Loading...
BCC Minutes 06/07/2022 W 1 MINUTES OF THE COLLIER COUNTY BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS Naples, Florida, June 7, 2022 LET IT BE REMEMBERED, the Collier County Board of County Commissioners and the City of Naples City Council, in and for the County of Collier, having conducted business herein, met on this date at 9 a.m. in JOINT WORKSHOP SESSION at Administrative Building “F,” 3rd Floor, Collier County Government Complex, Naples, Florida, with the following members present: BCC Chairman: William L. McDaniel Jr. Andy Solis Rick LoCastro Burt Saunders Naples City Council Penny Taylor Teresa Heitmann, Mayor Michael McCabe, Vice-Mayor Ted Blankenship, Council Member Raymond Christman, Council Member Terry Hutchison, Council Member Paul Perry Council, Member Beth Petrunoff, Council Member ALSO PRESENT: Amy Patterson, Deputy County Manager Jeffrey Klatzkow, County Attorney Jay Boodheshwar, Naples City Manager Tanya Williams, County Public Services, Director Trinity Scott, Transportation Management Services, Department Head Bob Middleton, Naples Utilities Director Andy Holland, City Streets & Stormwater Department, Interim Director Jake LaRow, CHS Operations Manager Maggie Lopez, Financial Operations Manager, CHS 2 Any persons in need of the verbatim record of the meeting may request a copy of the video recording from the Collier County Communications and Customer Relations Department, or view it online. Call to Order BCC Chairman BCC Chairman McDaniel called the meeting to order at 9 a.m. 1. Pledge of Allegiance The Pledge of Allegiance was recited. 2. WORKSHOP TOPICS 2.A. 2008 Interlocal Agreement, Set To Expire Sept. 30, 2022 – Tanya Williams, County Public Services Director BCC Chairman McDaniel told the Board and Council they could ask questions and make comments during presentations. Ms. Williams presented a PowerPoint presentation: and said that Kim Grant, Director of Operations & Veterans Services, and Jeff Newman, Operational Services Manager for Public Services, helped her put together a brief presentation. The current, amended and extended City-County Beach Parking Interlocal Agreement is set to expire on September 30, 2022. As part of the Interlocal Agreement that started in 2003, the City and County operate beach patrols and maintenance programs. The City provides at least 1,048 parking spaces for those with valid parking stickers and the County provides 1,527 parking spaces. The original agreement was set for five years and expired in 2008, when a new agreement was established. The term was expanded from five years to 10 years, with an expiration date of September 30, 2018. Both the City and the County wanted to extend the agreement, so it was extended another five years. At that time, the County agreed to a $1 million annual payment to the City, with an annual adjustment beginning in 2011. The City agreed to expand access to the City’s parks, recreational facilities and programs to residents of unincorporated Collier County. On December 17, 2017, the agreement was amended to include an increased $1.5 million annual payment to the City, with no adjustment factor. At that time, the County agreed that beach stickers would no longer be sold to non-Collier County residents and that agreement was extended and amended through September 2022. At this time, Collier County staff recommends maintaining the existing, amended Interlocal Agreement terms for another four years. By maintaining the existing amended Interlocal Agreement, several benefits continue:  It distributes the cost of beach patrols and maintenance programs to the respective entity.  The County’s $1.5 million remittance to the City equals over 53% of all beach and water revenue being permitted.  It provides the best value and quality beach access to Collier County residents. Vice Mayor McCabe asked what does 53.3% of all beach and water revenues from all sources mean? 3 Ms. Williams said it means that of all revenues generated, $1.5 million equals 53% of those revenues, so you’re getting back 53% of the revenues as part of your $1.5 million. Vice Mayor McCabe said that to him, it doesn’t equate, 53.3% of the general revenues? Ms. Williams said they are just for beach and water revenue, just for your parking revenue and your beach access. Ms. Williams asked Mr. Newman to explain further. Mr. Newman said that if you look at what we took in during FY2021 for beaches and parking, the overwhelming share of beach and water revenues come from parking. There are some other minor streams. For instance, if we rent something out on the beach, like a marriage ceremony. But overwhelmingly, it’s parking. If you take all revenues that we generate in parks for our beach and water at County parks, $1.5 million in FY21 was about 53.50%. Vice Mayor McCabe said that’s what he thought, but why is that relevant? Mr. Newman said he included that information to show that although we charge out-of-towners who don’t have beach parking stickers at our parks, it shows how that $1.5 million works into the parks’ revenue stream. Vice Mayor McCabe said it’s saying it’s 53.3% of the parking revenues that the County takes in, but it’s for the City’s beach parking in parks, so how does that equate? Commissioner Saunders said he misunderstood, as well. He thought we were talking about what is the gross revenue from this of the City in terms of your parking, so he assumed this number reflected 53.3% of the City’s gross revenue. The relevant question is what is your gross revenue? And what percentage of that gross revenue is this $1.5 million? What is the City’s gross revenue from parking operations that are subject to this agreement? For example, if that number is $3 million, then that 53% percent of that would be our payment. That’s what he assumed it was. Vice Mayor McCabe said the more relevant comparison for the City’s parking and Parks would be what does $1.5 million represent to the cost of the City, the beaches, renourishment, parking, to maintaining, and the raking of the beaches and parks, to our fulfillment? When he saw 53.3%, he didn’t know why that number was there. BCC Chairman McDaniel said we’re here to discuss that and to move forward. Commissioner Taylor agreed. The issue is what’s the cost to maintain our beaches today, what is your cost and what is our cost and what is the revenue? Because more needs to be done. We need more oversight on the beaches. We need to figure out that number and go from there. Vice Mayor McCabe said he doesn’t see why the County’s cost is relevant because we’re talking about County residents using City facilities and the County’s cost is covered by the City’s residents paying the ad valorem tax, the same as any other County residents. So, the question 4 should be what is the City’s cost, and then looking at the share of the County residents, what that would represent. Then make sure the costs we have are being borne by the County’s residents. BCC Chairman McDaniel said having this discourse will be very instrumental in coming up with a palatable agreement. Heitman asked to clarify “all sources.” BCC Chairman McDaniel said County staff is taking notes to get answers to all the questions. Vice Mayor McCabe said there are 156,218 beach parking stickers. Of that, 151,008 is the County, so 96.66% of the parking stickers for our beach ends and only 5,210 are the City, so as we’re looking at this and understanding what the percentage of access is, we’ll never be able to get down to the percentage of actual use. When we’re saying roughly 97% of the beach stickers are the County, that needs to be weighed into this conversation. Commissioner Saunders said he suspected that was substantially higher than $1.5 million, which he finds objectionable. He has four beach stickers and rarely goes to the beach, so 96% doesn’t mean anything. BCC Chairman McDaniel said this discussion is so they can have an open and honest discourse and reach a consensus. Council Member Hutchison said we’re discussing an Interlocal Agreement, and currently the discussion is about identifying costs. His “ask” would be that as we look at costs today, we should also include projected costs over any period of time in a proposed extension. Also, please provide a definition for “water revenue.” Commissioner LoCastro said it sounds like we don’t have an argument over the agreement itself, but we need a deeper dive into the statistics, the money, the revenue, the sourcing and all that as we come up to the September 30 timeline. Is there anything in the agreement that anyone takes exception to, other than wanting a breakout with statistics? Council Member Perry asked how the extension was set for four years, not five or 10. Ms. Williams said it was just decided to extend it for four years. BCC Chairman McDaniel said the number is irrelevant now. They could determine a time for an extension once they approve an Interlocal Agreement. Commissioner Taylor said that prior to the agreement, the City and County were butting heads a lot. The City strongly suggested asking for $1 million a year for parking and the County agreed. That had to do with the parking passes, etc. Prior to that, it was loggerheads. She didn’t know why there wasn’t another 10-year agreement. It makes no sense, unless the County decides they don’t want to use the City’s beaches. How many accesses are in the City right now? Ms. Williams said 40. 5 Commissioner Taylor said she doesn’t think the City or County wants to give up access to 40 beach accesses because the County has about five, so it behooves us all to come together to understand that the beach is a shared resource, and it’s very important to keep it up and to keep our quality of life. Our quality of life is dependent on how people use the beaches and it’s not to have glass on the beach, dogs on the beach, barbecues or tents on the beach. This can’t happen. Council Member Blankenship said they can come to a reasonable agreement on cost-sharing. We’ve had significant cost increases since the pandemic. We increased the beach patrol, pelican patrols, increased cleaning on the Pier, and increased cleaning and trash pick-up at Lowdermilk Park and all the beach ends, so we can factor that into the budget and come up with a reasonable approach. The real issue we need to think about is long-term parking. We’ve got tremendous growth in our area and only so many beach parking spaces. That’s where we’re going to need creative help, either from us, from City and County staff, on how we’re going to address providing access to the beach for all our residents when there’s not enough parking in the area. BCC Chairman McDaniel said he liked the statement he made about them being “all of our beaches.” If we approach this discussion with that as a premise will be able to come to a consensus. Commissioner Saunders said he understood. Where the City Council seems to be going on this is all those maintenance costs they have. Whether we have this agreement or not, you’re going to have those costs, so he wanted to find out what the City’s gross revenue is from parking meters and see what that $1.5 million, what that percentage, would be. As staff is evaluating this, please come back with what our alternatives are in increasing our parking facilities on the beach because we do have several facilities and maybe we could increase those. Clam Pass Park is an example of an area we’ve talked about, so we may need to go in that direction. He’d like to see the City’s gross revenue for parking, which is really what’s relevant here. How much you’re spending, how much revenue you have, and how much this $1.5 million reflects that because your costs are going to remain. Your costs are not going to change. There shouldn’t be a perception that the County is a cash cow here. We have to be very careful about how we spend our money, as well. This $1.5 million was a very fair agreement and he’d like to see that rate continue, but he understands the City needs to look at its numbers. Council Member Christman said he recognizes they have Interlocal Agreements for Parks and Recreation, particularly the beaches, which is the most visible Interlocal Agreement we have and is in the minds of all. Is this the only Interlocal Agreement we have between the City and County? He didn’t believe it was. When we planned for this joint workshop, some of the discussion by Council was to take a look at all the Interlocal Agreements we had with the County, or even to talk about Interlocal Agreements that don’t exist that maybe should for issues such as affordable housing. It would be useful for staff to provide a full summary of Interlocal Agreements that are in place so we have an understanding of that. Ms. Patterson said they’re in the process of putting that together. Mayor Heitmann said she set the tone. She doesn’t think this is an adversarial meeting It’s a great 6 opportunity to discuss, to work on and solve issues. We’re not coming against you and wanting, but seeking information to solve some issues. BCC Chairman McDaniel said they all concur. This meeting is long past due to have an open discussion and discourse with our community at large. You’re a part of ours, we’re a part of yours. Commissioner LoCastro said he wanted to get back to something Council Member Perry said. It’s extremely important how frequently we look at these agreements. When we’ve been looking at accounting agreements, some get looked at every 10 years and then a 10-year point hits and nobody looks at it and then we’re at the 17-year point. The County is so dynamic and growing so quickly and money is changing hands so fast. One minute we have a marina that’s barely being used and producing no revenue, and now it’s a huge cash cow. They’re looking at these more frequently, even if it’s just to look at it and say, “You know what, it’s perfectly set the way it is” and then we go another four years. We really need to nail that down in an agreement. We’ve been remiss here in the County a few times where we missed a few and when the agreement came to us, it was pretty dusty. Even by our own admission, we’ve sat here and said, “We would have better served the County if we’d really attacked it at the 10-year point when we’re supposed to, or maybe sooner.” So really nailing down that term, what’s the magic number, four or five? We need something definite because you’re dealing with real dollars here and things that are changing very quickly. As you said, this area is growing so quickly that in four years it might need a total overhaul, maybe even sooner if we’re watching it. We might want to have an emergency meeting and really take a look at this, or any other agreement. Vice Mayor McCabe said is the agreement itself, as it’s structured today, sound and should we move forward? Yes, but with one caveat. During the last go around, they took out an escalator clause. The escalator clause or something similar should be put back in because that would capture the kind of conversations that we’re having today. It’s important because if you look at the escalator clause, if it was in there, and you project it into 2023, to this next fiscal year we’re going to make an agreement for, and you compared the metrics, we would have had an 84.6% increase. Instead of $1.5 million, we’d be talking about $2,769,292, so it’s not a small deal. It is a big deal. As Mr. Commissioner Saunders touched on, we’re not talking about hoarding County money, but we just need to make sure we really understand what we’re talking about. In the City of Naples, our residents pay into the County, just like any other County residents. Then City of Naples residents pay additional taxes for the services and all that we have. County residents don’t, so what we’re talking about is making sure that County residents share in paying for what the City residents have, in addition to what the County has. We’re not drawing a line and saying, “Give us more County money.” We’re literally saying, “For the residents of City of Naples, give us the money we’ve already given for the additional services that we have for the City.” It’s no more complicated than that. BCC Chairman McDaniel said we’re all entitled to our opinions. Commissioner Saunders has an opinion that he doesn’t disagree with. You’re certainly entitled to spend as much money as you want, but in order to do it, and if you have a discretionary expense that you’re putting out as a 7 maintenance expense with a theoretical escalator clause that you want to put in here and it’s not a ratified expense, then we need to have a discussion about that. With our carte blanche, there’s more money, but at the same token, he wants it to be equitable. Vice Mayor McCabe said absolutely, so this is a good conversation to set up, What will take place post-meeting? Commissioner Taylor said it might be advisable to have an ad hoc committee work out details and bring something back to each of our boards, because that is something that she doesn’t think we’ve ever done. She doesn’t think it’s in the ordinance. It’s clear that the beaches are in the County’s interests, everyone’s interests. Rather than getting into the nitty gritty, we should pick one and you pick one and bring staffs together and really go into it, understanding the tenor of what you’ve heard here. BCC Chairman McDaniel agreed, saying he liked the idea, the holistic approach. BCC Vice Chair BCC Vice Chair Solis asked if they could hear today what the City’s total revenue is for parking. Mr. Boodheshwar said in about three months, he’ll be able to assess that question and others. We don’t have anyone here today from finance. But as we gather all this data, that is important in our assessment, we’ll have that piece of information. Ms. Williams said the last benefit is that the Interlocal Agreement would provide City residents with access to South Marco Beach, Tiger Tail Beach, Barefoot Beach Preserve, Barefoot access, Clam Pass, North Gulfshore Beach access and Vanderbilt Beach, a total of seven County beaches. The discussion has already started and notes have been taken, so she awaits the Board’s directive. Council Member Blankenship said one other element of data that would be helpful to look at is parks utilization. We’ve talked a lot about the beaches, but not so much about the parks. We have data that show a lot of County residents continue to use City parks. Even though you have invested tremendous amounts in County parks, we’re still seeing the utilization and it would be interesting to see if you have data that shows how many City residents are using County parks. That would be helpful to know so we can factor that into this Interlocal Agreement because the $1.5 million, or whatever the number ends up being, is supposed to cover some shared park costs and beach costs. BCC Chairman McDaniel said we’ve had discussions about the Seagate parking garage and so on. He wants to explore an inland parking garage to digitize all our beach accesses, so the people who want to come to a beach can look at a screen to see if there’s parking available. He wants them to be able to go to a parking garage, pay, get in, get in a van and go to a City or County beach. It will reduce infrastructure impacts and reduce parking in the City of Naples. Council Member Blankenship said we talked about the same thing because Lowdermilk Park, for instance, fills up and people drive around or sit in line trying to find a parking space. BCC Chairman McDaniel said they’ve had people parking in private yards or rights-of-way and they’ve had very serious circumstances. 8 Vice Mayor McCabe said he doesn’t agree with factoring in what share of City residents use County parks. City residents are paying County taxes and, therefore, should have access to County parks. It’s the opposite that’s not taking place, so City residents are already paying for County facilities, services, etc., in their ad valorem taxes, so we shouldn’t be factoring that in. It’s when County residents come to the City, that’s the conversation. Council Member Hutchison said for staff, the “ask” would be to share the variables the County uses to arrive at its net expense and beach costs. Let’s compare what we’re using. You may find an opportunity there. And let’s look at what reasonable access to the beach really looks like, parking on the beach ends and near-shore parking lots. What’s the impact on people parking in our rights- of-way, in front of the residences and what’s that expense? Should we discuss solutions with shared-costs and providing mobility? He wasn’t sure if that’s ever been discussed, beach parking enforcement and numerous other beach-related variables. Outside our world, what are the best practices? There are a lot of beaches around the country. We can look at best practices and adopt those to come up with a good template for our residents and visitors well into the future. Mayor Heitmann said we also should look at boat ramp fees and how many spaces we actually have. The pandemic showed us that our access for boaters has increased. We might want to look at that to make sure we have enough. BCC Chairman McDaniel said they’d looked at the County ramps a lot and would be happy to share what the County is doing. Commissioner Taylor asked the Chair if they had the consensus of both boards to appoint an ad hoc committee to come back with some information that can be disseminated. If we’re on break, it can be disseminated through e-mail, so we can prepare for the Interlocal Agreement in September. Mayor Heitmann said she could be the liaison for the City Council and the BCC chair when they go on summer break. BCC Chairman McDaniel said he’d be happy to be a liaison and be on the ad hoc committee. BCC Chairman McDaniel said no decision making is coming from this. We’re just gathering information, putting it all together, and then we’ll bring it back to our individual boards. Mayor Heitmann asked what the time frame was. Commissioner Taylor said the agreement would be voted on during the second BCC meeting in September. BCC Chairman McDaniel said it would be September 13 and our last meeting before break will be July 12. 2.B. Septic To Sewer Initiative - [Bob Middleton, Naples Utilities Director] 9 Mr. Middleton presented a PowerPoint presentation said he’s presenting an update to the City’s septic sewer program, a good program for eliminating the potential for septic tank overflows that contaminate our waterways. In 2006, the City completed a study of the unsewered areas within the City’s sanitary sewer system service area. The shaded area is the City’s sanitary sewer service area. A lot of that area is outside the City limits, in Collier County. The plan identified seven areas that did not have sanitary sewer and were on septic tanks. The first project that we took on was Area 7, the Bemberry Drive area, which was constructed in 2015. The next project was Areas 4 and 5, within the unsewered area. Construction of the sanitary sewer system there is complete. The County stormwater system is almost complete, except for some punch-list items. So far, connections to that system are about 95% complete, with the connections from the homes to the sanitary-sewer system. We’ve got four areas remaining. Areas 1-6, which are bounded on the north side by Pine Ridge Road, the southern end is the green area known as Area 6, Creech Road, and is bounded by U.S. 41 and Goodlette Road. Area 7, the first project we completed in 2015, is behind the post office on Goodlette Road, north and west of the post office. It cost $852,000 to connect 50 properties there. These are paid for by assessments, so Area 7 residents were assessed the construction cost for the sanitary sewer system with no grant help, just City residents paying about $15,000 per connection. Residents also were responsible for paying for the connection and abandonment of the septic tank, so we’re learning how that worked through that first process, and we’re a bit better on Areas 4 and 5. Hopefully, we’ll continue to get better during this process. BCC Chairman McDaniel asked if the City had any struggles financially and had issues due to that. Mr. Middleton said yes, sir, that’s the main reason for this discussion, because he wants to make everybody aware of it. In the area we called Phase 1, the west Goodlette Frank Road project, or Gulf Acres-Rosemary Project. It was to provide sanitary sewer systems in Areas 4 and 5. In November 2017, the City and County entered into an Interlocal Agreement in which the City would construct a sanitary sewer system to eliminate septic tanks and replace the water- distribution system. The City provides drinking water to residents of this area, so the water system needed to be replaced at the same time because it couldn’t withstand the construction activities for installing the stormwater system and the sanitary sewer system. Along with that, the County was going to upgrade and replace the stormwater system in this area, which was prone to massive flooding, especially during Hurricane Irma. It was a good move to replace or upgrade the stormwater system to get that water off those properties during a storm. He likes the Interlocal Agreement, where the City and the County work together, because there are several benefits to doing that construction at the same time. When two different entities own utilities, if they can get together and do that work all at one time, that minimizes the construction agony, and there was a lot of agony doing this construction, not only for the residents there, but for City and County staff. When they dig up that right-of-way, which was 60 feet, we went down through those streets and 10 dug it up to install and replace all the utilities. The cost-sharing is an advantage for both sides. Under this agreement, the County took the lead on procurement. They took care of hiring the design consultant and bidding the project out, and this project was done through a three-party construction agreement. The City and the County had an agreement with the contractor where the City paid for their cost and the County paid for their cost for the improvements. The total project cost for Areas 4 and 5, which includes the construction of the sanitary sewer system, the water system and the stormwater system, was $13.7 million for the County. The sanitary sewer was assessed to the residents and when we went into this, the construction cost for just sanitary sewer was $5.7 million to connect 331 properties. As we got into meeting with residents, several were not happy about getting hit with a $25,000 assessment for those costs and that number of connections. That assessment includes not only the construction but the design cost, engineering cost, and any other fees associated with setting up that assessment. That was all charged back to the residents. There was so much public outcry on this when we got into the public hearings to set the assessment, that the City Council said, “Let’s stop, we need to find money to help these residents out.” That’s when we joined together with the County, which agreed to pay for the $313,000 design cost. The City and County had grants with the Water Management District for this project. The City had $800,000 in grants and the County had $875,000 in grants. The County said it would give up its grant request and give it to the City, which was $1.67 million. Just with those two offsets, we were able to reduce the assessment from $25,000 down to $13,300, which was much more palatable to the residents. Plus, we gave them several options on how they could pay off the assessment. We still had a few that were not happy with having to pay that. But they had the option of paying that off upfront, $13,300, with no interest or fees, just pay it off; or they could have it attached to their ad valorem taxes over a 20-year period, with interest; or they didn’t have to pay it off at all, but at the end of the 20-year assessment, they would have to pay that plus the interest, about $50,000 at the end. Commissioner Taylor said they didn’t have to pay it off if they sold their house. If they homeowner wanted to do this, but they saw an appreciation on their house and wanted to realize that appreciation and that debt was carried to the new owners. Commissioner LoCastro asked what most residents did. Mr. Middleton said they paid it off. There was a silent majority out there because the septic tanks were in extremely bad shape. For the cost they were going to have to pay, the payment option was an advantage to some. Plus, to replace the septic tank was about $15,000. So, either you pay the City once to connect to the system and eliminate the septic tank or have the recurring costs of replacing the septic tank every 20 years, so there was an advantage. Then the City applied through the State Legislature for a line-item appropriation. This project got a lot of attention with the help of the County and our lobbyist in Tallahassee and we were granted a $1.2 million line-item appropriation from the Legislature to offset the cost of the sanitary sewer system. The City also applied for a DEP grant, a 319 Grant that pays to offset the cost of the abandonment of the septic tanks in connection to the system and the City threw in $400,000 to 11 match that. We were able to combine those three sums of money, which is about $2.1 million. We hired a contractor to do the actual connection work to abandon the septic tanks and make the house connection to the sanitary sewer system. The residents didn’t pay anything out of pocket and it’s their responsibility to make the connection because it’s on private property. Today, of the 331 properties, we’re about 95% complete. We’ve got 11-15 remaining connections to be made, and that’s going to be on Ridge Street, so we hope within the next two months to have that project completed and move on to the next one. If you didn’t have the opportunity to ride through this area before construction and ride through it now, it looks very nice. The right-of-way is opened up and the road is brand new. The sanitary sewer system runs down the middle of the road and you can see the difference in the swales on the side of the road for the stormwater system. Everything stormwater in this area runs to the east, to the canal along the road, so everything is pitched that way to move the water. A water line is on the north side of Ridge Street. To the west, you can see the improvements of the stormwater system, the roadway, the driveways were replaced. We did a phenomenal job on restoration. There is still some more work to do, some line-item things, but it was a pretty successful project. For Phase 2, we’ve got four more areas to do. In 2019, the City and the County agreed to another interlocal agreement to do the design and construction of the four remaining areas. In March of 2021, the City Council awarded a contract to the design firm. We’re at 60% design right now and we should be at 100% by this August. We’ve got some tentative amounts based on that engineer’s estimate on what the cost would be. The design of the sanitary sewer system for the entire area is $806,157 and this will be a special assessment. We will charge residents for the design and the construction through the assessment program. This area represents 869 total connections and the City has budgeted $32 million over the next five years. We’ve got it spaced out because we estimated it’ll be about a year to two years to construct and do all the improvements in that area. That includes replacement of the water system, a new sanitary sewer system and the County’s improvements to the stormwater system. We’ve broken this project down into three projects in Phase 2. Project 1 is to work in Areas 3 and 6, based on the unsewered master plan. The construction cost for the sanitary sewer system alone is $10.7 million. Areas 3 and 6 and represent 285 connections. To give a cost comparison, the construction of the sanitary sewer system for Areas 4 and 5 was $5.7 million for 331 connections and did not include $2 million for the connection cost. What we’re doing differently on this one is we are including in the construction costs the abandonment of the septic tanks and connection to the system. That represents $2 million out of that $10.7 million. BCC Vice Chair Solis asked what exactly does abandonment mean? Mr. Middleton said there’s a procedure that you have to go through that’s identified by the State Health Department and now DEP. You have to crush the tank, pump out the contents and fill it with suitable material. In some cases, that’s select soil and others, we may pump it full of flowable fill or concrete. The cost for that is anywhere from $2,000-$5000 per property. 12 If you remove the cost of the connection, $2,000 from the $10.7 million, you’re at $8.7 million for 285 connections versus $5.7 million, which we just completed. It’s $2 million-$3 million more for doing the work now so that’s an increased cost the residents are going to have to absorb, and hopefully our engineer is way off on his estimates, but we know what prices are doing right now. Based on that cost with no grants applied, it’s $40,000 per connection per resident, and that’s at the 60% design drawings. We’re hoping that will be reduced, but I am not looking forward to that discussion with the residents. Grants are available, but they’re not guaranteed for this project. We’ve applied for a line-item appropriation through the Legislature and that has been approved. It’s in the State budget now for $500,000. They’ve changed the rules on how we can apply for State funding and will only provide funding for work done within their fiscal year, which is July through June. When we applied for this, we were assuming that we would start construction in early 2023, but that would only give us six months of construction within that fiscal year, so we would probably have $1 million worth of work done by then, so it’s typically a 50% grant. They provided $500,000. We think we’ll be successful in future grants. Congressman Byron Daniels has applied for a Federal Community Funding Project grant on the City’s behalf and we’ve requested $5 million. We have received comments back from the federal level asking questions about the how to justify this. He doesn’t know where they are with it, but if we could get a $5 million grant, we’ve just cut that $40,000 in half to $20,000. Plus, with other grant opportunities, we’ve been in conversations with the Big Cypress Basin through the Water Management District and will more than likely get grant funding there. But it’s going to be around $500,000-$800,000. We’ll take anything. We also applied for a 319 Grant through DEP to cover the connection cost, and we think we’ll get about $500,000. We will send out public notifications to residents this summer, including costs, and will probably set up some public meetings with City and the County staff to represent the project and have plans and drawings set out for residents to see their properties and how it’s going to be connected or affected. Those will probably be good meetings, except for the discussion about what their costs will be. The design of the project will be completed this fall, probably August. The initial and final assessment hearings will begin later this year, but for the final assessment, we’ve got to have a pretty good number to have the maximum assessment included in that final assessment. If we don’t have the final assessment high enough and the project costs exceed that amount, the City’s on the hook for that cost, so we want to be accurate on our cost. Commissioner Taylor asked if you could go the other way. Mr. Middleton said yes, and that’s what typically happens after a project is constructed. We know the true construction cost and then the assessment is recalculated. If people paid a higher amount, then they’re reimbursed. Council Member Petrunoff said the prime rate is going up and it’s going to go up again. The way these are priced, are they variable or is it a fixed rate that’s applied to residents? Mr. Middleton said it’s a fixed rate. 13 Council Member Petrunoff asked if we have any sense of how much it costs, or have we done any calculations on reduction in pollution to explain this? What is the benefit of this project? What are the failed septic systems doing to waterways? Mr. Middleton said that’s done through water-quality monitoring. We’ve got a good area to do water-quality monitoring. One of the tasks in the Big Cypress Basin’s grant agreement with the City is that we have to do water-quality monitoring. We’ve already started monitoring of the water coming out of the system prior to the septic tanks being online, so we have the history on that. Now that the septic tanks are going away, then we’re required to monitor for an additional two years to see what the impact reduction is going to be. Council Member Petrunoff asked when they will get our first reads on this, given that you’re 95% done with Phase 1. Mr. Middleton said we have to sample again in September. Council Member Petrunoff asked if they’ll get a reading in October or November on this. Mr. Middleton said yes. For construction, the City will bid the project and we’re going to change the way we did it from the previous time. We did not pre-qualify a contractor. We’re going through a contractor pre-qualification process to pre-qualify any contractors that will be eligible to bid on this job and you know why we’re doing that. We’re anticipating construction to begin in early 2023. In Area 3, the northern boundary is Solana Road, the southern boundary, including the boundary on the south side, is Cypress Woods Drive. We’ve just completed the septic sewer at Hollygate Lane, so we’re moving north and it’s bounded by U.S. 41 and Goodlette Road. This represents 260 connections. Area 6 is Creech Road. The north half of Creech Road is in the County and they are not on sanitary sewer. They’re on septic tanks, so they represent 25 connections. For Project 2, to the north, Area 2 represents 305 connections. The estimated construction cost for the sanitary sewer is $10.8 million and includes the connection cost. Grant funding is anticipated, but not guaranteed. This area is south of Granada Boulevard and includes Morningside Drive on the south side and it represents 305 connections. The last area to the north is Area 1, which is $10.4 million based on this year’s dollars, and is 279 connections. That’s a $40,000 per-connection cost without any grants now. It includes the connection cost. The area in the middle is not shaded because at some time before my existence at the City, somebody installed sanitary sewer in that area, so they are lucky beneficiaries to be living there right now. This shaded area represents 279 connections and it’s south of Pine Ridge Road, north of Granada Boulevard between U.S. 41 and Goodlette Road. Mayor Heitmann thanked Mr. Middleton, his staff and County staff. This is really a fine example of a City-County partnership in taking care of the necessary infrastructure that was missing for a very long time and it is protecting our impaired waterbodies for the future. That’s what the City has been working on with our Lakes Management Program. It’s extremely important that we are also a partnership in State appropriations and are lobbying the federal government for our water management. It took a team to do this and she’s very proud of this project because she has hope that we can clean up some of our water bodies that are impaired. 14 Commissioner LoCastro said he hopes that Isles of Capri residents watched this because in his district, that’s a huge footprint now. That’s pretty much all septic and it’s been postponed for so many years. We all appreciate the timeline it takes from the idea to actually flushing the toilet and having it being connected to sewer, and it’s big. We would have benefited on Isles of Capri by having this discussion in the very early stages of talking to Isles of Capri residents. You were saying there’s misinformation, the minute they hear that there’s a possible assessment, forget it. But the rebuttal is if your septic tank explodes tomorrow, you’re going to pay regardless of how many grants there are. And when it comes to water, you’ve raised a great question, but it’s really about prevention. It’s about making sure that doesn’t happen because it has happened in some communities. Some preliminary work that we’ve done to get our notes together was a great reminder for him when he talked to residents and own staff: We want to learn from best practices. The one thing that we have found out is grant money was much more plentiful a while ago. That train may have left the station. That’s an exact quote from a contact in Tallahassee who works on this. If you’re up against issues with septic tanks, you might not be able to wait for the grant money and we have more than a few septic tanks that are having issues now in Isles of Capri. Right now, we’re trying to at least do the homework. Very little of that has ever been done. It was started and then when a lot of pushback came from residents, nobody wanted to take a bite of that apple and it was just like, “Oh we’ll talk about it in 10 years” and the septic tanks aren’t any cheaper and the connection isn’t any cheaper now. We also have the added complexity of Marco Island. They have a partial responsibility with sewer connections, a complicated partnership in trying to bring everybody to the table. My takeaways here are exactly what the mayor has said: It’s a lot of great work and we want to learn from this. There will be other areas in our community, but Isles of Capri is a big footprint with a lot of connections, a big project. We’re in the very early stages of trying to educate the community that they really shouldn’t push back anymore on this. We’re having a lot of success doing that by giving them the right information, but the negative is when they ask about the assessment. He’s glad to hear some grant money is available. But nothing is guaranteed. It’s a lot less guaranteed now than it was when money was flowing more freely and it was less of a challenge to get, when environmental help was easier to get. Council Member Petrunoff asked if the new developments being built in the County are required to hook into the public septic system. BCC Chairman McDaniel said not at all, but the higher-density projects, yes. Commissioner Saunders said he believes it’s State law that if you have access to a municipal water and sewer system in a new development, you have to hook up, so as the Chairman said, we’ve got areas where we don’t have that service. If it’s available, they have to hook up. BCC Chairman McDaniel said one of the things we’ve been working hard on is capital-asset replacement and maintenance out of revenue streams we currently have. If you haven’t implemented those practices yet, start. It will certainly help your process when you’re taking care of your own house and not looking to somebody else talking about free money falling from the sky. We hadn’t had those practices in place for a long, long time in Collier County because we’re close to $2 billion in assets that need to be managed, both subsurface and surface. 15 So if you haven’t really looked into those things yet, add that to your repertoire. Start talking about your user fees, how you’re managed. We have experience in Everglades City with what’s going on down there. With regard to the necessity and the want for grant monies, the folks that have access to larger pots of money, if they see that you’re taking care of your own house upfront, there’s a greater propensity for help along the way. BCC Vice Chair Solis said he was glad to hear that staff has been working so well together. In North Naples, in North Collier County, we’ve had one of these projects going on for years. All of Naples Park has to be switched and we’re doing all of that at the same time, so he hopes there’s a lot of communication because when that process started five or six years ago, the way we’re going about the work has changed significantly. The staff has done so much to work with the residents and how to minimize the pain of digging up the roads and living with unpaved roads, especially in the rainy season, so he’s glad to hear that that’s working well. He hopes County staff is sharing all of that experience because from Naples Park we have to go to Palm River, we have to go to Bonita Shores and southeast, as well. It’s going to Golden Gate City, right? So that process is continually being refined and he hopes we’re sharing what we can share with you. BCC Chairman McDaniel said when he first became Commissioner in 2016, we were 50% developed. You asked about new growth and development. We were 50% developed in Golden Gate Estates and still utilizing the normal septic systems that are currently used today, and we all know there’s highest and best technology availed. He’s data-driven. He looks for data-driven decision making, so he deployed County Pollution Control to get data in eastern Collier County and 50% build out. The other 50% is coming and we are good even with the new construction that’s coming all the way to 951, from the human effluent hitting the water system with the existing septic systems that we have. So, for those who are listening who live in Golden Gate Estates, unless the municipality puts water and sewer up the front of your street where you have the option of connecting, you don’t have to. There isn’t going to be a septic-to-sewer move in Golden Gate Estates. There’s no economy for it. The density is so low at one unit per 2¼ acres, Mother Earth does her job. That’s just for information purposes going forward. Council Member Hutchison said you went over various areas and that in spring of 2023, construction is going to start in one of those areas. Can you summarize from now until when the project work will be completed for all areas? Mr. Middleton said if we start in 2023, it’ll be 1½ years, maybe longer. Area 1 would probably be completed in 2027-2028. If we weren’t able to maintain the schedule, late 2029. Council Member Hutchison asked if he’d identified what the greatest or most likely threats are to cost increases during that timeframe. Mr. Middleton said materials, delivery of materials and staff. Council Member Hutchison said, And a delta of what? Mr. Middleton said just on this project right now, what we’ve completed and what we’re going into, is a $2 million increase. 16 BCC Chairman McDaniel asked if it was the equivalent number of connections. Mr. Middleton said not really. The one we just completed was 331 and what we’re going to is 285, but it’s a little bit less and it’s $2 million up. Council Member Hutchison said that for those participating in this meeting, as well as for the public watching, we’re going through these septic-to-sewer conversions for a reason. It’s water quality. The City properties are all sewer. Are there County residential properties that are not within the area described in your presentation, yet they remain on septic systems and they are contributing to water-quality issues in and around the City of Naples? Mr. Middleton said we have a section off Airport Road, north of Golden Gate Parkway, but they’re fairly large lots, and he believes they’re still on septic tanks. The difference is, as the Chairman mentioned, these are large areas of property with a septic tank, so the potential for them to be contaminating surface water there is a lot less. This area we’re talking about, these are septic tanks 20 feet apart. It’s just one large septic tank. The density is so high there compared to this other area off Airport Road, but they’re really not even on our radar right now. Commissioner LoCastro said it’s the same as we have in the Isles of Capri. The density is unbelievable, and we’re already seeing an indication of service problems. You can talk to some citizens and they say, “When I flush my toilet, I don’t get the same sort of suction I got.” We’re seeing little characteristics of septic tanks, not necessarily contaminating the water, but starting to get to their life expectancy and that’s a bad sign. Mr. Middleton said it depends on high tide. Commissioner LoCastro said yeah, absolutely. BCC Chairman McDaniel said the key is density. If you’ve got a spatial differential, Mother Nature can do her job. Commissioner Taylor asked if it also depends on lot coverage, of impermeable structures. Mr. Middleton said it sure does. That’s how a drainfield works. You have to have room for that. Once the waste leaves the tank, it overflows into the drainfield and that’s what dissipates the treated water into the earth. Commissioner Taylor said it’s dependent upon the moisture from above, which is inhibited when they build mega houses and cover lots, no matter how big they are, like they’re doing in Pine Ridge. Pine Ridge is going from very modest to major mansions and that whole area is on septic. Vice Mayor McCabe said as everybody says, this is an extremely important project to address the water quality for everyone. Given you’re looking at Phase 1 and now we’re talking about Phase 2. If you look at what happened in Phase 1, Collier County really jumped in and helped out with it. They did the design cost, they did the bidding and then they did the construction contracting costs. But in Phase 2, it’s not represented as such, as yet. It’s not formalized or finalized, so an 17 “ask” is for the County to jump in and do this, as well. And as Council Member Hutchison said, this is for County residents. This is not the City. This is what the City’s sewer map includes, but these are not City residents. The second “ask,” when we’re doing this, we’re tying it into what you’re doing, as far as your stormwater, etc., construction improvements in this area for your residents. When we look at the right-of-way restoration, Bob showed some excellent pictures, how it looks post versus pre looks fantastic. When you’re tearing up the roads, if you did your project alone, you would bear the cost for right-of-way reconstruction. When we’re doing it in conjunction with you to replace these sewer lines, we’re doing a cost-sharing. This would be another way that the City could help out. With this $32 million project the City is taking on for County residents, instead of cost-sharing for replacement of the right-of-way, the County takes on responsibility to replace the County road, given they were going to take it up anyway. That would be a benefit to County residents, but it will also help the City out with this project going forward. It could also help out in some of the numbers that we’re talking about County residents getting hit with, the assessments for this. The more that we look at this project very specifically for its goal, the positive nature of it for all residents, the positive nature with which your County residents will be benefiting from it, and then looking and trying to make sure that we as the City, which is taking it on, taking on what we need or have to do, but also have the County helping us out and ensuring that the County residents are getting the benefits. So that would be a pushback or an “ask” that I have, to look at Phase 2, and for the County to come to the table, do the designing, the engineering, the construction and contracting. And look at when we say right-of-way replacement, that the County does that because it is a County road for County residents and you’d be tearing it up, so that would be an answer. Commissioner Taylor said she didn’t know if everyone was aware of this, but the City does make a premium on the service that they supply to County residents and the City could decide to abandon it, and we could take that over. She believes the County would be happy to do that. BCC Chairman McDaniel said so again, there’s another way of getting to where we need to go. Vice Mayor McCabe said this is a good conversation, to be available. Commissioner Taylor said that on the first go-around, the County applied for and received the grant and dedicated it to the City, so this has always been a partnership. As we approach this, because the variables are so great with the construction costs and inflation, etc., it’s important to keep an open dialogue as we go forward, understanding that it is a huge cost for both entities, but it is a necessary cost. BCC Chairman McDaniel said and it goes back to what he was saying at the beginning. With regards to your Capital-Asset- Replacement maintenance, you’ve got asbestosis water lines that are running everywhere and what’s our plan for those replacements? It’s not yours, it’s ours. So how are we budgeting for those known replacements that are coming, are we communicating at the same time, so departmentally, we’re not fixing rights-of-way and doing the storm water and then saying, “Oh, wait a second.” 18 Commissioner LoCastro said Amy Patterson has so much historical data and knowledge. If you have some comments to make that would be beneficial to this group, we know you have background historical info. He believes she has something to add, correct? Ms. Patterson said absolutely. To clarify, we would not be doing this project without the City. It would be irresponsible, specifically for water quality, for us to go improve the stormwater, to move polluted stormwater more quickly. That was almost the genesis of our first partnership. We had catastrophic flooding in the area. Residents were distraught because of the level of funding, even before Hurricane Irma. But we had to keep telling them we had done as many small fixes as we could to the stormwater, and without a significant change with septic to sewer, there was nothing more we could do, so the restoration cost became a negotiation point. We’re always looking for ways to improve. Secondly, on funding, we’ve already had conversations about how the County can help, more specifically how we can partner better and be more successful. We were pretty successful in the first round of grants. But where else can we go? Septic-sewer is a very hot topic right now all over the State. We know that septic doesn’t work well in areas like this and we’re facing the same challenge in Golden Gate City, but we will be partnering to the greatest extent possible and have already agreed that it is counterproductive for us to compete against each other for grants. So, stormwater will stand alone and we will fund as we do our stormwater projects while we dedicate our efforts to a joint pursuit of grants to the benefit of reducing assessments. [A break was taken between 10:26 and 10:40 a.m.] 2.C. STAFF GENERAL COMMUNICATIONS 2.C.1. Affordable Housing – Jake LaRow, Manager, Housing, Grant Development & Operations Mr. LaRow presented a PowerPoint presentation: said that he wanted to acknowledge Maggie Lopez, Financial Operations Manager with CHS. She is here in case he gets a question and doesn’t have the numbers. She’s our guru and he thanks her for helping with this. And Joe Trachtenberg, chairman of the Affordable Housing Advisory Committee (AHAC), is here. At the conclusion, he wants to invite Joe up to speak a little bit. This is collectively a number of programs that we have rolled up into Collier County assistance programs. We’ve been presented to the Board a number of times over the last couple of months, related specifically to our Emergency Rental Assistance Program, most recently on May 24. Emergency Rental Assistance Program: Through the month of May, for the first time ever, Community Human Services, in conjunction with the Clerk’s Office, dispersed more than $500,000 in rental assistance to qualified needy families in the community. As of yesterday, we stand at approximately $5.8 million disbursed. The number in front of you is the amount remaining that isn’t already dispersed or encumbered. What that means is families that have already qualified for future rental assistance, we’re counting that money in terms of future expenditures. Household Assistance Local Fiscal Recovery: This is commonly known as the American Rescue Plan. The County received about $75 million and we will be taking another amendment to the 19 Board shortly. Of that $75 million, approximately 10%, about $7 million, has been set aside for rental and mortgage assistance. Those familiar with the CARES Act funds that were implemented and administered in 2020 and 2021, the income targeting largely mirrors that in terms of we’re trying to make assistance available at higher income ranges than is allowed under Treasury rules under the ERA program. Emergency Solutions Grants: This is an entitlement program we receive grants for annually. Under the CARES Act, we received a supplemental allocation of approximately $3 million. Of that, we have $568,000 remaining for rental assistance for households at risk of homelessness or that are homeless. ESG funds typically target households at 30% AMI or below, but with this particular tranche of funds, we’re able to assist households up to 50% of AMI. The Emergency Home Energy Assistance Program: This is pretty self-explanatory. It’s for households with someone age 60 or older that have past-due electricity bills. Vice Mayor McCabe said when it says funding available, she thought he said these numbers include what’s already encumbered, or is this not unencumbered? Mr. LaRow said this is not encumbered. Vice Mayor McCabe said so the $8.7 million for Emergency Rental Assistance is not encumbered, correct? Mr. LaRow said yes, and that’s inclusive of both ERA 1 and the ERA 2. Vice Mayor McCabe asked if there was a time limit on when that funding expires. Mr. LaRow said yes, ERA 1 is September 30, 2022, and ERA 2 is December 30, 2025. Vice Mayor McCabe asked what the division was between ERA 1 and ERA 2. Mr. LaRow said we received about $9 million for ERA 1 and $11 million for ERA 2. Vice Mayor McCabe said it’s potentially expiring and he wanted the public to understand. Ms. Lopez said there was a big number that was put out there to the public, $6 million was the unexpended portion of ERA 1. Out of that $6 million, there were funds that are encumbered, so what this number is reflective of is unencumbered ERA 1 and ERA 2 funds Vice Mayor McCabe said with the ERA 1 does the not spent go away on September 30? Ms. Lopez said that’s correct. Out of those funds, that’s about $2 million. We have been seeing a major reduction in that because, as Jake explained, we spent over half a million in expenditures last month, so that will shrink. BCC Chairman McDaniel said we’re real close to consuming that entire amount. 20 Vice Mayor McCabe said that’s his point because we’ve heard this on the radio and the news. There’s been a major push and we really don’t want that to go away. He’s glad to hear that. For those out there listening, make sure that you hear that. Commissioner LoCastro said we’re more than chipping away at that $2 million, which is obviously the goal. BCC Chairman McDaniel said we’ve even had discussions about encumbering and still using it. Council Member Petrunoff said given that it’s an emergency, what is the turnaround? What are your metrics around turnaround? These families are often in crisis. How quickly is it, as far as reviewing the application, or getting the dollars in their hands? Ms. Lopez said we’re moving as fast as we can. Fortunately, our Board has approved us using additional personnel to dedicate to that. We’ve been using volunteers, we’ve been continuing to do outreach events. We have one that I’m scheduling for next week. She’s getting details worked out. We’re constantly putting that effort in to review those applications and get them processed as quickly as possible. When we first initiated the program, 120 days was our goal turnaround time. Now it’s seven to 10 days. We have incorporated a pre-screening process, so an application gets reviewed as soon as it is submitted. We really are trying to aim for our metric to be within 48 hours to return all the documents required to move their applications forward. Council Member Petrunoff said so it’s no longer 120 days, it is now seven to 10? Ms. Lopez said that is the standard, but yes, we understand that it’s an emergency and it needs a quicker turn around than that, especially because many families that we’re seeing needing assistance are getting three-day eviction notices, so 120 days is not helpful to those households. Commissioner Saunders said our Clerk, Crystal Kinzel, audits all of these in this program. Her turnaround is very, very quick. She’s dedicated some staff to make sure that within a very short period of time, a few days from the date that they get a completed application, they can approve the funding. So, we’re working in that direction to get it as fast as possible. Ms. Lopez said we meet weekly with Clerk of Courts staff to review all the documentation and answer any questions they may have. Vice Mayor McCabe asked if other funds were expiring. Mr. LaRow said the Emergency Solutions Grants ends September 30, 2022. The ERP funds have a longer shelf life. That’s expended by 2024 or encumbered by 2024. Commissioner LoCastro said that we have an AHAC meeting once a month, which was yesterday. He was on a Zoom call with all the elected officials that are on AHACs statewide. One of the things we talked about is the misinformation out there. There’s a lot floating around, but folks that say, “Wow, I applied on this date and then I got paid on this date and it was about 190 days.” We count when we get an actual valid application. Some people apply and we say we need these three documents now and we never hear back from them. 21 One of the things we’re doing with additional staff is being much more aggressive calling applicants back to say, “We need a copy of your lease.” We just can’t give you free money based on you writing a number on a document. Where the clock starts is to help them as aggressively as possible get a completed, valid application and quickly process payment. Elected officials who represent AHACS statewide are all having a very similar challenge. He likes what Collier County has been doing, which is using many different resources to speed up that clock, but it’s really to get that valid application and then have it get paid. People on social media are complaining that they applied in January and never heard back. Well, you did hear back and you were missing four documents, so we can’t give you $5,000 just because you put your name on the back of a postcard. That Zoom call provided a lot of good information that made him feel even better about what we’re doing here. He wants to give them some of that feedback. A lot of it was timing. We’ve been really working hard to tighten it. Mr. LaRow said these are the individual assistance programs we want to highlight because they’re the ones that are quickly turning out to help folks in need. In relation to the interlocal discussions and agreements that were mentioned previously, we do have annual entitlement grants, two of which are between the City and the County. One of them was most recently approved by the City at its April 6, 2022, meeting, the Local Housing Assistance Plan, LHAP. The SHIP Program/Local Housing Assistance Plan (LHAP: This is a three-year agreement. There was a lot of great discussion and some feedback from the Council at that meeting, so we’re going to revisit it and take those notes into consideration for future discussions. Now we can improve that process with the collaboration working and with Council Member Blankenship’s presence at the AHAC meeting yesterday. LHAP becomes effective July 1, 2022. Urban County Consortium: This is another interlocal agreement. The Urban County Consortium is our CDBG program. That’s another entitlement grant we receive and that agreement was effective last year. The City of Naples participated and we also go to the City of Marco Island because they are a potential participant with their Urban Consortium. That’s a three-year agreement and we have a couple of years before it comes up again. Here are some quick numbers in terms of the sharing resources that go to the County versus those that are invested in the City of Naples. From 2001, the historical figures we’ve received for the County show there is approximately $50 million in CDBG funds. Of that, just a little over $3.3 million has been distributed within the City of Naples. The bulk of that comes through public infrastructure projects. The most recent one was for street lighting, which was almost $700,000 of our allocation last year that went for that project. About $100,000 went to some down-payment assistance homeowner rehab programs for several years. SHIP: We recently received our money, the allocation that we’re going to receive for this next year, which is down $564,000 from what we anticipated and we had distributed previously for planning purposes. Of that, approximately 95% is the County share. That share is determined by 22 the State and it’s purely population-based. Over the last 10 years, approximately $200,000 of SHIP funds have been distributed to assist households within the City of Naples. Likewise, those through down-payment assistance programs, home owner rehab and new construction systems, eight households total. A quick overview on the SHIP program and strategies:  Homeowners looking to repair their homes to make them more livable.  Some are looking to purchase a home through down-payment assistance programs or new construction.  Demolition and replacement of manufactured homes. We have two years to commit and three years to expend. The State does have pretty tight timelines, so we have to be flexible and nimble when we develop our plan. We can’t exceed income limits per household size. The BCC approved the Urban Land Institute study and adopted the Community Housing plan in the fall of 2017. Those items in green were actions that were taken independently, not as part of the original considerations, such as government wages and minimum wages. The Board did act on some wages for County staff at the beginning of this year, and State action on the minimum wage. Those in red are actions recommended through the Community Housing plan, but at the time were either considered and not pursued by the Board or declined outright. Regulatory-Relief Initiatives: These focus on density. With housing, specifically affordable housing, density a key component to make projects viable and feasible. These initiatives were most recently heard by the Planning Commission on May 19, 2022, and they voted to recommend moving those to the Board and it’s scheduled for a hearing on June 28, 2022, for transmittal. Land Development Code: The corresponding Land Development Code amendments will likely be heard by the Development Services Advisory Committee mid-summer or late summer and those will be paired up in the fall as companion items for Board’s consideration and potential adoption. The other four boxes are items that were discussed and the Board provided direction to staff at that meeting on the 22nd. The AHAC met over several months and in their advisory role to the Board, they wanted to make a permanent source of financing, either through the Local Housing Trust Fund or some other mechanics to support affordable housing. One of the directions from the Board at the time was to direct staff to evaluate a mileage equivalency to bring back to the Board. The Board’s budget workshops on June 16 and 17 may contain that discussion. Evaluation of County-owned or publicly owned land was another direction from the Board on June 28th, so that is currently going through staff with real property management in Growth Management trying to identify properties that are the most viable for potential development for affordable housing. That is slated for discussion on June 28, as well. The infrastructure sales tax has been in place for some time. He believes it was approved in 2018. The Board on the 22nd approved a budget amendment, essentially putting that $20 million for the Affordable Housing Workforce Land Trust in a separate account. The next step here is that on June 28, staff will be bringing that item to the Board with suggestions on how to move forward to 23 identify potential uses for the $20 million. The only potential use for that is acquisition of land, so we can’t finance construction or any type of other related cost. That is one of the major restrictions that we have to acknowledge when we develop recommendations to consider. Vice Mayor McCabe said when you say acquisition of land, does that mean barren, no structures, just acquisition of property, period? Mr. LaRow believed the Legislature said acquisition of land, only land. Attorney Klatzkow confirmed that. Vice Mayor McCabe said so if you purchase a piece of property, but you only go for what the estimated land value is, can that be used? Attorney Klatzkow said yes, it could. Vice Mayor McCabe asked if you have a piece of property worth $24 million, but the land itself is assessed at $8 million or $10 million, it could be used for this purpose, for the land portion of it? Attorney Klatzkow said yes. BCC Chairman McDaniel said they have $20 million allotted. Vice Mayor McCabe said he just wanted to understand what the potential was. Mr. LaRow said the blue box is identification of a consultant to complete a Nexus study for linkage and an affordable housing impact fee. That was a recommendation that came out of the AHAC subcommittee that was presented to the Board on the 22nd. The direction was for the Board to bring back a recommendation for consultant. As that currently stands, staff is still evaluating proposals that were submitted. These are a number of developments that are coming online, already leasing up, and some that have had some impact already. Allura: The development has affordable housing commitments that were entered into and agreed to through the Board. He worked with the Collier County Public School Systems on marketing and advertisements for school district employees because of the location, which is adjacent to or near North Naples Middle School. They’re doing an incremental lease up, with the last of the six buildings being fully leased by August 15, 2022. The Harmony on Santa Barbara (the Bembridge PUD): The developer was at our last AHAC meeting, Chris Shear with McDowell Housing Partners. He indicated that the project is currently 40% constructed, so they are on track to be occupied in November or December of this year and that just broke ground in early March of this year. That one has a long-term ground lease, so the County owns the land underneath. We also have a developer agreement. That project was initiated through an invitation to negotiate in 2019. As a result, through that partnership with removing the cost of land from that development, they were able to secure other financing through the State, 24 low-income housing tax credits, etc., to successfully construct that project. Cadenza and Allegro at Hacienda Lakes: Those also are being constructed by the same developer, McDowell Housing Partners from Miami. Those are sister properties and are slated for completion the first half of next year. One still must close on financing, but we anticipate that to occur shortly. BCC Chairman McDaniel questioned whether Cadenza and Allegro were on County owned land. Mr. LaRow said they were not on County owned land. BCC Chairman McDaniel asked what AMI stands for. Mr. LaRow said it stands for Area Median Income, which is $96,800 here. BCC Chairman McDaniel said he wanted him to specify that because they are getting a lot of phone calls because housing is based on AMI and the public doesn’t know what AMI or that amount is. Mr. LaRow said they’ll have flyers translated into Spanish and Creole by the end of the week to publicize the developments. Council Member Hutchison asked about the programs and amounts that are unencumbered. Is the number for the Emergency Rental Assistance program at $8.7 million? Mr. LaRow said that was correct and it’s allocated until the end of September, $2 million of it is unencumbered and that was inclusive of both ERA 1 and ERA 2 programs. Council Member Hutchison asked if any of the funds are at risk of expiring and not being used. Mr. LaRow said $2 million is unencumbered. We haven’t spent it. Council Member Hutchison said that’s a significant amount of money. Commissioner LoCastro said that’s a significant amount of money. We still have applications waiting and we’ve received more applications. We’ve been doing a lot of education. We feel strongly that $2 million is being chipped away at every time we get an application. Council Member Hutchison said he hopes there’s an opportunity for us to collaborate moving forward and make sure we effectively communicate the opportunity we have for these funds. Many people come to his 7-Eleven stores and tell him they need this type of assistance. If there is messaging we can do on gas receipts, clothing receipts, etc., we should do it. The City is willing to collaborate with messaging and to do our fair share. BCC Chairman McDaniel said the flyers are a wonderful way to disburse that information. Of that money that’s there, $2 million, the burn rate is $500,000 a year. Council Member Hutchison said that’s real help going to the community. 25 Commissioner LoCastro said your offer is an extremely valid one. We’re going to be putting some fliers in utility bills in July and August. NCH has been providing information in a weekly newsletter, how to apply, etc. We’re asking Arthrex and others to disseminate this information. We’ve been trying to flood smaller organizations. We even had TV ads. Council Member Hutchison said people are consumed with how they’re going to make these payments, if they can get mortgage assistance. Consider messaging boards, something easy. Need mortgage assistance, etc.? Those are ways we can effectively communicate. Commissioner Taylor said to sum it up, we’re in a crisis. There’s no question. At this point, the State is not helping us as a County. We’re just reacting. That’s all we had, a time frame to react. Kristi Sonntag’s office has increased its employees by 12 as of our last meeting and we’re getting volunteers from Leadership Collier. Everyone is in high gear. No one dreamed there would be so much need out there. Commissioner Saunders said 450 units will be going online quickly. What about the 400 plus units at the Golden Gate Golf Course? Mr. LaRow said we’ve been working with Jennifer Belpedio. We’re 99% into that with the long- term ground lease. There are other elements of the project related to infrastructures or transportation items that have been raised. BCC Chairman McDaniel said it’s an important distinction, that Allura, Cadenza and Allegra are private developments, with a percentage of affordability added in and The Harmony and Golf Course projects are County-owned projects in perpetuity and they don’t really. We lengthened the whole period from the previous 15-year to a 30-year because of what we were seeing transpiring. We changed the entire ROI on that from a development criterion, these projects with our County- owned land and to purchase land there. The other will be held in perpetuity. Does it need changes? Mr. Trachtenberg said he spoke to Steve Kirk last week, the CEO of Rural Neighborhoods. He hoped to break ground in early 2023. Right now, a lot of this is in the hands of staff, who are resolving several issues. That’s the developer’s projected timetable and he’s building between 350 and 400 houses. The final number is to be resolved. Vice Mayor McCabe said that given $2 million expires in September, what is the average award? Ms. Lopez said it was $9,000 and last month, it went up to $10,000. That’s the average initial request. The ERA can pay up to 18 months of assistance, so they’ll come in averaging that off the bat. ERA can pay up to $10,000 initially and we’re hoping that the additional 259 applications come in at the average that we previously saw, $9,000 for initial requests. That would get us to that $2 million. Since our last Board meeting two weeks ago, we’ve already received over 100, so we’re well on our way to meeting that target to reduce that $2 million. Vice Mayor McCabe said he wants to make sure the public understands the average award and the $2 million available. You’re talking about a little over 200 individuals or families and making sure that we’re using that money. At your rate of applications, it sounds like we are going to be 26 there. But let’s make sure we overachieve and start using not just the money that’s expiring in September, let’s make sure we’re using ERA, too. Ms. Lopez agreed. One of the things that we want to make sure and educate the public on is that when we talk about COVID impact, it’s not just having COVID yourself or a family member. It’s having housing instability during the COVID pandemic. A lot of people would be very surprised that they fit into that category. An increased cost in housing with not getting an increase in household income puts you in financial instability and housing instability. Commissioner LoCastro said the biggest misconception is when they come in and say, “I didn’t have COVID, so I didn’t even apply.” We’re trying to educate the public. He put it in his newsletter. We all have. We’re trying to get it out by saying, even if you’re unsure, if you apply, this is significant money. It might be worth filling out the paperwork to make sure because you have a COVID impact. It’s not the same as if you were in the ICU or the hospital for COVID. That’s probably the biggest misconception. Our education process is why we’re seeing more applications. People are realizing they could have applied, but the scary thing is that this money is not in perpetuity. Some people have been paid for well over a year and have been benefiting from these programs, but they have a shelf life at some point, so that becomes the scary thing. Vice Mayor McCabe said as Commissioner Taylor said, we are in a serious crisis. This money could expire and we might not spend it. We need to ramp up this information. This is very encouraging, that what is being done has accelerated it and we will be on a path to use it. For those who are listening or those who know someone, please make sure that you get out and if you have the need, apply because the money is there. There’s no one sitting at these tables or sitting in this room who wants that money to not be spent. BCC Chairman McDaniel said the unencumbered money is at risk of a clawback from the federal government. He even asked if there’s a clawback if we encumber it. He doesn’t want to obligate our taxpayers on $6 million. It was a half a million or some lower amount that would be worth taking the risk to ensure that the money doesn’t go away and goes to the people who need it. Vice Mayor McCabe praised everyone for doing a great job and accelerating it. Mayor Heitmann asked Mr. LaRow where we are in the conversation with the school board, as far as acquiring property and affordable housing. Are we partnering with them? Mr. LaRow said he attended a very long school board meeting two weeks ago and spoke about these topics. School Board Chair Jennifer Mitchell, who also sits on the AHAC, has been having those discussions with Superintendent Patton. They’re discussing it at an upcoming board meeting on June 14. BCC Chairman McDaniel said he spoke with her yesterday. Mr. Trachtenberg, Chairman of the AHAC, said he applauds Jennifer Mitchell, AHAC member and chairman of the school board, for aggressively pursuing an attempt to free up some excess land that the school board has and that they’ve been extremely reticent in the past to even consider utilizing for possible affordable housing. He’s very hopeful that Jen is going to have success. For 27 the record, we’re not suggesting that they give up future schools, but there are several 4- to 6-acre excess plots available that could be utilized where schools already have been built. There are areas where schools aren’t contemplated and we really think this is a very smart thing to do. He agrees with everything you said. Commissioners, and Commissioner LoCastro especially, have done a tremendous job helping to get the word out on the money that’s available, but we need to keep in mind this is 18-month money. That’s the maximum. Let’s not confuse this with solving the affordable housing crisis. This is going to provide relief for some people that are in deep pain, but it does nothing in terms of helping us get to where we ultimately need to be. In his job, it gives him great hope to see this group meeting today, with this body of leaders present. It’s really an acknowledgement that we do have shared problems and he hopes meetings like this will lead to shared and combined solutions. He believes they already have. While the geographic lines that define the City and the County are clear to the people in this room, it’s curious how mystifying this is to a significant portion of our population. Most folks in the County get their mail delivered to Naples. I guess it’s natural that they think that’s where they live. The interdependency between our City and our County goes far beyond names. We share many wonderful assets and we equally share many vexing problems. Our issues with water quality are always at the top of the list. What’s happening in the Gulf, Naples Bay, Gordon River, all of our tributaries, will likely have more impact on the commercial future of this region and our wellbeing than any other single area. We share common problems of traffic as our region grows and so many sought-after resources are located in the City. We’ve to got better address the movement of people from the less populous areas into the City and back out again. We share responsibility for the growing crisis of lack of affordable housing. In this respect, we’re not unique, and that’s actually a good thing. Cities and counties like ours all over Florida and all over the United States are facing the same problems. Land and building costs are rising, interest rates are going up and the people we need to provide essential services can no longer afford to live within reasonable commuting distance to their jobs. Ignoring these problems is a bad decision by government leaders. We must be cognizant that what brings people to want to live here requires availability of the support required to maintain these desired lifestyles. This doesn’t just include our policemen, our firemen and EMTs. It’s not just our teachers. It’s not just our health-care workers. The majority of people who perform these diverse but vital jobs that we require make about $15 an hour. That’s well under 50% percent of our newly announced AMI. They staff our stores, they clean our pools, they mow our lawns, they collect our trash, they prepare and serve our food, they repair our cars, etc. Most of the people who work with you every day in the City and County offices fit in that wage category. Try to imagine life without them. He can’t. So, the good news, as he mentioned before, is we’re not alone facing these problems. The playbook on what we collectively must do is really clear. In a nutshell, it’s about spending money to help acquire land. It’s about changing fees and zoning and density rules to allow the finances of these projects to actually work. It’s about being more creative with new approaches to buildings in terms of size and shapes and multiple uses. It’s about speeding up the processes. We can’t afford to spend four to five years from inception to groundbreaking or moving, so we’re playing catch-up and the hole is getting deeper. It’s also 28 working together to resolve traffic issues because these things go hand in hand. Most everyone recognizes the need for this kind of housing. They just don’t want it near them. So it’s also about us all standing up and explaining to the people who live in the County why we must proceed to build affordable housing, sometimes near them. He’s pleased to be able to report today that we are making progress. These Commissioners are doing good. There are a lot of new ideas coming up and more to come. There’s more awareness that there are other things that we need to do, so he’s here on behalf of AHAC to thank you for your commitment to assure that Naples and Collier County remain at the top of the list of where people want to live. BCC Chairman McDaniel said we appreciate your assistance. It’s nice having that kind of leadership. Mr. Trachtenberg said it’s a joy for him. Commissioner LoCastro said if you saw Joe Trachtenberg’s resume, he could be sitting in a lot bigger jobs elsewhere, doing a lot of other things, but he’s really dedicated himself. He applied to be a member and then we had the AHAC Chairman job open. And he raised his hand and got a unanimous vote. He has added so much acceleration to our AHAC board. Maybe every day hasn’t been a joy, but we’re dealing with a tough topic here. Yesterday, we had our monthly AHAC meeting and one of the things we’ve talked about at AHAC meetings, which started a year ago, was beefing up the attendance. It’s not just about, do you have a quorum, but who’s really in the room, so we’ve worked hard to invite citizens and the press. We had a guest speaker yesterday who was a senior official from the Florida Housing Coalition, the group that he had a Zoom meeting with just a couple of hours after our meeting, so it was timely. We’re adding a lot more meat to those AHAC meetings, getting a lot of great ideas and hearing from disgruntled citizens and business leaders who think they can help us advertise things. A lot is coming out of those meetings. Not only did we have one of your Council members attend, but we also have added permanently to our meetings, when possible, somebody from our Planning Commission. We have several more attendees now from our County staff, so it’s not just the housing team, it’s the folks who work in Growth Management, the folks who are talking to these contractors on a regular basis, Mike Bosi, Jamie French, Trinity Scott. These are key folks that add to our AHAC meetings, which has lengthened the meetings, but the meat that’s coming out of those meetings is significant. He didn’t realize how significant and how valuable the meetings have been until the Zoom meeting that included every elected official on AHACs statewide. It was run by the Florida Housing Coalition and virtually every county, with a few exceptions, attended. Some of the things that came out of that meeting are not so much what we’re doing, but what some counties aren’t doing. We were comparing notes. We can always do better, but it was amazing how many significant counties, counties the size of ours, chimed in when we all got a chance to speak. One of the questions by the moderator from the Florida Housing Coalition was, “How many AHAC meetings have you had?’ It was great to be able to say the first Monday of every month, without fail, and we’ve even had a couple of additional discussions. Other counties said they’d had one this year. This is critical. Some of his takeaways are that we are doing a few of the right things, but we definitely can do better. There were some counties that asked basic questions about the ERA program, how much is left and when it had to be turned back, yet here at our meetings, this is a topic of common discussion. 29 We talked about best practices and some of the things that have come out of our ad hoc meetings, such as putting flyers in the utility bills, TV commercials and how some of our main companies, such as NCH, have been advertising aggressively. Those weren’t things he heard from other counties, such as using County land for affordable housing. So that’s where the whole conversation stopped and everybody chimed in. The County doesn’t own land, taxpayers do, so when you make it sound like, “I wonder what we’re going to do with our land,” somebody who lives 10 miles away that helped buy that land through their taxes might not be so excited about building affordable housing. When he spoke about one of the initiatives we’re proud of, is that when we see these developments being built, we always ask the question, “Should a certain percentage of these units include affordability, whether it’s 10-30%?” It varies. When I talked about that, few counties chimed in and said they were doing that. Everyone is looking for the 20 acres to build the giant high-rise with 600 units for the working class. When someone cited that as an example, another County representative talked about what we always call NIMBY, Not In My Backyard. A colleague from another county said they don’t use that term anymore. They use the term CAVE, Citizens Against Virtually Everything. So when he talked about how we’re trying to find more of a balance and how we’re trying to take smaller or medium bites out of the apple by spreading it out and making it part of what we talk to a contractor about, he was really surprised that ohers didn’t say, “Oh yeah, we’re doing that as well.” It was sort of a silence. We can do more. On June 28, we’ve got our Affordable Housing Advisory Committee making a presentation to the Board of County Commissioners, so there will be a lot of information. Anything that you can push in our direction, either to Jake, Joe or myself, we’re all on the same team and we’re really working hard to brainstorm. One of the things that that came out of the final conclusion of the Zoom meeting with elected officials statewide is there is no one solution. There are going to be more than a few counties that wind up returning some money. You could just tell by what little they talked about, that they’re not trying to make their program much more aggressive. They’re still trying to figure out a few things. It was a good overview for me to talk with others in a similar boat to see if we were doing everything possible. We are open to anything but if you had been at the AHAC meeting yesterday, it was almost standing-room only. These are sometimes three-hour meetings that Joe runs and a lot of great information comes out of them. The senior official from the Florida Housing Coalition who was our guest speaker yesterday talked about things we’re already doing. He also talked about counties of equal size and what they’re doing or not doing. There was no epiphany of, “Oh, we’ve got to really jump on this one particular thing we missed the ball on.” We’re open to any ideas that you have. There are no borders. It’s all Collier County to the average citizen. His worry is exactly what Joe said, that there are some people that have benefited for well over a year and have gotten funds from these programs, but if they haven’t been putting money away or the housing market stays the same and more federal dollars don’t come, the big explosion will be when checks stop coming. Some of the negative feedback we get from folks living here is that units are expensive. But some of the checks we were cutting were for some people that live above affordability. He wants to give a shout out to our Clerk of Courts, Jake and Kristi Sonntag. We’re working very hard to make sure that money just doesn’t fly out of this building. Anytime you apply for federal dollars, it should be 30 a little difficult. It shouldn’t just be that we cut you a $10,000 check for the next 18 months. So we figured out a lot of ways to speed up the process with more people, but some of those suggestions have been to make the application process easier or shave steps out of it. This is a federal program that we’re executing and we want to make sure we’re doing it properly. Thanks to Joe and his team, we’re wide open to anything he might hear from citizens, people who want to attend our meetings, whether it’s a landlord or somebody in the business community who could give us some feedback or help us in any way. We certainly would be open to it. BCC Chairman McDaniel said he’s a huge proponent of data, and transparency forces accountability. One of the first things Commissioner LoCastro did was go through all the projects we’ve approved. Virtually every single project, multifamily, both ownership and rental, have a affordability component built into them and he went back through and brought forward with transparency, those that are being held, those that aren’t and what was being done because there’s a lot of missing information. That’s one of the first things that he did with his AHAC involvement. It’s allowed our Board to look at and see the efficacy of what we’re putting forward. We’re approving units with a percentage of affordability. How many are actually on the ground now? How many are actually being held in affordable status? How many are actually being put forward to be utilized? So, thank you. That’s really helping my decision-making going forward here. John Harney, of AHAC and Habitat for Humanity, said we’ve been talking about apartments this morning, and that’s what this is about. The National Association of Realtors reported today that with the increase in mortgage payments, composed of the increase of housing prices and the increase in the rates, the average payment is going up by $600 on a new home mortgage. That’s going to drive a lot of people to apartments who have been looking at houses. We need more apartments. That’s what this whole problem is about. This isn’t going to be about building more condos or building more luxury homes or building homes, single-family homes. It’s going to be about apartments. That’s how we’re going to solve this problem because that’s where the numbers are needed. We’re way behind, we’re thousands of apartments behind right now. If we add up all the numbers that Jake was talking about and some other numbers that I don’t think he mentioned, there are about 2,000 apartments in the pipeline. That’s not much when you need more like 10,000 right now. Apartments are largely going to be on major streets, and we always talk about traffic costs of infrastructure. These major streets already have water lines, they have sewer lines, they have electric. Streets are built up. People are not driving so much anymore. Uber is used instead of cars all the time. No car if you live in a city, so a lot of these infill developments that we do with apartment buildings are really going to make a big difference on traffic. The traffic that we have out there, the cost of infrastructure that we have out there, they’re all embedded. We’ve already paid for those, so it’s not going to add to our overall cost. If you look at overall affordability for somebody, the cost of using a car is very substantial, about $9,500 a year. For people struggling to meet their monthly rent payment, not having to use a car by building infill and by building smaller buildings, lower then 3-, 4- ,5- stories, and scattering them around the City, instead of concentrating, that will keep people out of cars and in the City, where they’re going to their jobs. There was some mention about the number of people in the County who are making $15 an hour. 31 It’s actually more like 60% of our residents are making less than $30,000 a year. It’s a huge number and it’s all those categories that Joe was talking about. The part Habitat can help with is we can build single-family houses. We can build duplex-type villa houses, triplexes, quads, townhouses, condos. We’ve done all these or we have plans for every one of these right now, so Habitat exists in a very small part of this because we’re selling homes. But we have current plans to work with a market-rate apartment builder on the same property we will be building those condos on their property, so what’s going to happen there is that … Council Member Blankenship said he didn’t want to repeat any ideas, but he has a couple. We have a unique opportunity in the County and the City to significantly increase our funding in the coming year. From what he’s heard, our property taxable values are going up by double digits this year, so he knows the County and the City have other needs that we all have to make tough decisions on and balance out. But we have a really good opportunity to set aside some significant funding on an ongoing basis to tackle the affordable-housing crisis, so hopefully in our budget discussions and your budget discussions over the summer we can make that a priority. The second idea is syncing up our bike plans across the County for transportation. The public- transit plans have been recently updated and we’re in the process of updating the City’s pedestrian and bicycle plan. To the extent we can look for gaps to close, that will help. As Mr. Harney said, a lot of people can’t afford cars or want to give up cars. Maybe the bus schedule doesn’t work for them, but biking could. For people biking in from East Naples into Naples to work, there are some challenges. One is the Gordon River Bridge and we’ve been having discussions with FDOT on ways to improve that. Maybe there are some other examples like that we could work on together that cross the lines between the City and the County to improve bike trails and build better networks moving forward. So hopefully we can empower our staff to work together on that to see where we can cooperate and build better networks for our citizens. Mayor Heitmann asked if they could consider changing the day of the AHAC meetings because it conflicts with City Council meetings and workshops. Council Member Blankenship and others would like to attend. BCC Chairman McDaniel said her concerns are noted. Mayor Heitmann asked, What mechanisms are in place now to ensure that future commissioners don’t change the good work that we put into place until we accomplish these goals? How do we make sure we solidify this? BCC Chairman McDaniel said needs are going to change. One of the maneuvers he put in place is the extension of the period from 15 years to 30, to be held in perpetuity for government expense, land cost, government facilities projects and subdivisions. They are held in perpetuity because the need existed in 1981, when he came here and it changed again and again for the last 40 years. And it will change again in 10 more years, so there has to be latitude by elected officials that are coming forward to be able to adjust and meet the community’s need based on the prevalent circumstances. John talked about transportation changes and people working more from home and with the advent of AI and AV, the transportation requisites are going to shift in the next 20 or 30 year, so we need 32 to provide for as much of the need as possible. Is it perfect? No. Are we making moves in the right direction? Absolutely, and having the flexibility for those adjustments in the future are there. Mayor Heitmann said absolutely, and she supports that. There should be something in the comp plans that can’t be changed so we achieve these goals. But as we know, these positions will come and go. To have those mechanisms in place would be very important. BCC Chairman McDaniel said we had a discussion with the folks from ULI when they came and talked to us in 2017. They talked about a supply-demand ratio, our population growth issue and said we needed to be putting 2,000 units a year into the system. Since he became a commissioner, he’s approved 9,500 units and shortly after we had our first meeting back in April and May, Jamie shared with him that we will approve 9,500 units and only 1,600 are on the ground. There’s a 36- month timeframe from a developer that has a pre-app meeting until they get a CO. There are far more in the inventory process than what John shared, so there are 10,000 units or 8,000 units that have yet to hit the ground, and a lot of this has to do with supply and demand. When you have that voluminous of a reduction in the supply, it puts a lot of pressure on, and then you add in the population increases and such, which is exacerbating the circumstances. Council Member Christman said some people offer ideas about how the County might be able to provide greater financial contributions to the City for things like beaches and septic to sewer. Let me turn it around. We obviously have a tremendous problem with affordable housing, especially affordable rental housing. There’s more we can do in the City, but there are some really practical limits because of the geography that is the City, the availability of land and the cost of land. We can do some things, but there are practical limits. We recently commissioned and received an affordable housing study that showed that 6% of all the people that work in the City live in the City. That’s everyone from lawyers, to doctors, to health-care workers. The reality is that there will be more opportunities to find sites for affordable housing outside the City than inside the City. Within a certain geographic area, people who might live in those affordable housing projects may well work in the City, so there’s a value in at least remaining open to partnerships between the City and the County where development could occur outside the City, but within a certain radius, three miles, five miles, the City could be a financial partner in that development. We should remain open to that because of the benefits it would provide to the community at large. It’s the kind of thinking we should remain open to and find out whether there could be some opportunities for those kinds of partnerships. Commissioner Saunders said he appreciated him saying that. These projects work much more efficiently when there was a partnership for the 400 units at Golden Gate Golf course. It’s a partnership. Naples Community Hospital is looking to do a partnership to try to develop more housing for nurses and that’s working, so any kind of a partnership with the City would be appreciated. But that becomes a funding issue. He’d love to have more conversations with you about that. That type of partnership will work and will make things move much more quickly. Council Member Petrunoff said you mentioned GMP and density. Can you talk more about density, where we’re headed? Commissioner Taylor said it’s where a developer wants to take us. Density is in the Growth Management Plan under affordable housing, so when they want to exceed the density 33 requirements, say 12 units per acre, you would say, “OK, you can exceed it if you do 20 per unit and you set aside X percentage toward affordable housing. A discussion ensued and the following points were made:  Hold periods for affordable-housing unit set asides were extended from 15 to 30 years.  PUDs with affordable housing have been successful.  There were negotiations on the percentage of units, AMI and grades of affordability; that’s becoming more of a conversation as zoning applications come forward.  One of the changes to the RLSA, the far eastern lands, was that the land owners agreed to put into the Growth Management Plan for that area, that a certain percentage of land must be set aside for affordable housing.  The County and citizens are checking to ensure that nurses, EMTs, firefighters and others are living in the affordable units that were approved to ensure those requirements are met.  The County had a similar meeting with the Marco Island City Council and they agreed they should continue the conversations.  Density bonuses, if developers provide affordable housing, are now at 20% for workforce affordable housing and developers have agreed to that.  Density bonuses will generate a lot of workforce affordable housing over the years.  Developers don’t want to lose money on a development, but density bonuses also make it harder for a developer to get the prices they originally intended to make it profitable.  The Conservancy is concerned the rules could change for the eastern lands.  The RLSA is a voluntary program that incentivizes clustering housing and increasing density to reduce the impacts on the overall area.  One developer agreed to go set aside 30% for affordable housing due to the market we have, but that’s going to change.  The County needs to ensure they don’t accept a plan that doesn’t belong in a neighborhood just because it has an affordable component. Attorney Klatzkow said that between your comp plan and zoning, you’ve got vested rights for a certain number of units. Let’s say it’s 18 units per acre. If you wanted to say, “If you want additional units on that, a percentage of those have to be affordable housing.” This is a pure policy decision. A developer can always say, “No. I know what my vested rights are.” But if they want to put on greater density than is allowed, we can certainly ask for a proportion of that density to be affordable housing. After that, as BCC Chairman McDaniels noted, it’s become a numbers game with the developer as to the price points, and given today’s construction costs, what they could actually do. Commissioner Taylor asked him to opine on the State’s position on affordable housing incentives. Attorney Klatzkow said you’ve got vested rights for a certain number of units. The State’s position is that you have to make a developer whole, which is no policy at all, so they put the onus on local governments. If we’re going to require development, do inclusionary zoning, etc., then whatever the developer’s loss and profit is, you’ve got to make it up to him. That’s what the Legislature has done, so we can no longer dictate to a developer that you’ve got to put in X number of affordable housing units. We can do it as an incentive: We’ll give you extra units if you 34 do this. But you cannot dictate anymore. Commissioner Taylor said there was no real affordable housing component required in the rural villages. BCC Chairman McDaniel said that’s not true. (The following was added from the affordable housing discussion during 2.C.2.) We have approved three rural villages that then got converted to a town in eastern Collier County and there is a housing-affordability component within that. Commissioner Saunders said he doesn’t disagree with what you just said, but the requirement may be somewhat illusory. For example, the Conservancy has said that there’s language in what we’ve approved for those villages dealing with workforce housing that may sound good on the surface, but it may be illusory in terms of whether it will actually be workforce housing. He plans to discuss that language at our June 14 meeting, so you are right that there is language there, but it may need to be strengthened. Commissioner Taylor said there is no requirement. 2.C.2. Water/Quality Resiliency – [Trinity Scott, deputy department head, County Growth Management Department/Andy Holland, Interim Director, City Streets & Stormwater Department] Ms. Scott said Jerry Kurtz, our Road and Stormwater Maintenance Director, as well as Beth Johnson, our Capital Project Planning, Impact Fees and Program Management Director, are here. To quote our County Manager: Stormwater is where it’s at. The County has a very large stormwater management system. We have the system in place to protect our individual and personal properties, as well as to ensure our roadway network is available for health, safety and welfare. Stormwater management is essential for us to protect our natural environment with regard to our water quality. The County has regulatory requirements. We must follow the Clean Water Act and perform stormwater management activities in compliance with our stormwater-discharge permit. We have a very diverse system, a very large system. We have over 370 miles of storm-sewer pipes that must be cleaned and maintained, 687 miles of roadside swales, 648 centerline curb miles of streets to be swept. We collect lots of storm debris annually, as well as cleaning inlets, and we have major control structures. The following is a sample of projects being undertaken by our Capital Project Planning Impact Fees and Program Management Group. Some of the projects that we’re looking at not only look at constructability (can it be constructed?), but how do we maintain it in the long-term. We have a lot of infrastructure in the ground that unfortunately, 40-50 years ago, when that was put in place, no one really thought about whether we have an access road to be able to get to clean out a maintenance area. So those are things that we’re taking into consideration now, so that we’re not being penny wise and pound foolish. The Freedom Park Bypass Ditch: The project is substantially complete. Freedom Park is an extensive water-quality area that the County looked for the water quality performance of the Gordon River. Along the northern end of Freedom Park is a bypass ditch that was taking water 35 directly into the Gordon River. What we have done with our Freedom Park Bypass Ditch Project is increase the conveyance channel to allow more water to flow through it, but those flows are now redirected to a spreader swale, thereby severing that direct connection. So now this water is going to flow through those wetlands and be able to enhance the water quality before it’s ultimately discharged into the Gordon River, so we’re really excited about this project. The Golden Gate City Master Plan: Golden Gate City is very diverse. Some folks are on water and sewer, some of are just on water, while some are on sewer and some are on septic. It’s like a little patchwork quilt. We have survived the Governor’s line-item veto into the State budget and we will receive a $500,000 Legislative appropriation that will be matched, $500,000 by the County to develop a master plan, phasing and funding strategy to be able to look at stormwater, including the outfalls, water, septic-to-sewer, roads, sidewalks system, lighting, perhaps even looking at FPL. Essentially what we’ve done with the Goodlette projects, where we’ve kind of taken this holistic approach for the project management, we’re going to be doing the same thing with Golden Gate City and really figuring out a master plan to be able to convert that. Mr. Holland said the City’s Stormwater Management is governed by its Stormwater Master Plan, which was last updated in 2018. It’s updated every 10 years. It’s our guiding document for stormwater programs, projects and policies. Most recently, one of the great things that came out of that master plan update was our stormwater ordinance code changes, where we increased the retention requirements for all developments in the City, including single-family homes. The Beach Outfall Project: This has not been an easy project. Nothing about this project has been inexpensive, but it is a very important project. It’s been called the most important water-quality project in the City, so the goals there are to improve storm resiliency and reduce flooding. He drove along Gulfshore Boulevard on Saturday morning after the storm and there were several feet of water on the road. That’s a common occurrence on Gulfshore Boulevard related to these pipes discharging directly into the Gulf of Mexico. This is the condition of the beach outfalls. There are nine existing pipes on the beach that directly discharge stormwater into the Gulf of Mexico. This is what it looks like after a rain event. You can see soil runoff discharging into the Gulf in the shore area. It’s a lot of tannins and leaf debris that is broken down and other pollutants from the City stormwater system. These pipes also cause beach erosion, so as that water is flowing, it’s scouring the sand and then the dry sand from behind fills that scour in. Water quality has been a huge component of this project from day one. There are extensive water-quality improvement components planned for this project, such as improving the sea turtle habitat. We’ve lost turtle hatchlings inside the wood pilings. We need improved beach access for beachgoers. We’ve had injuries, cuts, and scrapes and things from kids playing on the pipes and the boards. The City Lake Management Plan: It covers approximately 30 lakes citywide. About 20 of them receive runoff from the public right-of-way. That 30 lakes don’t include golf course lakes, like Bears Paw Estuary. Our Lakes Management Plan prioritizes which lakes to improve. There is a ranking of priorities based on a combination of different water-quality parameters, bacteria, nutrients, total suspended solids. Currently in that high priority list is Swan Lake. These three 36 green stars are actively under construction and are wrapping up. Red stars show where we’ll be going out for design this year. Commissioner LoCastro asked if the water is filtered. Does a can go through the pipes? Mr. Holland said there is no filtering. Some grates do catch debris, and our crews scrape them after every rainstorm, but finer mesh filters would cause flooding. The Swan Lake Water-Quality Study pilot program is a very comprehensive look at water quality in Swan Lake, which is in Parkshore. The Venetian Village shopping area is just off to the left on the other side of that bridge. This is a large drainage basin that includes areas of U.S. 41. The Park Shore Plaza, where Burlington Coat Factory and Fresh Market are, discharges into Swan Lake. We believe that a portion of the gray area, of the County area, Morningside, also discharges into Swan Lake. This is a really close look at pre- and post-storm water quality treatment or water-quality sampling, pre- and post-treatment water-quality sampling. We’re currently applying a bacterial product that’s supposed to eat the muck at the bottom of the lake. This is to avoid dredging, but another thing we’re doing is sediment testing because that biological doesn’t address heavy metals in the sediment. That’s ongoing, and we have a lot of preliminary data that we’re sorting through now. This is another lake that’s actively under construction now and wrapping up. That’s a littoral shelf that was just graded. A lot of our lakes are older and the banks are very, very steep, so by recreating that slope and putting plantings there, you get a good water-quality benefit. There’s also a new pervious trail there. Swales: We don’t have ditches in the City. The County has a lot of deep drainage ditches, three- and four-feet deep. The City relies on swales that are roughly six inches deep. We’re installing a lot of inlet filter baskets. That’s what we’re proposing for that Beach Outfall Project to capture the debris, garbage and dead animals that end up in the stormwater system. Vegetation maintenance is a really effective means of reducing nutrients, so cattails, as they grow, they’re taking up nutrients. If we harvest them, and we can do it all over again, that’s a way to reduce nutrients in these ponds. Street Sweeping: In 2021, we purchased a brand new second street sweeper. Sweeping is well known to be one of the most effective best management practices for removing nutrients and bacteria from stormwater systems. The City also has a fertilizer ordinance and the blackout period went into effect June 1st. Resiliency: The City conducts basin assessments. All the red circles are completed or ongoing basin assessments. In this project, we’re taking a look at the City’s existing level of service and the existing stormwater infrastructure in these drainage basins and modeling that to see how we’re doing and then applying sea-level rise and applying a higher level of service, a higher stormwater event and seeing what we need to do to address those flooding concerns in the future. This is one of the results/deliverables of those basic assessments. All the red areas are flooding areas during a 25-year, three-day storm event. A lot of these areas are also very low lying. We have roadway elevations in the threes and fours, so they’re very impacted by tides and sea-level rise. The device you see on the right is a backflow preventer. They’re actually simple, but pretty 37 ingenious devices that prevent the tide from backing up into the stormwater system. The picture on the bottom right is an actual installation of one of those. It’s inside the pipe. He’s joining with Natalie Hardman, the City’s new natural resources manager. She started in April and came from the DEP. She’s going to help with a lot of natural resources issues. This is one of her projects, the Oyster Reef Restoration. We have three sites. Two are complete and we’re planning on doing the middle one in 2023 at Site 2 in Naples Bay. There are actually three manatees in the photo. Vulnerability Assessment and Climate-Adaptation Plan: The City completed its vulnerability assessment in 2020 and we’re working on starting our adaptation plan, how to address concerns related to sea-level rise. Commissioner Taylor asked how this solves the problem of not polluting the Gulf of Mexico, when the pipes that you’re constructing, the stormwater is still dumped into the Gulf of Mexico, but just a different distance. Mr. Holland said we are installing 100 or more inlet filter baskets, like he showed you in the miscellaneous improvements slide. The pump station has a nutrient-separating baffle box, which is a series of baffles that won’t let things into the pumps. And we’re increasing the retention of the three-lake system – North Lake, South Lake and Alligator Lake, which all flow to one of the bigger outfalls, so we are doing a lot of things upstream to improve water quality prior to it reaching the pump station and getting pumped farther out. BCC Chairman McDaniel asked if they’d had any luck on the bioreactor we visited. Council Member Blankenship said he was going to bring that up as an example of where we could work together on improving water quality. We all want to improve the quality of the Gordon River in Naples Bay. He and BCC Chairman McDaniel and others had the opportunity to see what Bonita Springs is doing with its bioreactor. That might be an opportunity for us to collaborate, if we get our staff to work together on deciding where or how it might work, so we could have a pilot project to improve the water quality of Naples. He’d love to do that. BCC Chairman McDaniel the preliminary data coming out of that bioreactor that the City of Bonita Springs built to assist in the stormwater management was off the charts for the nutrient- reduction component. They actually found that they build it as a free-standing unit and it requires continuous flow, so they’re in the second phase of installing a pump to pump out of the Imperial River to supply that continuous flow when there isn’t rain, in order to keep the efficiency of the project actually working. He’d love to do that. We talked before about the septic-to-sewer and west of 951. That canal is a direct feed into the Gordon River to Naples Bay, so anywhere along those lines if our staffs are listening in, he’d love to see us explore that and have a look at a joint venture on a couple of those just to help with the effluents that are in that canal system. Council Member Blankenship said we have a new Natural Resources Manager and City Manager, so the time is right to take on that important initiative. BCC Chairman McDaniel said that relatively speaking, it’s not expensive. The total project cost 38 was $1.5 million, even with the pump at $750,000 to build and another $750,000 for the pump to move water in and out of the Imperial River. There was an enormous amount of reduction in nutrients. It was off the charts. Any other questions on stormwater-water quality? Council Member Christman said that a couple of years ago, the State passed the Clean Waterways Act, a big piece of water-quality legislation that’s still going through implementation. They’re finally getting around to developing a new stormwater-management rule. He’s sure County and the City staff are aware of this. It just went through a technical advisory committee process and now it’s going to go through a public process. The last time the State tried to do something like this was over 10 years ago and it never got to the finish line then, so it’s been ages since we’ve had an updated stormwater management regulations and it’s truly important for the whole State, including Collier County and the City of Naples. He wanted to flag that because at the Commission level and on the City Council level, we ought to be learning about it and engaging in it to make sure that it comes out in a way we’d like to see. Vice Mayor McCabe said that as Andy said, we in the City of Naples passed a stormwater ordinance requiring property owners to retain the first inch of water on the property. Does the County have anything like that. He asks because, as development happens in the City of Naples, it’s not new development, it’s redevelopment. You’re tearing down a house that is at 25% lot coverage. You’re putting up a house at 60% lot coverage. That means there’s not as much going to be absorbed, so it runs off, which means you’re increasing the volume of stormwater continually and exacerbating the problem that’s already there. So, the City of Naples took a look at it and said we’d take it to the next level to make sure that as projects are being developed, retention happens onsite, so that we’re being proactive about not continuing the increase. BCC Chairman McDaniel said the short answer is yes. Vice Mayor McCabe said that’s an important component of making sure that we are using the land for what it is, the filter system that it was designed to do, so that as the water runs off into our gulfs, etc., it is done right. Mayor Heitmann asked if the County has a fertilizer ordinance. Commissioner Saunders said yes, we have one that’s different from the City’s. We don’t have a blackout period. We brought in fertilizer experts from the University of Florida and their recommendation was not to have a blackout period. He spoke to a Marco Island City Council member and they have a blackout period. That council member had listened to the testimony we had and said that he wished that they had not done that, so we may need to take another look at it. But that was the basis of ours. We brought down some well-known nationally known experts to tell us how best to draft that and that was their recommendation. 2.C.3. Army Corps of Engineers Update – [Amy Patterson, County Manager] Ms. Patterson said that about a year ago, we were having a discussion about the Army Corps Project, which is three years and $3 million in the making. There was a lot of controversy involved in that, some mixed feelings from the community, particularly related to the walls, floodgates and things like that. As we all know, the Army Corps has asked for more time. They had a number of 39 issues, including some environmental concerns, the feasibility and cost of the project, and wants to take this up their chain of command to look at options and then have a chance to come back to Collier County as a whole, the Cities and the County and all of our constituents, to see if there is a different way to approach this. So as of now, the Army Corps is still evaluating options. Many of you have probably seen the October letter that laid out four different options. The most attractive to all is probably the beaches only, higher, wider beaches and some flood-proofing of structures and some protection of critical infrastructure, but much less impactful, as far as the footprint on infrastructure and the hardened structures. We believe that the Corps is leaning there. They are continuing to work this through their channels, so I’m here today to tell you we’re continuing those conversations with the Corps. We’re nowhere near ready to commit to anything with the Corps, including continuing on. They need to figure out if this is something they’re even interested in pursuing, and secondly, what does that look like, timewise, and what does it look like moneywise? At that point in time, when they come forward with a proposal, that will be the time we begin public engagement. That includes with our Commissioners, with you, as City Council, Marco Island, Everglades City and all the interested stakeholders. We have very significant takeaways from the last process, including how we engage with the public, so reassurances to all of you sitting here, as well as any of the viewing public, that this is not going to be done in isolation or in the dark. We’re not going appear and say, “We’re engaged with the Corps and just deal with it.” There will be a very open and public process that we go through and as soon as we have additional information, we’ll begin that engagement with you as the elected officials. Commissioner LoCastro said that from his military commander days and being a base commander, he worked with the Army Corps a lot. Here are a couple of takeaways. They always recommend crazy, outlandish things when money is no object. We heard from the public, “Oh my God, you know these big giant concrete steel walls on the beach?” The Army Corps recommends, we decide. But here’s one thing to keep in mind. If we give them too much pushback and say we’re not interested, it’s crazy and outlandish, the Army Corps is in popular demand across the country. Maybe we don’t want the funds because they’re sometimes tied to federal funds or all kinds of things. But to have the option and to say “no” to an Army Corps of Engineers report, even with the outlandish things, your chance of getting the federal dollars or even a discussion is almost zero. You know what the misinformation from the past report is and we’ve gotten them to sort of tone down that page because they’re wasting time on these crazy, giant things. In the end, you cherry pick the things you want to do, or you do nothing. He had big reports coming out of the bases he commanded, and we thought nothing in this report is doable now or affordable now, but at least we have it. And then you stick it up on the shelf, and at least it was good analysis. A lot of times buried in the reports aren’t crazy projects, but really good research. The takeaway is we’re not going to build a 20-foot wall, but what they just identified for us was an area of our community that is fragile and vulnerable, so you do want to embrace their science and their help and not necessarily put a bad taste in their mouth. Most importantly, we 40 need to make sure the public understands that even if we get a report this thick with things that are a billion dollars, the Army Corps just recommends and we decide. They don’t force feed anything. Getting that information out, he hopes this second draft of the report is a bit more palatable and much more presentable to the public than the last ideas that were floating around. You want to be really careful about kicking the Army Corps to the curb because we may need them for all kinds of things, and we don’t want to be on that list where they say they came down to Collier County, spent years and millions of dollars and man hours and were on the front page, but the County didn’t even want our report. That doesn’t help any community. BCC Chairman McDaniel said that’s a long way of saying that we’re going to engage with the Corps. We’re going to take as much of the information and data that we can get from the Corps and then make the decisions accordingly for what’s best for our citizens. Council Member Christman said he has the pleasure of representing City Council on the County Coastal Advisory Committee, so he brings that perspective to this. It’s interesting that we ended and began the meeting at the same place, talking about beaches. The Army Corps study is broader than just beaches. It talks about sea-level rise and resiliency and climate change, but ultimately it impacts the beaches. What people aren’t aware of is that Fund 195, the money that comes from the Tourist Development Council for beach renourishment each year, goes into Fund 195. Today, there is $46 million in unexpended money in that account that was built up over the years because the annual contribution to it has not been fully spent. This year, we are not contemplating any beach-renourishment projects anywhere in the County, including the City. If that ultimately holds, meaning there’s no hurricane disaster this summer, that money has to be used. We’ll have over $60 million in that fund. He’s bringing this up because of the beach-renourishment issue. The care and feeding of our beaches is really such an important issue for us to continue to try to work together on because you’ve got some money sitting in the County-administered account, but 75% of publicly accessible beaches in the County are in the City, so we have a mutual interest in finding a way to work together on this in terms of what we need to do and how monies that are already within our hands might be used over a period of years to make sure that we’re dealing with beach nourishment and inlet management. The Doctor’s Pass project is an example of that. We need to try to work together to do the right thing in that area. 3. PUBLIC COMMENTS Nancy Lewis said she wanted to add a point of clarification regarding the villages. The Affordable Housing, specifically Bellmar Village and Longwater Village, 80 or 88 acres were set aside to accommodate affordable housing. Up to 880 units for either the County to purchase or an affordable developer to come in and build on at $22,300 per acre and the developer was exempted from the impact fees. The other affordable components are from 12 to 16 units per acre. Most of the affordable units have been given 25 units per acre. Commissioner Saunders said that’s why he called the commitment illusory because we have to have someone buy that property and develop it and that may not happen, so we might want to tweak that language. He’ll be bringing it up to the Board. BCC Vice Chair Solis said one of the big components and driving forces of the Mental Health and 41 Addiction Strategic Plan was NCH. They announced last week that they were closing their psychiatric facility, so we will no longer have that as a resource in Collier County. They’re just going to push the folks that they would have taken in and treated to the David Lawrence Center. That’s going to stress the system even more on what we’ve been working so hard to do. That caught me by surprise and it caught Scott Burgess by surprise, as well. We have committed to building the central-receiving facility, which is the place where all the mental health and addiction services will start, and take that function out of the jail and build some capacity for the future. Part of the discussion has been whether that can be a mental-health hospital facility, as opposed to just a central-receiving facility. It seems that issue has become greater now because of this decision by NCH. He’d like to come and speak to City Council. We’re in the middle of the budgeting process, but more so now than ever, we need to get the entire community, the City included, to help us build the facility that we need to build. The County has committed $25 million of its surtax funds to help us do that. It’s going to cost more than that. Construction costs are going through the roof, so we’re going to far exceed that. It’s going to be a facility that serves everyone. It’s good fiscal policy, it’s good for public safety and this has thrown a curveball into what we’ve been trying to do. It’s significant because now we won’t have a hospital facility. Physicians Regional doesn’t provide those services and now NCH announced they’re not going to do it, either. That’s a significant issue, especially for seniors. We had The Willow come in and they’re trying to change some of their facility. They are licensed and it was certified as a psychiatric hospital. But they need some other certifications. They’re working on that, so he’s not going to say that they we won’t have some capability in that regard for people who need psychiatric care and medical care. This issue really affects seniors because up until now, it’s been predominantly seniors who are on Medicare who need psychiatric and medical care. We’ve been sending them to Park Royal Hospital in Lee County. That’s how we’ve handled that. This is going to create a bigger issue and he hopes to engage the City in helping us solve it because there really is no answer, other than a total community buy-in and dealing with it, a commitment. Commissioner LoCastro said the $25 million facility is now about $6 million more to build the same size facility, so the easy answer always is that we’ll just build a smaller facility for $25 million. It was a 56,000-square-foot facility and now it goes down to 40,000 square feet. A lot was packed in at 56,000 square feet and now with NCH’s announcement, 56,000 square feet is more important than ever. We don’t want to address it down the road. This central receiving facility is so critical. To build it smaller when the need has grown? We want to act before we start and put a shovel on the ground incorrectly. Commissioner Saunders said there are a lot of things that we’re working with the City on. When we put it out to the voters, the 1-cent sales tax, we generate $490 million over a seven-year period. Once that $490 million is reached, the sales tax sunsets, so it could be six years instead of seven. About $70 million of that is distributed to the three cities. He doesn’t know how much the City of Naples gets. Vice Mayor McCabe said $25.5 million. Commissioner Saunders said that’s money that maybe in 2017 would not have been anticipated. The tax was approved in 2018. There may be a way. Commissioner LoCastro, to move money around a little bit in that fund, not the City fund, but the County fund. There is some flexibility there, and that's a County Attorney question, but we may have some projects that we can change. He mentions that because he (Saunders) got a bit testy saying you don't want to look at the County as a cash cow. Beach parking, for example, is a small-ticket item when you start looking at everything we're doing. He appreciates the ability to work with the City. In years past, it wasn't always that way. The City was not getting treated properly by the County. We changed that a long time ago and the working relationship has been extremely good. He wants to thank you for the ability to continue that good working relationship and emphasize that there are some big-ticket items that we're involved in and the mental-health issue may be one where maybe there's some flexibility on your part with that $25 million plus that you're getting. We have a lot that we're involved in together. Commissioner Taylor thanked the mayor and the Council because there's been a marked change and a very positive way with her leadership on the Council to foster and nurture these kinds of relationships, which is so critical to our future. Mayor Heitmann said that on behalf of Council, our manager and staff, we thank you for making this efficient, and for your partnership in many programs and in moving forward. It's necessary and important to our residents that the City and County work together. We look forward to continuing the conversations. BCC Chairman McDaniel agreed for his colleagues and County staff and said they should not wait too long before meeting together again. 4. ADJOURN There being no further business for the good of the County, the meeting was adjourned by order of the Chairman at 12:51 p.m. COLLIER • 01. ' I ARD OF COUOYA•414 ISSIOAtoop • WI AM L. MCDANIEL CHAIRMAN ATTEST: CRYSTAL K. KINZEL, CLERK Attest as to Chairman's 4.' . signature only, These minutes were a proved by the Commission/Council on DO? as presented , or as amended 42