right now.
What we talked to both of those committees, and I want to
present to you, is we're in the process of trying to look at something in
the way of acre feet or something that makes a lot more sense about
storage and conveying capacity of the system. And we're in the
process of doing that now.
We did update the inventory. The inventory information is much
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better. Before we just had generally structures, one structure the same
as all others. Now we've broken it down into different categories. So
I think we'll have some ability to report from year to year much more
and show you what is happening with the system, how it's expanding.
But right now we do not have that as we went in with, as I said,
the form as it's been done from year to year. That's one thing I wanted
to bring to your attention. And I'll ask Gene to go through where we
are on the program. Thank you, Gene.
MR. CALVERT: Thank you. Mr. Chairman, members of the
board, it's a pleasure being here.
As Mr. Feder made reference to, we really looked at how we
report things as far as our improvements over the next five to 10 years
through this A UIR report.
And that includes, as you look at Attachment A on Page 22, it
continues onto Page 23 and 24. We tried to break down the systems
from not only all of our capital improvements but separate those into
really whether they're capital projects or it's on our secondary systems,
or as it works on our tertiary system and then works on our tidal
systems as well. We tried to break that down a little bit further.
As we look at some of those projects, I'm going to just briefly run
through them, I'm not going to go through all the projects themselves.
But as you run down through those projects, most of those projects
were identified in previous stormwater management studies. We have
some major projects that are included in our capital projects. You see
the little note on them to the far right, that's part of our CIE program.
We've actually got four projects that's part of our CIE, our capital
improvement.
Those four projects are the Gordon River Water Quality Park,
which is project No.8 on the list there. Project No. 14, which is our
L.A.S.I.P. project. Project No. 28, which is our Gateway Triangle
proj ect. And the new one that we actually included in there because
of the upcoming studies is project No. 30, which is our Belle Meade
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January 24, 2007
stormwater improvements.
Those have not been determined as far as what is the exact extent
of those improvements on the Belle Meade will be. But we wanted to
indicate those.
As you go down through and look at the various different
projects we have on the books and look at the time line over the next
five years, you'll notice as we go through the projects, we have 33
projects on the books as of this current fiscal year, going from '06 to
'07 and now '07.
As you go into the five-year program, you'll see that a lot of
those capital projects are completed. We actually replaced some of
those capital projects with some of the projects that we look to
identify in the upcoming watershed management program, plans that
were going to be developed over the next few years.
As you look on to the out-year, the total out-year of FY -10 and
'11, that five-year stretch out through there, you'll notice that we really
dramatically dropped the number of projects. But those project
numbers are still substantial. Some of the projects that are included on
that include still the L.A.S.I.P. project, looking at the out years.
The Belle Meade's, the Immokalee urban improvement areas, the
Wiggins basin improvement areas, as well as these are some projects
we haven't fully identified: The Gordon River drainage, Golden Gate
improvements. Looking at those improvements out in those drainage
basins.
As you look on down to exhibit Attachment B on Page 24, you'll
see what we've identified as some of the structures and miles that were
referred to in that first page of our capital improvement proj ect. So if
you look at the first page on Page 20 and wondering where are these
pumps, where are these structures that we're going to be building,
that's what Page 24 illustrates. Shows you the number of miles that
we'll be building through those years, as well as the various
infrastructures.
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January 24, 2007
Now, the structures that are listed on Page 20, all of the structures
that are completed in our capital improvement projects or capital
projects, our secondary projects, they do not include the facilities that
are constructed in our tertiary systems or our tidal areas.
MR. FEDER: The only thing that I'll add, Commissioners, is in
presenting this to, in particular, the productivity committee, the
concern was raised, as you know in our policy on Page 20, for
instance, our capital projects, it's one-third county, one-third BCB and
one-third MSTU s. What they looked at is the MSTU contributions to
date. And as we start our projects, we're utilizing the county funds,
bringing in the BCB where we can, with the understanding that the
initial start-up -- I don't have the MSTU form, but for those dollars
coming in. The concern was where do the MSTU dollars come
forward.
And the commitment we made to you as a board some time ago
is that we won't go beyond our county one-third share, and we will
seek the BCB and any other grants to go the other one-third or further
or the MSTU. But if we go through and we do our one-third and the
BCB does their one-third and we aren't able to get more from BCB or
from grants or other sources, then at that time we'll have accomplished
the major portion of that work which sometimes two-thirds of the
money may be 80 percent of the improvement.
The rationale being that these major capital projects are
important to the overall community, and they also have site benefit as
well. And if locally they don't to want pay for that site benefit, which
is mostly what that 20 percent at the end results in, then they don't
form the MSTU, and we stop at that point of two-thirds solution,
which may have been 80 percent of the improvement, which is
important to the overall community to let that water flow and not
establish blockages to the overall system.
MR. CALVERT: We also look at any type of developer
contribution, such as right-of-ways as part of the match that are
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January 24, 2007
non-county match, non-via Big Cypress Basin, non-county match.
They could be very similar to the MSTUs.
A good case in point is the L.A.S.I.P. project that was just
approved this morning. This particular project got construction dollars
of 2.4 that was approved by the board this morning. They have over
$700,000 worth of right-of-way that was donated by developers along
that same route.
And so while it doesn't come up to the full one-third balance, it
certainly strives to reach to that level of that local participation
through there.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: We do have a couple of
commissioners that have questions.
Commissioner Coyle?
COMMISSIONER COYLE: What are you going to do about the
MSTU contributions?
MR. CALVERT: You mean as far as how we're going to address
the future MSTUs?
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Yeah.
MR. CALVERT: As we look at each project, we're going to try
to evaluate it, if that really makes sense for an MSTU. And ifit does,
then we'll be bringing that before the board for either voluntary or
mandatory. We've got several projects that we've gone and did some
preliminary work on it. We've got some design. We're ready to come
now to the board to get direction from that.
There will be other projects where we'll be looking at maybe
doing the two-thirds solution. If it just doesn't make sense to have an
MSTU because the overall benefits is a communitywide basis, we
may be looking at a two-thirds solution of using the Big Cypress
Basin monies as well as the county's monies. And we'll also look at,
as I mentioned, the look at the developer contributions as to help
offset that cost.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Thank you.
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January 24, 2007
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Commissioner Henning?
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Well, let's make sure that we're
following what the board directed a couple of years ago on that item.
I -- what's wrong with setting up an MSTU prior to doing the
capital improvement?
MR. CAL VERT: Prior to the actual construction, putting the
construction out to bid, there's nothing wrong. In fact, that's the time
an MSTU should be set up. We will need to do some preliminary
engineering to determine costs, assuming what those areas need to be.
And that's what we've done on two of the projects we're now going to
be bringing before the board within the next few months.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Wouldn't it be a safe assumption
that you can count on MSTUs?
MR. CALVERT: It depends on two factors. MSTUs can
certainly be set up by voluntary or they can be mandated through the
board's action. It's certainly a voluntary MSTU unless the
homeowners in there can see a clear benefit. Achieving that 50
percent plus one vote may be problematic.
And also then requiring the board to require a mandatory is
problematic as well.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Well, if the citizens don't want
it, would we do the project anyways?
MR. CALVERT: Well, part of the issue is we looked at some of
the major drainages, the capital projects, if you will. These are
proj ects that are on our secondary systems, where the advantage to
improve those canals may be far reaching. They may reach certainly
beyond the Lely area.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Let's go to specific examples.
The Haldeman Creek, that is a primary drainage, so we can exclude
examples like that. But a neighborhood drainage benefit, I'm trying to
think of one. Well, that's in the Lely drainage basin. Pick a
neighborhood.
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January 24, 2007
MR. CALVERT: We can pick most of them we have down
through here. And particularly as you get into some of the areas, Pine
Ridge, for example.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Sure. That's a neighborhood
benefit. Let's say that they do not want to make that improvement by
a consensus of the people. Would we do it anyways?
MR. CALVERT: It depends on the situation. If that particular
neighborhood, if there was certain benefits to the county's structures,
we may want to force it. But it depends on a case-by-case basis.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Let's say it didn't have any
benefits to the county.
MR. CALVERT: Then there's no reason to enforce it unless
there was some overriding effect.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: So we wouldn't make that
capital improvement.
MR. CALVERT: That would be entirely up to the board.
Because proj ects such as that is what we'll be bringing before the
board. We'll come to the board and say we've got some preliminary
costs, we know what the benefits are, we know what the extent of the
proj ect is, we'll seek some direction from the board.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Maybe Mr. Feder can help me
out.
MR. FEDER: The other part I was going to add to that,
Commissioner, when you're talking about, and we need to make the
distinction, a secondary versus tertiary. In the case of a secondary,
that's what we call capital projects and major projects. They typically
have an involvement well beyond their boundaries, not just within the
encased boundary.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: And I do understand that.
MR. FEDER: And so they're the ones where we may proceed in
advance of -- without an MSTU and maybe do the two-thirds, if that's
what it came down to.
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January 24, 2007
When you come into the tertiary, it's one-half county and
one-half grants, or an MSTU, there we have some projects. And up in
Palm River and others, we are identifying the nature of the proj ect,
going back to the community. If they're ready to form an MSTU,
we're ready to proceed. If they're not, we will not proceed.
MR. CALVERT:
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Will proceed with the --
MR. FEDER: Will not proceed with the project.
Why don't you give some examples of those, Gene.
MR. CALVERT: That's exactly -- Palm River is good.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: That's great, that's great.
So I guess going back to the original question, wouldn't it be fair
to include some of those MSTU s, whether it be 50 percent -- say 50
percent of the neighborhoods would not want that. Wouldn't it be fair
to say that 50 percent would?
MR. FEDER: If we don't have at least 50 percent plus one,
which is required for voluntary MSTU, we'd come to the board. But
we would probably not do it on a tertiary project where predominantly
-- there may be an exception -- but predominantly there is no
communitywide or countywide issue, rather it's localized.
In the case of our major capital projects, as I noted, you've got
both countywide issues to follow through as well as localized issues
associated with it.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: So what you're saying, most of
this money could go to transportation road expansion.
MR. FEDER: That's not what I said, sir.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Before -- well, next will be
Commissioner Fiala. But right after Commissioner Fiala, we're going
to go to a speaker.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: I guess I'm confused. I thought we
voted a couple of years ago to create a countywide MSTU for
stormwater.
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January 24, 2007
MR. MUDD: No, ma'am. What you did a couple years ago is
you set up a stormwater utility. Stormwater utility, the way you set it
up was if it had to do with a capital project, and there were some --
Gene, if I'm wrong -- there was a total of about $342,000,000 worth of
stormwater backlog of projects, everything from cleaning out the
tertiary and the secondary system out in the Estates to -- and that was
about $75 million. And then your other capital projects like L.A.S.I.P.
You've got a project that's Pine Ridge going down to your water
park, okay, and trying to solve those particular problems.
The way the capital project was set up, that one-third would
come from the county -- and you basically set aside .15 mills every
year for that particular park. One-third would come from Big Cypress
Basin and one-third of the cost of the project would come from
MSTUs.
Stormwater is one of those particular -- well, it's a little bit -- it's
an odder entity, because when you set up a stormwater proj ect, you
build it from downstream going upstream. Because you want benefit
from your project the day you start construction. If you started
upstream, there's no place for the water to go.
So you're getting benefit from the time you start your project,
okay, as you work your way back. My experience has been you put
about 66 percent, okay, and that's that one-third county, one-third Big
Cypress Basin into the proj ect. You get about 75 percent of your
benefit for the project done. So you get a little bit more than a
one-to-one based on the earlier projects that are done.
At that particular juncture, if the residents want to do any
additional work, they can set that MSTU up in motion, or you can set
that MSTU up in motion in order to get the other third. But there is no
-- based on the plan that was presented and the board approved, there
was no intent for the county nor the Big Cypress Basin to spend more
than 66 percent on a capital proj ect. The rest of it would come from
the MSTU in order to finish it off.
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January 24, 2007
On the tidal basins, they had several parts. For the tidal basins
part, eight tidal basins estimated $2 million per tidal basin. Half of it
would be the county's, half of it would be Big Cypress Basin to get the
initial project done. Mandatory MSTU setup, as in Haldeman Creek,
for instance, whereby then the folks that benefit from that project from
boating or whatnot would maintain that particular tidal basin for that
under perpetuity. They would be in charge of 0 and M. Did I miss
them? I think I got them all.
MR. CALVERT: The tertiary system is 50/50.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Thank you very much for that
explanation.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Would you call the speaker, please.
MS. FILSON: Yes, Mr. Chairman. Janet Vasey.
MS. VASEY: Janet Vasey for the record.
I'd like to draw your attention to Page 20 on the drainage canals
and structures.
On this page you see what your expenditures are. That 115
million, that's your total. And then it shows the revenues, 29 million
expected in the first year and another 86 million in the next four years.
And right above that 86 million line is the MSTU line of 25
million and other unidentified revenue.
That's the line that we question whether you're going to get any
revenue on if you don't have any MSTUs. And that was the basis of
our discussion.
Also, we were concerned that -- oh, and by the way, I'm speaking
for the productivity committee. That's who the "we" is.
We were concerned that the policy, the county policy wasn't
being followed, because in the stormwater projects, the reason the
one-third is for the MSTUs is because homeowners, local homeowners
are going to be benefitting from some of the stormwater projects. So
one-third comes from county taxes, which we all pay into, one-third
from South Florida Water Management, which we all pay into, and
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January 24, 2007
then one-third from those who directly benefit from these projects
because their houses no longer flood. And that was the principle.
And it seems like once we've established the stormwater utility
with the .15 million every year, there's a pot of money there and the
impetus to get the MSTUs is no longer very strong.
And I don't know if you all remember the revenue commission,
but we were the ones that recommended the stormwater management
utility as a way to solve the problem of getting money into this fund
and qualifying for grants. Because you had to have a recurring pot of
money for grants to be able to apply for the grants. But it was never
intended that we would lose the idea of those who benefit pay into it, a
share, a small share of one-third.
And I really think we've kind of lost that. And that was the basis
-- the two bases for our comments. One is there's 25 million that's
pretty much hanging out there, and then the other is this whole
concept of what was this policy intended to do. And it was intended
to be a fair share kind of funding of some of these proj ects, and I think
we've lost that.
So we were looking for maybe some guidance from you as to
whether or not there should be more effort to go out and pursue these
MSTU s. They're not easy to do. But go out there and pursue them.
And, you know, especially when I've seen the room full of people
wanting flooding taken care of because their houses are flooding. And
in that situation their houses are flooding, they'll sign up to an MSTU.
That's when you need to get them, when there's a real problem out
there and there's an MSTU need. And then people will agree. Thank
you.
MR. FEDER: Commissioners, if I could, I'm in Commissioner
Coyle's position, I very rarely disagree with Janet, so I will elaborate.
I guess, first of all, we need to point out that in the case of the
capital projects, there is both community -- community benefit and
obligation. Because the reason in many cases that there's that flooding
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January 24, 2007
is water that's coming through, it's sheetflow from other properties or
even some of our systems and it's overtaxing through those areas.
So that is something that not only is a benefit to the whole
community, but in some degree an obligation to that local area.
The issue is we would rather have the MSTUs obviously, rather
than do 100 percent of the project. What you see in your budget here
is that 100 percent of the project, assuming that the MSTUs come
forward. If they don't, we will not go outside of our policy of
one-third county, one-third BCB's.
The other part of that is in a lot of cases where the neighborhood
is asking for and ready to form the MSTU is on the tertiary system.
And in those areas, as we pointed out to you, like for instance in Palm
River, where that just came about, we're assisting them in identifying
what the project would be, telling them we're ready to go for forward
if they form an MSTU to help contribute to bring that project forward.
In the case of the tidal, of course we'll require a mandatory
MSTU, because those aren't necessarily seen as necessarily
stormwater obligations of the county, but nonetheless one that had
developed over time. So we come in, fix it up along with the space,
and then leave it for those people in the area then to take care of after
it's been cleaned up one time.
So I hope that answers the questions. I appreciate Jan's concerns.
I'd like to have that funding source upfront. I never like to not do 100
percent of the proj ect and get it done right. But if we don't have that
funding come forward at that time, we'll at least have taken care of the
broader county concerns and to a degree obligations.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Commissioner Henning?
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Yeah. And Janet, I lost that
discussion a long time ago, for the most part.
But where there's MSTUs that should be set up before any capital
dollars are spent, there should be some dialogue with the residents.
Because you spend some money in designing and making that
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January 24, 2007
improvement and they say no, that is wasted money that could be
spent in other areas. So that's the least of direction that we should do.
That's all I have.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Thank you.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Could you make that in the form of
a motion?
COMMISSIONER HENNING: That's a motion.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: I'll second it.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: We have a motion by Commissioner
Henning, second by Commissioner Coyle.
Any discussion?
(No response.)
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Hearing none, all those in favor,
indicate by saying aye.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Aye.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Aye.
COMMISSIONER HALAS: Aye.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Aye.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Aye.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Opposed?
(No response.)
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: The ayes have it 5-0.
MR. CALVERT: Thank you.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Thank you.
Item #2F
POTABLE WATER SYSTEM
MR. MUDD: Commissioner, that brings us to potable water
system. Mr. Jim DeLony and Phil Gramatges.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Excuse me. Before you start, if
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January 24, 2007
there wasn't any objection from the productivity committee or
planning commission on any of these items, unless there's, Mr.
Chairman, particular questions from the members of the board, we can
move through this a lot quicker.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Well, we do have speakers for a
couple of items. J, M, Nand O. I say speakers, I mean speaker.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: We have one on potable water?
Maybe we can just get a brief report of what the planning commission
and the AUIR -- planning commission and the productivity committee
said on potable water. Nothing?
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Nothing.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: And I don't have any questions
for staff.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: I don't either. So we'll move on from
potable water.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Motion to approve.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Second.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Motion from Commissioner Coyle,
second by Commissioner Henning.
Is there a discussion?
(No response.)
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Hearing none, all those in favor,
indicate by saying aye.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Aye.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Aye.
COMMISSIONER HALAS: Aye.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Aye.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Aye.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Opposed?
(N 0 response.)
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: The ayes have it 5-0.
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January 24, 2007
Item #2G
SEWER TREATMENT & COLLECTOR SYSTEMS
Next is sewer treatment and collection system. Is there any
comments from the planning commission or -- okay, fine, motion to
approve.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Second.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: We have a motion to approve from
Commissioner Coletta and second by Commissioner Coyle. Any
discussion?
(No response.)
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Hearing none, all those in favor,
indicate by saying aye.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Aye.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Aye.
COMMISSIONER HALAS: Aye.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Aye.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Aye.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Opposed?
(No response.)
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: The ayes have it 5-0.
A little quiet, but we have it.
Item #2H
SOLID WASTE
MR. MUDD: Commissioner, that brings us to H, solid waste.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Solid waste. There was no issues
anyone wants to talk about with the landfill? You feel like we're really
there on it.
Page 80
"----~."._.._...- --".--.
January 24, 2007
Okay, Commissioner Henning wants to discuss something.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: On Page 60 of our AUIR,
there's a table for population, for disposal rate and so on, so forth.
As they moved down here from 2000 into 2006 -- actually 2005,
it goes down, to 2006 it goes down, and then in 2007 it goes up. What
happened?
MR. DeLONY: That's the average, sir.
Excuse me, Jim DeLony, Public Utilities Administrator.
As you can tell on your note, I looked back three years, and
averaged the disposal rate for those previous three years, and then I
proj ect that disposal rate as we go forward.
We had a great year in 2006. I think that when I'm back here
next year, I believe that that disposal rate per capita will probably go
down. And we'll project that forward.
But per the protocol or the methodology that we have, we looked
back and we averaged that and then we proj ect that forward as the
level of service on demand.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Well, if you keep on for six
years going down, what would be the reason for going up?
MR. DeLONY: Again, the methodology approved by the board
was to look backwards at least three years and make sure that we
didn't see an anomaly and that we weren't looking at something just in
a very contemporary basis as we would ensure and rely on our
methodology to ensure sufficient compliance with our Growth
Management Plan.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: So that's a sludge fund that
could be corrected?
MR. DeLONY: Sir, I don't see it as a sludge fund at all. I see it
as a measure of concurrency that shows --
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Sledge fund.
MR. DeLONY: Sledge fund. Well, I was thinking.
Bottom line, we're in good shape. You know, I think, sir, with
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January 24, 2007
the solid waste workshop we had on the 5th of December, I think that
where we are in terms of what this shows us, that that solution set that
you gave me as direction of that, that this AUIR, that we are
concurrent with regard to solid waste as we see it over the planning
horizon and that we will continue to get better at it.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Thank you.
MR. DeLONY: Yes, sir.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Commissioner Fiala?
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Yes. Could you tell me what the
highlighted figures are on line five? In category five.
MR. MUDD: Column five.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Column five.
MR. DeLONY: Yes, ma'am. Looking at that balance, it tells us
when we would make a change in terms of cells coming on-line, in
terms of a construction program, which I believe is on -- it's Page 61.
If you'll look at Page 61, you can see where we would make it past the
increases because of construction into those cells, those line cell areas.
And that's the reason we're adding per passenger during those years.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: I see. Thank you.
COMMISSIONER HALAS: Motion to approve.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Second.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: We have a motion to approve by
Commissioner Halas, a second by Commissioner Fiala.
Any discussion?
(No response.)
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: If not, all those in favor, indicate by
saYIng aye.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Aye.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Aye.
COMMISSIONER HALAS: Aye.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Aye.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Aye.
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January 24, 2007
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Opposed?
(No response.)
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: The ayes have it 5-0.
MR. DeLONY: Thank you, Commissioners.
Item #2I
P ARKS AND FACILITIES
MR. MUDD: Commissioner, that brings us to I, which is parks
and facilities. Marla Ramsey and Amanda Townsend present.
MS. TOWNSEND: Good afternoon. Amanda Townsend with
Public Services Division.
The 2006 AUIR for parks and recreation facilities as you know
covers three level of service categories: Those being facilities valued,
community park land acreage per capita, and regional park land
acreage per capita. Do you want to address them separately?
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Any particular items that
commissioners would like to see addressed?
Commissioner Fiala?
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Yeah. Somewhere in here, I'm
sorry, I can't find it fast enough, I had read that there was some
concern brought up, I think it was by the planning commission, about
how parks were figured, the population was figured for the entire
county, and yet the parks that were calculated did not include the
parks in the City of Naples and the City of Marco Island, even though
their population was included.
MS. TOWNSEND: That's in the facilities value section. I'll give
you a brief overview of that section, and then we'll get into that
question, if that's all right.
A change that you see in this AUIR from previous is that we're
doing some planning in a 10-year window. And when we look at the
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January 24, 2007
facilities valued portion of this A UIR, it has sort of an interesting
effect. And I wanted to bring that up first.
That is that if you look on -- at the graph on Page 72, you'll see
that it appears that we're going to spend a considerable amount of
money in excess of what would be needed to satisfy the level of
service. This is somewhat of a misrepresentation.
The chart reveals what we're going to expend, but we find that
when that then translates into the inventory, the values we use in the
inventory significantly reduce the amount of the expenditures.
So I wanted to point that, that it appears to be an
over-expenditure, a surplus there, and it's on your summary sheet, I
believe it's $27 million. When we actually get there and inventory
those facilities, we'll be meeting the standard.
As far as to address your question, Commissioner, we do
inventory only county-offered facilities when we're looking at
facilities value. We do, however, put it up to a county-wide population
figure, and that is because we know that we inventory both regional
and community parks in that facilities value, facilities within them.
And of course they're used by residents county-wide.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: But the county residents also use the
facilities in the cities, right?
MS. TOWNSEND: That's correct.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: That doesn't seem to work out when
we're figuring. I mean, I would like all the parks we can get and
everything, but I think we should be comparing apples to apples.
MS. TOWNSEND: Because the value per capita facility was
established using a certain methodology and that was valuing only
parks within the county, if we were to -- or within the county's
jurisdiction, if we were then to include the facilities that were in the
cities, we would need to adjust the level of service to reflect that level
of service of what right now we're using as $270 per capita, which
reflects the continuation of a methodology of what we would measure
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January 24, 2007
against the population. If we were to change that, then we would need
to appropriately adjust the standard.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Okay, I'm having a real tough time
understanding. Maybe some of my fellow commissioners will
understand. I know that I've heard the City of Naples say that 80
percent of their parks are used by the county residents. And you
would think then that somehow our -- you know, that would be
calculated in here. But maybe I don't understand it right. I offer any
of you --
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Well, I think you do understand it.
They just don't figure it in. The population of the city, is that figured
into the county's part of the equation?
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Yes.
MS. TOWNSEND: When we're talking about facilities value,
yes.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Okay. But we don't pick up the parks
within the city.
MS. TOWNSEND: We do not.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Makes no sense to me either. I can
understand -- you know, I heard this before, and I was lost at it myself.
I mean, it's a resource that's out there that's used. Also Everglades
City has a park that they allow all the residents of Copeland and
Chokaloskee to use. That should be counted in the inventory. That's
my own opInIon.
MS. TOWNSEND: Ifwe were to -- the only thing is that we can
include those in the inventory. And I haven't run a value of either the
City of Marco Island or Everglades City, but I have run a value on the
City of Naples facilities.
We could include that in there and add it into our value, but we
would need to appropriately adjust the number of our level of service.
And in fact 270 per capita would need to go up. Otherwise, we would
be devaluing what we're providing to the public.
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January 24, 2007
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Well, we've got a level of service that
we have to maintain. We agreed to it. But the numbers are arrived at
through the -- what do you want to call it, erroneous means. I think
we're falling a little bit short in how we're getting to it.
I know what you're saying. Maybe there's enough when you
figure that in. I don't know what you're figuring your base calculation
on. But when you go back to it, you have the resource.
Okay, you're going to make it clear.
MS. RAMSEY: Well, I'm not. Marjorie just has a comment that
she has.
MS. STUDENT-STIRLING: By way of history, and I'm really
digging back many years in my memory banks, but I think that this
question was posed by comprehensive planning staff to DCA, what
can we and can we not include. And I think that the answer may have
been that we couldn't include the city's facilities. I'm not sure, but --
because I'm going to back probably 15 years in my memory.
And I was looking in the statute in Rule 9J-5 to see if there was
anything to help. And in my quick looking here, there was not. And
it also hasn't helped that DCA doesn't have rules anymore; they got rid
of that, and 9J-5 for parks and recreation type things.
But I think it's something that is worthy of checking into and
even arguing with DCA about, since county residents use city
facilities.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: I would. I mean, I don't know how
my fellow commissioners feel. To me it's an issue. You know, it's a
resource that's out there. And if we're going to identify this county as
a whole, and people are using one resource or another, they should do
it. Then we should identify all the resources for the whole population
to use.
MR. RAMSEY: Commissioner, if I could. I think there's even a
bigger issue than whether we include the City of Naples facilities into
our AUIR or whether we don't. I think the biggest issue is is that is
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January 24, 2007
this the appropriate level of service that we should be looking at, and
staff does not believe it is.
It is the historical level of service that we have been providing,
and the way that we have it today is the way that it has been done for
years and years and years. But staff believes there's probably a better
way, a way that would actually get us to something specific in our
level of service, rather than just a dollar amount attached to a very
expensive process of development.
An example of that will be is that we just received the bid for one
soccer field in East Naples. And we took the soccer field value from
the North Collier Regional Park, and we have it into our inventory
today, which is about $450,000, round number.
The price for the one soccer field standalone in East Naples is
almost $800,000. So this level of service to the tune of$170 (sic) per
capita doesn't necessarily help us make a determination of what our
need in the community is. And staff would request that you allow us
in the next cycle here to look at something different.
But know that we think this is flawed too and we just have not
found the right level of service that actually gets to the need in our
community.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Commissioner Coyle?
COMMISSIONER COYLE: That's exactly the point. Basing the
level of service on the value of the property or recreational facility is
absolutely ridiculous. It has no relationship to anything.
You're exactly right, you need to classify recreational facilities
and then taking the demographics of our county and the city's and
determine how many shuffleboard courts we need, how many
racquetball courts we need, how many soccer fields we need, softball
fields, baseball fields, all of that sort of stuff. And you can't do it by
leaving out city residents. Because the city residents use those
facilities just as we use theirs. If you want to want play racquetball,
about the only place you can go is Fleischman Park. We don't have
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January 24, 2007
any, do we?
MR. RAMSEY: We have outdoor. Yes, we do.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: You do, okay.
But it's important I think that we get an appropriate level of
service, and that solves the problem. Because that forces us to focus
on the specific recreational facility and the number of potential users
county-wide. And we can also balance out a little easier by if we use
the city's recreational facilities as part of that inventory . We've broken
down the barriers between any charge limits or tiers. And I think that
helps us manage our expenditures much more properly, and it helps us
get the right kinds of recreational facilities for the people we serve.
And the changing demographics are going to constantly require a
review of that balance.
But that's what I wanted to talk about is changing the level of
service. Once you change the level of service to something like this,
then you've solved the problem that you're talking about.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Okay. Commissioner Henning?
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Thank you.
And just if I can expand upon that, please. And that's what I was
talking about is how we provide services is kind of do a door count of
what comes in to parks and rec. It doesn't matter what we count, it's
what the demand is of the service. So if the demand is high, we need --
know we need to do something. If the demand is low, we know that
we need to do something. But if it's just right, we know that we're on
target and we need to move forward.
And I think that's pretty much what the productivity committee
and -- said. So that's where I'm at, is on all these things is let's take a
look at what's out there and who's using it and how much and so on, so
forth.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Sounds logical.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: And that will hit your concern,
Commissioner Fiala, Commissioner Coyle.
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January 24, 2007
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Whatever it takes to be able to bring
it down so the average person can look at it and understand it, they
don't raise it as an issue.
I do have another question, if you're through. Thank you.
Under the productivity committee's recommendation, it says
using a specific dollar amount per capita level of service standards for
recreational facility does not keep up with the cost increase leading to
understating requirements. Large surpluses ($27 million over the
AUIR period) and excess revenues due to impact fee changes to
include beach and boat access project.
I don't understand the statement. How does this really refer back
to it? Maybe Janet Vasey might be able to answer it.
MR. RAMSEY: Either one of us.
Well, I think part of the concern at the last meeting that we had
was that the impact fees changed just recently to include beach and
boat accesses. And of course we're going to see an additional amount
of revenue sitting in the books, so to speak, as we continue to look for
locations where we can purchase lands and put in facilities.
So there is going to be a little excess revenue as we look at that.
And I think that's part of the concern there.
But then like I had mentioned a few minutes ago is that soccer
field that shows 450 in our inventory is now 800,000 in reality to put it
down. And we've been working on this plan over a three-month
period of time and it's changed by that much. Is it a realistic price or
not? I don't know. But that's what we have on our books.
So how do we continue to adjust that level of service of $270 per
capita based upon the cost of construction as well?
And if there's anything else, Janet, you want to add.
MS. VASEY: Does that cover it?
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: It covers it for me.
Commissioner Fiala has another question.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: We're getting some developer
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January 24, 2007
contributions as well. I'm tickled to death.
The other one that I was talking to is moving along, which is
pretty nice and I'm happy about that.
There's -- I was just wondering, and I probably shouldn't ask it at
this time, but over there by the East Naples Community Center -- and
I know you're going to build a soccer field. Isn't that amazing it cost
$800,000 to build a soccer field, but if you give the kids the land
they'd just play there anyway?
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: They could play on the road.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: That's right. Nice field.
But anyway, I was just wondering if circumstances would allow
them, if we ever got a developer contribution adjoining that land from
the people who are thinking of building there, could we build that little
league complex that we've been talking about where we could
accommodate all -- I mean, there's plenty of land right there. And not
only that, but how many people want to be living right next door to a
soccer field, but a nice little league complex could be built there.
And I was just wondering if you'd like me to help along a little
bit on that.
MR. RAMSEY: Commissioner, we would take all the help that
you're willing to give in that location. I will say that we have had
discussions with the developer, and did ask them for about three acres,
and they did decline to give us that.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Well, let me talk to them about that,
too. Thank you.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Commissioner Coyle?
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Just a quick comment, then I'd like
to make a motion to approve.
I know that the public at large cannot get in to gated communities
to use their recreational facilities, but there are a lot of recreational
facilities in those gated communities. You must adjust your level of
service standard to reflect that. There's no point in building enough
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January 24, 2007
tennis courts to accommodate the entire population of Collier County
when there are so many tennis courts that are accommodating the
needs of all the people living in the gated communities.
So I would hope you would consider that, maybe by stripping out
the population of gated communities that have those facilities and not
building tennis courts that duplicate the amenity.
So just a wish that, you know, we use common sense and adjust
the levels of service to recognize reality. But now having said that, I
would like to make a motion to approve.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Second.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: We have a motion by Commissioner
Coyle for approval and a second by Commissioner Fiala.
Any other discussion?
(N 0 response.)
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Hearing none, all-- Commissioner
Henning?
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Yeah, we're going to give
direction on the overall AUIR about how to provide level of service
through the level of service.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: We definitely have that option at the
end.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: I guess so. But it would be easier
to do it as we go through each of these. Because the level of service
process will be different from this than it will be, say, for solid waste
or something else. So--
COMMISSIONER HENNING: This is the first one that we had
that I feel that our staff can give the planning commission and the
productivity a better way to count the need for service.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Yes, I agree.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Should that be a part of your
motion?
COMMISSIONER COYLE: It is. I understood that you were
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January 24, 2007
asking us for permission to grant you -- or permission to proceed with
this kind of a breakdown on recreational facilities. So yes, that was
my intent, although I didn't state it clearly.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: That I can't really see.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Okay.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: But also in your motion -- or
does anybody have any objection to provide those two advisory
boards the backup material and how they arrived at that conclusion?
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Sure. I have no problem at all
including that in the motion.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: And the second?
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Second, yes.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Go ahead. So that motion has now--
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Motion is to approve and to give
direction to the parks and recreational department to revise the level of
service standards to reflect the types of recreational facilities that we
should provide, and to give supporting documentation to the CCPC
and the productivity committee.
MR. RAMSEY: Very good.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Very good. And that's your second?
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Urn-hum.
MR. COHEN: Yes, Commissioner Coletta, members of the
Commission.
I thought it would be more appropriate to weigh in on this item at
this point in time, because it actually applies to all of the other
elements, for the productivity committee and the planning commission
made recommendation to look at level of service. I think it would be
appropriate when we do so to do it in what I would look at it from a
four-prong methodology. And it ties in kind of to what the planning
commission and the productivity committee discussed.
First is to evaluate the existing level of service and what was the
general basis for that and the rational nexus for establishing it.
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January 24, 2007
Two, what alternatives are out there and are there better
alternatives that are out there?
Three, will those alternatives withstand legal scrutiny from an
impact fee standpoint? Because what you're looking at from a level of
service standpoint does tie into our rational nexus for impact fees.
And if we get through all those steps, then coming back with an
alternative recommendation to this Board of County Commissioners
based on the new level of service standard that we know meets all
those criteria.
And I think that, if I'm correct, would actually address what the
productivity committee and the planning commission was trying to get
at in bringing forward a recommendation to this body.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: And that's the overall on the
AUIR, right?
MR. COHEN: Yes, sir. And I think because you're dealing with
an integral portion of it right now, dealing with one component right
here, just saying level of service, I think it's important to point out the
overall objective at this time.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Are you suggesting that we look at
the level of service for solid waste also?
MR. COHEN: No, sir. Only in the instances where you see a
recommendation from the planning commission, the productivity
committee with alternative -- looking at alternative levels of service
where you make that determination that you want that to transpire,
then you would follow those four steps, like this particular instance.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Yeah, since that is not uniform
throughout this entire document, I would prefer to -- just to make sure
we don't miss something, I would prefer to reiterate that every time we
have that kind of situation.
MR. COHEN: And that's why I--
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Can you alert us to that when we
come to one of those?
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January 24, 2007
MR. COHEN: Yes, sir. That's why I wanted to address that at
this point in time.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Then I would be -- yeah, I would
be happy to provide that guidance each time we have a situation.
When the CCPC or productivity committee has recommended that we
review the level of service, I would be happy to do that. But this is the
first one, I believe, that we've had today.
MR. COHEN: That is correct.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Okay. So you've got my motion
and you've got the second.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: We do. We're all set to go. No more
comments?
Okay, all those in favor, indicate by saying aye.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Aye.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Aye.
COMMISSIONER HALAS: Aye.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Aye.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Aye.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: The ayes have it 5-0.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Commissioner?
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Yes.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: I think we can address the
balance of it, because and again, if Ms. Vasey would help me, the rest
of this had to deal with level of service from the planning commission
and the productivity committee. If we could just make that motion, I
don't have any other questions, to follow the guidance of the planning
commission and productivity committee. Then we're done with it,
right?
Item #2J and #2K
COUNTY JAIL AND LAW ENFORCEMENT
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January 24, 2007
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: We have to clear up one thing. We
have Janet ready to speak on four other issues. And she may want to
come up and address all four of them at one time or give us guidance
what she'd like to see. In any cases, she can speak for each item
individually.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: That's fine. I just --
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: It's a wonderful suggestion you've
got.
Janet, could I ask you to come up to the podium to speak, please?
MS. VASEY: Yes, sir.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: You had several issues: County jail,
emergency medical services, government buildings and dependent fire
districts that you also wanted to speak on. Commissioner Henning is
saying to follow the recommendations of the planning commission
and the productivity committee and move forward on those items. But
meanwhile, I have you signed up as a speaker.
Would you address that and maybe give some guidance from a
productivity standpoint?
MS. VASEY: I'd be happy so. Janet Vasey for the record for the
Productivity Committee.
I'll go down the list. I can make it very quick, with one
exception. One of them would take three minutes, but the others I can
cover faster.
On the county jail, I just wanted to bring to your attention, you're
showing on that one a need for resources of $3.1 million. That's Page
92.
And I was thinking that Chief Smith would probably be
addressing the issue. But on the $3.1 million, that's for a jail
expansion in Immokalee of 64 beds.
And I just wanted to bring to your attention that in actuality it
probably wouldn't cost 3.1 million. And there again, I think he
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January 24, 2007
probably would tell you the same thing. Because there's just only
minimal work needed in that area. And it's just the way these
computations are made that it comes out to be 3.1 million.
And also, there was a jail study that might change the fact that
the level of service standard is 3.2 beds per 1,000 population. And,
you know, the judges were working -- I think Commissioner Coyle,
you were working with them to try and expedite the processing of
inmates. And if that does change the level of service standards, then
even that amount would probably go away. So I just wanted to bring
that to your attention.
MR. MUDD: The study -- if I can interject, the draft study that
was briefed to this committee talked about changing the level of
service from 3.2 to 3.8, which would exacerbate our situation. And
I'm not too sure, based on what I saw in the draft study -- and I've got
everybody taking a look at it -- that some of the assumptions that they
made in that study were correct.
Because I don't believe they took into account the committee and
all the efforts that they're trying to do to try to expedite our awaiting
population before they go into court and get sent to the state pen
instead of the county jail. Not that I'm trying to predetermine their
sentences, but --
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Commissioner Coyle -- I'm sorry, go
ahead.
MR. MUDD: But I would say to you the draft study makes it
worse for us. I just want to make sure you know what I've seen. And
we've asked them to go back and take a look at that. We were
expecting that the beds per 1,000 would go down a little bit, based on
that study.
And then there was a discussion item about the spring form tents
out at the Immokalee j ail that they had been talking and not counting
as far as beds were concerned. So we've got that rectified. They are
permanent structures and they are now counting those particular beds
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January 24, 2007
in place.
I cannot tell you the 64-bed -- Chief, are you here?
MR. SMITH: Yes, sir.
MR. MUDD: The 64-bed addition is, I believe, the last and only
module that we can add to the Immokalee jail. And what folks were
showing on previous pages, not this page that I've seen, but previous
drafts where -- that we had a shortfall in beds over that particular time
based on population growth.
And I looked at him and I -- you know, I looked at Skip Camp
and said, I thought we had another module. I was there at the
ribbon-cutting ceremony at the Immokalee jail. And I remember that
part of the things that they basically said, they could expand for
another module or so on that particular facility to bring it to 64 more
beds, and I basically said, then why aren't we doing that? Why are we
just saying that there's a shortfall and when it's time to bring that
module on line. And that's as much as I know.
Chief, would you like to add some things?
CHIEF SMITH: I think you covered it pretty well.
Again I'll just go on record saying Greg Smith, Chief of
Administration for the Sheriffs Office.
We questioned this amount as well. And as I understand, the
way that it was derived at is a standard formulation for structures.
However, we had a little foresight when we erected this facility. The
plumbing, the electrical has all been stubbed out. The site has been
prepped, so it will take a very minimal moving around of even dirt. In
fact, you can add that 64-bed pod without even additional staff, adding
in support space or anything. It's just ready to go. It's a modular unit
that's just ready to plug onto the side of the building, basically.
So we're going to be able to do those 64 beds tilt up a lot cheaper
than $3 million. So that's the good news.
Relative to the sprung structures, I'm real happy with the result of
Mr. Camp's work in that regard. Because we too felt that we had gone
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through the process to make those a permanent structure. The
consultant was trying to back them out, so they're back in now, so
that's good.
What is in question is I think 78 beds that have been moved in
since construction is that we may not be able to count in the AUIR
report because they are not supported by either showers are toilet
facilities or square footage in the current housing units. So we may
have to back those beds out of the current AUIR. If we did, then those
would come back next year and you would see a reduction in that
regard.
But we are still working with the consultants on the preliminary
report. I will echo the comments made by the county manager. It
seems to us that the initiative that we've undertaken and the things that
are under way with regard to the port system are going to serve to
reduce that level of service we hope. Certainly no one foresees the
need to increase that level of service.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Commissioner Coyle?
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Chief Smith, it was my impression,
and please confirm or refute this, if you don't mind, that the expedited
process of moving people through the pre-hearing procedures and that
sort of thing and trying to get them out of the jail if incarceration was
not necessary was showing some positive results. Is that not the case?
CHIEF SMITH: That continues to work. I think it's going to be
even more effective once the additional judges are in place and we
have the facilities in the courtroom. Because right now that seems to
be hampering us a little bit with facilities available in the courthouse
to actually conduct more court sessions. But certainly we think that
this is going to expedite the process.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Okay. So it has begun to deliver
some positive results.
Now, on the other side of the equation is the fact that a very, very
high percentage of the people in our jails are illegal aliens. And that's
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approaching about 30 percent, if I remember correctly.
MR. SMITH: That's correct, just shy of 30 percent.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Yeah. So about 30 percent of all
the people occupying the jail beds are illegal aliens.
So if we could find a way to make the illegal alien problem the
federal government's problem rather than our problem, maybe we
could get that issue solved. And I would like to move in that
direction.
And I know we shouldn't just turn people loose, but I think we
should be pressing the federal government to take custody of those
people and deport them, rather than just letting them sit in j ail or
having us release them and then notifying them they should return for
a hearing sometime in a few years.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Actually, they are responsible to
securing the borders. So the responsibility should be in the federal
jail, not in the local jail.
But to get to Ms. Vasey's questions and comments; I think they're
valid. So what do we need to do to adjust their need in the AUIR for
the jail space?
MR. MUDD: Commissioner, give me direction and I've already
got it, but go out there and make sure I've got a good estimate on the
cost of that 64-bed expansion to see if I can lower that cost and that
shortfall of $3 million. And I can do that and I will do that.
I went back and said, do we have a good handle on it? They said
no. I think we can do that based on what she has given me in the
as-builts that are sitting out there, I think we can get a better estimate.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: But also what I heard is because
of the new judges, maybe there's not a need for those extra beds
anyways; am I correct?
MS. VASEY: Well, if we are able to reduce the level of service
standard from 3.2 beds per 1,000 people, some of that new need would
go away in our AUIR period, the five-year period.
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January 24, 2007
MR. MUDD: That's right. And the 64 beds are due to come on
in 2010, 2011. And that's the reason why we put it there, so we could
have some time to see how the task force works and the new judges
coming on board, to see if it lessened our population in the jail.
So I think we gave ourselves enough room. Based on your level
of service we have it in there so we could satisfy the shortfall. But
we've got it out there far enough where we could see if the new things
that are out there, new judges coming on board, whatever, could
lessen that level of service with the contractor that we have on that's
basically studying the level of service for the jails.
MR. SMITH: There's only one cautionary statement that I would
make, and that's if it does come to pass that we have to back out those
78 beds that have been added since the Immokalee jail has been
C.O.'d, if we can't count those in our actual jail bed count, then the
date that that happens we're going to be 78 over in population.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: But not in reality, though. You
can count them -- the reality, they haven't gone away . You're just
talking through this exercise, right?
MR. SMITH: No, what I'm referring to is if that's the
determination, you currently do not meet state standards for housing
inmates in that facility.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Oh, so you couldn't use them.
MR. SMITH: Correct.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Because they don't have
bathrooms?
MR. SMITH: Correct. There's a ratio that has to be maintained
of one to eight.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: What about a Portojohn?
CHIEF SMITH: I don't know. We could look at that.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Maybe move the inmates closer
to the Portoj ohn.
MR. MUDD: I was thinking more like pink striped uniforms.
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January 24, 2007
You know where I'm coming from.
MR. SMITH: Oh, absolutely.
I think what we probably are going to be able to do with some
comfort is to utilize those sprung structures, which right now aren't
receiving full utilization.
In addition to that, we have some initiatives that are currently
underway where we're working with the federal government in hopes
of bringing on a new program where we can deal with some of these
people who are self-reportedly in our facilities illegally. And we may
be able to enter into a program with the Federal Government to
expedite their processing that in the corrections system.
(Recess)
MR. MUDD: Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Next items.
Item #2M
EMERGENCY MEDICAL SERVICES
MR. MUDD: Emergency Medical Services, sir.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Is that Mr. Summers or Mr.
Page?
MR. MUDD: Mr. Summers is going to start it off. Mr. Page is
here.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Rather than make a full presentation,
let's see if we can -- there were some issues, and we need to talk about
those issues rather than go through all the slide shows and all of that.
And those issues mainly came from the productivity committee.
Janet, would you state those issues and we'll take it from there?
I'm jumping ahead of my commissioners. Maybe they'd like to ask
some questions. Right after we hear from Janet, before you come up.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Yes, that's fine.
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January 24, 2007
MS. VASEY: Janet Vasey for the record. Thank you. This also
was -- these were issues for the productivity committee and the
planning commission. They pretty much agreed with us on this.
I would like to draw your attention to Page 119. At the top of
that page you can see that EMS has 22.5 units and they want five
more units -- I mean they want 11 more units in the five-year AUIR
period.
Now the level of service standard is one unit for 15,000 people.
You can see that at the top of the page. However, EMS is not
counting any of the services provided by the 19 fire district ALS units.
These ALS engine companies, advanced life support, were approved
to augment EMS response times, and the license for these units is held
by Collier County EMS.
Of the 19 units, five are actually staffed by Collier County
employees -- paramedics. So you are getting the same medical
protocol on those five units because they are staffed by our people, by
EMS people. The only difference is that they can't transport.
But none of these units are counted in our level of service. They
are -- and they are a substantial service to the community. The total is
22.5, and here we're talking about 19 fire district ones.
During eight months in 2006, the East Naples Fire District had 32
-- 3,235 ALS runs with an average response time of four minutes and
46 seconds. The EMS goal is eight minutes, 90 percent of the time.
East Naples Engine 20, and that's the one that has the EMS employee
paramedic, had 1,039 runs with an average response time of two
minutes and 23 seconds.
Now, why wouldn't you want to include that service in your level
of service against your standard? The East Naples response time
would improve the EMS average. I couldn't get any data from North
Naples Fire District. However --
COMMISSIONER HALAS: Wonder why.
MS. VASEY: Yes. Wonder why. And I really didn't ask the
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others. But the EMS and fire districts together are definitely
providing substantially more service to the county than the county's
level of service standard for every 15,000 population.
At a minimum, if the five units with EMS-staffed paramedics
were counted, only six more units would be required in the AUIR
period. And four of those six are already planning to come on line in
FY -07. So you would only really need two more units if you, at a
minimum, counted those. And finally, that's the issue we have with
level of service.
But the productivity and the planning commission both felt that
there was a problem with financial feasibility on this account.
We would like to draw your attention to the loan on that same
page. It's under Revenues, $7.3 million. We're concerned about how
that would be repaid. The footnote says, and I quote, impact fees will
be utilized to repay the general fund loan over time. However, all the
current impact fees are accounted for two lines up in the 6,094,691
figure. That's the impact fees that will be collected over five years.
Apparently EMS plans to pay off the 7.3 loan with future impact
fee increases. That's the best we could figure out they were talking
about.
And there are two problems with that. No other facility includes
future unapproved impact fee increases in their A UIR funding, not
even indirectly. And the impact fee increase that was just approved in
December 2005 was very modest. They would not get a hundred
percent impact fee increase to payoff that 7.3 loan. If you did it again
today, it wouldn't get you that much money.
So we think that, in reality, that bottom line additional revenues
required of $16 million is closer to $23.7 million because it's the 16.4
plus the 7.3. And those were the -- those were our main issues.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Excellent. Great presentation. Now,
in all fairness, I want to hear here from Mr. Summers and then we will
go to you, Commissioner Coyle.
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January 24, 2007
MR. MUDD: Let me help a little bit. I don't want to put Dan in
-- most of the time -- I'm on -- Commissioner Coyle, most of the time I
agree with Janet. And everything she said is absolutely right except --
not except what you said. There is additional issues.
She basically assumed that, because you have five ALS engines
with paramedics, they can replace the cracker -- the ambulances.
Okay. It's the old Army thing, we used to call them cracker boxes
instead of ambulances -- that you can replace those.
And I would tell you, yes, I can't wait for this board to tell those
districts, those fire districts that we're moving their ambulances out of
their districts and moving them to someplace in the county because
they have ALS engines that basically can supplant those particular
ambulances.
The next issue assumption that is made is that there is some way
to control the ALS engine as it arrives on the site versus send in a
paramedic vehicle at the same time. And right now both respond at
the same time. Fifty-six percent of the calls have a transport.
So if they are both going at the same time and 56 percent need a
transport, and in 56 percent of those cases, if we're just playing
statistics -- and I hate to talk about life and death in statistics, it's bad.
You never win. But that would tell me that the ALS engine could
only possibly give me a benefit 44 percent of the time. Forty-four
percent times those ALS engines.
The other thing you have to understand is you have an agreement
with every one of those fire districts, and those agreements state that
they will provide one guaranteed ALS engine 24/7, not 19. So five
districts, five ALS engines. So you don't have 19 to start with, you
only have five that's guaranteed.
We don't have the protocols at this particular juncture to make
sure that the ALS engine is responding first and making the call that
the paramedic vehicle needs to come to transport yet. And that would
help that situation out.
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January 24, 2007
The other piece that you have to understand is, if you -- if the
ALS engine gives you the benefit in that district, then you should be
able to move an existing ambulance out of that district and place it
someplace else that doesn't have ALS. Only five districts have ALS
agreements: North Naples, East Naples, City of Naples, Marco Island
and Isles of Capri. The other fires districts don't have the ALS
program: Corkscrew, Golden Gate, Immokalee and Ochopee, I
believe. Did I miss any?
MR. SUMMERS: Correct.
MR. MUDD: I got them. I'm getting good at this. And I didn't
want to get good at this.
So you have a problem with those four, and those four that don't
have a big area. If you take a look at where ALS responded to the
number of calls, and we did this data over a six month period of time,
some 13,000 calls out there, a little over 3,000 were responded to by
ALS engines. So only 37 percent of the time.
So you would also have to decrement, you know, the ALS, the
five that you have, not only by the 44 percent, but you might have to
decrement it by the 37 percent or whatever. So it really gets down to a
series of numbers that you are sitting between the ALS, based on
agreements that I have, that you are only getting a benefit anywhere
from .8 unit to two units, best I can tell, as far as that's concerned.
But we're going to study this. We're not going to let this go.
We're going to study it. But I wanted to add some conditional
conditions to what Ms. Vasey basically stated, because she did state
they are out there. They do provide a service. How you measure that
benefit is very difficult. And that's what I was trying to get at with my
explanation.
So yes, they all have that particular issue. Yes, we understand
that we do have some financial challenges in EMS: big county,
people, and you have a demanding level of service. And we talked
about that level of service demand at one time before when we talked
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January 24, 2007
about east of 951 and I drew the ire of the chairman on my comment.
But if you are asking for an eight minute response time and you
don't have interconnecting roads out in the Estates, okay, I am not too
sure your level of service is really realistic.
And how do you deal with that? Do you modify your level of
service or do you build lots of bridges and lots of roads. Because right
now you're not building lots of bridges out there. You've built one in
the last five years or so, according to Norman's slide from today.
There needs to be more done, and we already have a deficit in the
road program. So I don't mean to exacerbate the issue. I will tell you,
we need to look at this level of service because I believe we haven't
captured the true benefit of ALS engines, if there is any, okay,
because I believe, to capture the real true benefit, you need to be able
to move an EMS station out of a district that has the agreement into a
district that doesn't in order to capture the benefit. And I believe that's
a political trick that's going to be very difficult to get accomplished.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: You hit it towards the very end.
Political. The whole word comes into play here. You have two
government entities that are not working together. You've got
resources out there that are paid by the taxpayer that are not being
maximized. There has got to be a better way.
It's going to take something where we have to take a meeting
with all the fire departments involved out there at the same time,
where we can sit down and be able to go over this issue and try to
resolve it. Because it is absolutely insane to keep sending a fire truck
and an ambulance to every single location that's out there with no
regards to what the needs are. It's just insane. There has to be a better
way.
And I think that what we heard from the productivity committee
is exactly what I just said. The public is not happy . We hear this
complaint all the time. Why are these resources going out like they
are? It doesn't make sense.
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January 24, 2007
But in any case, let's go to Commissioner Coyle, then it's
Commissioner Henning, then Commissioner Halas.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Yes. I think that was a very, very
good explanation, Mr. Mudd. I agree with you on every single point.
It's necessary that we maximize the utilization of these resources.
They are under the control of two political entities, governmental
entities, and they are not working at the level of greatest efficiency.
Now, the only thing we have control over are our EMS
personnel. It troubles me that we can have all of our emergency
medical assets in a particular sector at the scene of one incident. What
happens when we get another call? Somebody else has to respond to
that or we have to pull one person away from the scene of that
incident to go somewhere else. It is not a good situation.
The safest thing for us to do, from the standpoint of protecting
the health, safety and welfare of the people of Collier County, is to
beefup our own EMS, because we can control EMS. But, more
importantly, it's necessary to beef it up because we're getting more
people moving into an area of the county that doesn't have a good road
network. And we are going to have to locate more units out there.
It's not so much -- it's not just the fact that the ALS and the EMS
portions of our emergency resources are not working that well
together, it's that we are also having to service areas of the county
where we can't maneuver as quickly, which means we're going to have
to put more units there, one way or the other.
And you are absolutely right. And I would like to see this go
ahead, move ahead, with the guidance to the county manager to
continue the study you're planning to take and provide us the
information to see if there is a way to coordinate the EMS and ALS
resources in a more logical fashion so that we can do a better job. And,
if there is not a better way to do that, maybe you can make some
recommendations as to how we can do it.
That's why I'm -- I am anxious for the fire departments to take
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January 24, 2007
whatever action they are going to take to merge, and then we can
consolidate all this under one single organization that is responsible
and then we can get that done. But I'm not going to get anywhere
close to it until that consolidation occurs because we have to maintain
consistent and uniform service to all of the people of Collier County.
We cannot have fire departments and EMS personnel competing in
Collier County against each other to see who can -- who can develop
the greatest assets.
So we've got to solve that problem and we need the fire
departments. I know. I know the fire departments can come in here
and tell you why that engine ought to be there at the site of that traffic
accident. I know they can tell you that, and they have got good
reasons for it. But -- so we've got to do it in coordination with the fire
departments and see if we can't resolve this problem and make it work
better.
And that's all I have to say.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: That's enough.
Commissioner Henning and then Commissioner Halas, then
Commissioner Fiala.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Mr. Summers, so we do have
paramedics in the independent districts' ALS engines?
MR. SUMMERS: Sir, we do.
Dan Summers, Director of the Bureau of Emergency Services,
for the record.
We do have that, sir, but we have some elements in that, that you
-- and, for our audience needs to be aware, and that is that while we do
have a swap program for your paramedics and we also have some
paramedics that are tied directly, if you will, under their particular
certifications with their departments, please understand that there is a
difference in how we base our skill level and our medical control for
our paramedics while they transport. And we don't want to consider a
transport unit as something that is a hauling unit. You need do look at
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January 24, 2007
that unit as a mobile intensive care where additional definitive
treatment, because of our travel times in Collier County, really makes
that a mobile emergency room.
So while we do have paramedics with different levels under Dr.
Tober's certification, under his licensure, I might add, and he makes
that determination for what extent of medical control and medical
protocol is delivered by ALS engines as well as ALS transport, please
understand that there is a slightly different environment in ALS
transport. And that transport, I think, is what we want to, continue our
level of service where we want to continue to excel in pre-hospital
care life save.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: The reason I was asking. It's a
one on one. You get one paramedic, we get one firefighter?
MR. SUMMERS: I'll let Jeff get into the specifics because there
is a great deal of -- there's a number of variables in how that checks
out.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: I guess --
MR. SUMMERS: It's by agreement.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: -- to get to the source, is, when
you -- when we have to add more units, it would be a logical thought
that you would bring that paramedic back to fill that instead of having
a new hire.
MR. SUMMERS: Good question.
Chief?
CHIEF PAGE: For the record, Jeff Page with Emergency
Medical Services.
The agreements, as they are right now, require us to provide them
a paramedic fully served by a firefighter. They in return provide us a
firefighter EMT. It may be a paramedic but typically it's not.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: So it would still be utilized on a
new box. Okay.
I have a question for Ms. Vasey.
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January 24, 2007
Janet, did you take a look at the collocation facilities?
MS. VASEY: Well, we didn't ask a lot of questions. We did ask
one question on that. We said -- when we were talking about how the
response times work, Jeff told us that the collocated -- that the times
for the firefighters were about the same times as -- for the ALS units
as for the EMS units because basically they were coming from the
same location. And that led me to wonder, why are we collocating if
they are coming from the same location? We ought to spread them
out a little bit instead of having a policy to collocate. But that was the
only thing we talked about, a little, on collocation.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Okay. Thank you.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Thank you.
Commissioner Halas.
COMMISSIONER HALAS: Just so that I'm clear in my mind,
the ALS is not a life support type of ambulance?
MR. SUMMERS: The ALS engine, sir, is not a transport unit.
We do work in partnership with those fire departments. They do help
us in specialized situations. They are there in some cases. When you
look at all the variables, they are there in some cases before us. And
they can do "X" amount of particular protocol, which contributes to
our out-of-hospital cardiac arrest survival rate in Collier County, and I
would never dispute that. But they are not a transport unit, and we feel
like that this transport, which we think is the most critical element in
this level of service standard definition, is what Collier County EMS
does with the transport unit. What we have from the fire departments
is an enhancement with some early intervention.
COMMISSIONER HALAS: And what's the percentage of calls
that you receive, EMS receives that need the response of the
ambulance with life support?
MR. SUMMERS: In the six month sample -- Jeff, I am not sure
if you have that chart available or not.
But in the six-month sampling of those calls where we have
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January 24, 2007
transport, we will transport about 56, 57 percent of the time, in that
most recent sampling.
COMMISSIONER HALAS: And those are the people that are
critical enough that they can't get on the ALS; is that what you're
saying?
MR. SUMMERS: No, sir. Remember, the ALS engine only
brings personnel and medical equipment and a limited amount of
protocol to that scene, while the transport ambulance is also bringing
paramedic with even additional levels of treatment and transport with
treatment in process back to the hospital.
COMMISSIONER HALAS: We have these interlocal
agreements whereby they are supposed to help support us with an
ALS system.
MR. SUMMERS: Yes, sir.
COMMISSIONER HALAS: What is the percentage of vehicles
that are deadlined, whether they are ALS or an ambulance, that you
have that are deadlined for maintenance?
MR. SUMMERS: The ALS engine, we will have a report every
day during lineup as to what engines are available, whether it's
maintenance, whether it's staffing, units taken out of service for a
particular training. Jeff can give you an approximation of what the
transports units, Collier County EMS transport units, what we have in
terms of replacement when they are down.
Jeff.
COMMISSIONER HALAS: I would be interested to know.
CHIEF PAGE: Let's look at the ALS engine lineup, please,
every day. When I look at that report each morning, typically it varies
from day to day. North Naples does a fairly goodjob of having seven
to eight ALS engines out. But, keep in mind, there are different levels
of protocols on some of these engines. Some of the paramedics used
to be my medics and they are able to do a full protocol. But every
ALS engine is limited to the medications and what equipment is on
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there, and that's based on Dr. Tober's guidelines.
So it's not the same as a cracker box. But East Naples, there are
days when I only have one ALS engine. That's the unit where my guy
is on it. The other four are down for various reasons, either out of
service. It could be due to training.
The next day it may be three units up. And occasionally I have as
many as four up in East Naples. City of Naples, generally two up
every day. City of Marco, two up every day. Isles of Capri, one up
every day. So it just varies.
But the other part that Dan had pointed out is, is that all of these
paramedics within the fire service operate in different levels of the
protocol. It could be because of their training or experience. But all
of them are also governed with the equipment that is on that fire
engIne.
MR. SUMMERS: And, sir, you also mentioned about the
number of units that were down. I think you were talking about
Collier County EMS service units that were down.
COMMISSIONER HALAS: Yes.
MR. SUMMERS: We maintain -- Jeff, if you want to talk about
what we have as a minimum. Jeff has some high season flexibility,
which we need for demand. That is also an ongoing issue, and then
has reserve vehicles for maintenance.
CHIEF PAGE: Right now I'm still gearing up the staffing that
we provided for, and we're also waiting for the new trucks coming in.
So there are some days when I'll have as many as 26 units up on line.
But it's never less than 24.
We're at the situation right now where we have such a small
reserve fleet because we have the manning now to staff all the four
additional growth units that you provided for this year.
So the people are here. It's just having enough reserve fleet to
staff those units up while we're waiting for the new trucks to be built
and delivered. So we're working on it.
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January 24, 2007
MR. SUMMERS: Mr. Chairman and board, I would tell you that
one of the things that I really admire about Chief Page and his
operation is they maintain a very lean posture. And, when you're in
the business of being prepared 24/7, you want to have the right
amount without having excess. And they've done a very, very good
job of having that reserve capacity but maintaining a very lean
operation as well.
COMMISSIONER HALAS: This poses, I think, a difficult
decision for the commissioners, in how you weigh the level of service
versus somebody's life. And would -- I would weigh to the side of
making sure that the citizens are taken care of first.
So I think what I need to do is look closely at what we have here.
I think we need to address the issue that, it's a car accident with the
possibility of fire. That, I can see, where you need an ALS system
and, as you call it, a cracker box there. But there are some other areas
where it may be a house call or something. And I believe it should be
just the EMS who could respond because chances are somebody has
either fallen -- chances are they got a heart attack or whatever else, so
I think we have to -- there is some way or another we have to work
some local agreement and say, this is the protocol that is going to take
place in response to an accident.
And I can see where you need, in a traffic accident say, on I-75,
you are probably going to need an ALS engine because they have the
jaws of life in case somebody is trapped, there's a fire or whatever
else. So you probably need both units there. But in all cases I don't
think you need all units there to respond to a house situation.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: That sums up what I was saying
earli er.
Commissioner Fiala.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: I have a lot of questions. Number
one, in the 11 that you said you need, does that include the four that
you're already waiting for, that you have already ordered?
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January 24, 2007
CHIEF PAGE: When you're saying the 11, you are talking about
the future --
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Proposed AUIR FY-06/07, 11.
CHIEF PAGE: No, ma'am. Those four are for this fiscal year.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: So that's over and above the four
that you are waiting for right now?
CHIEF PAGE: Correct. In this fiscal year there were fourth
growth units that were approved.
MR. MUDD: Those 11 include the four, ma'am.
CHIEF PAGE: Oh, they do.
MR. MUDD: Those 11 include the four.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Okay, thank you. That clears it up a
little bit for me.
You said something about equipment on a fire engine but earlier
you had said that the equipment has to be Dr. Tober-recommended or
certified. Are you saying that the equipment on the fire engines aren't,
or do they meet Dr. Tober's recommendations?
CHIEF PAGE: He approves what equipment is on the fire
engine. It's just not to the same level that's on a transport medic unit.
In other words, they operate with a four lead EKG machine, we have a
12 lead.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Okay. You had mentioned
specifically ALS in East Naples. You said they have five units, yet
you said the four aren't in service quite a bit, you said, but
occasionally they are. And are you saying that their stuff is out of
service more than they are in service?
East Naples people, I know you are listening.
CHIEF PAGE: No, ma'am. The engine is physically there but
typically it might be an issue with staffing on that particular day to
where they don't have a paramedic to put on the unit. They are
allowed -- unlike ourselves, they have the ability to put an engine up
or down based on staffing, things of that nature. Where we would pay
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overtime, they typically do not.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: From what Janet was saying, it
sounded like they were in service all the time, from all of the figures
that you gave. Well, they'll certainly fill me in on that, I'm sure.
Let's see. Jim Mudd mentioned our study. I know that they are
doing a study about consolidation. Are we also doing a study?
MR. MUDD: No, ma'am. I said we were going to do a study to
make sure level of service was correct and try to measure the potential
or the benefit of ALS engines. One of the recommendations --
COMMISSIONER FIALA: We're not doing the same studies
they are doing. Okay. Fine.
MR. MUDD: No, ma'am.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: You didn't say what the study
included --
MR. MUDD: No. The study was to get the level of services
right in this particular item.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: The second last question is in the
areas that don't have ALS at all. Do we have EMS engines in there or
EMS?
MR. MUDD: Ambulances.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Ambulances in that areas already?
CHIEF PAGE: Yes, ma'am.
MR. SUMMERS: Yes, ma'am.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Okay. So those areas are covered,
right?
CHIEF PAGE: Countywide, we're covered.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: And you say you have 26 units?
CHIEF PAGE: Yes, ma'am.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Are they in most all of the fire
stations, the 26? I don't know how many fire stations there are.
MR. MUDD: Some are collocated, some have their own separate
stations. Like the one on Santa Barbara, the new one, is a separate
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station.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: I just want to make sure that as
we're preparing to see some kind of -- some kind of --
MR. MUDD: Merger?
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Merger. That's a good word.
Merger, yes. That we're not so over -- we're not buying a whole
bunch of stuff that then we're going to just be giving away. And I
certainly don't hope that we're not even thinking of getting into the fire
department business. I hope we're not even going there. Okay.
MR. MUDD: Outside of the two that I have back there, ma'am,
that's all.
COMMISSIONER HALAS: You can ride engines all day.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: And have your dog.
MR. MUDD: Commissioner, we are in the fire engine business.
We have Ochopee and we have the Isles of Capri. And those are in
the back, but that's all the dependent districts that you get.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: We're not ever planning on getting
into any other fire engine business. Okay. Fire department business.
Okay. Just checking out.
Okay. Thank you very much. I think I have all my questions
answered.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Would you like to make a motion?
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Okay. Go ahead. I'm still
concerned about the 11.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: I need to ask a question or I need to
make one minor point.
When we are looking at the level of service and that sort of stuff,
we have to keep in mind that we have a sheriffs agency. And they do
provide emergency first aid services, if they are the first ones on site.
So I think we need to understand that what we have is layered
responses from three different agencies.
And so what I would like to do is make a motion that we approve
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the AUIR as it's submitted, with the following guidance to staff. That
the county manager continue his study of all of the emergency
medical assets that are available in Collier County to determine how
we can best coordinate their use to achieve the best response time,
considering the road transportation networks and peak populations.
Now, that gets at the coordination between the fire department,
ALS engines and our EMS, how we can better use the respective
resources, where we should locate our EMS stations to assure that we
can respond quickly to those people who live in more remote areas.
And also to make sure that we take into consideration that during
the peak months we have got more traffic on crowded roads and that's
going to impact our response times, and that might mean we need
more units. And how best to do that? Do we staff up for peak times
only or do we have staff all year long and have to deal with the fact
that we're paying more money than perhaps we need to?
But that's the study parameters. If you can do that for us, I would
make a recommendation that we approve the budget as it currently
exists, contingent upon the county manager coming back with a study.
Now, if we find that those engines are not necessary, all of them
that you are talking about, all 11 or so are not necessary, we will have
a chance to talk about that, because you'll have to come back and get a
budget authorization to get those. Right now you have budget
authorization for four. So if we approve it the way it is now, you
come back with your study, then we can deal with whether or not you
really need these additional units. Okay.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: I'm very fixed. I'm very uncertain
about that 11. I just feel that that's very high.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: There are four of them already
approved.
MR. MUDD: Sir, they were purchased last year. There is a
budget line item for three for this year and we'll have to come to this
board in order to purchase those.
Page 11 7
January 24, 2007
COMMISSIONER COYLE: All right. That's my motion.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: We have a motion. And a second?
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Well, I'll second it with the caveat
that we can readjust that figure, because that's -- and I would like to --
I would like to get a report from the fire departments also as far as
their ALS goes, because maybe we're overestimating how much we
need. You are saying -- my point is --
MR. MUDD: Ma'am, the study --
COMMISSIONER FIALA: My point is, ALS goes out for
things like broken arms and so forth and we don't need an ambulance
there. And they go out for many items that are just very minor and we
don't need an ambulance there at all, although they will come and then
they don't need to transport anybody. Their biggest effort is for
transport. Right? That's what you kept saying.
CHIEF PAGE: Commissioner, if I could. The problem that we
also have, and I think Mr. Mudd has hit on this, is that we do not have
the ability to dictate what type of calls they even respond to. East
Naples is a good example. They do not respond to Alpha calls, a
seIzure --
COMMISSIONER FIALA: I don't know what Alpha calls are.
CHIEF PAGE: A seizure is an Alpha call.
So typically they will stay in-house and they will wait to respond
to more important or life threatening calls before they go out, where in
other districts they go to all the calls. So they have the ability to
dictate to us, really, what they will and will not respond to.
MR. SUMMERS: Commissioner Fiala, I would give you some
comfort to tell you that when we do this level of service standard,
we're going to look at every enhancement. We're going to look at
every protocol. We know there are different business philosophies at
different independent districts. We have to manage that by local
agreement, and hence the term agreement. But we will look at every
of one of those comments, ma'am, so you'll know that we'll --
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January 24, 2007
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Safety is the most important thing. I
just don't want to see us buying so many and the taxpayers paying for
a lot of stuff that is going to sit idle. That's my, you know -- and that's
my only thing.
But I have seconded the motion.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Thank you. And I understand your
concern. And I also believe that, you know, like Commissioner Coyle
said, I think it was, or Commissioner Halas, if we're going to err,
better that we err on the side of caution and have maybe an extra unit.
That's all I can add to that.
And with that I would like to call the motion, if there are no other
comments.
Hearing none, this the motion made by Commissioner Coyle,
seconded by Commissioner Fiala.
All those in favor, indicate by saying aye.
COMMISSIONER HALAS: Aye.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Aye.
COMMICOMMISSIONER FIALA: Aye.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Aye.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Aye.
Opposed?
(N 0 response.)
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: The ayes have it, five to zero.
Thank you very much, Dan.
Item #2N
GOVERNMENT BUILDINGS
MR. MUDD: Next item is government buildings. Mr. Ron
Hovell will present. Ms. Len Price.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: On the government buildings, is there
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January 24, 2007
anything as far as the productivity committee or the planning
commission had as far as comments?
MR. MUDD: Yes, sir. Had to do with level of service. Had to
do with separating level of service, maybe based on what government
buildings support the entire population of Collier County and what
buildings only support the unincorporated parts of Collier County.
Would it be better to separate those particular items? Again, it's a
level of service issue. It's one of those things that we'll go back and
investigate and review for the next time around. But we've taken
those, and those are --
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: I think if we can address that, and
then we'll go to Commissioners' questions, it might take care of most
of it. That may have addressed it. I don't know.
We'll go to Commissioner Henning first.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: You're absolutely correct. We
want to put the four-legged arm of Randy Cohen's kiss on this one.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Second.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Motion by Commissioner Henning,
second by Commissioner Coyle to approve this and move it forward.
Any discussion?
(N 0 response.)
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Seeing none, all those in favor,
indicate by saying aye.
COMMISSIONER HALAS: Aye.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Aye.
COMMICOMMISSIONER FIALA: Aye.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Aye.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Aye.
Opposed?
(No response.)
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: The ayes have it five to zero.
Thank you. Wonderful presentation.
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January 24, 2007
MR. MUDD: Commissioner, that brings us to dependent fire
districts. I believe the angst, not only of the planning commission and
the productivity committee --
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: I'm sorry. Don't mean to interrupt
you. Forgive me.
Janet, I messed up. You signed up to speak on that item.
MS. VASEY: No, I had not.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: You hadn't? Then I did not mess up.
I had it absolutely correct again.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: You knew what you were doing all
along.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: I did.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Pure dumb luck.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: How about the dependent fire
districts? I have a mark by them.
MS. FILSON: Yes.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Okay. Why don't we let Janet Vasey
address us first and then we'll take it from there.
MS. VASEY: Okay. On this one we're on Page 145, for the
Isles of Capri, and --
COMMISSIONER FIALA: You said that right, Isles of Capri.
MS. VASEY: Isles of Capri, yes.
We recommended approval of this one but we caveatted it only if
it can be accomplished within their current 1.5 mill ad valorem tax
rate.
And basically the issue here is that they are expecting a land
donation from WCI and they have, already, impact fees scheduled to
take care of the additional ladder truck and equipment. However, the
impact fees that we approved last year do not include anything for a
new fire station. So the 1.25 million that's needed for the fire station
would have to come out of the -- out of the ad valorem budget that
they have.
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January 24, 2007
And, in addition, when they put on a new station, they'll need
new people. So we were -- they said they could do it in their 1.5. We
were very skeptical. And I just wanted to bring it to your attention.
By the time you put on a fire station and the new staffing, we just
didn't really think that they could do that in 1.5.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: We appreciate that insight.
Let's hear from whoever.
CHIEF RODRIGUEZ: For the record, Emilio Rodriguez, Chief,
Isles of Capri Fire.
Yes. We are looking right now at a possible land donation from
the WCI. But we are looking at that for our five-year plan. That's not
going to happen next year or the year after.
So that gives us the opportunity right now to start setting some
money aside between now and then. When actually the time comes to
put this station up, we are looking at a collocation with the EMS also.
So that would be a savings; for our taxpayers as well as everybody
else because we're going to share that station. There will be a 50/50
station there.
So we do feel that, when the time comes five years from now, if
we achieve in getting all of that land, that we will be able to do it with
the 1.5 millage.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: So there are no intentions at this point
in time, to ask for any kind of millage increase?
CHIEF RODRIGUEZ: No, sir. And there are not intentions at
all to go in front of this board for a millage increase in the near future.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: And that's kind of an anomaly,
though. The non-county fire departments, they have to have the
millage increases passed in referendum, if I'm not mistaken.
CHIEF RODRIGUEZ: That is correct.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: And the only thing it takes for us to
increase it would be the commission itself.
Is that correct?
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January 24, 2007
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Well, where are you coming
from?
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: No. I was just drawing a comparison,
that it's a lot easier for a fire department that's under the county's
control to get a millage increase than it would be going to the voters.
Just drawing a comparison. I am not saying we're going them a
millage increase, but I wanted to make that comparison.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Oh, no. I'm not saying that.
CHIEF RODRIGUEZ: Nor are we coming up here for any type
of --
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: And I just want to make sure you're
not because I'm going to bring every voter out, if you are.
CHIEF RODRIGUEZ: That is correct. And that is not in our
plan at all, whatsoever.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Okay. Motion to approve.
COMMISSIONER HALAS: Second.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: I have a motion to approve from
Commissioner Coletta and second from Commissioner Halas.
Any discussion?
(No response.)
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Hearing none, all those in favor
indicate by saying aye.
COMMISSIONER HALAS: Aye.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Aye.
COMMICOMMISSIONER FIALA: Aye.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Aye.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Aye.
CHIEF RODRIGUEZ: Thank you.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: The ayes have it, five to zero.
Now, the last item on here is the recommendation and adoption
of the 2006 AUIR.
MR. MUDD: Do you want to talk about Ochopee?
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January 24, 2007
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: I'm sorry. I missed one. I thought
maybe they would forget and go home.
Ochopee Fire Department, any comments from the productivity
committee on this one?
MS. VASEY: Just one quick one. It's similar to the Isles of
Capri. In this situation they are adding two new fire stations, one to
support Port of the Islands and another on I - 75 east of State Road 29.
And here again they are expecting land donations. They already have
one of the fire trucks.
However, again, their impact fees do not have money for new
stations. They are at the four mill ad valorem, add tax rate max. And
they do have a limited population of under 3000 in 2011.
So there again the question is, will the millage rate provide
sufficient funding?
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Chief Wilson or Dan Summers,
whoever?
MR. SUMMERS: Dan Summers, for the record.
We thought we would bring it to you in stereo. The comment
that we have on those other two stations is that one of the things that
we continue to look closely at is the demand of services on Interstate
75, on the Alley from Ochopee. That pulls them out a great deal.
We continue to have conversations with the Bureau of Land
Management, the federal folks. We have had conversation with the
State Department of Transportation through John Norman, and
looking at the possibility of land donations in that area for a
substation.
It really does draw heavily on Ochopee for the call volume on
Interstate 75. And we have continued to study that. We're even going
to take a look at that with some of our MedFlight studying that we're
doing this year.
So all of these earmarks, if you will, or placeholders for these
other facilities are generated based on whether we're able to get some
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January 24, 2007
window of opportunity to set up some temporary or satellite
substations.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: I hear you, Dan. Once again, it's a
hell of a burden on the residents. How many people did you say it
was, a thousand -- how many people are you serving?
CHIEF WILSON: About three thousand out of the Everglades
area.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: About 3,000 people that have to bear
the burden for everything that takes place on an interstate. I kind of
hope that we might make an effort to try to get money for the Florida
Department of Transportation, the new tolls that they have.
Maybe we can start a petition going forward from the
commission through our MPO, or whatever it takes. We have to be
more proactive. This isn't right, that they pay the highest millage in
the whole county and for that they have to take care of the rest of the
world. It's not right.
I hope at some point in time that we are a little more proactive on
this and start drawing some funds from some other sources other than
the residents who live down there.
MR. MUDD: Commissioner, before the toll went up, I went to
see Representative Davis, and we addressed I - 7 5 . We have been
proactive to try to get a piece of that increase in order to come, and not
only go to Collier but also go to Broward, because they handle the
other half of it. And I'm talking about just the Alley part, the part
that's got the fence up on it, and you go down that strip and you are in
No Man's Land, and it's a whole lot more people traveling that
interstate than just folks in Broward and Collier County. There are all
over the State of Florida.
And to expect probably our -- one of our best but most taxed fire
districts to go on out there and satisfy that need for the Collier County
piece is a bit much, but they are the closest ones to it. It would be
better to have a station that is located someplace at a rest stop that's
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January 24, 2007
sitting there --
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Only if somebody else underwrites
the cost of it. I'm not paying for it.
MR. MUDD: Yes, sir. Again -- and so far I haven't had much
luck trying to get a piece of that increase in order to fund --
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: It's a shame. For the lack of money
there is the safety of the motoring public is at danger. Why do they
drop this burden on us? It's the same thing. We're paying mitigation
for the panthers. Why is that burden placed on us also?
In any case, I do expect you gentlemen to work on this and solve
that problem in the near future.
I feel very strongly about it. That's why I wanted to get the
message across. You are reaching -- you have to allow for the time
that you are at the scene of an accident on 75, which means you need
more resources at Everglades City to be able to back you up or you
have to bring somebody in from East Naples. It's a never ending cycle.
Commissioner Henning. I'm sorry.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: I was going to say, why don't
we make a motion that you set up a toll booth up there and they call it
the Coletta toll booth for fire trucks and EMS?
COMMISSIONER FIALA: I'll second that.
No. I'm just kidding.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Commissioner Henning, do you have
something more sensible to say?
COMMISSIONER HENNING: No. Just a sensible question.
What page is your capital improvement plan on?
CHIEF WILSON: We actually start at Page 153 in the back
here. I see a five-year plan in here.
MR. MUDD: It's missing in my book.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Right. Well, that's not bad.
That means there won't be any activities in the next five years. That's
what I read.
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January 24, 2007
CHIEF WILSON: These numbers were supposed to be the end
result of the five years.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: But when are you going to bring
it on board and what are you going to bring on board?
MR. COHEN: For the record, Randy Cohen. It's an oversight on
my department. The intent with regard to the two units that are shown
in this particular section were intended to be in the fifth year of the
AUIR. And unfortunately they were inadvertently omitted, and I
apologize for that.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: So it's going to be 0-11 ?
MR. COHEN: Yes, sir.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Okay.
CHIEF WILSON: And, for the record, Commissioner, this is
pretty much a goals and means for us. We're at capped mills. And, if
we can't do it underneath that millage, then we will continue to move
it into the next AUIR.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: I understand. Thank you.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Motion to approve.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Second.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Motion from Commissioner Coletta,
second from Commission Henning.
Any other discussion?
(N 0 response.)
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Hearing none, all those in favor,
indicate by saying aye.
COMMISSIONER HALAS: Aye.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Aye.
COMMICOMMISSIONER FIALA: Aye.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Aye.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Aye.
Opposed?
(No response.)
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January 24, 2007
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: The ayes have it, five to zero.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: That's it.
Item #3
RECOMMENDATIONS AND ADOPTION OF 2006 AUIR
MR. MUDD: Commissioner, that brings us to recommendation
and adoption of the 2006 AUIR.
My comment that I've got on level of services, I expect those
level of service studies to be done the best that we can for this next
coming AUIR. I'm talking about the next time we do this, that we sit
there and do that.
Now, there might be one or two that are more complicated than
that but we will get back with you and let you know that. But we plan
to have the level of service reviews done for the next time that you
have another review of the A UIR.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Well, I think the Board of
Commissioners directed you to do those certain ones. So if you have
a problem with those, I think you need to come back to the board.
MR. MUDD: Sir, all I'm trying to do is specify my expectation
of what you told me to do, to do level of service changes and reviews
so that they are integrated in the next AUIR, that there is no -- that
there is no confusion whatsoever on the record or with my
administrators or my department directors or anybody else, or with the
sheriff, that these level of services can languish for two more years.
It needs to be addressed now. And the next time you see them in
the books, unless there is some extraordinary circumstance, which I'll
get with you ahead of time to let you know that I expect, and I believe
you expect, those level of service reviews to be done for the next time
that you see this book.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: You need a final motion.
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January 24, 2007
MR. MUDD: Now, Randy is going to get up there and do
whatever formal things he needs to.
MR. COHEN: Commissioners, if you could turn to Page 8,
which is your executive summary.
Some of these items you've already addressed. I think probably
we should go ahead and clarify them in the final form of a
recommendation.
If you look at number one in terms of the recommendation, that
should remain unchanged and I would recommend that this board
move forward with a recommendation on that particular item.
I would say the same thing with number two.
However, on number three I would recommend a language
change on number three to read: Accept and adopt the attached
document as amended with recommendations from the Board of
County Commissioners as the 2006 Annual Update and Inventory
Report on public utilities as a planning and budgetary tool.
I think it's important to include that caveat in there because you
did make some amendments to it, as well as some recommendations.
Items four and five pertain to the direction from the planning
commission and productivity committee. The county manager's
already alluded to some of the specificity that you directed with regard
to items four and five. I think they should be modified to include
language pertaining to the level of service analysis that would be
undertaken, the alternatives that are being explored --
COMMISSIONER FIALA: You're talking about sewer
treatment and solid waste treatment, right?
MR. COHEN: Actually, four and five. Items four and five.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: EMS.
MR. COHEN: Every one of the facilities where the productivity
committee and the planning commission identified a need to look at
the level of service.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Are we under -- we're under
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January 24, 2007
Category A facilities?
MR. MUDD: No, ma'am. You are right in front of the book
before you hit the tabs for Category A, Category B, the executive
summary, Page 8, recommendations.
MR. COHEN: If you would like me to go through that real
quickly again, Commissioner, I can do at that for you.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: That wouldn't be a bad idea.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Okay. Yeah. That's good. I'm
sorry. Because I was at a different Page 8. I'm sorry.
MR. COHEN: No problem whatsoever.
Again, under the recommendations section, I would leave one
and two alone as worded, as they were fine in the manner that they are
presented.
Item three, change the language to read: Accept and adopt the
attached document. And then with the insertion: As amended and
with the recommendations of the Board of County Commissioners as
the 2006 Annual Update and Inventory Report on public facilities as a
planning and budgetary tool.
And then, when we look at items four and five, those are the
areas where you had the specificity, where you asked for specific level
of services to be looked at from the standpoint of what is the rational
nexus for the existing ones. Two, what are the alternatives that are
available and what is the basis for those? Three, will they pass the
litmus test for rational nexus for impact fees? And then actually
coming back to this Board of County Commissioners as the county
manager alluded to in the next AUIR, with those alternatives and
those recommendations that come forward from that analysis.
And that would be the recommendation that I would ask you to
make.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Commissioner Henning.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: As far as the litmus test for
impact fees, the direction that we already gave would probably change
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January 24, 2007
the level of service.
MR. COHEN: What traditionally can happen, Commissioner, is
we can do a level of service analysis. We might like at a level of
service -- and I'll give an example, and this is just a hypothetical, this
is done different ways for EMS and different governmental entities.
One would be population based. One could be distance based. One
could be based on response time.
Say they evaluate all three of those.
(Commissioner Halas has left the room.)
MR. COHEN: From my past experience, all three of those have
withstood some type of legal scrutiny. For example, say, one of them
is one that they have chosen as the best measure but it wouldn't pass
impact fee muster. Okay. Even though it may be the best measure for
them to utilize as a level of service, it wouldn't be adequate for impact
fees.
So we have to look at it from the standpoint of, if we find a level
of service that we think is going to work better, then the question
becomes, is it going to be adequate to meet our level of service
standards for impact fees in order for us to, as you've directed, make
growth pay for growth? So we have to look at it from that perspective
as well.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Where can I go to find that
information out about impact fees?
MR. COHEN: What we will do is coordinate that with our
impact counsel. I have already discussed it with Amy Patterson, and
we will be doing that as part of our analysis before we come back to
this board at the next A UIR.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Where can I or where can the
public go in those public documents to find out what meets the litmus
test?
MR. COHEN: It's -- what you would actually have to do is look
at different jurisdictions that have actually gone through a legal
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January 24, 2007
process as to what does pass and doesn't pass. And usually it's court
decisions that have -- where you find that type of decision making.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: All right. So that is where you
were judging your litmus test, whether it's been challenged?
MR. COHEN: Yes, sir. But there's been a litany, and legal
counsel can correct me if I'm wrong, but there's been a lot of litigation
in the State of Florida with regard to the variety of impact fees.
Again, what's acceptable and what's not acceptable in terms of level of
service. And we'll take a look at it from that perspective.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Okay. But, if you -- let's give
an example. If we hit the level of service by actually lowering -- if we
hit the services that we need applied or give to the public by actually
lowering the level of service by using something that's not tested in
the courts, who is going to challenge that?
MR. COHEN: Well, I think two things would transpire: One
would be the question, you know, from legal counsel, is there a
rational nexus for it?
There are different types of fees that are out there that have not
been litigated. And the next question is, is there a rational basis for it
and do we think that it would withstand legal muster? And I think we
have to rely on that opinion.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: And we're not stuck on those
opinions, right?
MR. COHEN: No, sir.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: We could do whatever we want,
correct?
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Is that--
MR. COHEN: I think that we would have to take the advice of
legal counsel with respect to what their advice would be in moving
forward with some type of level of service. If there was a level of
uncomfortability, obviously we would want to let you know what that
level is and why they were uncomfortable working forward with that
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January 24, 2007
kind of level.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Are these questions leading towards a
motion?
COMMISSIONER HENNING: I mean, I can -- motion to
approve the balance and the recommendations on the top of what we
already stated.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: As noted with the changes?
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Yes. The recommendations that
the Board of Commissioners take the following actions.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Second.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: We have a motion and we have a
second.
Commissioner Coyle, something else?
COMMISSIONER COYLE: No. After the questions.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Am I talking too much?
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Yes. That's okay.
We have a motion, we have a second.
Any other discussion about the motion?
(No response.)
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Hearing none, all those in favor,
indicate by saying aye.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Aye.
COMMICOMMISSIONER FIALA: Aye.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Aye.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Aye.
And the ayes have it four to zero. Okay.
Any other closing comments before we adjourn?
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Great meeting, Commissioner.
Thank you.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Thank you. Appreciate everybody's
participation.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Mr. Coyle has --
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January 24, 2007
COMMISSIONER COYLE: A closing comment.
MR. MUDD: Before we go -- sorry to interrupt, Commissioner
Coyle. I want to make sure that this board thanks the planning
commission and the productivity commission. They spent a lot of
time doing this --
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Very much so.
MR. MUDD: -- and review. And they do good work. Now, I'm
going to tell you that good work is very painful for my staff.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: I would recommend a letter.
MR. MUDD: And that's okay. But I just want to make sure.
They do a good job. And since I have been the county manager I've
asked every group that you have, advisory board and said look, I don't
know what your experience was past time but I value your judgment.
Nobody has the right answer all the time. Nobody has got this down
pat. This is a growing county and it's almost like a growing body of
citizens. And we have unique problems. Every eye, ear and idea is a
good one and needs to be examined and looked at. And they did a
great job. And I just want to make sure--
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Mr. Mudd, I'm going to ask this
commission to direct the chair to write a letter making those very
statements to each and every member of the productivity and the
planning commission. We should show our appreciation.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: I agree. I'll make that motion.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: We have a motion from
Commissioner Fiala --
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Second.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: -- to direct that letter. And a second
by Commissioner Henning.
Any other comments?
Commissioner Coyle, you have to say something, I know you.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: No, let's vote on this and then once
we get this business out of the way, just a --
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January 24, 2007
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: All those in favor, indicate by saying
aye.
COMMICOMMISSIONER FIALA: Aye.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Aye.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Aye.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Aye.
But is there something --
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Aye. Four to zero.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Is there something better we can do
for these two groups other than just sending them a letter? What can
we do? Can we take them out to lunch? Can we do something to
express our appreciation?
I have had members of both of these organizations coming to me
personally and from time to time and saying, I hope we're doing what
you want us to do, as if they are not getting enough feedback from us.
And I don't think they understand how much we appreciate them,
because they do a tremendous amount of work. And I would like to
do something other than just sending them a letter.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Proclamation?
COMMISSIONER COYLE: A proclamation would be great.
Have them all come up here together I wouldn't mind taking them out
for lunch, quite frankly.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: I'd like to do that.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: And you'll pick up the bill?
COMMISSIONER COYLE: I'll pick up the bill.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Wow. We're there.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: .Why don't we ask the county
attorney to come back tomorrow in our EAR-based amendments to
give his recommendations as to what we can do for these two advisory
boards.
MS. STUDENT-STIRLING: There are Sunshine issues, with
having -- you know, about posting a notice or something.
Page 135
January 24,2007
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Oh, we can post a notice, you
know.
MS. STUDENT-STIRLING: There may be others. I'll check
with Mr. Weigel.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: As long as we don't talk business,
we're okay. We can have the attorney there to make sure we don't get
into trouble.
MS. STUDENT-STIRLING: We need to have about three of us.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: We could even invite a newspaper
reporter, for all I care. But I think we need to do something to express
our appreciation.
Now, to get to my real question, and it is a question of the board,
to see if you support a position that I expressed at the joint TDC board
meeting just recently.
A statement was made there that said that the TDC is using
county recreational facilities and that they probably, the county
couldn't probably maintain these facilities as they didn't get this
additional revenue from our participants.
And I take issue with that. I hope we're not building recreational
facilities for tourists, to attract tourists. That's not the purpose of it.
And I would like some reassurance that we're not doing that, and
at least, if the board agrees with me, to provide direction to the staff
that, if -- that we may need to make sure that our recreational facilities
are designed and used primarily by the people of Collier County and
then, secondarily, by anybody else.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: And not have our staff do that
verbally, put it in writing.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Yes.
MS. RAMSEY: I do have that in writing for you, which I've
submitted to Mr. Mudd in regards to the North Collier Regional Park,
with all of the statistics attached to it. He received that today.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Good.
Page 136
January 24, 2007
COMMISSIONER FIALA: How did she know that you wanted
that?
MR. MUDD: Because you told us at the last meeting that you
had -- that you were interested in the specifics and you had that
question in the back of your mind. I tasked Ms. Ramsey to provide
that information to me in a memo so I could get it to you.
And then, once you have that information, if you have additional
questions and you are still uncomfortable, then we will have more
discussions. But we can discuss it based on the information and the
facts that we have.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: If there is no other business, we're
adjourned.
Page 137
January 24, 2007
*****
There being no further business for the good of the County, the
meeting was adjourned by order of the Chair at 5:15 p.m.
BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS
BOARD OF ZONING APPEALS/EX
OFFICIO GOVERNING BOARD(S) OF
SPECIAL DISTRICTS UNDER ITS CONTROL
lAME COLETTA, Chairman
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These minutes approved by the Board of
presented V-- or as corrected
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TRANSCRIPT PREPARED ON BEHALF OF GREGORY
COURT REPORTING SERVICE, INC. BY CHERIE'
NOTTINGHAM AND ELIZABETH M. BROOKS, RPR.
Page 138