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BCC Minutes 09/02/1997 RREGULAR MEETING OF SEPTEMBER 2, 1997, OF THE BOARD OF COUNTY COHMISSIONERS LET IT BE REHEHBERED, that the Board of County Commissioners in and for the County of Collier, and also acting as the Board of Zoning Appeals and as the governing board(s) of such special districts as have been created according to law and having conducted business herein, met on this date at 9:00 a.m. in REGULAR SESSION in Building "F" of the Government Complex, East Naples, Florida, with the following members present: CHAIRMAN: Timothy L. Hancock Pamela S. Mac'Kie John C. Norris Timothy J. Constantine Barbara Berry ALSO PRESENT: Robert Fernandez, County Administrator David Weigel, County Attorney Item #3 AGENDA AND CONSENT AGENDA - APPROVED AND/OR ADOPTED WITH CHANGES CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Good morning. Welcome back after a nice Labor Day weekend. I'm calling to order the Board of County Commissioners meeting for Tuesday, September 2, 1997. It's a pleasure this morning to have Reverend Lyberg from the Shepherd of the Glades Lutheran Church here for the invocation this morning. Reverend Lyberg, if I could ask for your invocation, and we'll follow that with the pledge of -- pledge of allegiance. Excuse me. REVEREND LYBERG: The Lord God creator of all that we are and all that we have and all that we can be, we give you thanks for your gracious attending to our needs and to preserving us each day. We give you thanks for the joys of the morning, of the day, and the opportunities that it presents. This day especially we would remember those who grieve throughout the world, especially remember those that grieve for those who are famous such as Princess Diana, those who are also well known such as the student in Cape Coral. But also we remember and our hearts go out to those who grieve when there are only a handful to grieve for that life that has been lived, that has ended, that continues on in your care and by your gracious handling. All lives are precious in your sight, oh Lord, and we give you thanks for that love that you have for each one of us. And so we ask your blessing upon our community, the freedoms that we enjoy, all that we have been, all that we are, and all that we can be as well in the future. All this by your gracious, guiding hand and for your loves sake. Amen. (The pledge of allegiance was recited in unison.) CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Reverend Lyberg, thank you for taking the time to be with us this morning. We certainly do appreciate it. Good morning, Mr. Fernandez. MR. FERNANDEZ: Good morning. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: What do we have in the way of changes this morning? MR. FERNANDEZ: Mr. Chairman, we have one change. This is to continue Item 8(A) -- 8(A)(1) to the September 23rd meeting. This is the determination of whether 24 owners in Big Cypress Sanctuary, otherwise known as Looneyville, are required to obtain certain permits and/or pay applicable fees. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. MR. FERNANDEZ: Request to continue. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: And although I've had conversations with you and Mr. Cautero on this matter, has the rest of the board been briefed to any extent on the continuation here? MR. FERNANDEZ: I think to some degree. I don't know that all commissioners have been. I'll be glad to -- CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: And understandably. It was Friday at about three o'clock in the afternoon -- MR. FERNANDEZ: Yes. It was very late Friday. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: -- when we discussed that. So are there any questions on the continuance? COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: If you're comfortable with it, I am. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. With that being a change, Commissioner Hac'Kie -- Oh, I'm sorry. Mr. Weigel, did you have anything? MR. WEIGEL: Thank you, yes. I would, if it please the board, like to have an add on for 9(A) under County Attorney just to provide a brief informational discussion and answer any questions you may have concerning the recent positive Marco incorporation vote. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Thank you. And that was -- I asked Mr. Weigel to do that, because we do have some things ahead of us that we need to be aware of, and I've had some phone calls from Marco this weekend to my home on issues that need to be clarified. So -- MR. WEIGEL: That would be 9(B)? CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Yeah. That would be 9(B), then, would it not Mr. Fernandez? We already have a 9(A), I believe. MR. FERNANDEZ: Yes, 9(B). CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. Commissioner Mac'Kie. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Actually, the only item I was going to ask for discussion under -- under just county commission communications about whether or not we need to create some sort of a commission to review what changes need to be made in county budgeting issues and others related to the Marco incorporation, what services we need no -- need no longer to be providing and -- COHMISSIONER NORRIS: I wonder if we couldn't integrate that into Mr. Weigel's discussion. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Sure. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: This will make 9(B) a little more wholistic, then, rather than just the county attorney's report of any questions or concerns. This is going to be an evolving process, so it's probably best to get the questions out there now and begin delegating who's responsible for researching and finding the answers. Commissioner Norris. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: I have nothing today. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Commissioner Berry. COHMISSIONER BERRY: I will have something under the communications area. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. Commissioner Constantine. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Mr. Chairman, I have no changes. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: And nor do I. Do we have a motion on the agenda? COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I make a motion we approve the agenda and consent agenda as amended. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Second. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Motion and second. Any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor signify by saying aye. Opposed? (No response.) CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Seeing none, we do not have approval of minutes this morning. We do have a proclamation this morning. Commissioner Constantine. Item #5A1 PROCLAivLATION PROCLAIMING SEPTEMBER, 1997, AS CHILDHOOD CANCER AND BLOOD DISORDER AWARENESS MONTH - ADOPTED COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Mr. Chairman, I have the honor of offering a proclamation declaring September '97 as Childhood Cancer and Blood Disorder Awareness Month, and I believe Nancy Constantine is here with us this morning. Come on up. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: You have to make the obligatory no-relation comment at this point? COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Well, of course, they're teen and I'm tine. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Understand. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Just close friends. Nancy, you can turn around so everybody in television land all over the world can see you. Proclamation: Whereas, Florida's greatest resource and most cherished treasures are indeed our youth who truly have offered -- I'm sorry -- who truly have so much to offer -- included in this population are those children with special needs who suffer from childhood cancer and blood related disease; and Whereas, while the research and treatment of today has extended the lives and made a positive impact upon the life experiences of many of these children, and while the number of long-term survivors is slowly increasing, it is essential that we work together as a people and as a state to insure that this trend continues on the upscale; and Whereas, dedicated organizations like Candlelighters of Southwest Florida, Inc. remain deeply committed to expanding the resources and education available to families whose children have cancer or blood related disease; and Whereas, Florida, proud home to some of the finest medical institutions in the world whose professional staff are presently at the forefront in cancer research and other advances is pleased to join in recognizing and applauding the valuable role which families of childhood cancer patients play in helping our medical community to reach great heights in the name of caring. Now therefore, be it proclaimed by the Board of County Commissioners of Collier County, Florida, that September 1997 be designated as Childhood Cancer and Blood Disorder Awareness Month. Done and ordered this 2nd day of September 1997, BCC, Timothy L. Hancock, Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I'd like to make a motion we approve this proclamation. COMHISSIONER NORRIS: Second. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Motion and a second. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Congratulations. (Applause.) MS. CONSTANTINE: Hi. As a parent of a child with cancer, I wanted to thank you all for your continued support and recognition of Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. I know how it has touched my family in dealing with a child with cancer, and thank you again. COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Thanks, Nancy. (Applause.) CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Thank you. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: For the golfers in the group, Candlelighters have a tournament the 20th -- something like that -- September 20th of this month, which I'll try to rope each of you into. And it's going to be at Bonita Bay. I assure -- CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I think we can be assured of being notified. Ms. Constantine, thank you very much this morning. Item #5C1 WELFARE REFORM AND FLORIDA'S WAGES PROGRAM PRESENTATION We are under presentations. We have from our iljustrious Mr. Olliff, the welfare reform and Florida's wages program presentation. Good morning, Mr. Olliff. MR. OLLIFF: Good morning. For the record, Tom Olliff, public services administrator. Host of you have heard a lot in the national news lately about welfare reform, and there were several financial incentives for states who opted to participate in the program early, and Florida was one of those states, and in 1996 the legislature approved a bill which was called the Work and Gain Economic Self-sufficiency Bill, or what's known as WAGES here. And just because it was an item that the Florida Association of Counties has been extremely interested in for at least two years and one that will affect a lot of your constituents locally, a lot of residents here, we asked -- and I thought it would be a good idea if you were at least presented a brief presentation to let you know what was going on in Collier County. We have with us this morning representatives from both the new department of Children and Families, Ms. Rita Young, and I'll ask Ms. Young if she can go ahead and start making her way to the microphone. And while she's coming, I'll hand out for you a booklet that was prepared by the State of Florida called Work Pays for Florida Business, and I think it gives you a good thumbnail sketch of exactly what the WAGES bill is and how it will affect our local people. Following Ms. Young, Joe Paterno is here, and Joe's the executive director of the Southwest Florida Workforce Development Board, and he'll give you a little presentation about the actual work and how it affects local business issues and work centers. Ms. Young. MS. YOUNG: October 1st, 1996, began the two-year time limit for Florida's welfare recipients and, of course, that includes Collier County as well. The new priority is to get people off welfare and into the work force. Once the youngest child in the home is three months old, the family must start looking for employment -- actively seek employment. Welfare rolls have continued to drop in Collier County as around the State of Florida, and the last counts probably 35 percent drop has been the average drop in welfare rolls since October of '96. There are a lot of reasons for that. We suspect the biggest reason is the economy, because the economy is so much better and there are jobs out there. Another thing we sort of thing might be causing it is people are thinking, geez, if I only have two years, I better use it wisely and go do something when I can, because two years isn't a long time in the span when you have young children. In Collier County specifically, for the last nine months we've had a fraud prevention program that start-- that started in Naples, and actually Naples was the first place in the district to begin it, and it consists of one lowly person that does -- takes referrals from eligibility workers in Collier County on suspected cases of fraud. And as a result of that, we have saved nearly $500,000 in nine months in welfare fraud; so that's real substantial. And as a matter of fact, Collier County has close to half of the whole district's savings because we started earlier. I don't -- I think that might be sort of a mixed blessing, but that's okay. Another thing that we've -- probably the biggest contributor is the low unemployment rate. And as long as we have a low unemployment rate, we probably will continue to have success with welfare, because there are plenty of jobs out there, and if you want one, you can generally find one, right now. We have -- the Wages Coalition -- I'm sure some of -- that you're familiar with, that was formed in the legislature to sort of kick things off, and Joe can tell you a little more about that. But one of the things they did was two -- they had $2.9 million to provide overall services to get these -- to get the people back in the mainstream. And since the clock started ticking October 1, the money wasn't available till July and the Wages Coalition had the task of getting an RFP together and try to figure out what services were needed to move the people from welfare to work. So as a result, our department as well as Workforce Council was given the go ahead to go ahead and start some case management services in the interim until the RFP takes affect and we can get full running January 1 of '98. And what that means, in Immokalee and in Naples office, we have a committed staff that consists of employment -- employment service -- more service counselors than anything else in addition to family support workers that are working with the really what we call deep, deep in-services, because we have a certain percentage of our welfare clients that have very low self-esteem, a lot of alcohol, drug abuse, mental health issues, just unskilled, uneducated that have been maybe generational cycles, and the only thing that they know is welfare. And we know that those people will be the hardest to work with, so we really are keying in and trying to get them where they need to go so that they can be employed. And we've had that in effect with -- we've actually hired most of the staff and are in the planning stages and assessing every single client that we have that is receiving welfare in hopes that we can kind of determine in which area they need to go. Do they need to go right to work? Do they need to go to training? Do they need someone to refer them to maybe mental health services, alcohol, drug abuse services, whatever's needed? So we hope that that will be a help. What our clients look like in Collier County: 45 percent of our clients are Hispanic; 32 percent are white; and 22 percent are black. And of those 38 percent need alcohol, drug abuse, or mental health services. Nineteen percent have reported domestic violence issues and that's -- that's not -- only the ones that we know for sure. We suspect quite a bit more have those kinds of issues. Thirty-nine percent of our population do not have high school diplomas or GEDs. And the average age of a participant is 30 and the average number of children is two, contrary to popular belief. And we figure that 70 percent of our participants actually need remedial training; so there's a lot of work to be done. And we have more and more teen mothers coming on, which continues to be a big issue for us. Some of the things that we feel like we need in Collier County and around the state is we need flexible day-care hours. We have day cares that are open regular traditional hours. You have a lot of service needs in Collier County. It's a big tourist area, so therefore, your hours are -- somehow we have to make the day care fit the hours that people are actually working. Hopefully we have to somehow find a way to have a pre-GED program, because a lot of our clients are not even prepared for the GED and couldn't pass it; so therefore, we need some remedial work with -- some kind of remedial program through the educational system. And we also need employers willing to work with people who will need a lot of support and guidance, and that's probably going to be the toughest thing to do. So in October '98 when the year -- the two-year time limit starts running out, we're a little concerned what's going to happen to these families, and the legislature's trying to figure out what we do. And two things that they're actually looking at is if someone hasn't cooperated at that point as going off assistance, one of the options is to report -- call the child abuse agency and make a report to the hotline line so someone can assess what the situation really is, or appoint a representative payee who can take the check and make sure their rent's paid and make sure the basic needs of the kids are met. So that's the short-and-sweet version. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Short, but not so sweet. Great work. MS. YOUNG: Thanks. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Commissioner Berry. COHMISSIONER BERRY: I just have a question in regard -- you mentioned percentages and what does that equate to in numbers of people in Collier County? MS. YOUNG: I'm sorry. Can you -- COHMISSIONER BERRY: You mentioned percentages, but what does that equate to in the actual number of people? MS. YOUNG: There are close to 600 families receiving assistance in Collier County, so close to 40 percent of that -- I'm not good in math -- is what, 240, somewhere around -- not a small number. And actually, biggest majority of welfare recipients are in Naples rather than in Immokalee; that will surprise a few. COHMISSIONER BERRY: Thank you. MR. PATERNO: Good morning. Joe Paterno. Just to follow up a little bit about what Rita was talking about. One of the things that the legislature did last year was create what's called the Workforce Development Boards which is really -- it's a business-led organization that is to oversee various initiatives that the state is supporting. And I'll go real briefly for you. The four initiatives that they mainly oversee are: School-to-Work, which is really an educational program, but it's given to the Workforce Development Boards to work with the county -- work with the county school districts so they design a program that really starts transitioning kids from as early as kindergarten into the work mentality. And those that don't go on to further education, then we start getting those into occupational career choices sometime earlier on in life so that they can proceed and go forward. Those dollars directly come to the school districts through the Lee County School District. The other thing is Welfare-to-Work. As Rita mentioned, one of the glitches that the legislature did is in the Workforce Development Act, they created the Workforce Development Boards to oversee welfare reform, but in the WAGES Act, they also created a Wages Coalition to oversee welfare reform. So they created two local advisory bodies to oversee the same initiative, which is really -- it's a complicated issue, but what it requires now is that the board I work for and the Wages Coalition are to be coordinating their efforts to make sure that we're designing a work force initiatives that really assist the individuals to get them off the welfare rolls into the job. Some of the things that we're promoting from the welfare system is that -- one of the things that they have to do is provide community work experience for a million people on welfare. So we're calling on public agencies to consider giving some of these individuals an opportunity. They're allowed to work 20 to 30 hours a week, nonpaid jobs, in the hopes that the public entities will give them enough skills to start leading them towards career paths. We're going to combine that with some occupational training to get them in the occupational thing. As Rita mentioned, there's remedial education that's needed, so we want to tie it to the remedial education, too. So we just don't want to -- so we want to an individual through here. We want to give them a true structure of a training program so that at the end of that training program, they can become a very productive and meaningful employee for somebody. Another initiative that we have is the High Skill/High Wage, which I think is an issue that we all in all of our five-county region will have to address. And I say that because the state definition for High Skill/High Wage initiative is that the occupation must have an average wage of $9 per hour, and you must have at least 25 openings a year. Well, that really doesn't fit our five-county program, nor does it fit Collier County's program. We're looking at and calling on some businesses to say we need to address these issues sometime down the road to present to the state. You know, we're a service-oriented thing. They're looking at training programs that don't provide average wages of $9 an hour. And I always use a example of certified nursing assistant training program, they come out making seven, seven and a quarter an hour, do not meet the guidelines of a high skill/high wage job. However, the majority of those individuals go on to become LPNs or RNs which does meet the $9 in average wage. So we're saying what we ought to do is design a system for our region and for Collier County that looks at career options, career paths. If they're making less now, where are they going to be at the end of their career or when they get to the high point of their careers? So we're going to call upon everybody to support the initiative that says -- we're going to challenge the state. We're going to challenge their definition. So we need to look at this from a career standpoint. One of the major initiatives that we're going to be implementing is called One Stop Career Centers. And because of resolutions that were adopted by the five county commissions and the support we received, we just was awarded a half-a-million-dollar grant to start initiating what's called One Stop Career Centers. Now, that's a concept. For our region, what we've decided to do is we think it's important that we co-locate the various agencies that provide services. So our plan is to have seven within the five-county region but two within Collier County. And the co-location will include the Department of Children and Families; the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation; the Jobs and Benefits office, which many of you are familiar with is a placement agency -- state agency to provide placement services to individuals; the Workforce Council, which is the administrative body for the Job Training Partnership Act. We will also have available in the facility space for other social service agencies, for education, for the local school district, vocational school, and for Edison. We think this is important that we co-locate, because individuals that come in to sign up for services right now would have to be referred to as many as 12 different agencies to start to get those services. With the one-stop concept, they can walk in, they can sign up for welfare services, they can sign up for unemployment, they can sign up for job assistance, but they can also sign up to attend various training classes. Our centers will all be hooked up electronically, and we'll also be hooked up to the school systems, to Edison, to all the other players that would like to be a part of that. We see this as a very viable benefit to the business community, too, because employers need employees. They can make one call to that center. That information will be distributed to all five counties, to all five school districts, to all the vocational centers, to Florida Gulf Coast. So the job that they're listing with that center would be a five-county approach for recruitment. Right now the employer might have to call as many as 10, 12 different agencies and offer a job and hope that you can refer somebody. So we're hoping that once this center is developed and put together, that it takes one phone call. It's a five-county recruitment effort and hopefully we can benefit that business. The two places that we want to locate the One Stops is -- Children and Families has just built a building on the corner of Airport and Radio Road. We've been negotiating with the builder to extend that property out so that we can locate Division of Vocational Rehabilitation, Jobs and Benefits, and the JTPA program, but the other initiatives that would be there as well. So that is in the works, and hopefully that will be done by the first of the year so that we can physically put those agencies in there. The other location will be in Immokalee. We're planning to look at where the current Jobs and Benefits are to extend that over or to look at the property next to that to be able to construct a one-floor system that would have all of those agencies over there housed with education there and the consideration down the road that we will make space available to provide on-site training. So as Rita was talking about, we need remediation. We might be able to provide that on site so that the individuals coming to the center can take advantage of that right there. One of the things that we're hoping to put into these centers is called a family center. This is one of those areas, again, we're going to look for support. It's not a day-care center, but one of the problems that we have when we're dealing with case management and the deep in-services that Rita mentioned, is that we need to have some place for these -- for individuals that have children under school age to be dropped off. So we're hoping to construct and have a center there where they can drop their kids off for a couple hours so that they can get the kind of case management and services that they need without having to deal with children running around. It will be a structured, supervised, licensed facility, so we're not going to get into any kind of ramifications with the law. But those are some of the things that we're going to be doing with the One Stop that I think will be very beneficial, and it ties very closely in with the welfare initiative, because the welfare recipient will be required to come to that One Stop to receive all their services and placement assistance. I'd be happy to answer any questions that you might have. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Questions for Mr. Paterno? COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: All I can say is wow. Great work. Wonderful work. Thank you. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I think one of the main concerns that a lot of people have is everyone has kind of signed on the Welfare-to-Work program. It makes a lot of sense. It's a transitional program that takes the emphasis off the county tax dollars being spent on the welfare cycle, if you will. The concern is that -- one of two things, either welfare gets replaced with other federal programs that cost as much or more money, or the feds or state try to shift that responsibility fiscally to local governments such as the county. As this thing is transitioning, you're talking about, and the lady who spoke previous to you, are talking about a lot of new ideas and concepts, and all these concepts have dollar price tags attached to them. Where is the money coming from? MR. PATERNO: Well, that's a good one. I think you'll see some more money on a national level. They just recently passed on a national basis a new Welfare-to-Work initiative that over the next three years will pump in three billion dollars. And these are mainly discretionary dollars for the local area to what you need to do to structure programs and services to assist the welfare client. I think one of the things that we need to be concerned about, as Rita mentioned to you, is that the time clock started last October. The money wasn't available until July, so really the programs and services that we're trying to implement for some of these individuals are not going to take place for almost a year. They have lost a year of their eligibility. The thing that the welfare act says, they want to do short-term training. The work first is the language under the WAGES Act, work first; training second. But the training must be short term. Well, short-term training for millions of individuals is not the appropriate method. So I think we all have to be concerned because in July 1 -- I mean, October 1 of 1998, if they're totally cut off, let's guess where they're coming. They're coming to other service agencies. They're coming to the county. They're coming to whoever they can find for some support and assistance; so it is going to create a problem. So that's why we're hoping a lot of these initiatives that -- if we coordinate these initiatives, that we are able to put some programs together to get the majority of these individuals from where they are now to becoming a productive employee by the deadline of October the 1st of 1998. You know, I will mention, too, that the JTPA is one of those initiatives that we will be working with for the Welfare-to-Work to get them into training, because training dollars are available for that. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Further questions for Mr. Paterno? COMMISSIONER BERRY: Well, I have to ask, too, if you're going to start training and if you have got to use the vocational center, you know, where do the dollars come in terms of education, so it's not only at this particular area here, but you have got to see something more exclusive -- on the school system. MR. PATERNO: Well, that's -- that's the thing that hopefully -- that the Workforce Development Board kind of works with and coordinates that we maximum the resources of all the initiatives so that we just don't tap one source, that we all are putting a little bit of money into it to make sure we're providing that training for individuals. COMMISSIONER BERRY: One of problems you mentioned you talked about the wage-- the jobs must have a certain -- you know, be at a certain rate, and there was talk that they would cut -- if you couldn't guarantee that they could go out at a certain price, that those programs had to be discontinued from the vocational center. In other words, they could not carry those programs. It had to be a program that was the high skilled, and in Collier County, that is a real problem, because, you know, you just don't have that demand. MR. PATERNO: That's why we're hoping that everybody'll support the Workforce Board's initiative that's saying we need to look at this from a career path. COHMISSIONER BERRY: When -- when will this information be coming back? MR. PATERNO: Probably within the next two to three months. We've structured a committee that's going to start to look at that and see how we -- how we gathered some information from the business community as to the job, the rates, the needs for training over the next 12 to 18 months. And then from there we're going to be making some presentations and hopefully we're going to take some stance and some initiative to get the state to say, okay, we need to waive that or we need to include additional occupations on your -- on your list that don't meet the $9-an-hour requirement. COHMISSIONER BERRY: Is this pretty much a statewide initiative? MR. PATERNO: It's a statewide initiative, and each region is a little bit different in terms of the number of openings. It's $9 an hour average statewide, but since we're classified in a large group as part of the 24 regions, we have to have a minimum of 25 openings a year. Some areas may only have to have 5 to 10 openings a year to justify their training. So we're going to bring that back to everybody probably within the next three to five months. Okay? Thank you. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Questions? Thank you very much. Mr. Olliff, anything further on this item? MR. OLLIFF: Not really. There's just a -- there's no specific action required, but because there are some potential impacts to local government, school boards, we thought it was an important enough issue that you ought to be at least apprised of where the county is today. Frankly, from a staff perspective, we're encouraged. We think that the groups that are working right now, they've got some good programs in place to transition these people, but there may be some hurdles along the way. And I think some help for the Workforce Board to be able to try and change some of those legislation constraints about salaries and issues like that are going to be some of the kinds of things that you as a commission are going to see. But we thank you for your time this morning. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Thank you. We are to Item 6(A), analysis of change to reserves for contingencies. I see a little bit of backup in our agenda on this item. Is there anyone here to discuss that, or is it just presented for the board's review? MR. FERNANDEZ: Just presented for the board's review, I believe. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. Is any action required on that? It's a little odd. I was looking for Mr. Smykowski, because normally when we have these, somebody from the budget office is here. MR. FERNANDEZ: Mr. Chairman, why don't we skip that one, and I'll give a call to Mr. Smykowski. Item #7A JIM COLETTA REGARDING THE COLLIER COUNTY EMPLOYEE CHRISTMAS PARTY - COUNTY ADMINISTRATOR TO WORK WITH FLORIDA SPORTS PARK TO DEVELOP PARAMETERS FOR BOARD CONSIDERATION CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Please. Let's go to Item 7(A), public petitions, Mr. Jim Coletta regarding the Collier County employee Christmas party. And so, Mr. Coletta, we do have three public petitions. Just again, so everyone, in case you're not familiar, knows public petitions are limited to ten minutes to present information to the board. The board does not take official action on a petition but may give staff direction regarding the matter. Mr. Coletta. MR. COLETTA: Thank you, Commissioner Hancock. COURT REPORTER: Your name, sir? MR. COLETTA: I was getting to that right now, ma'am. Commissioners, ladies and gentleman, thank you for granting me permission to talk to you today. My name is Jim Coletta. I am here today as a board member of the Florida Sports Park. Our president, Rich Caperton, and our board of directors, has appointed me as chairperson of special events. Florida Sports Park would like to put a family Christmas party on for the employees of Collier County. But first, as has been requested by director Gene Vacarro, I would like to take a moment to remind you of the Swamp Buggy Parade October 25th. Okay. I got to get this in. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Got to get that in. MR. COLETTA: Through the efforts of our committed and talented director, Gene Vacarro, and his lovely wife, Elaine, this parade will be the best ever. We have a record number of preregistered floats and a larger-than-ever number of bands participating. This year, as in the past, there will be no charge for non-profit ent -- entries. Returning to past tradition, we'll hold a dance that Saturday evening, and all are invited to attend. The races on Sunday, October 26th promise to be exciting as ever. The difference of opinion between some drivers and the board has been resolved and all are committed as one to preserve and promote the unique sport of swamp buggy racing. Now, back to our regular scheduled program. In the past, a Christmas party for Collier County's employees and their families was put on and paid for by the county. A number of years ago, the allotment for the employee Christmas party was cut from the budget and the program was dropped. Florida Sports Park has a history of community involvement that spans 47 years. Our mission statement and our non-profit status requires us to support the community with our resources. The Florida Sports Park has done this many times in the past. Among the many recipients you can find the Rotary, Boys and Girl Scouts, Kiwanis, Rich King Fund, Immokalee Child Care, 911 Emergency Services, Youth Haven, David C. Lawrence, YHCA, Big Brother and Sister, Girls Incorporated, and Habitat for Humanity. Also, we have assisted many families that needed a fund-raiser to cover emergency medical expenses or home disasters -- or to cover home disasters such as fires. Now we would like to sponsor a Christmas party for the employees of Collier County. Much of the good the Florida Sports Park has done in the past was made possible due to the assistance and commitment of the county employees and management. The day's events would be decided by a planning committee made up of our board members, county personnel, and committed citizens. In order to satisfy a diverse age group, four to ten different activities would be planned. With Florida Sports Park's large pavilion and its spacious grounds, the possibility for family activities are many. For the young and the young at heart, clowns, puppet acts, games of skill with small prizes given and, of course, Santa Claus -- and I'm looking for a volunteer -- will participate with gifts for his fans. The teens and young adults would have a rock band with dance contest, organized games of volleyball, tennis, baseball, horseshoe, and even skeet shooting is a possibility. Of course, rides around the track in swamp buggies and airboats would be offered. The food would also be varied and served continuously from several locations. This would be a time for our guests to renew old friendships and make new ones. A time for county management to reinforce a bond with its work force. This would be a time that the commissioners and county supervisor could interact with personnel in a social setting. Your personal involvement could be a simple as coming with your family and enjoying the festivities or to be part of the event in its planning such as the emcee, entertainment, or even serving the food. This undertaking will not require tax dollars from the county coffer. The cost of the day would be shared by the community. In a genuine show of appreciation for a job well done, many of our citizens would like to honor our dedicated county employees and their families with a day of companionship and festive activities by the donation of foods, services, and money. A number of county businesses, large and small, have expressed a very strong interest to be involved. In order for this project to be successful -- successful as we envision, we will need an endorsement from this board of commissioners. This is necessary to assure the assistance of your department heads that have indicated that they would not be comfortable participating without the blessing of this commission. Timing is important. The day that we have reserved for this event is Saturday, December 6th. All other weekends in December have been reserved by different organizations or for private parties. In the coming week, if your appointment schedule permits, I will schedule a meeting with each of you to further clarify this proposal. Your endorsement would be needed by October 16th to allow for the time needed to plan a party of this size. On behalf of Florida Sports Park, I thank you for your time today. And at this time I'd be happy to answer any questions that you may have. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Mr. Coletta, first of all thank you for coming forward today, and thank Gene at the Florida Sports Park for proposing the idea. Have you had any discussions or anyone from your board have discussions with the county administrator on this matter today? MR. COLETTA: I -- just very brief discussions, and he wanted to see it brought up in the form of a public petition, and that's where we are today. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. I wanted to make sure he hadn't been skipped on the way to public petitions today, because this is really something that I think we're going to count on and have discussions with Mr. Fernandez on, on what we would deem appropriate both from the standpoint that this is government, not a for-profit business. MR. COLETTA: That's correct. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: And in taking any donations from, you know, the community, I think we need to keep a clear line of definition between those that are just interested in seeing that there is a party and those that may have individual business interests. MR. COLETTA: I understand that, Commissioner Hancock. And it's not -- we're not setting a precedent. This has been done many times in the past. Sometime ago I helped parks and rec set up a system whereby they went out for donations for a number of items to be able to bring down the cost of putting on recreational type of events. You have a company -- you have a picnic planned in the very near future where very good pricing has been asked for, and in my case, I even offered the donation of quite a few pieces of equipment to make the event even more meaningful for the county employees. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: And that is appreciated. Mr. Fernandez. MR. FERNANDEZ: Yes, sir. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I think this is something that -- if I'm out of line, let me know, but I think the board certainly would like to find a way for our employees to enjoy a Christmas party, but there's a lot of questions to be answered. I think I would like to ask you to work with the folks at the Sports Park and develop some parameters for the board to take a look at. Is that consistent with -- COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Yeah, just one comment. I know Horseshoe Drive had tried to put together something for their employees three or four or five years ago, and some businesses had been involved, and then accusations of certain groups trying to buy favors and so on, which is kind of silly that someone donating $80 worth of party favors was going to buy themselves a favor, but the point is we just want to avoid the pitfalls of situations that can appear to be inappropriate. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: My response is, is this a great community or what? How wonderful for the community to be wanting to show that kind of appreciation for its county staff. And I have every confidence that we'll be able to work out an appropriate system to be sure that, you know, that donations are scrutinized or recorded in whatever way they need to be. MR. COLETTA: That wouldn't be difficult at all. We have -- in the not-too-distant past, about six months ago, we did something like this quite similar for 911 Emergency Services, and it was very accepted and well received. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: This is just a wonderful offering. I think that it couldn't be a better idea for us to go back to having a Christmas party, and how great if you can come up with a way to do it without tax dollars. I just think it has all of the markings for being a great success. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I'll take that as support of directing Mr. Fernandez to -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Well, I wanted to be a little more enthusiastic in my support just to say I hear -- I hear support with some caution, and the caution is appropriate, but I want to give a very strong, enthusiastic support. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: It seems we're running around today with larger targets on our back than usual so I just want to make sure we do err on the side of caution, but make every effort to provide something nice and accept the offer -- and a fine offer it is -- for a Christmas party, so let's pursue it through Mr. Fernandez's office and see how it comes back. MR. COLETTA: Thank you very much for your time. Item #7B JOHN F. HOOLEY REPRESENTING LELY CIVIC ASSOCIATION REGARDING STORM WATER DRAINAGE - STAFF DIRECTED TO DEVELOP OPTIONS FOR BOARD CONSIDERATION CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Thank you. Next item under public petitions, Mr. John F. Hooley representing Lely Civil Association regarding storm water drainage. MR. HOOLEY: You have my name, right? Good morning, Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen. I'm here in my capacity as president of Lely Civic Association because we've got a problem and we really need some help here. The problem is that when normal rainstorms come, Forest Hills Boulevard and Bay Meadows Boulevard flood, and they flood for a period of several days, and it's difficult for or impossible for emergency vehicles to get there. This flooding problem is -- didn't originate until the county put in County Barn Road. County Barn Road stopped the westward sheet flow of the water and diverted it south into Lely. This was in the early seventies. And what Lely did, when it was all owned by Lely Development Corporation, is they put in a pump and when the pump operates, it empties the streets out in a matter of hours. When the pump doesn't operate, the water stands there for anywhere from two to three days to a week, and the water's between six and twelve inches deep, and it's a hazard as well as difficult for emergency vehicles. Our problem is that we need to run a conduit. We need to have somebody run a conduit across the golf course and to the pump. When Lely put the pump in, they put an underground conduit in from the nearest three-phase power source, and the line has been breaking. It wasn't actually put in conduit. It was just buried in underground cable. Things have changed. We attempted to fix it. The civic association at their own expense spent more than $2,000 to locate a break and fix. It didn't operate the pump for more than two weeks. I've been getting a lot of calls from the people who live on Forest Hills. They're saying -- you know, I had to tell them that the pump wasn't working, and so they have contacted me, and they say, you know, we think that somebody is responsible if we get flooded out of our houses or if, you know, something happens and we can't get an ambulance or a fire engine there to save our houses. I don't know what to answer them. The installation of the conduit is $15,000. There's a utility easement and a drainage easement across the entire Lely Hibiscus Golf Course, so apparently the county could go in and run the conduit and run the pump and operate the pump on the basis of this utility easement. Lely Civic Association can't. The pump is on Lely Hibiscus Golf Course property. We've -- aside from the expense, we're meeting some resistance from the golf course in actually digging up the property and putting in a new conduit. But the fact is it would be less than 24 hours out of use. And, you know, we don't know what to do. We've talked to the county, and I talked to John Boldt this morning. He wasn't even aware that -- he wasn't aware that there was a -- an easement over the entire golf course, but apparently Royal Palm Golf Course had a general easement, and after that Lely Hibiscus had a general easement, so this is a doable thing. Actually, we wouldn't need any of this if we had the Lely canal outflows cleared, but naturally we're not going to have that, and we understand that that's a huge expense. All we're asking for is can you put the pump back in operation? The golf course has paid for the electricity. The civic association would be happy to maintain it. We just need somebody to put in the conduit. And when I was talking to Mr. Boldt, he did mention that a similar situation occurred in Victoria Park. And we do look at this as only a -- only a temporary measure until something's done with the overall county drainage. The good news is you don't have to buy a pump. The only thing you have to do is help us with the installation of an underground conduit. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Board members, I've talked to Mr. Boldt on this a couple of weeks ago, and he's probably got us a few options to look at. But this is something that, as Mr. Hooley has pointed out, is not the first time we've run into this situation in Collier County. As a matter of fact, I think Mr. Boldt can cite you a couple of more examples. And if you'll remember a couple of years back, the county had to step in and assume some easements behind the Wilderness Country Club to be able to go in and clear that out, so it's the same type of thing that we're doing at -- ends up being something that we need to do for this particular area because of the health, safety, and welfare concern for the county. There are, however, some jurisdictional issues. We don't own those drainage easements, nor the pump, but those are -- those are little obstacles that we've overcome in the past when we needed to step in and help the particular community out, and perhaps Mr. Boldt can shed some further light on it for us. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Well, all we're being asked for today is to go ahead and give Mr. Boldt direction to bring us back the options; is that correct? COHMISSIONER NORRIS: That's all what we're going to end up doing today, yes. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I don't need that I need a full explanation from him today if we're going to hear it as a regular item anyway. I have no objection to bringing it back. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: I agree. MR. HOOLEY: I would like to point out that the easement's already in place for the county. I think it's dedicated to the county, so that should save lots of time, meaning -- so the only thing we're really looking at is just utilizing the easement. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Again, since the board can't give specific direction or take action today per se, the only thing we can do is give direction. What I'm hearing is the majority of the board is asking Mr. Boldt to work with you and bring back options on this matter to us with a little bit of history of other areas and jobs that have been similar, because we want to make sure we are consistent from one neighborhood to the next in how we resolve these matters or assist in resolving them. MR. HOOLEY: Okay. Thank you very much. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Mr. Boldt, when could you come back and have this? Is one week too short, or have you already got the information ready to go? What is your status on it? MR. BOLDT: John Boldt, storm water management director. I'm going to look to office of capital project management to help me on this, and we've already started to gather some information, but I think one week would be too short. If you could give us a couple weeks to put them together and come up with some of those options, I think that it would be more appreciated. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Let's make it two to three weeks, and contact Mr. Hooley and let him know when it is scheduled so that he has an opportunity to discuss it with you and be here to represent the community if you so decide. MR. HOOLEY: Sure. One more thing. Mr. Sweeney is here, who lives on Forest Hills Boulevard, so his interest is a little bit more pointed than mine. He wanted to point out to the board that presently the pump is not operating, so if we have a heavy rain sometime between now and the end of the rainy season, we're going to be in a pretty bad situation. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Agreed, but we have some issues that we can not act rashly on, so we're going to act with expedience but carefully. MR. HOOLEY: I understand. Thank you. MR. BOLDT: To that end, we've checked into some rentals and some 4-inch pumps in the area. If we do have a storm of that nature, we could recommend some suppliers that we could put something in on a temporary basis, gasoline driven pumps. But so far the weather's cooperating. It hasn't been a critical issue. Item #7C BRADLEY CORNELL REGARDING SUPPORT FOR AN EXOTIC PLAN QUARANTINE RESEARCH FACILITY - sTAFF DIRECTED TO DEVELOP RESOLUTION FOR CONSIDERATION ON sEPTEMBER 9, 1997 CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Next item under public petitions, Hr. Bradley Cornell regarding support of an exotic plan quarantine research facility. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Oh good, you brought us copies of the resolution, because they're not in our packet. Thanks. MR. CORNELL: Good morning, Commissioners. My name is Brad Cornell, and I appreciate very much the opportunity to bring up this topic. What I'm basically doing is following up from your Environmental Policy Technical Advisory Board's report in February, February 25th, which more comprehensively examined the issue of invasive exotic plants in Collier County. One of the recommendations that was in that report dealt with supporting research for exotic plant control, and in particular a -- supporting the construction of a quarantine facility in south Florida. The importance of this is -- is really crucial, because the entire state of Florida is dealing with only one very, very tiny quarantine facility up in Gainesville, which was not even built for exotics control; it was built for agricultural research, and it's being shared with IFIS, and that is wholly inadequate for dealing with the magnitude of the exotics problem in the state and in particular in south Florida. I'm bringing this up right now because the U.S. Congress was supposed to fund this through the agricultural -- U.S. Department of Agriculture funding in appropriations for the fiscal 1998 year. It has been recently struck from that appropriations bill, and they're about to go into the conference committee discussions where the Senate and the House decide what's going to go into their final appropriations bill. There has been some discussion on the part of Newt Gingrich that he would like to see that funded. The cost is $4 million to construct it and $1 million a year to operate it. It's the top priority project of the south -- the Everglades Restoration Task Force, and also the governor's commission on sustainable south Florida ranks this is as a very high priority, so it's very well recognized within the State of Florida as being a priority. Unfortunately, in Washington exotic plants in south Florida don't really -- aren't really understood, and very difficult to convince people that the $4 million is absolutely essential for a problem that is costing local government, state government, and the federal government millions of dollars every year and actually will continue to cost those kin -- that kind of money forever until we can bring to bear some biocontrols. Unfortunately, biocontrols seem to be the only option that's going to be a long-term solution for this very difficult problem. So I'm bringing in front of you -- after discussing this with Representative Clay Shaw's office, who's worked very, very diligently on this issue, because it's in his district -- three recommendations, and they're in that letter that is on the front of the resolution. The first is the -- to pass -- to consider and pass the resolution that you see. Now, that resolution comes out of a report that the staff, your staff, wrote. I'm not sure whether you saw that report. It was in the flurry of the ton of paper at the budget times in June. And if you haven't seen it, there are very good recommendations concerning exotics in there as well as this resolution. That report is dated Hay 28th, 1997. So if you need a copy of that, I'm sure your staff can provide that. Anyway that's the first recommendation, would be to pass that resolution and provide copies to Rep -- Speaker Gingrich, our Florida delegation, and Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, who has also indicated a strong interest in this. The second is -- is really of a lobbying nature. I know you cannot take action today as a board, but perhaps as individuals you might consider calling our Florida representatives who sit on the house appropriations committee, and those representatives are Bill Young, Dan Miller, and Cartie Meek. And on the back of that letter, you'll see phone numbers there. And since they are in Washington now and the time frame in which we're dealing is this week before Friday as far as contacting them, personal communication probably holds a little more sway than a piece of paper. And finally the third thing would be in the same vein of lobbying to ask our Florida delegation, in particular Congressman Goss, but also Senators Mack and Graham to lobby for us. Even though they're not sitting on the appropriations committees or the conference committees, they could more easily and perhaps more effectively discuss this issue with those people in their respective houses. So that's my recommendation. I respectfully ask that you consider that and take -- make whatever direction that you can. And if I can answer any questions, please ask me. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Commissioner Constantine. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Brad, I noticed in your letter and then actually reinforced in the resolution, it talks about melaleuca and old world fern and some of those. And the effort to control these destructive plants has been determined to be futile without biological control agents, obviously the reason for the quarantine facility. And then -- I guess this answers part of my question. I was going to ask you determined by whom, and it says in a joint task force with the department of ag, the U.S. Army Corps, Florida DEP, the water management district, and University of Florida. Was that a formal group of the joint task force who came to that conclusion, or did they get together specifically to try to promote the quarantine facility? I'm just wondering -- that's a pretty big step to point out. Actually, I smile as I read this because yesterday my wife and I were looking at lots, and there was a particular lot that had very obviously been cleared once which was now just chock full of short but fresh melaleuca everywhere. It wasn't any taller than I was, but it very obviously had jumped right back in there again. MR. CORNELL: And that's just the problem. Helaleuca in particular gets stressed when you cut it, poison it, burn it, any of those things which are our normal means of, you know, mechanical and chemical controls, and when they get stressed, they have a seed release. Hillions of seeds from one tree get released. You know, you multiply that by how many trees you obviously see all around us and it's a very big problem. So the normal physical and chemical controls aren't as effective -- aren't really effective at all against that particular -- CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: But if we stop cutting them down, they won't release all the seeds. MR. CORNELL: Well, that's not true either. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. MR. CORNELL: You have a huge seed release when you burn and spray, but it's a steady ongoing thing even -- COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: It's probably not appropriate for this debate, but I do have to wonder if we've had all these folks declare it futile, maybe we don't need to make everybody clear their lots of them, but that's not the point. My question was a joint task force, was this -- was it -- did this happen to be one issue that they tackled among many, or was that task force put together specifically to try to -- MR. CORNELL: That task force is cited by your staff, and I'm not exactly sure which task force that is. I've been talking with Ted Center with the USDA and the Exotic Pest Plant Council, Dan Thayer and some folks that are involved with that. So I'm aware of the perspective on exotics through them which is the same as this cited task force. You'll notice that task force is in -- is in the resolution, so staff gleaned that from some source, and I'm afraid I can't answer that question. But it is a widely-recognized situation that we're not going to get ahead of the game without biocontrol. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: The $4 million start-up costs, does that include constructing a facility? MR. CORNELL: That is the construction cost. The designs have already been drawn up, I think by the Army Corp of Engineers at the direction of the USDA, so they have the plans ready to build. Unfortunately, they don't have the appropriations to actually construct. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Obviously, there'd be some specific needs within a facility like that, but is there no structure already existing that could be retrofitted at a smaller cost? MR. CORNELL: No, apparently not. The only thing that they've been using is a very small facility in Gainesville at the University of Florida, and it's not been adequate. They have one bug out there right now that's working on melaleuca and apparently is successful from all reports. It's actually doing more than they expected it. And as you perhaps read in the paper this morning, there are other agents, biocontrol agents, like these carp that are being released that are useful in different situations. The problem is and the reason the need for the quarantine facility is that there's always the danger that it's going to go beyond what course we humans think that it's going to do. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Kind of like of bringing the melaleuca in to drain the swamps. MR. CORNELL: That's right. Right. And so the research is intended to eliminate as many possibilities of negative effects that you can. I mean, you can't eliminate everything but -- CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I think in a nutshell -- and obviously we're not going to act on the resolution today. The earliest we could do that would be next week. But in a nutshell, exotics are a predominant problem here. They're a costly problem for the people that live in this community, that own land in this community. And for us as a government body, they're costly. So anything we can do to encourage the federal government to take up a larger role in this I don't think is a bad idea. I don't like telling other bodies how to spend their money typically, but this something that we have a defined need in. I do have other concerns. Every time I hear the governor's commission on sustainable south Florida we talk about priorities with no funding. You know, the commission on sustainable south Florida apparently said everything's important but not going to assign dollar one to it. And I think that's a little disingenuous, so I may have an issue with the inclusion of that recommendation in any resolution we look at. But regardless, I think we need to, you know -- it makes sense that there is one, and if we have a role to help it come to south Florida, then I think we ought to do it. And how we want to word the resolution to do that is really something we can talk about next week. That's my take anyway. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: In the meantime, I will commit to making the phone calls outlined in your letter to see if we can do some lobbying since Friday is the important day. MR. CORNELL: Once they start into their conference discussions, it's not as productive to actually call them, because then they're -- you know, they're obviously getting phone calls and lobbying from many, many sources and, you know, our local input is important up to that point. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Does anyone on the board have difficulty with this item coming back as a formal resolution on the agenda next week? COHMISSIONER BERRY: My only concern is -- I have to share with Commissioner Constantine is the four million for the facility. I find it very difficult to believe that there isn't some building on the east or west coast of Florida that could not house this facility. That just doesn't make sense to me. MR. CORNELL: Well, Commissioner Berry, if I could suggest, a good source for getting a handle on the need, the specifications, and exactly what is involved with this facility would be Ted Center with the USDA over in Fort Lauderdale. He's in charge of research and, in fact, was in charge of this weevil that is out there right now. And he can give you much more detail about the needs and the options that are available. My understanding is that it's a very task-specific facility that requires certain design features. I'm not the researcher and he is, and I would refer you to him, and I do not have his phone number there, but I can give that to you if you would like to get in touch with him. That is a good question. COHMISSIONER BERRY: It's always nice to have your own quarantine facility, you know, and -- that kind of thing, but if the real thing here is to try and find something to contain these exotic plants, I think there's a way to do it, that they can find a way to do it, and I don't think they need, quote, a specific building set aside. But I'll certainly be happy to talk to him and -- MR. CORNELL: Well, the building was set aside for the insects which they are testing or whatever biocontrol agents they happen to be so, you know, it's -- they need enough territory for enough acreage for -- you know, to get a good read on the natural predilections of these critters. And you want to really know before you let it go. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Let me ask this, then. Let's bring this back on the agenda for next week. And in the meantime, I think some specific concerns have been stated regarding the construction of the new building or not. Maybe you could ask Mr. Center to provide the board with why a new one has to be built and why parameters aren't existing in structures found anywhere in southwest -- or south Florida to do this. MR. CORNELL: Okay. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: And if we could get that assistance from him, it may make the discussion a little easier next week. MR. CORNELL: I will contact him and ask him to provide that input. I'm sure he will. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Thank you, Mr. Cornell. Any further questions? Okay. Thank you again. MR. FERNANDEZ: Do you have a comment on this item? CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. In fact, if anyone who signed up for public comment on this matter would like to do so, it will be appropriate under general comments before the end of meeting, but we typically don't take comment on public petition requests. Item 8(A), the county administrator's report has been continued. Item #SB1 FINAL REPORT ON THE UPDATE OF THE INTEGRATIVE CORRECTIONS STRATEGIC DEVELOPMENT PLAN - PRESENTED. COUNTY ADMINISTRATOR TO MEET WITH CAPTAIN SMITH, SUB-COHMITTEE OF THE PRODUCTIVITY COHMITTEE AND STAFF TO REVIEW STUDY AND COME BACK TO THE BOARD WITH A RECOHMENDATION We're to Item 8(B), under public works, final report on the update of the Integrated Corrections Strategic Development Plan. And we have representatives of the V Group here this morning to present that to us. And we would like to ask anyone at the mike to please give your name before -- before speaking so our court reporter doesn't have to reprimand you sternly. Try to avoid that. MR. GONZALEZ: For the record, Adolfo Gonzalez, capital projects director. Good morning, Commissioners. Today we thought we'd give you an update on the jail study since the last time you took action on it. Since the V Group was awarded the jail study contract, they have done an extensive data-gathering effort throughout the last three months in compiling all sorts of criminal justice information for you. They've also had regular meetings with the sheriff's staff and -- it'll be just a couple minutes while they set up here. They've had several meetings with the sheriff's staff and the clerk of court's staff on all aspects of the criminal justice planning system. In addition to that, we've also briefed members of the Public Safety Committee and members of the Productivity Committee on the study and also have incorporated their comments from it. And with this I'd like to introduce Jeff Nunnet. He is the V Group project manager on the jail study. Mr. Nunnet will introduce the rest of his team. I also understand that Captain Smith and the sheriff are here. And if you have any questions, they'll be available to answer any you may have or give comments toward the end of the presentation. Jeff. MR. NUNNER: Thank you, Adolfo. For the record my name is Jeff Nunnet with the V Group. Thank you, Commissioners, for allowing us the opportunity to present our final report on the update of the Integrated Corrections Strategic Development Plan to you today. We are pleased to present our findings to you today and look forward to a question and answer period at the completion of our presentation. We also want to thank your staff and the Collier County Sheriff's Office staff for all of the help and support they have given us through this study. With their concise and timely delivery of information, they've allowed us to complete this study on the schedule that the board had previously determined. As some project background, the Board of County Commissioners' last report on the Collier County criminal justice system was completed in 1991. This report has served the board well. We have found the report to be very accurate in a lot of its projections and found it very useful in the compilation of our report. Although, due to the changing population in Collier County and the tremendous population growth that the county is experiencing, it was time that a portion of that 1991 study be updated. That was our project objective. We evaluated the dynamics of the existing jail population. We forecasted future capacities. We evaluated the existing alternatives to incarceration and looked into some other alternatives to incarceration. We also identified the facility needs for the future. One other service that we provided was a value-added service where we looked at the existing cost per day that the county is currently paying. We took that one step further and looked at the cost per day that the county would pay if they took into account our recommendations. We also formulated a capital construction cost schedule for those recommendations and also we developed a strategic financing plan for the board to consider in financing those recommendations. Today our presentation will cover twelve key findings, seven key recommendations as well as the implementation plan. At this time, I'd like to introduce the rest of our presenting team today. Our technical specialist is Ann Boysko. Our chief architect is Harry Keagler, and the director of criminal justice planning is Terry HcHanus. MR. HCHANUS: Thank you, Jeff. And good morning, Commissioners. I'm Terry HcHanus, director of criminal justice for the V Group, and I will be presenting the twelve key findings that we have developed for the update of the report. We believe that the important issues presented today identify the unique aspects of the criminal justice system in Collier County, and I have identified some items which help shape our recommendations which we will also be presenting this morning. The first key finding is that the population growth within the county is significant. Of all Florida counties, Collier County has the 3rd highest rate of population growth and is the 20th largest county in permanent population. This combination, this magnitude of growth, is significant, and when you combine the permanent population with the seasonal peak population, you can see that in the year 2005, which is the outside end of our scope of study, the permanent population will be about 280,000 people, the peak population about 380,000, and most of that growth is occurring by the year 2000. These figures are based on the recently adopted board projections for growth. Our second finding is that this continued growth will impact the entire criminal justice system since the at-risk population will also grow along with that. And our area of study was the -- primarily the adults at-risk population, which are those people in the 18 to 40 age group as well as those that are below the poverty level. This chart shows that adult at-risk population, and with that growth each component of the criminal justice system is affected. The county administration, since it is responsible for funding of offices and programs; the role of the 20th judicial district, including all of OTS members, in the caseloads that they will have. Collier County contributes about a quarter of all of the caseloads to the 20th judicial district. The clerk of courts, which is a county agency, their caseloads will continue to grow for both criminal and civil cases. The sheriff's office with the law enforcement component and the jail operations will continue to grow. And state probation and parole, and its adjacent or related agencies such as counseling and support and -- will also grow, and alternatives to incarceration. So those are the main pieces of the puzzle, and they all will be affected by this continued growth. Our focus in our study and our third key finding is to identify the trend for adult offenders in the criminal justice system, and it is increasing. This chart shows the total bookings over the last seven years and the adult share of those bookings since 1990. Each year over 10,000 offenders entered the criminal justice system, and the system has to be capable to accommodate them. Those offenders in the system may be in any number of locations. They may be in jail awaiting for trial or have gone through the court system, may be in prison, state parole, county probation, or some sort of alternative program. This is a chart representing all of the offenders in the system for these years, and if we look at the jail portion only, which is the red part of the chart there, adults in jail represent only 4 to 6 percent of all of the offenders in the criminal justice system. It varies from year to year due to various forces in the system, but adults in jail are a limited number. One in twenty offenders are actually in the jail system. Our fifth key finding is that alternatives to incarceration are being used and are reducing the jail population. The current alternatives which are being used address both pretrial offenders through the bond schedule, the pretrial release program, and pretrial diversion through state probation. And for sentenced offenders there are the probation department for the state as well the county and the electronic monitoring program that's in place. There are some limited beds available for offenders in a residential treatment center through the David C. Lawrence Center. In our evaluation of the 1991 report, there were three different paths to the future that the report had identified. There was a low range of growth of the criminal justice system which projected an optimistic view where crime would remain low and all alternatives would be used, and the laws didn't become more restrictive. And that was what they considered at that time to be a utopia of the criminal justice system. And they also explored a high option where there would be no -- there would be no actual improvements in the system, and it would be allowed to grow based on the population growth. They chose a planned approach which by the year 2005 projected a need of just over 1,000 jail beds, which would be a balance between what the -- the perfect world of corrections and the worst-case scenario would be. We've added to that chart the actual daily population that has been in the jail. Over that time the population of the jail decreased significantly, and we believe that is by the introduction of alternatives to incarceration. But that trend is changing, and the path now has crossed over the low projection line, and it's heading at a rate that is aiming much higher than that range; so we think that the system is kind of correcting itself. Throughout our research for the update, we received extensive data on arrests and types of offenders and programs and alternatives to incarceration. The stack is probably two feet high of data. And there really is no common system for data collection in the criminal justice system. Everyone collects data and interprets data for a different reason, but there's no common base such as what an offender -- what an offender does once they get into the system. We understand that the 20th Judicial Circuit is in the process of developing the Seejus program, which is not yet in effect or it's in its early planning stages. Possibly this program could be a useful hub in developing some sort of database collection. It's important to have this type of system in place because of the extensive numbers of offenders in the system, over 10,000 each year. And offenders' needs vary. Some offenders may require treatment programs. Some offenders are required jail housing with programs in the jail -- in a secure setting, and it's -- without that type of data, it's very difficult to evaluate the effectiveness of -- of internal jail programs or alternatives to -- alternatives to corrections. The next objective was to develop a projected level of service for the Florida jail beds for the county. The Growth Management Plan currently projects 2.4 jail beds per thousand of the peak population. And this number is based on several factors. It's based on the actual incarceration rate, which we're calling the base forecast. There is a peaking factor to handle the seasonal fluctuations in the jail due to -- due to the coastal and agricultural growth in population. And a management factor is identified to determine how efficiently the jail can house the varied group of offenders. When we look at each component that makes up the forecast, this chart shows the base forecast as an average daily population as a percentage of the peak population. Over the last seven years, that trend has bounced all over the place. 1992 and '93 when alternatives were in their infancy and that was perceived as the answer, there were not that many people percentagewise in the jail. But that has changed over the past few years, and it has now crossed over to a point where 2.15 per 1,000 of the population are actually in the jail system. When he looked at the peaking factor, we identified the average population in the jail and identified the high number of prisoners for any day in a month. This chart is a little bit messy in its look, but what it does is identify on a month-by-month basis the average rate and the high rate of jail beds. The peaking factor -- earlier this year there was an average daily population of about 615 in a month, but there were certain days when that population was over 700, and that difference of 85 beds over the average is what we would call the peaking factor. The final part of the equation is the management factor, which is the capability of the jail facilities to separate prisoners to meet security standards as well as maintain the security within the institution. This chart shows the various types of classifications of prisoners in the jail. Male and female inmates are separated. In certain instances sentenced and unsentenced offenders are separated, but most -- the largest group is the pretrial felons and pretrial misdemeanors, the male population. And when the pressure on those groups becomes so great, the sheriff's office is forced to have these inmates sleep on mattresses on the floor in their housing unit, because they can't mix them with other populations. So while there may be empty beds in jail, there are people sleeping on the floor due to the security classification system. Our next key finding we evaluate the profile of inmates within the jail. Where they are housed depends on two factors, their security classification, which may be maximum, medium, or minimum. But in the daily management of prisoners, the inmate programs that they may be suitable for affects their actual housing assignment within the jail facility. We looked at the same group of inmates that we had in the management factor chart but identified what types of inmate programs exist to address the inmates' needs. The male and female general population are the two largest groups, and generally those are the pretrial -- pretrial felons that are being detained. But the next three largest groups are the male trustee housing unit, the education block, and project recovery which is the therapeutic community. Those three classifications are successful and effective because they have an adequate number of inmates who can be screened to participate in these programs and make them cost effective. The trustee inmates are necessary to run jail maintenance within -- within the secure perimeter. The education block permits offenders to work on GED as long as they're in the jail, and the success rate of about 67 percent with the therapeutic community all make these programs meaningful in the jail. One of the areas that we were asked to look at was the feasibility of a work opportunity restitution center. The judiciary has expressed an interest in having this as a sentencing option with a goal to help develop accountability of the offender. It would be a cost-effective option since it is low-security housing and the offender can help and pay some of the costs to operate it. Out of the group of the prisoners that we looked at, approximately 30 offenders could have been suitable for this type of program that were currently housed in the jail. One aspect of the jail capacity that we tried to identify is the effectiveness of the criminal justice system in moving people through the court system. Some of the key factors which influence that are the growth in the county. With more offenders there are more cases and possibly the need for more courts. The rate of case processing not going to trial and on time -- and there were very few examples where court cases did not meet the mandated deadline. But a significant aspect of the jail population is the impact of mandatory incarceration. And it's not just mandatory arrest for domestic violence cases or sentences for DUI offenders, but the actual sentencing guideline for repeat offenders. This chart shows the numbers of inmates moving from the jail to courts for different types of proceedings since 1991. There's a block of -- or a grouping for the people going to 24-hour hearings, going to arrangements, soundings, court hearings, trial, sentencing, and other -- other movement to court from the jail. There's two observations that we're able to make from looking at this, is that while the -- most proceedings -- or the movement of inmates to most of these proceedings has remained relatively the same, the population in the jail continues to increase. And what that makes us believe is that the court system is probably slowing down a bit. To have more people in jail and have the same number appear at different court -- court movement would seem to lead us to believe that. The other area that we are seeing is that offenders are waiting till trial. They're trying to outweigh -- or they're trying wait out the system. The longer you wait in jail without entering a plea on a lesser charge, the likelihood is that they will be able to beat the rap, as it were. The point system, the mandatory incarceration for repeat offenders predetermines in some respect. The judge has to write an explanation if the offender doesn't receive the sentence that the point scale tells him to; so it's an important issue that offenders have either -- I guess they've wised up to the fact that if they wait out the system, they may not end up going to prison. The next key finding that we looked at -- actually, the last two that we're going to look at deal with the condition of the facilities to support both the criminal justice system and the sheriff's office. In this finding we looked at the criminal justice facilities for both inmate housing and support areas for both the Immokalee Jail Center and the Naples Jail Center. We evaluated them in terms of the physical condition, the effectiveness of their layout, the staffing efficiency, the management flexibility, and identified other important factors with the facilities themselves, and finally looked at the operating cost which we believe is the most significant aspect of developing a correctional facility. The current Collier County jail system has 754 rated beds and operates at a cost of $51.32 per rated bed per day. When we look at the Immokalee Jail Center with their rated bed capacity of 172, we see that the facility is approximately 40 years old. It is deteriorated. Its layout is inefficient to supervise prisoners, but in spite of that, the amount of staffing is adequate, and it costs about $27 per rated bed per day to operate that facility. The booking and holding area is inadequate especially with the relatively high arrest rate that occurs out in the Immokalee area. And the need for program areas for inmates to avoid just warehousing inmates out there is -- is needed. And currently as an example, the Immokalee facility is used on weekends for overflow. They remove inmates out of the Naples Jail Center to Immokalee to make room for new arrestees that will come in -- into the Naples Jail Center over the -- over the weekend. Another key aspect of the Immokalee Jail Center is its location next to the juvenile boot camp. And some of the operations of the Immokalee Jail Center and the DRILL Academy are shared. When we look at the Naples Jail Center, it was originally designed for 300 beds but has been increased to 582 rated beds. It's basically a sound structure, and primarily it's a maximum security environment with an extensive number of housing pods to help classify the prisoners. The single-floor layout does dictate the staffing level, and it costs about $58 per rated bed per day to run this facility. There's a need for a program area, since the original design was for 300 beds, and there are insufficient beds for certain types of classifications, primarily medium and minimum security beds. In the early eighties it was very popular to design jail facilities with -- with maximum security beds only and then plan for addition of medium and minimum security beds down the -- down the road. The growth in the county and the jail system have caused several areas of the jail to be inadequate. The intake and booking area, the medical and mental health area, live safety and security in the central control area are all inadequate. And staff support areas for the staff which has increased over the years is also inadequate. Our 12th key finding deals with the sheriff's operations on the government campus here. Primarily, the sheriff's operations are located in Building A and J in -- on the campus here. And the county is basically centralized on the campus -- what's the next thing -- substations -- the size of the county is such that it is best served by the substations for the outlying communities, but when we look at the centralized services in Building -- in Buildings A and J, Building A houses departments that are -- generally have adequate space to meet today's needs but not expansion, and it is separated from the sheriff's administration area. The building condition also at Building A should be evaluated to -- to determine its long-term usefulness. In Building J, the sheriff's departments that are in there are crowded and need to be expanded. The configuration and circulation in Building J for the sheriff's operations is inefficient, but the building has been designed for vertical as well as horizontal expansion. And this -- these twelve key issues -- CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I'm going to interrupt you there for just a second. We are again to a point where I think we need to take a break for the court reporter and anyone else. So we'll take a five-minute break, and we'll come back and pick up on key recommendations. (A break was held from 10:30 a.m. to 10:50 a.m.) CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Good morning. Let's reconvene the Board of County Commissioners meeting. We're to the point in our consultant -- excuse me, folks. Can I have your attention, please. Thank you. We're to the point in our consultant report on key recommendations, and we'll pick up at that point. MR. KEAGLER: Good morning. My name is Harry Keagler. I'm with the V Group. I'm going to be presenting the seven recommendations and an implementation plan that we have put together here. The first recommendation we want to make is that the criminal justice system and all its various components expand with the county population, that this would provide for adequate planning, funding, as well as space needs for the requirements. Of particular note in maintaining this need to address the criminal justice total outlook, we would like to recommend that the Collier County Public Safety Coordinating Council remain in effect. We feel that this group has the various components that will address the overall county needs on the criminal justice side. The second recommendation we would like to make is to develop an adult offender tracking system. This would provide for data from all the various criminal justice agencies, elements, and so forth that would commit to an ongoing management system by all of the components. The importance of this offender tracking system would allow the county to make decisions based upon what was happening in the system, what was working in terms of the 10,000 or so offenders that we've identified in the criminal justice system now. One of the important things is to evaluate really the effectiveness of some of the programs that are in place to a -- particularly with alternatives to incarceration, to see the effectiveness of those, which ones are successful, which ones may have to be adopted that perhaps would address certain needs as they come up. So we feel that the -- developing an offender-based tracking system is very important. The third level or recommendation that we have is that presently the projected level of service based upon the Growth Management Plan is 2.4. We would like to recommend that that be increased to 2.65 for a couple of reasons. One, we have the base rate forecast. Secondly, we would like to include a peaking factor and a management factor that would bring us to the 2.65 for planning purposes. Based upon that we would see the peak population in the year 2005 as requiring approximately 1,000 jail beds. This is the need that we would see the county based upon this level of service. Based upon the thousand beds, we would recommend that -- the present classification system that is in place at the jail itself is -- you have adequate what we would call maximum security beds, and the medium and minimum security beds need to be addressed. We would see a security classification within the need in the year 2005 as being 250 beds maximum security, 400 beds for medium, and 350 beds for the minimum security classifications. In addition, we would have -- maintain the same level of percentages of the male, female, and juvenile. That would be 86 percent, 12 percent, and 2 percent for the juvenile. We would also like to call the attention for the -- not only for rated beds but also for the need for some disciplinary beds that would be within the detention center for their use in terms of disciplinary segregation. The fifth and sixth recommendations are really having to do with the facility component of our report. We're recommending, number five, to replace the Immokalee Jail Center. As Terry had mentioned, it has pretty much lived its usefulness, and we would see several areas in this replacement component, one being the housing areas. And we're recommending that 192 beds be constructed at Immokalee. This would approximate nineteen to twenty thousand square feet of facility for the housing needs. The way the staffing is now, we would not necessarily see an increase in the staff by going to 192 beds from the present 172 beds, so we see a -- a $25.13 per rated bed per day at the Immokalee facility. The other area that we would see at the Immokalee facility would be the support areas. This would include the booking and temporary holding as well as the -- some program areas and so forth for the inmates and staff there at Immokalee. One area that we would like to consider would be video classrooms. Some technical components like that that could be utilized at the Immokalee facility from the main facility in Naples. We show a diagram basically showing the new Immokalee Jail Center that would provide for some future expansion even after the year 2005. We also see the Immokalee center as adding to support, particularly for the adjacent DRILL Academy and other programs that the county may foresee that would be a part of the Immokalee facility. Recommendation No. 6 is the expansion of the jail center here in Naples. Some of the highlights of that would be -- again in two areas. That would be housing, where we are recommending that 240 beds be added. We see a need by adding those beds that through some direct-supervision housing and some various housing mixes, that we can increase the efficiency of the Naples facility itself. We see approximately 44,000 square feet and the requirements for this addition would require approximately 30 additional security staff. Support areas are also needed at the Naples facility. This would include central intake, some medical and mental health, new central control -- and as Terry mentioned, adding adequate programs for the existing beds as well as for the new beds. We see this as a 49,000 addition with no additional staff required for the support areas. Part of this Naples facility would also include some renovation, particularly with the existing jail where areas would be as needed for code requirements or even updates in terms of maintenance. We also would see enhanced staffing efficiencies that would help particularly in the housing areas. The 90,000 square feet of renovations would be required, and we see this as adding to a final operating cost of $51.05 for the Naples Jail Center. The seventh recommendation is, again, the consolidation of the sheriff's operation at Building J. Several reasons for that would be to consolidate the areas that are in Building A and J and renovating the existing sheriff's areas to meet the new needs. Advantages for the sheriff's central operation would be public accessibility, more effective communication within the department. And we would like to comment that the substations will continue to service the communities as a remote facility, a remote item. The item we want to discuss briefly here is an implementation plan, which we have put into the executive summary, that includes capital costs, scheduling, operating costs, and a fourth item that we want to talk is some financial strategies, at the end. The capital costs for a new Immokalee center, for the Naples Jail Center, and the sheriff's administration, we have included both construction costs, soft costs, for example design costs and other fees. We've also included costs for telecommunications and other services that would be required in these services. We're looking at a total cost for these projects so that the commissioners understand what the complete and total costs are on these projects. At Immokalee we are projecting a total of $5 million for the cost, which translates to approximately $26,000 a bed. At the Naples Jail Center with both the new construction as well as renovation, we have the same breakdown in terms of construction, other costs to give us a project total, which translates into $30,800 per rated bed. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Did I see correctly a $3-1/2 million contingency on that? MR. KEAGLER: Yes. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. Thank you. MR. KEAGLER: That contingency also includes an inflation factor for the midpoint of construction. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Thank you. MR. KEAGLER: For the sheriff's central administration expansion, again, we have broken the costs down into construction and other costs, and we're looking at that as a project total of 9,300,000. In summary, the capital costs for these various projects approaches thirty-nine million three hundred thousand with this breakdown of the five million for Immokalee, twenty-five for the Naples Jail Center, and nine million three hundred for the sheriff's central administration. We have also adopted a phasing which we would like to discuss further with the staff. We think that the -- we have this projected out both from a design and then construction standpoint to the year 2003. We think that the consolidating the design for all of the jail requirements in the first 12 to 18 months would be an issue that we would like to discuss with the staff. We have it shown projected out, but that would be an advantage in terms of tying all of the design features together. Operating costs, we have looked at those. We know that the operating costs last forever. I think to go to a bottom line, that the operating costs include both the staff costs, the contract services, utilities, and other costs. We have carefully looked at those and feel that there is a savings that through prudent planning and facility design, that the operating costs can be reduced by approximately $5 per day per inmate. At the thousand-bed capacity, we would see that as a $5,000 per day at 365 days, which is an approximate savings of a million eight hundred thousand dollars; that's on a per diem savings. We feel that there are some significant financial advantages to this, and Jeff would have some closing remarks as well to discuss some of these financial issues. Thank you. MR. NUNNER: This per-diem savings of $5 per day, which equates to $1.85 million per year, mainly comes through constructing minimum security cells at the Naples Jail Center. Right now, all the cells at the Naples Jail Center are maximum security, and they are a lot more costly to operate. By installing minimum security cells, we feel we can bring the average cost per day down $5 per day. This $5 per day is instrumental in our financial strategy that I'd like to discuss now. We felt that preparing this report and all of the capital expenses would be incomplete if we didn't produce some type of modeling for the -- for a way the commission can pay for this project. The first two years into the project, we would recommend that the commission pay from general funding. That would be approximately $6 million and would complete the design of the first three phases and also the construction of the Immokalee Jail Center. Upon the beginning of the third year to the buildout of the project, we would propose that the commission finance those costs through two sources. The first source is the $5 per day savings, which is equal to $1.85 million per year, and also a $1-million-per-year impact fee source that the commission is considering right now that Henderson and Young is completing a study on. Or actually, I think their study has been delayed until we complete this study and they get additional direction from the board. But those are the two sources that we feel would finance the rest of the project after the first two years were paid from the general fund. Just in closing we think that our findings indicate that the criminal justice system is working well. We all know that growth is going to continue, but we feel that this current system can handle this growth through effective management. We believe our plan will do two things. It will provide the additional bed space that's needed and also bring down the operational costs that the county is currently paying. We would be happy to answer any questions, and we thank you for this opportunity. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: As we go to questions, let's go ahead and bring some of the lights back up if you would, please. Commissioner Norris. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Mr. Nunnet, you just mentioned that some of the funding would come through savings on the operational cost of $5 a day per inmate, but will we actually realize those savings until -- or before the entire project is implemented or -- MR. NUNNER: You'll begin to realize some of those savings once the Immokalee facility is completed. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: How much? MR. NUNNER: It's hard to put a number on it. Maybe 25 percent to 40 percent once the -- and the way that it's phased, once the Immokalee facility is constructed, that will allow you to bring some of the Naples inmates over to Immokalee so that that construction can happen without a full facility there. The savings begins as soon as those inmates are brought from Naples to Immokalee. Day one you start experiencing savings because the Immokalee system is much less costly to operate than the Naples system. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: The way I understood it, it seemed like you were financing part of the construction and implementation of the entire program with some savings that would really come the bulk of in the future. MR. NUNNER: The first two years would be from the general fund. From the third year on -- and that's a gray area that we probably do need to look at further. But I understand -- I understand your point, and that's something we do need to look at further. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: The 1.85 million annually, how long can that be expected to be in effect? Because obviously as your inmate population grows -- and I realize there's a cost per inmate, but as this thing fills up, there's got to be a cap on that somewhere. MR. NUNNER: Well, the 1.85 is at -- is at buildout when the facility is at capacity. One of the slides said operating costs are forever; so the 1.85 will be forever. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: When do you expect that buildout to be? I'm sorry. I missed a little bit of the -- MR. NUNNER: 2005. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: That's -- at 2005, that's how many beds? MR. NUNNER: That'll be a thousand fourteen beds approximately. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: And I'm trying to remember the construction years on there were ninety -- MR. NUNNER: Fiscal year '99 for the Immokalee Jail Center. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: And then 2000 or 2001 was when the actual expansion here began; is that correct? MR. NUNNER: Approximately 2001 for the first phase and 2003 for the renovation phase. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: And then you lost me, I guess, where 2005 will be at buildout if we've just done the construction at 2001 or 2003? Maybe I'm just misunderstanding. MR. NUNNER: The phase 4, which is the administrative -- sheriff's administrative center, that will be completed in 2003. In 2001, the Naples Jail Center would be completed. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: My point is just if we build something, we don't usually want it to be full or obsolete four years later. And that's what I hear you describing. And maybe I'm misunderstanding, but -- MR. NUNNER: Well, the next phase that we have looked at and that we've presented was a 128-bed expansion to the Immokalee Jail Center. That would be the phase past this project. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Beyond 2005 you're recommending -- MR. NUNNER: Beyond 2005. I think it was my fault. 2005 is when we see the need for these beds would hit, and the facility would be completed in 2003. At 2005 you would have the ability to expand Immokalee if the population rate kept growing. And there's really -- there's no way -- I mean, we have projections, but that's all we have there, projections, and we just have to do the best we can with those. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Could be a nuclear accident and growth would stop here. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Right. That's what it would take. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: 1.85 million annually -- and again, I'm not sure I got a complete answer to that. Do we anticipate being able to count on that from a physical perspective for how long? Once it fills up and we're looking at expanding Immokalee, I assume we're not really counting a $2 million savings any more. MR. NUNNER: Well, you're still operating at less than you're operating today, and that's the whole key. And you will continue to operate less than you're operating today forever. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Okay. The restitution center was one of the low-cost alternatives, and it said as many as 30 inmates that had been in our regular facility in the past year appeared to be appropriate or eligible for what we'd try to do at a restitution center but -- and I may need the sheriff's help with this, but I remember when we had the discussion with the judges on the restitution center and we asked the sheriff at that time how that would lower the inmate population, we were told it really wouldn't at all, because most of the people who would be eligible for the restitution center .... the vast majority" I think were his words -- aren't currently serving time in our jail anyway. And so while it may be a low-cost alternative to putting them in a maximum security facility, I need some help there. I don't think we're saving money if we're putting someone -- if we're now spending money on them that we haven't been previously. CAPTAIN SMITH: For the record, Captain Greg Smith, Collier County Sheriff's Office jail administrator. Commissioner Constantine, as I understand the question, it's just what use we would make of a work release restitution center? COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: The question is when we talked about a work restitution center before, we were told the vast majority of the people who would be eligible and be placed ultimately in that center aren't spending time in our jail now anyway; so we wouldn't be lowering the jail population by it. That's what the sheriff had told us during those public hearings. I need you to tell me how we're going to save money by spending it on people we're not currently spending it on. CAPTAIN SMITH: Okay. You are correct. We did make a statement that in our snapshot profile of the jail population, that it currently shows that between 30 and 50 inmates that we are currently housing are eligible for that type of program. However, it needs to be pointed out that as the system grows in total -- you know, and we're now at about seven hundred beds and we grow out to a thousand beds, that that too -- that number will also grow larger. So it's a matter of, you know, just exactly when that type of facility is built, when it comes on line, as to the exact burden that it will take off of the present need for jail beds. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Is our current snapshot different, then, than what we were told a year ago when we had the restitution center discussion? CAPTAIN SMITH: No, sir, it's not. It's pretty much identical. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Okay. I'll have to dig those minutes out, because it's different than what I remember. And finally I need -- I know you went through some of this, but I need an explanation. You exp -- Mr. Nunnet explained how one in twenty adults in the system are actually behind bars. Help we with the other 19. COHHISSIONER HAC'KIE: That is a scary number, isn't it. Where are the other 197 CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Did you go to the grocery store this weekend? COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Yes, some. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Right there with you. MR. HCHANUS: I think when we look at the magnitude of the people in the corrections world, we always think of people in jail or people in prison. Alternatives to incarceration include things such as county probation where jail time is determined to not be necessary by the judges and, therefore, put them on probation, which I think runs about six or seven thousand people a year in Collier County are on county probation. There's an additional nine hundred to a thousand people that are on state probation. These are more serious offenders, but the judges have seen fit to put these people back into society in lieu of putting them in a jail bed. It's very costly to incarcerate somebody in jail. And if want to rehabilitate the offender -- the goal of the sanction is to produce members of society again. It is -- you know, jail is an option. Jail is a tool. But 19 out of 20 people that are offenders are not in jail; they are out in public. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Adjudicated, either misdemeanors -- I guess adjudicated misdemeanors. MR. HCHANUS: Or felons. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Or felons? MR. HCHANUS: Yes. The state probation is -- you know, a thousand a year are out in state probation and report in Collier County; so that is a significant number. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I realize the point of this study and what you-all are trying to accomplish is to fund the most cost-effective way to safely handle our inmates or judicial responsibilities, but I guess we -- we're ready to have a debate of what is the goal of the sanction. I don't know if the goal of the sanction in my mind is strictly to rehabilitate to make them wonderful citizens again. It just -- when we hear -- and I can't tell you what the statistics are. Perhaps -- Greg probably knows them better than anybody, but when we hear the statistics of what percentage of crimes are committed by people who either have been or are currently in the system, I'm pretty sure it's more than 5 percent. And it just scares me that 95 percent of the people in the system are out there knowing that a big percentage of crimes are committed by people already in the system. And I realize it's a balancing act of how do we cost effectively do that, and at least we can track them and have some idea of where they are and what the likely problem is, but that's a tough balance. MR. HCHANUS: I think one of the key aspects of understanding that balance is having the information available. And when -- as we said when we got a stack of paper two feet high with data, how do you apply meaning to the data? And what we found was that the different agency -- county probation uses rules of thumb. They say, well, half of the people succeed on probation the first time, so out the 6,000 or so that are on probation in a year, 3,000 come back. And of that group, again, 50 percent or half of them succeed a second time. So unless we can find a tool that puts all that information together, as the county grows, there's just going to be -- the magnitude of the numbers is going to crush the system as it were. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I think -- anyone who thinks that from this study or any other study we're going to be able to put off or not have to construct a new jail sometime in the future has had their head so deep in the sand it's not funny. The bottom line is a new facility is needed -- will be needed. We can argue about the year. We can argue about the funding mechanism. But if you want to cut through the fat, the bottom line is that the sheriff's office is going to continue arresting people who break the law. The judicial system is going to continue trying them at whatever pace they are able to try them, and that's not always governed by them. The circuit may not assign new judges to us, thereby requiring us to keep more people in local jails awaiting trial as is happening. And that's probably the scariest number I've seen, is those awaiting trial have gone up dramatically. And you can't blame the sheriff for that. You can't blame the individual judges. The State of Florida has a responsibility to fund the circuit judges at an appropriate level. I don't think that's happening, and it's showing up in our taxpayers having to bear a burden of jail expansion when if we could get the trial process moving along a little bit better, maybe we wouldn't have to look at that burden so substantially. The study is key in a couple of things. I think it recognizes the sheriff's office for doing -- and Don Hunter for doing something that is -- has worked very well, and that is the alternatives to incarceration. The bracelets, the things that he is doing have proven very successful and probably staved off us having to face this question for several years now, and I think we need to recognize that. It also recognizes Captain Smith and his folks for running what is a facility designed in the eighties as a maximum security facility very well being faced with the fact that they can have one prisoner taking up several beds because of the design of the jail facility. That's a reduction in efficiency, one that either wasn't contemplated then, not foreseen, or ignored. Either way we are where -- what is it Ken Cuyler said? We are where we are. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: We are where we are. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Yeah. And it's not an enviable position. I think we have to recognize that this board needs to take steps to begin preparing financially for a jail expansion of some sort. It's going to be somewhere between what we would like to see, which is pennies from heaven and we don't have to do a thing to the $40 million that's being proposed in front of us. The impact fee is key for what we're trying to accomplish, and the other key is operational costs. No one likes to say the P word, privatization. But we're seeing Lee County to the north look at taking -- going out to bid on its jail operations. We are going to have two distinctly different facilities here, one at the jail center at Naples and one in Immokalee. The one in Immokalee being minimum and medium security may be more prime for privatized operation or not. But I think we owe it to the community to at least look at those operational constraints and questions and see if we can't bring the cost per day down even further. And again, that's not a criticism of you, Mr. Smith, by any means, but we're sitting here with a checkbook in our hands and -- with a zero balance and looking at a $40 million debt basically. We have got to find a way to fund that. There's going to be some refining and some arguing on the fine points of what's -- what's been presented here today, but I think we need to take a step forward and go to the next level of getting a plan of action in place that makes sure that the judges are not forced or the sheriff is not forced to maybe put people on bracelets that shouldn't be there. We've been fortunate in the past. We don't have anybody who's been at home arrest or home confinement that has gone out and done something heinous. What was it during the Dukakis election -- you know, the weekend furlough. We've avoided those kind of PR problems, and I think we're fortunate, but the judges and the judicial system would be forced to look at those things and make some more marginal decisions if we don't perform some type of jail expansion. So we can argue the specifics, but I'm more interested in the financial application of this and how we are going to fund what is going to be somewhere between I would say a 25 million and $40 million project, one that we can no longer put off. So my vote is to take this study to form, through the county administrator, a group that will sit down and pick this apart and put it back together in a way that our taxpayers can handle without being burdened to a degree that is unacceptable and come back to this board with it. I don't know that the five of us today are going to take it to that level ourselves. Commissioner Mac'Kie. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: I just would point out if I understood the presentation and I had the benefit of meeting privately with Mr. Conrecode and Mr. Nunnet, too, the good news as I heard it was -- well, first the bad news, but no surprise, we need a jail expansion, significant one that's cost about $40 million. But the good news as I heard it was assuming a million-a-year impact fee and assuming a $1.85-million-a-year cost savings in operations that will be possible as a result of the reconfiguration in the new space, the net-net here is we can built the facility you're proposing without any tax increase if we fund the bond that would be necessary with the savings, the 1.85 and the $1 million, the 1.85 million being a cost savings and the $1 million being an impact fee. Assuming those two numbers are correct, the jail as proposed to be built, requires no tax increase. Did I understand that correctly? MR. NUNNER: That's correct, Commissioner. The only thing I would add there is that the first two years we did propose $6 million from the general fund, and I believe in the next fiscal year the two million is already in the budget for the Immokalee jail. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Budgeted two million, and you're telling us we need to budget another four million -- MR. NUNNER: Four million in the next year. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: And after that you're telling us that the cost savings and a $1-million-a-year impact fee can fund the entire project without any additional tax increases. MR. NUNNER: Yes. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: We need to put that in perspective by saying, though, that takes us -- if that can be done -- and I believe it excludes the sheriff's administration space. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: No. MR. NUNNER: No. That would include the entire contract. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Assuming that happens that means in the year 2005, we get to sit here and have the same discussion, because we are back to break even a jail that is supposed to be at capacity in 2005 with a zero funding balance to move ahead for further expansion. So I think we have got to look hard and fast at the cost associated with this and the funding mechanisms because -- I liken it to -- I kept thinking about beach renourishment. We started off beach renourishment with a big price tag and no funding mechanism. We adopted a funding mechanism and revised it later that not only got us renourished, would pay that back, but then put money in the bank for the next one, so that we were staying ahead of the curve. Mr. Nunnet -- MR. NUNNER: And I think that's what Commissioner Constantine was getting at, is how long will the savings be there? And that I think would be a prudent thing to do is even after the bond is relieved, after everything's paid for, that those funds, those savings be earmarked for additional expansion. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And the challenge is -- and I'm glad to see Mr. Smykowski in the room, because the hard part of this, it seems to me, is that we create some sort of a mechanism to protect that amount of money, that 1.85 million that's in the budget that will be saved as a result of the increase so that it can't be spent by future boards -- this one, of course, being perfect and never would do anything like that -- but can't be spent by future boards on new programs, but that that 1.85 million or whatever the actual number is is somehow in a fund that protects it for not only the servicing of the bond debt but for future expansion. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Good intentions. I don't know that we can tie future boards' hands to the extent that they couldn't undo it if that's their choice. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: No, that's not possible, but certainly we'd want to do our best to do it, because if we can build a jail that gets us to 2005 without any tax increase and operationally saves us $2 million a year towards future increases, that seems to me to be the perfect plan. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Well, Mr. Chairman, I agree with your suggestion. I suggest perhaps we can direct our county administrator to work with Mr. Smith and representatives from the V Group to put together a body and come back for some sort of approval from us as an appropriate body to do it but -- do exactly what you said, pick it apart, put it back together, and see what we come up with. But at this point we can talk around circles without knowing details now so -- CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Commissioner Norris. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Your point about seeing this discussion revive itself again in the year 2005 is a very valid one, and I think we need to make it clear right now as we go forward with any kind of design and proposals that we incorporate into the design of our new facility something that is very easily expandable, because that'll be the key if we make it a system that is compartmentalized or modular in nature where you just simply add another section, because that would be critical in the original design and it's -- one of the problems that we're facing today is that our present systems were not designed that way to make it very easily expandable. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: You're looking at the Naples Jail Center and almost 4-1/2 million in renovation alone to try and put it into the way we need it now. In other words, our operation has changed and you're absolutely right. So the plans I saw did show for -- the new construction would be addition -- additional pods that could be tailored to meet the needs at that time, which makes sense. But I think your point is on the mark, because a lot of what we're looking at here, not the bulk of it, but a lot of it, is renovation costs. And the expandability -- I like the idea of the Immokalee Jail Center being a little bit of a test ground for a minimum, medium security and ask -- would, you know, obviously ask the sheriff to pull out your creative juices on that one as to what's on the horizon in law enforcement for medium and minimum security that can even bring that cost down further. I know we don't want to take any serious risks. But if we're going to address that, medium and minimum security seems to be the place to do it. MR. FERNANDEZ: Mr. Chairman. COHMISSIONER BERRY: I'd like -- go ahead. MR. FERNANDEZ: I'm sorry. I didn't realize you were -- I'll wait. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Mr. Fernandez. MR. FERNANDEZ: I was just going to say, I would appreciate the opportunity to get staff together and take a look at some of those funding assumptions that are being made. For example, the concept of counting on the savings as a portion of the funding scheme for future. I think we need to be realistic about really what our expectations are there. So I'd like the opportunity to take a good look at that and some of those assumptions, and come back to you. Also, I'm not sure that the board's budgeting of the Immokalee jail was really accurately discussed here today. Am I doing that? CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I don't know. It's unusually -- I can hear myself almost echo up here today, so something's been changed in the sound system. MR. FERNANDEZ: We told them to fix it last time, and boy did they. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Careful what you ask for. MR. FERNANDEZ: I'm told that we only have, for example, the design costs for the Immokalee jail figured into the budget and not the construction costs. So these are the kinds of details that we need the opportunity to really take a good hard look at and then come back to you and say this is our recommendation with respect to the funding plan. I think the importance of today's presentation is conceptually to give you a firm idea of what is needed in -- order of magnitude of what is needed and so forth, and I think it's time now for us to go in and take a look at some of the details on how do we get there and come back to you with a plan. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Commissioner Berry. COHMISSIONER BERRY: I don't know if this would be an appropriate group, but I think working with perhaps the county administrator and his staff might be reviewed by the Productivity Committee who has done some work in this regard. But I think they'd welcome the opportunity to perhaps sit down and work on this along with our staff. Just a suggestion. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I think that's a good idea, particularly knowing the expertise and talent we have on that committee. Let me -- let me suggest -- and, Commissioner Constantine, you have already suggested the direction. I'd like to be a little more specific. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Sorry to interrupt, but are we going to hear from the sheriff at all before we give direction or -- CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Well, I thought if we give a direction that's acceptable to him and includes that, we, you know -- COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Okay. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: But, yes, I expect to hear from Sheriff Hunter. I don't think he's been sitting here to -- here to just age gracefully in our audience today so -- Mr. Fernandez, the funding -- or the team I'm looking at needs to have, obviously, representatives from the corrections and law enforcement side of the sheriff's office. We need a representative from the judiciary, because those numbers are part of our equation. We need a representative from the county budget office, which I think is key. And then, of course, with the V Group which, by the way, I want to commend to Mr. Nunnet and Mr. Conrecode. What this study has done is it has provided I'll say an unarguable point of which the sheriff and the board can now work together. In the past the studies that have been done have been done -- you know, if the sheriff performed the study, we got questions and phone calls about, you know, the old empire building. And this has confirmed a lot of things that the sheriff's studies have proposed in the past, and I think we can put to rest the divisional arguments between the sheriff's office and the board on whether we need a new jail, and this study was intended to do that, and I think it's done it fairly. So now we can at least work together on a long-term solution. That's my recommendation for a team to do what the board has requested, which is simply to review this study and, I guess, put some more detail to it to present to the board a scenario that would accomplish the needs within the correctional system from the sheriff's office side and the fiscal goal of this board, which is to fund it with as much as -- with growth dollars as possible as opposed to general fund ad valorem dollars, or with operational savings. Is that a fair direction for our county administrator? COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Yeah. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. With that, I know we have -- Sheriff Hunter is here. I take it the V Group doesn't have anything else to add, Mr. Nunnet? MR. NUNNER: No, we don't. And thank you. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. Why don't we ask to hear from Sheriff Hunter, and I did have the opportunity to speak to him briefly this morning to make sure there weren't any large bumps in this, which I think we were able to agree upon. But, Sheriff Hunter, good morning. SHERIFF HUNTER: Thank you. Good morning. Sheriff Don Hunter for the record. Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak. I'd like to also commend the V Group, Mr. Nunnet, Mr. Conrecode, the work that they've done with staff. I thought that they did a very commendable job in a very short period of time. And I certainly appreciate the complimentary outcomes of the study that reinforce earlier studies both with the sheriff's office and a former board back in 1989 and '90. I think the message is clear that we need to go forward with the jail expansion plus the razing of and re-creation of, if you will, the Immokalee Jail Center, a facility that has served us well for 40 years, but certainly it has -- it has reached its obsolescence. We do -- and we are going to get together with your staff as you direct, but I caution the board again. We do have some transportation issues out to the Immokalee area, and until we can satellite communications and have our judiciary given the latitude of having microwaved imaging and being able to actually hold court over these new technological devices, we will have to suffer with the transportation issues, and we can't expand Immokalee beyond those considerations. But we do have a direction for the future. I think as limited as the space is over here on this campus, we have to consider vertical structures which the V Group has proposed and did make me aware of. We are not opposed to vertical structures and expanding the jail into a vertical orientation. That's all I really have to say. I appreciate the board's assertiveness in this, the initiative that you show, the cooperation of your staff. And we look forward to working with you in the future on seeing this come to fruition. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Thank you, Sheriff Hunter. I did want to also add a subcommittee, the Productivity Committee, I think, is a good third eye, a non-governmental eye to sit on that committee if they have the time to take it up. And, Commissioner Berry, I'll ask that you relay that to them. Mr. Fernandez, do you feel that you have been given sufficient direction on this matter to proceed? MR. FERNANDEZ: I believe I have, Mr. Chairman. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. With nothing further on that, I would like to thank everyone. Thank the V Group, for your presentation. And we will continue on till a recommendation comes before the board for definitive action. Item #BE1 ESTABLISHHENT OF RESERVE OF $150,000 EACH YEAR TO FUND RECONSTRUCTION OF OUTER HALF NAPLES PIER IN THE YEAR 2000, CATEGORY A, TOURIST DEVELOPMENT FUNDS - APPROVED SUBJECT TO INTERLOCAL AGREEMENT WITH CITY We're to Item 8(E)(1) under county administrator. This is to establish a reserve of $150,000 each year, a total of $450,000 to fund reconstruction of the outer half of the Naples Pier in the year 2000. This is a Category A Tourist Development Fund request. Good morning, Miss Gansel. MS. GANSEL: Good morning, Commissioners. Jean Gansel. This is a request that you have seen before the City of Naples had requested the $450,000 over a three-year period; however, the -- a local ordinance wouldn't permit for this expenditure. You have since amended the ordinance to allow up to $250,000 a year for the reconstruction of the outer portion of the pier. This application is requesting you set up a reserve fund to allow for that. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Motion to approve. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Commissioner Constantine. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Mr. Chairman, obviously we amended it to allow us to move forward and do this. However, during the past several months between the parking issue and threats to charge admission to the pier and limit access to the pier and take away parking near the pier and elsewhere, it seems we need to be very careful if we're going to move forward and assist the city in any project like this. If the county is going to assist in reconstruction -- and, indeed, I think we should -- we should have some expectation of unfettered access to that for the life of that reconstruction. And the only way to achieve that is through an interlocal agreement. And I think we need to go ahead and approve the funding but we need to do that subject to an interlocal agreement that the county residents will have complete and open access to this and the parking near the facility as well for the life of the reconstruction. It would be a shame for the county to participate and a year from now city council or three years from now, or any period of time, the next few years, city council to decide that that they were then going to limit access to the pier. And it seems to me a very important issue. Obviously, we should participate, but obviously the residents should have access to the pier as well. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I think we need to go one step further, and it's not just about residents; it's about tourism. And that pier is kind of a -- I mean, it's a landmark that we all enjoy whether you live in the city or you live outside of the city. The past contributions from the county side to that, I think, have been appropriate and necessary. But I agree, there needs to be an interlocal agreement, because we do have a -- we wouldn't fund an organization that then can turn around and affect the operation of that organization the next day. I think the city has shown us extreme willingness, but just as we also suspect future boards -- I believe as you did earlier, Commissioner Mac'Kie, with the jail issue -- we don't know what future boards are going to do. We don't know what the future council is going to do, so I'll support a interlocal agreement that deals with the access question on this, but I think we need to go ahead and take action to do this -- COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Mr. Chairman, I make a motion that we approve the item subject to an interlocal agreement between the city and county for unfettered access to the pier. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I already made a motion. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: We do have a motion. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I'm sorry. I didn't realize. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: We had a motion on the floor, a motion to approve as is. Commissioner Mac'Kie, would you be willing to amend that motion to include what Commissioner Constantine has outlined? COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I would be willing to amend it to include an interlocal agreement that allows county residents to have the same access as city residents, even though recognizing that this is tourist development money, I'd like to -- you know, the public perception is so confused anyway about what tourist development tax money is, and I'm afraid that this will only add to that confusion, because it will give the misimpression that this is county tax money being used to build the pier when, in fact, of course, it's tourist money paid primarily by coastal area hotels. Nevertheless, if the requirement is that the access to the pier be equal for city and county residents, I think that's a noble goal. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I just like the idea of not charging admission to the pier. Let's see if they'd sign on to that. I mean, that's -- that's kind of always been the issue is every now and then -- and it gets defeated. You know, they come up with charging admission, and it gets shot down, and I expect it will in the future, but maybe the city would be willing to sign onto an interlocal agreement for ten or twenty years that says no admission charge will be charged at the pier. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I like the idea, too, and certainly would like not to see any admission charge on the pier. It just -- I think we're tying things together that don't belong that way when we have our parks department charging fees for use of our facilities and this is -- CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: But there is a line of separation there. And here what we're talking about using is tax dollars to fund a pier that right now its operation is known, and it's known not to charge either residents or tourists for access to it. And I think we would like that operation to continue for a reasonable period of time if we're going to make a funding decision, because that's part of my funding decision. If there was a charge for getting on the pier, I may not be as willing to use tourist tax money because there's a revenue source that would go to the city. That's part of my decis -- it has nothing to do with city-county residents as much as it is, here's the operation; let's ensure that operation is continued in that same form for a reasonable duration if this funding mechanism is going to be used. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: What kind of duration do you have in mind? COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: The life of -- the expected life of the reconstruction. If this has a 20-year life to it, then it should be for the same term. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: That's pretty much where I was going. I don't know if -- and kind of like beach renourishment. You can call it a seven- to ten-year life. Well, the pier, is the construction a 20-year life? And if so -- if we're going to fund 20 years of use, then -- with this then -- let's just say let's enter discussions with that in mind that the operation be locked into a interlocal agreement for the period of the -- for the duration of the extent of the construction. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And obviously the interlocal agreement will come back to us for review. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: And to the city council. Again, there's no adversarial position here. I think it's just a basis of funding an operation that is important to the whole community. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Couple of important distinctions, too: The parks programs that charge are for programs. You don't have to pay to get into the park, and -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: You have to pay to park to get to the park. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: And you have to pay to park to get to the pier. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: You're talking about beach parking, though, not the county parks. Again, let's not marry two unrelated issues between county parks operation and this single point so -- COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Could we have the motion repeated, because I'm not clear on what it is? CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Just a second. Let me -- Commissioner Norris has been trying to get in here so -- COMMISSIONER NORRIS: There's a point here. I know Commissioner Mac'Kie suggested that we make an interlocal agreement treating city and county residents alike, and I can't support that language. It's either everybody or nobody. I mean, it's a tourist attraction. I'm afraid that under her language that would -- that would allow the city to -- to charge tourists or people who do not live in the area but not anyone who lives in Collier County. And then that's not really what I'd be intending to do here. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Then it'd be irresponsible of us to fund it through Category A Tourist Development Fund if they could be charged. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: But keep in mind there is a real separation, and we know -- and Mr. Olliff knows better than anybody that the cost of building facilities is what we're spending the tourist tax money on. It's the maintenance costs, ongoing costs that sometimes we find ourselves wanting to charge fees for. So I don't think that's an unreasonable request. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Mr. Fernandez. MR. FERNANDEZ: Mr. Chairman, I'd like Mr. Olliff to speak about the commitment we've had on the issue of access of county residents. But before he does that, I'd like to add that we have a precedent on this issue of Florida boating improvement funds, that if I'm not mistaken, they always carry a requirement that the county not charge access to boat ramps that are constructed with state money; is that accurate, Tom? MR. OLLIFF: That's correct. MR. FERNANDEZ: So that -- that precedent really does exist with state money -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: You wouldn't relate it to tourist tax money, is that your -- MR. FERNANDEZ: Well, the concept of a contribution coming from another source and, therefore, with that contribution comes the requirement that it's not appropriate for you to charge even though there are ongoing maintenance costs associated with the operation of the facility. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Mr. Olliff. MR. OLLIFF: Just for the commission's benefit, I think -- the county administrator and I went down to talk about the beach parking interlocal agreement, and when discussing the ability to tie in a guaranteed continued public access for county residents freely as it currently exists, there didn't seem to be any problem with that at all on the part of the city. So I don't think this is a new concept, and it doesn't seem to be one that the city is going to balk at at all. So I think our ability to be able to do the same type thing for the pier would probably be readily accepted. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I don't have any problem with equal county and city. I wonder if we need to get into the business of whether or not they need to charge fees for maintenance and operation of the pier? CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Well, I have to agree with Commissioner Norris, and that's kind of the basis that I was coming from. Tourist development taxes are to be used for just that, tourist development. And if -- you know, again, the operational control of the pier rests solely with the city, and we need to recognize that, as does the placement of concessionaires and revenues derived from concessionaires on the pier. That goes to the city, also. We don't share in that, and the tourist tax fund doesn't share in it. And that's fine. There's no city-county issue here. I think the issue is simply, if tourist taxes are to be used for capital improvements, we need to make sure that the duration of improvements are available to the tourist as they are today -- as they are anticipated today. That's the issue. Whether it rests in the city or county should be immaterial. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I agree. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: So I think all we're asking is that -- that for the duration of the improvements, that there be no fees charged for access to the pier for tourists or city or county residents. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I guess I'll amend my motion that way so that we can propose that to city council, and we'll get their response as we always would when we're negotiating an interlocal agreement. I don't know if that's a problem, so let's propose it. And if it is a problem, I'm sure we'll hear back from them. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: And the flip side is, if it's a problem, then they have to look at it as a general fund expenditure instead of a tourist tax expenditure, and that's a whole 'nother argument. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Right. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: If we're dealing with city-county residents, it becomes general fund. But we're talking about tourism. I think that's the difference here. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: So my motion is -- COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Restate your motion, please. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: My motion is for approval, subject to negotiating an interlocal agreement with the City of Naples, for the continued operation of the pier at a no charge -- on a no charge to city, county, or tourist for the duration of the improvements funded by the tourist tax grant. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Second. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Thank you. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Would it be fair to describe that as unfettered access to the public? I'm just trying to get as few words as possible. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: I think that's what I said. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Thanks. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: You're welcome. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: So if there is a guardhouse -- no, I'm sorry. Never mind. Wrong issue. Okay. We have a motion and a second. Any discussion on the motion? Seeing none, all those in favor signify by saying aye. Opposed? (No response.) CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Motion carries five, zero, with the emphasis that that's not a city-county issue; it's a tourist tax issue. Attention media, it's a tourist tax issue. Thank you. Item #8E2 CONSIDERATION TO FUND OFFICE OF CAPITAL PROJECT HANAGEHENT $91,080 FOR MANAGEMENT OF BEACH PROJECTS, CATEGORY A, TOURIST DEVELOPMENT - APPROVED Item 8(E)(2), consider funding office of capital projects management 91,000 for beach projects, Category A. Ms. Gansel. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Motion to approve. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Second. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Any discussion or questions of Ms. Gansel? Seeing none -- COHMISSIONER BERRY: I have one. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Oh, I'm sorry. I'm a little too quick here. COHMISSIONER BERRY: It talks about inlets here. I believe this is the one? There is an inlet in Everglades City, and I wondered why that was not included? MS. GANSEL: Okay. This is not -- we will be including that inlet in the new guidelines for Category A. The executive summary that we have here is requesting OCPH fees for the projects that are listed on page seven of the executive summary. These are the only projects that were being budgeted for this year. The Everglades City inlet will be included as an approved project and will come forward with request for funding in the future. Okay? COHMISSIONER BERRY: Great. Thanks. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I think it's important to note the TDC recommendation on this. COHHISSIONER HAC'KIE: Yup. Just like every year. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Which is not to pay OCPH for any of the work done on beach renourishment items. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Which they do that every year. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Every year. I just wanted it noted. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: At least it was a four-three vote this year. Okay. We have a motion and a second on the floor. favor signify by saying aye. Opposed? (No response.) CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Motion carries five to zero. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Yes. We're moving in the right direction. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Anyone want to guess where I fell on that one? All those in Item #8E3 APPROVAL OF FUNDING THE NAPLES AREA CHAMBER OF COHMERCE $75,000 FOR FULFILLMENT, ADVERTISING AND PROMOTION CATEGORY, TOURIST DEVELOPMENT FUNDS - APPROVED Item 8(E)(3), approve funding for the Naples Area Chamber of Commerce -- COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Motion to approve the item. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Second. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Motion and second. Anything unusual or strange, Ms. Gansel? MS. GANSEL: No. This is actually the second part of another item that you had approved a couple weeks ago. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Correct. Any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor signify by saying aye. Opposed? (No response.) CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Motion carries five, zero. MS. GANSEL: Thank you, Commissioners. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Thank you, Ms. Gansel. Item #8E4 FY 97 THIRD QUARTER REVENUE REPORT - PRESENTED Item 8(E)(4), third-quarter revenue report. We have Mr. Smykowski stepping up to the plate on this one. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: As he's preparing, I wonder if I could ask Mr. Fernandez when we might expect that this report and also expenditures? We talked about that this last budget cycle, that as soon as we could implement it, we would have not just the revenue, but also expenditure reports on a quarterly basis. MR. FERNANDEZ: First quarter of FY98. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: Thank you, sir. MR. SMYKOWSKI: For the record, Michael Smykowski, budget director. What the commission has before them today is a third-quarter revenue report. It compares actual revenues received to budgeted revenues. It's included as attachment on page three for the major intergovernmental revenues, your major enterprise fund revenues, impact fees, and beach parking revenues collected from October 1st, 1996 through June 30th, which is through three-quarters of fiscal year 1997. I'll just hit the important notes. Within the intergovernmental revenue categories, state revenue sharing and state sales tax revenue estimates through the end of FY97 are higher than initially projected due to better-than-anticipated collections. In addition, in the revenue-sharing category, the month of June is the close out of the state's fiscal year, and if there is any residual additional money to be received, we receive that windfall in that month, and accordingly have adjusted our figures upward. Sales tax revenue would be slightly -- 400,000 above projections, and revenue sharing, 354,000 above projections. And as part of the budget public hearing documents, which were distributed on Friday, the board will have additional latitude to either fund increase reserves, affect the millage rate, or fund additional capital projects or programs. Those decisions the board will be asked to make tomorrow night in adopting the tentative millage rate. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: With the found money amount being how much? MR. SMYKOWSKI: The total magnitude of the found money is $1.4 million in nice round numbers. And that's a function the additional money here as well as the ability based on the higher-than-projected collections this year being able to increase next years projections as well. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: So potentially a really nice picture there for the taxpayer. MR. SMYKOWSKI: Yes. And although that may be impacted somewhat due to the -- we'll have a discussion later on after the meeting today regarding Marco Island and the sharing of sales tax revenues with the new city which may impact us as well. So -- but hopefully we'll have some late-breaking information for you certainly by tomorrow night's public hearing. In terms of the rest of the report, within the gas tax collections, they're all doing fine with some minor exceptions, but they're all within the -- state law says you can only appropriate 95 cents on the dollar, and all our projected gas tax revenues are within that five percent limit. Water and sewer revenues are doing slightly -- slightly better than anticipated as projected previously due to a private contractor performing construction demolition. Landfill tipping fees are slightly less than budget. The last important thing to note -- and I've included some graphs just to demonstrate -- the large projected surplus in both building permits as well as the impact fees' collections this year. There were record construction values of permits issued in June and July of this fiscal year as there were large-scale multifamily projects permitted during that time period. As a result, we received a big windfall in both building permit revenue and impact fee revenue sources attributable, again, to those large one-time permits, essentially record value of dollars permitted. The final category is beach parking. That's slightly behind what we had projected in the budget, but in terms of the 1.4 million, nets out the projected shortfall in beach parking. So, again, it is for the general fund as a whole a $1.4 million surplus as a result of additional collections this year as well as increase in collections next year. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: That's 1.4 for the general fund alone? MR. SMYKOWSKI: Yes. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Okay. MR. SMYKOWSKI: Yes. In terms of this report, the only revenues that accrue to the general fund are revenue sharing, sales tax, and beach parking. The impact fee funds, obviously, are geared toward construction, and essentially they're just increasing the reserves for future growth-related capital projects within the respective areas. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: And I'm sorry. I came in on the tail end of that. When we went through budget and we did anticipated revenues through the fiscal year to establish a millage rate, we looked at things such as carry forward and so forth. Based on this third-quarter report, are we adjusting that up or down, and if so, how much to the general fund? MR. SMYKOWSKI: Yes. Overall, Commissioner, $1.4 million, and that's between additional collections anticipated to be received in this fiscal year as well as being able to marginally ratchet up next year's budget based on this year's collections. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. So we're at 1.4 to the good, where general fund is concerned, more than we anticipated during our budget deliberations? MR. SMYKOWSKI: That is correct. And -- well, the purpose of this as I indicated back during the budget workshop, we try to time this, the presentation of the third-quarter report to roughly coincide with your public hearings to give you the benefit of the most up-to-date fiscal information as it pertains to the millage rates. And I indicated -- you may have been out of the room -- there are some questions related to sharing of sales tax revenues and revenue sharing with the city of Marco Island, and we're going to try to resolve those. Perhaps Mr. Weigel may cover that. If not, though, there is a meeting with the attorney's office right after the board meeting, so we'll try to bring you the latest and greatest information certainly by tomorrow night. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I'd say we're going -- we begin wading into them today, but I doubt "resolve" is quite the word that -- but that may be on the horizon but not in the immediate future. Any question of Mr. Smykowski? CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. Thank you. MR. SHYKOWSKI: Okay. Thank you. Appreciate it. And as I indicated, we'll have -- there's one page in the budget handouts which you've already received for tomorrow night's public hearing that identifies the scenario of the additional money, what the rec -- proposed uses are. And the only thing that may change in any of those recommendations would be subject to any late-breaking news regarding sharing sales tax revenues with the city of Marco Island. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: We can expect everyone who didn't get everything they were looking for to come back and ask for it tomorrow night. Okay. Put everyone on notice. Item #9A SETTLEHENT OFFER IN SHARON ROBERTS V. COLLIER COUNTY - APPROVED Okay. We are to Item 9(A), recommendation that BCC accept a settlement offer in Robert v. Collier County. Mr. Pettit. MR. PETTIT: Good morning, Commissioners. For the record, my name is Mike Pettit from the County Attorney's Office. And I'm here this morning to present a settlement offer that we have received in the case of Roberts versus Collier County. The settlement offer is $44,500. My understanding of that offer -- and to the extent the board is going to consider that offer and act upon it, I would request and recommend that they make this part of their understanding for the record that this would resolve all claims that have been made or could have been made relating to this matter that's been raised by lawsuit, including any claims for attorneys fees, costs, damages, and so forth; and that in addition -- and this a little usual, 'cause often we have a settlement document prepared. That has not been drafted at this point, but that that settlement document would make clear that this is a settlement based on expenses and uncertainties in litigation. There is no admission of fault by either party. And with those understandings, I'm here to answer any questions. Risk management department has reviewed this, and I think we're both in agreement that this is a reasonable settlement proposal under the circumstances. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Motion to approve. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Second. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: As much as I dislike settlements, the mere cost of being involved in these forces our hand on some of these more than I would like. So do we have any further questions? Seeing none, I'll call the question. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Opposed? (No response.) CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Motion carries five to zero. I want to ask the board a question, because this case brought to mind an ability we have that is not exercised, I think, typically out of fear of extreme criticism. But I would have liked the opportunity to confer with the four of you on the merits or demerits of this particular case and to express to you some concerns and points I had, but by doing so in a public meeting before a settlement is accomplished, it may have been exposing the county or exposing our counsel or exposing things that we would want to hold until a trial date. There may be at some time in the future -- and I considered it on this one -- a reason to call -- I believe it's called an executive session -- is that correct? MR. PETTIT: That's correct. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: -- in which discussing elements such as settlement offers in lawsuits that may have a long-term affect or may have a serious impact on this county can only be done in closed doors without divulging the material. I think the reason the board has typically not done it in the past is because we want everything we do to be as open as possible. But there are some cases such as this that I would have liked the opportunity to have a little more input from the four of you and expressing things to you that I can't do here today. So I may be making that request in the future if a case similar to this comes forward. And I just wanted you to be aware of that simply because I think our hands are a little bit tied in this case and similar cases more so than it needs to be by law. And that's why the law is there, to allow us to do it. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Mr. Chairman, we can certainly have that discussion. We made a conscious decision not to do that, I think it was in 1994, or shortly after it first become legal for us, and the decision or the discussion of the board at that time had been the importance of that perception. You and I and all of us know the reason and the common-sense reasons for going behind closed doors and trying to discuss -- not even so much on a case like this but on those where you're dealing with items where the county might want to be involved -- talk about what your bid is going to be, obviously someone can bid a dollar more. There are clearly instances, but the public perception of the board going behind closed doors really raised the board's attention enough in '94 that we opted not to do that. We can have that discussion again if another issue raises, but I have a discomfort level just for the perception factor. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I agree with that. I just -- I hate writing checks with taxpayer dollars without being able to confer with all of you the way I would like to in order to make a good decision. And so I understand the perception but -- Mr. Fernandez. MR. FERNANDEZ: Mr. Chairman, I believe the law requires a certain process that may address that public perception issue, and that is that there be a record kept of the proceeding and that the record is made public after the matter is resolved. I believe that's accurate. MR. PETTIT: That is correct. MR. FERNANDEZ: So that might help with the public perception that you're, in fact, withholding something that is the public's business. This, in fact, will get revealed at an appropriate point in time in the process. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: I'd just like to support you on that, Commissioner Hancock, that there are absolutely times when the public can be better served if we are allowed to make more informed decisions than we are allowed to when we can only deliberate these things separately. And based on the fact that there is a public record that's available, I would like to revisit that and reconsider having executive session where it's necessary for litigation. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I have asked Mr. Pettit to, on cases in the future, to advise me when he is getting mixed signals from the five individual commissioners as he meets with them. Obviously, I have not asked him, nor would I, to divulge anything that is said to him by another commissioner. That would be a violation of the Sunshine Law. But if the direction from the board is lacking some clarity as he meets individually to explain the elements of the case, that to let me know, and I may bring that issue forward for a necessary executive session. I don't want to do it, but I'm afraid of -- as we saw in the sheriff's office. He settled one case, and the next thing you know, four others were filed immediately. And it's those seeking settlements, the quick dollar, as opposed to necessarily having a valid reason for filing a lawsuit, that I'm trying to avoid. I'm not, you know, discrediting the merits of their case, but the appearance was quite obvious. One person got a settlement and all of a sudden everybody else jumped on the bandwagon. COHMISSIONER BERRY: It's called due process. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Yes. Yeah, it is. And it's tax dollars we're dealing with. So anyway I just wanted to make that point, because you may be hearing more about it in the future. Hopefully we can avoid it. MR. PETTIT: Thank you. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Thank you, Mr. Pettit. Item #9B DISCUSSION REGARDING MARCO ISLAND INCORPORATION - SERVICE TO MARCO ISLAND TO REMAIN STATUS QUO UNTIL SUCH TIME THAT CITY IS ABLE TO TAKE OVER THOSE FUNCTIONS Next item under County Attorney, 9(B), Harco Island incorporation issue. I asked Mr. Weigel to kind of give us a heads up on what we're going to be looking at. And before you do that, Mr. Weigel, I need to express -- I have received two phone calls this weekend from individuals who are involved with the incorporation movement of Marco Island. There has been, apparently, some discussion down there and someone has actually cited our code enforcement department as making some statements about not providing certain services to Marco Island. I do not have specifics or particulars on that, but we'll gather them and turn them over to Mr. Fernandez. The bottom line is until I hear otherwise, everything is status quo. We have a fiscal year we're looking at with anticipated dollars being spent on Marco Island and services being handled on Marco Island for which we are collecting taxes. We have a responsibility to provide those services. There are some areas in which we have long-term commitments that maybe starting next year that the city would then take over that we have a reason to discuss with them and some other legal issues. But what I do want to stress to the people of Marco Island is your incorporation vote, whether you voted for or against it, to date does not have a fiscal impact or an impact on what county services are to be provided from solid waste collection to code enforcement to anything else. We still will perform that function until such time as shown that they are both willing and able to take those functions over. However, I think, new projects may be a little questionable. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: We need to be a little careful saying until when they're willing and able, because they may never be willing to take it over as long as we make a statement like that. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Well, at a point they're going to take it over whether they want it or not. But we would like to -- if they want to take it over, let's say, earlier than they have to, and they wish to do that, then I don't think we'd have a problem doing so. That was the intent of that statement. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Well, the vote even to establish a city council will not be until November the 6th, so they can't do anything until that time. I mean, there's no way. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I think we just need to be sensitive to the idea that since you voted to incorporate, the county's going to abandon you. That simply isn't the case. It's not going to happen, and I don't think anyone on this board would even advocate that. So I wanted that message to be very, very clear to the residents of Marco that the county is here and will be here even after they assume their cityhood responsibilities, just as we are in areas involved with the City of Naples and the City of Everglades. Mr. Weigel, with that, I will turn it over to you to kind of give us a little bit of a directional path here as we enter a very long and strange phase of government. MR. WEIGEL: Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Commissioners. And you hit the nail essentially on the head. And all I'll really be giving is some detail to what you said, but you're absolutely correct in your statements. I also at the beginning of my discussion here would like to provide for the record -- and will transmit into the record with the reporter here the memo to the Board of County Commissioners from Mary Morgan, the supervisor of elections, regarding Marco incorporation. And this is the transmittal of the official results and a certificate of the Collier County Canvassing Board to which the County Attorney serves as counsel. And, again, to note for the record the canvassing board is providing their certifi -- certificate indicating that of the total 6,523 votes cast on House Bill 1729 in this election, 3,221 were for the incorporation of Marco Island per House Bill 1729, and 3,079 of those votes were against the incorporation of Marco Island per House Bill 1729. And this is the original certificate signed by the canvassing board, and it includes also a precinct breakout, and that's being provided for the record of this board and for the clerk herewith. That being done, just to note that the initial election for city council is a mail-ballot election, and it shall occur, as Mr. Norris indicated, on November 6th of 1997. By the House Bill 1729, the charter that was voted upon, it is -- by law must occur within 70 days from the date of voter approval of the charter referendum, being this past week, August 28th, I believe. The qualifying period for candidates for the council is approximately 30 days. There is a computation method within the charter following the charter approval. The supervisor of elections is receiving petition applications for candidacy for city council candidates at this time and has received several, she has indicated. Because Collier County falls under a -- as a preclearance county still with the Federal Department of Justice, the election of the city council will also require preclearance with the Department of Justice. I've had communications with the Department of Justice in this regard. They opted, and I think rightly so, not to include prequalification for an election, the date of which was not set, until subsequent to the -- their preclearance of the initial referendum election that was just held this past week. But the supervisor of elections and the county attorney, I think, find it incumbent ourselves to provide -- since there is no Marco government yet, to provide the necessary data and transmittals to the Department of Justice for the upcoming election. It does provide within the charter that the cost of the first election of the City of Marco Island is to be reimbursed to, patens, the county, within twelve months of the election. I would suggest that the preclearance costs be a part of these election costs as an appendage to this election. Going on further then, there are a few very cogent items within the charter which Chairman Hancock addressed briefly, and that is: During a period of transition, and I quote from page 27 of the charter, until such time as the city adopts a comprehensive plan, the applicable provisions of the comprehensive plan and all existing land development regulations of Collier County, Florida, as the same exists on the day the city commences corporate existence, shall remain in effect as the city's transitional comprehensive plan and land development regulations. It does further state, and I quote, however, all planning functions, duties, and authority shall thereafter be vested in the city council of Marco Island which shall be deemed the local planning agency until the council establishes a separate local planning agency. This language is important because it indicates that the vesting occurs in the city council of Marco Island of which there is none until after the election and they take their seats on the Monday following the November 6th election. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Now, Mr. Weigel, does that mean that the day that the council is installed, that they immediately assume all the zoning functions? MR. WEIGEL: It would appear under this charter that that is the case. And you get me a little ahead of myself, but I think what we'll find is that with the very first meeting of this Marco city council, it may well be appropriate -- and I, of course, look forward to the meeting scheduled this afternoon, which incidentally I will not be at because I'm going to be at the EIS conferences with the Army Corps of Engineers this afternoon. But with all of the other able staff -- you'll have very able staff there. They'll be discussing some of the idiosyncracies beyond mere budget items of this board, but also into the administrative effects of this incorporation effort here. What I'm getting to is at the first city counsel meeting, I expect that there may be an opportunity -- and perhaps important for us to bring before them -- a potential for some interlocal agreements for the continuation of some of the services that they will not be equipped to do for an determinant period of time. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I think that brings up an important property-rights issue, because I read something in the paper from one of the pro incorporation folks that had said that nothing can be rezoned on Marco Island anymore. And as I understand what you have read, the authority that the Board of County Commissioners has had in effecting zoning on Marco Island continues until such time as a city council is in place. Once that council is in place, they will then assume that responsibility or ask it to be delegated -- or the county -- you know, there will be a relationship at that point. But until that council is seated, for the purposes of both zoning and Growth Management Plan amendments and action in those areas on Marco Island, continues to be the purview of this board. We are not prohibited from making any zoning changes on Marco Island; is that correct? MR. WEIGEL: I think that is correct. I wish it were clearer in the charter. However, there is another paragraph on page 28 that for the record and any publication, et cetera, coming from this meeting, it may be helpful. And, again, you're leading into it perfectly here. All powers and duties of the Collier County Planning Commission and any board of adjustment and appeals created pursuant to statutes, trade codes, and county commission of Collier County, Florida, as set forth in these transitional zoning and land-use regulations, shall be vested in the city council of Marco Island until such time as the city council delegates it to someone else. And, again, there's a requirement that a city council be present and sitting. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: David, my question is, assuming we continue to perform these functions between now and November or whenever the city council is in place, are the costs associated with those functions something that we can pass on to the City of Marco Island once they have a budget? MR. WEIGEL: Well, I think that costs we can pass on. Some of the things that we'd be looking at in regard to costs are often permit fees or application fees or petition fees which are administrative. The payment of a expenditure is, in essence, incurred by the county to process the petition or application or permit application that's come to the county in the first place. So I don't think that there's necessarily a question in regard to those kinds of fees. In regard to code enforcement and other activities in the future, that, again, we'll have to look at very closely. But it seems to me that at least until that initial situation of the city council in place, that Marco Island will not operate in a governmental vacuum and that the county will exercise the prerogatives that exist under its current codes and ordinances. They is, however, in here the indication that new planning, new zoning, new amendments affecting the island should not -- will not change for them, because as of the incorporation date, in essence, the planning and zoning codes generally are in place. I think that that may be distinguished from current applications and petitions in process with staff which may be completed prior to the first meeting of the city council. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: For example, code enforcement actions that occur on Marco Island between now and the 6th of November, the cost of that investigation or -- can that be passed on to the City of Marco? MR. WEIGEL: Well, I'm not sure that it can be, but in a sense there's no -- the cost of investigations are borne by the taxpayers, generally, under our set up until there is a determination and an adjudication by the code enforcement of some kind of costs, keeping in mind that the Code Enforcement Board activities are -- on the outset they are corrective and asking for correction in nature. If they are corrected, there may be no costs or fines assessed whatsoever in an initial Code Enforcement Board meeting. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: What I've asked Mr. Fernandez to do -- and obviously what I'm sure he was going to do anyway -- is to have his staff review where there are currently services provided to what's now the City of Marco that, you know, we don't have to -- we're no longer as of the effective date of the creation of Marco Island -- the City of Marco Island, we are no longer obligated to pay for and see if -- even though we may continue to provide those services if there's going to be some need for interlocal agreements or contractual arrangements with the City of Marco Island similar to what we have with the City of Naples, to be sure that the burden of paying for the services there should be borne by the municipality are, in fact, borne by the city. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I guess I take it from a slightly different approach, and that is that on October 1, we will be collecting taxes from Marco Island as if they were continuing as a part of the county. And the level of taxes we have assessed this year anticipated continuing certain functions through the full fiscal year, such as code enforcement on Marco Island. So from my standpoint, the residents of Marco have paid for that for the coming fiscal year. My question becomes, where is the separation between what has normally -- would have been a county government service and what is an additional service that the city would require? And that's where the separation of cost comes from, because otherwise we have taxed them for services and then saying we're not going to provide them. And I -- I think we may run afoul of -- COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: You're absolutely right. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: -- of the law there. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: What will actually happen, I'm sure, is as they put their own services on line, we'll find ourselves sometime next year having to actually refund them taxes that we collected to provide those services and, you know, a prorated portion of those will have to go to them once they start providing the services for themselves. That's what we'll have to do. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Or we could simply say we'll continue to do it through October 1st of next year, period. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Or that, yes. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: And you have until the -- and if you want to set up something earlier than that, fine, but we anticipated it, we budgeted for it, we'll provide it. And I think that we need to look at our own accounting, you know, and say, well, refunding them money based on what? I mean, based on how many code enforcement calls there is? I think that is an accounting nightmare. So that's where I come -- Commissioner Mac'Kie, so I guess I'm coming from a little different base. I do want the fairness issue, but the fairness comes on October 1st when they pay their taxes to the county for county services. And I say let's fulfill those services as anticipated and then when they have the ability to collect funds next year, take them over. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Well, that's exactly the kind of thing that I just would like to get a report from Mr. Fernandez on so that -- that we can have the benefit of his expertise on exactly how that ought to work. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: No disagreement there. Mr. Weigel, please continue. I'm sure we'll be interrupting periodically. MR. WEIGEL: Well, that's fine. You continue to lead into my next comment, which is fine, and that is, of course, that we must bear in mind that the City of Marco has no taxing ability. That is, it has an ability to tax, but it won't be -- it won't be administered and implemented until the fall of the following year and, therefore, although under the charter it has the opportunity to borrow up to $750,000 during this initial year, it -- not to speak for, you know, whoever the city council may be in the future, but the fact is that the realities are that they have no -- little or no funding sources from a local taxpayer base until a year from now when they've established a budget and determined their needs. And in the meantime, will have interacted with Collier County to determine what kind of services they wish to continue by means of interlocal agreement, both during this coming year but also for potentially years after that. As an aside, I note that there is a requirement that they do have police, minimally two police officers. And I know that we'll be discussing with the county administrator and his staff and probably the sheriff, also, the question about sheriff and police protection and how that interacts. Much of that is yet to unfold with the scheme the new city council may try to put together for that law enforcement aspect at the local level. Also, another thing that we'll be looking at very closely is the charter does discuss municipal service taxing units. There is the Marco Island MSTU generally for all of Marco Island. The charter does provide that these will continue in effect, that they do and may transfer over to the Marco Island city, but everything is copasetic to continue as currently projected in the budget process and the budgeting -- funding the millage for the MSTU at the present time. The Marco Island fire district is an independent district and it, again, is specifically provided for in the charter to transfer over to the city of Marco, but they've given leeway so that it can continue for a significant period of time with the -- with the approval of the city and the -- ultimately the fire commissioners of that district will continue on as advisory board members to the City of Marco fire district. And incidentally, in any transfer of MSTUs such as the fire district or another board -- excuse me, dependent MSTU, the assets and as well the liabilities would be transferring over as well as the requirement to honor all contracts that are currently ongoing for service and commodities and things of that nature to keep the MSTU going. A couple of other areas which are really more difficult, perhaps not so imminent to determine at this point, is in regard to cable services, specifically to the island, those cable services that may or may not be outside of the island. I have to say that as County Attorney, I'm not the guru of cable services, but we'll be looking at the comparisons with the City of Naples and those -- any kinds of changes that have to be made there forthwith. Local option gas taxes and revenue sharing, the charter provides that Marco -- the City of Marco is entitled to receive as of October 1st of 1997 the local option gas taxes. That, again, I think Mr. Smykowski and the group will be able to maybe comment rather quickly to the County Attorney's Office in that regard. And we'll it out and be able to report to you rather quickly what that really means. Revenue sharing is also an element that's important to the City of Marco. I do not have specific information to comment on that right now, but we're looking to get back to you there. That's pretty much the overview beyond some of the general statements which you made which were accurate. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Let me ask if the board's willing to give a little bit of direction here, because I think there's still some things out there that we'll want to keep abreast of. The first has already occurred. Mr. Weigel has done a preliminary review of the charter. I think what needs to be clear is the separation of responsibility, mandated versus optional. What does the charter require the city to take over, and what does the charter give them the authority to take over? Having a list of those two items will probably help us tremendously, because what will come before this board time and time again over the next couple of years is the establishment of a relationship between the City of Marco and Collier County to provide certain services. So knowing what's mandated versus optional in their charter should certainly help us. The second thing -- and you eluded to it briefly, Mr. Weigel -- is a fiscal evaluation of future revenues versus expenditures based on those mandated responsibilities. If we know we can -- we will be washing our hands of certain government functions at a given date, and we also know we will be losing certain revenues, the revenue versus expenditure bottom line effect to Collier County is going to be important to know as we go through this next year, this next fiscal year, to determine whether it has an impact on our '98-'99 budget. It will have an impact. The question is how much. And the third thing I think we need to do is establish a cost center. There are going to be requests made of the County Attorney's Office, possibly of Mr. Fernandez's office, and maybe of this board to provide some level of assistance as the city gets moving. I think we need to make a determination whether or not we can provide those at a cost center basis to be refunded out to the taxpayer, the general taxpayer in the county, or whether we wish not to provide those services at all. I think that would be a little tough to do. I think we do want to help them get moving properly but not at the -- not to the cost of the general taxpayer. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Thank you. That's exactly what my concern is, so I certainly would support that. And I wonder, Mr. Weigel, I think you told us, too, that the cost of the ballot for incorporation is something that will now not be borne by the general taxpayers, but by the City of Marco; am I right about that? MR. WEIGEL: Yes. The cost that -- we're talking now about the city council election. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Oh. But what about the cost of the incorporation vote itself? MR. WEIGEL: Well, that goes back to a kind of historical thought process of the county attorney and supervisor of elections is that the requestor of a ballot election should be responsible to pay that. It will be our intention to pass on that cost, also, although that is not specifically addressed in this charter. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: And if I were them, I wouldn't have addressed it either, but I think we as the board have to address it. If you request -- you know, it's kind of like the Gordon River Bridge. You know, it was a county project; the county paid for it. This is not a county project. And when we're not successful, there's no way to recoup the funds. But when they are successful, I think there is a responsibility to recoup the funds. My personal opinion, but I think that's another item we can add to our list of discussion, because they need to be notified. If they're 30 or 60 grand in the hole coming out of the chute, they need to know that. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I guess I'll even be rude enough to ask if there's a legal argument, a basis for asking them to pay for the prior five times. MR. WEIGEL: No. In fact, the case is that if they don't pass, they don't have to pay, because there's no one to assess it to. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: That's about 150 grand. MR. WEIGEL: Yeah. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I think, again, it's -- you know, we have to be a little bit fair. We don't penalize everyone who brings a ballot question forward if they're not successful no matter how much we'd like. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: We can try. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: But this one was successful, and I think we need to recoup those expenditures. That's the appropriate thing to do. Commissioner Berry. COHHISSIONER BERRY: You read the elements of the charter. Is this a charter that they drew up and then presented to the state? I'm just -- just for my clarification. I probably missed some of this but -- MR. WEIGEL: Yes. The answer is yes. It partoted fairly closely the most recent charter of two or four years ago -- COHMISSIONER NORRIS: '93. MR. WEIGEL: -- '93 -- four -- and it was pretty close to that with some changes. They had in bringing up this charter in it's initial form, they had some legal description discussion difficulties, and they revised that had so it didn't extend way up 951 and to 41 and things of that nature. But, yes, it's there. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: In accordance with that, their charter cannot bind this board. Their charter only deals with their home-rule authority. So anything in that charter that alludes to the county doing X or Y is, in my nonlegal opinion, nonbinding. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: It's good legal opinion. COHMISSIONER BERRY: What are the -- it may be a dumb question, but what are the legal boundaries of Marco Island? What area does this encompass? CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Start walking on the seawall. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: The water excluding Goodland. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: It's the physical island itself excluding Goodland. And there's a legal description of Goodland that was provided within the charter to exclude it, I believe. MR. WEIGEL: Yes, and it's -- it's always hard to read the legals -- or run the legals as we call it, but it extends in some places significantly out into water. Does not appear to go out on the highway outside of the -- the other side of the Jolly Bridge. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I've kind of outlined a couple of things we're requesting predominantly of Mr. Weigel and in part Mr. Fernandez to take a look at and bring back. I think we'd like to see that in written form first. And then if the board would like to request a presentation on specific items, go from that point. Is that acceptable to the balance of the board? COHMISSIONER NORRIS: I think if we just had a list of possible overlaps or questions that we would be able to use when we had people call in with their concerns. I think that's really all we need. But the bottom line is for the interim until November the 6th is status quo; is that correct? MR. WEIGEL: Yes. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: And I was a little confused that they became a city for local control, and my phone started ringing. Now, something's wrong with that but -- COHMISSIONER BERRY: Never had so many calls before. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Never heard from those two folks before but -- but either way, the point is well taken. It's status quo until the election, and at that point, the charter takes affect, and we need to know the elements of that charter and their impact. MR. WEIGEL: That's correct. And we will be bringing back to the board shortly as a regular agenda item the resolution ordering and calling the next election just as we do for any ballot election. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. Any further questions for Mr. Weigel? Seeing none, we have a couple of items left. Madam Court Reporter, it's -- we probably have about a half hour left. Do you need to take a break for about five minutes? COURT REPORTER: I need to make a paper change right now. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Let's accomplish both. Let's take five minutes. (A short break was held until 12:40 p.m.) CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Reconvene the board of commissioners meeting. We had just finished Item 9(B). Item #10A RESOLUTION 97-344 APPOINTING CLIFFORD WESLEY FLEGAL, JR. AND THOMAS LUGRIN; JOHN DOUGHERTY TO FULFILL REMAINDER OF MR. LUGRIN'S VACANT TERM - ADOPTED We're to Item 10(A), Board of County Commissioners. We have appointment of members to the Public Vehicle Advisory Committee. Do I have a motion or suggestion on that item? COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I'd like to suggest Clifford Wesley Flegal, Jr. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. The a -- we have an appointment of two new members here, one representing affiliated and one non-affiliated. Mr. Flegal is non-affiliated. We have two choices in the affiliated category, John Dougherty and Thomas Lugtin. MS. FILSON: And -- may I say something, please? CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: You certainly may. MS. FILSON: Mr. Lugtin is currently a member as a -- he's currently an alternate member and would like to be considered as a permanent member. And if you did appointment him as a permanent member, then you would have to appoint someone to fill the remainder of his alternate term. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. Do we have a recommendation for the affiliated position and the affiliated alternate position? COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Doesn't it make sense to appoint Mr. Lugtin to the -- as a regular member and then Mr. Dougherty, if that's how to say his name, as the alternate member in the affiliated category? CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: That makes all the sense in the world to me. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Then I would suggest that. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: I'll second those two motions. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. We have separate motions that combined will appoint Mr. Clifford Wesley Flegal, Jr. to the non-affiliated position, Mr. Lugtin to the affiliated position, and Mr. Dougherty to the alternate position for the remainder of Mr. Lugrin's term. Okay. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Opposed? (No response.) PUBLIC COHMENT - MARY DUNIVAN RE GOVERNOR'S COHMISSION ON SUSTAINABLE SOUTH FLORIDA CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Seeing none, we are to public comment on general topics. Do we have any speakers today, Mr. Fernandez? MR. FERNANDEZ: Yes, we had Mr. Ty Agoston. He was here earlier. He's gone. Mary Dunavan has asked to speak. MS. DUNAVAN: Good afternoon. Commissioners, my name is Mary Dunavan, and I have some information on sustainable -- the governor's commission on sustainable south Florida. You were talking about their implementing their plans and such to get the money for the counties. They have those plans, but you will be responsible for the taxes from your constituents out here that you have. You're the elected officials, and these people are not elected officials that sit on this commission. And they also have the answer for a crime-free community so -- and through that they will put us in town centers, and they'll have some policing by Americore, by equestrians or pedestrians. And -- so they have, they think, the answers. But it will be up to you to raise all your taxes, and they list a lot of them, like increased fines, raise your sales taxes for gas. And so you will have the brunt of raising those taxes to do that -- a lot of the things that they recommend. And they also have three or four possible reports on implementing the original report that they have out in 1995. They have a 1996 report and a 1997 report. And I would like to mention that even the news media, we have a TAG newsletter out, and I'm speaking for myself only, and I brought those in today, and the news media does know about sustainable south Florida. We were questioned on the U.N. agenda 21, and as you know, the news media a few weeks ago said quite a few days about having -- we have the right to know, but I want to know why we don't have the right to know the truth and so -- for that, I'll let it go. Thanks. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Thank you. Mr. Weigel, we continue to do hear about sustainable south Florida, the government's commission on that, and so forth. And I think I know the answer. I mean, they can write some cockamamie report that says we need to paint all our buildings purple, and that we can raise gas taxes to do it, and it doesn't mean that we as a local government are going to do it, nor have to. I'd like to answer once and for all the authority and funding issues of the sustainable south Florida document. What is the authority given that commission and it's -- you know, in other words, can they force the county's hand by any recommendation in that document? I believe the answer is no, but I want to know for sure. And even though they can make recommendations in there that the legislature allows funding options to accomplish certain -- to use someone else's term -- socialist agendas, that doesn't mean that we as a county are bound to do it. We will continue home-rule authority on those things. So I just want to answer once and for the authority and funding on that commission, because I don't agree with half of the stuff in that report as I have read it, but I didn't read it as a report that required any action on the part of this board, and I want to make sure that's the case. I think it would be helpful to Miss Dunavan also to have that answer. MR. WEIGEL: Okay. I'll do that. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Any more public speakers? MR. FERNANDEZ: No, Mr. Chairman. Item #12C1 APPLICATION BY FLORIDA CABLEVISION HANAGEHENT CORPORATION D/B/A TIHE WARNER CABLE FOR THE RENEWAL OF A CABLE FRANCHISE - APPROVED CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. Seeing none, we will go on to public hearings of which we have one today, Item 12(C)(1), recommendation to BCC consider application sent in by Florida Cablevision Management d/b/a Time Warner Cable for renewal of a cable franchise. Miss Merritt, good afternoon. MS. MERRITT: Good afternoon. For the record, Jean Merritt. You have for your consideration an application for renewal for a cable franchise from Florida Cablevision's Management Corporation doing business as Time Warner Cable. You've also received a proposed franchise agreement, but the one you are receiving today is the final version. The differences in the agreement are very slight and are only concerned with the correction of technical errors as well as this is a copy of the version that has been executed by the appropriate persons. This agreement is a result of a cooperative effort between the staff and the company, and it has been negotiated in an atmosphere of good faith, professionalism, and honest communication. The agreement is for 15 years, however, the contract calls for a performance review every four years, and at that time if both parties agree, modifications may be made to the contract. Given the upgrades and the rebuilding that the company is assuming, as well as investing in a considerable financial commitment, we believe the 15-year term is warranted. And at the same time, the four-year review process will allow us to react to any problems or changes that may occur as a result of rapid technological changes in the field. The agreement sets aside two channels for government use. One is available now, and the other one will be made available no later than September 1999. The county will make the second channel available to the Collier County school system. In addition, Time Warner Cable will make a one-time cash donation of $50,000 to the county for a boardroom enhancement media system that will greatly improve our efforts to televise these meetings as well as other meetings taking place in the boardroom. This cash payment is comparable to the contribution of Media One. Both are based on the numbers of subscribers. The cost of the donation will not be deducted from franchise fees. The agreement also speaks to customer service standards. And as a matter of fact, Time Warner Cable has always been very responsive to the county concerning complaints received. In a recent survey conducted for the county by an independent firm, the services offered by Time Warner Cable were found to be very acceptable by the majority of its customers. But the most important benefit to Time Warner Cable's customers will come as a result of the company's new rebuilding and upgrading of the system. A result will be to enhance the company's offerings thus giving its subscribers more channels and more choices. And we are pleased that those efforts will be completed by 1999. Again, I would like to remind you that one area the franchise agreement does not speak to is the rates for cable service. This is simply because the county in reality does not have authority or any significant latitude in this area. Sometime ago the Federal Communications Commission, FCC, signed an agreement with the company, and this agreement known as the social contract, effectively controls the company's rates and other allowable charges as well as sets limits for the raises the company can impose. In other words, the county has no control over the rates established by Time Warner Cable. The proposed franchise agreement allows for county inspection of books and records, dictates audits and insurance requirements, provides for the use and protection of confidential information, and requires an emergency alert system adhering to federal standards. The company has paid a $5,000 renewal fee as required by Collier County Code, Chapter 30, and will continue to pay the appropriate amount of franchise fees quarterly. The County Attorney's Office has looked at the agreement and has signed off on it. Staff believes we have a viable, fair, and responsible franchise agreement and recommends approval. Mr. Gene Benvenuto, general manager for Time Warner Cable, would like to say a few words. And after his brief remarks, we'll respond to questions. Thank you. MR. BENVENUTO: Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, Commissioners, ladies and gentlemen. For the record my name is Gene Benvenuto, general manager of Time Warner Cable here in Collier County. As you know, I'm here today to ask the board to approve Time Warner Cable's application for franchise renewal. Florida Cablevision Management Corporation, today doing business as Time Warner Cable, has operated cable systems in southwest Florida since the 1970s. Today we serve approximately 25,000 customers here in Collier County with over 550 miles of broad band cable television plant and over 60 miles of fiber optic backbone in place. In an era when telecommunication tools and technologies emerge at a rapid pace, it is important to know that Time Warner Cable is firmly committed to its core business, which is providing the best variety of quality entertainment and information available today. Our partnership with education through our Cable in the Classroom initiatives as well as our many community outreach programs only help to strengthen our commitment to the community. Time Warner Cable has worked with Jean Merritt and her staff, who by the way is -- I'm sure as you've heard -- is quite the tough negotiator, to place before you today a document that is fair and equitable both to Collier County residents and to Time Warner Cable. I'm pleased to tell you that I believe we have such a document before you today, and Time Warner Cable is in complete agreement with it. Therefore, I respectfully request and ask that you consider to approve it today. I want to thank Jean Merritt and her staff for their valuable assistance and patience in preparing this document. And, of course, Thank I'll be pleased to answer any questions if you may have them. you. very difficult agreement together. CHAIRNLAN HANCOCK: Any questions at this time? Seeing none, do we have any speakers on this item? MR. FERNANDEZ: No. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: We have none registered? Any questions of Miss Merritt? Jean, I think your office has again done a good job on putting a I think people who take the time to either attend these meetings or watch them on TV are going to see some very direct benefits. And I appreciate the input, because we get a lot of comments on why is my cable rate this and why is my cable rate that. And we as a board have no authority in establishing those rates. And Iwd like to use every opportunity to restate that. So Iwll say it again. We as a board have no authority to establish cable rates. So I appreciate it, and is there a motion on the agreement? COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Close the public hearing? CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I will close the public hearing and then ask for a motion on the agreement. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Motion to approve. COMMISSIONER MAC~KIE: Second. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Motion and second. Any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor signify by saying aye. Opposed? (No response.) CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Item carries five, zero. Thank you. MS. MERRITT: Thank you very much. Item #14A COHMISSIONER BERRY RE CRITICISM FROM MEDIA RELATING TO THE FEBRUARY GOLF TOURNAMENT AND MEETING WITH CLERK BROCK - COUNTY ATTORNEY WEIGEL PROVIDED AN UPDATE TO THE BCC OF SAID MEETING CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: We are to -- I'd like to ask if the board would like to -- in future agendas, I'd to get staff communication done first and then BCC communications. I'd like to flip those on future agendas, 15 and 14. Does anyone have a problem with that? Okay. I prefer to hear from Mr. Weigel and Mr. Fernandez first and then go to the board and wrap it up that way. So if there's no question with that, we'll start flipping those on the agenda. Okay. Mr. Weigel, do you have anything to add? MR. WEIGEL: No, thank you. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: And, Mr. Fernandez? MR. FERNANDEZ: No, sir. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. Commissioner Mac'Kie? COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: No. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Commissioner Norris? COHMISSIONER NORRIS: No. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Commissioner Berry? COHMISSIONER BERRY: I will be brief. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. COHMISSIONER BERRY: The last few weeks at least one of us up here at this board table have received a barrage of criticism in the news media in regard to a golf tournament that was held here in February. And the implication was -- or had to do with dollar amounts, approvals, et cetera, and I was very concerned about this, decided to have a meeting with the clerk to just establish if we, as commissioners, had done something that precluded him from getting all information that he needed. So a couple weeks ago we had that meeting. I called and had the meeting set up to find out that he would be bringing his attorney and -- at which time I decided that if that was the tone -- that's not what I expected. I fully expected just to have a sit-down meeting with the clerk. If he was going to bring his attorney, then I certainly contacted Mr. Weigel, and Miss Ashton came along. Mr. Mitchell was there from the budget office as was Miss Gansel and Mr. HcNees. I think I have included everybody I believe that was at that meeting. If I have missed somebody -- plus, of course, Mr. Brock and his attorney. My big concern was that we had done something at this board table that would have precluded him from getting any information that he would making -- and he couldn't get the information that he was satisfied with to make the necessary payments. And this has been the implication that this board has done that kind of thing, and I wanted to find out exactly what it was that we had done. And having said all this, at this point in time, I would like to ask Mr. Weigel if he would kind of recap the comments that were made at that particular meeting, if he would, please. MR. WEIGEL: I'll try, and I remember. Much of the meeting -- discussion at the meeting concerned whether the January 14, 1997, amendment to the 1996 golf tournament contract precluded, prevented, stopped the clerk from obtaining the information that would assist them in their required functions concerning the administration of board contracts. Part of the discussion was centered around the fact that it is not the Board of County Commissioners that makes the payments under these agreements. The Board of County Commissioners does not administer the contracts that it approves with another party. Those are handled both with the assistance of county staff and ultimately the clerk to the board with preaudit and post audit functions. We discussed at some point in time the fact that a payment was made on February 6 of 1996 in the lump sum amount of $500,000. The event to which the payments related to was an event, I believe, of the dates February 5th through the llth of 1996, and the ultimate and clear statement of the clerk upon repeated question was that the Board of County Commissioners, by its actions in January 14th -- and I gleaned from the conversation any other actions of the board even apart from that meeting did not impede, eliminate, or stop the clerk's ability to obtain information relating to that 1996 golf tournament event that had a funding of $500,000 tourist development tax monies. I don't know if there's any more for me to say at this point. I can respond to further questions. COMMISSIONER BERRY: That was basically my concern was that it has been -- it has -- as I read it in the media, that there has been a lot of concern that we have in some way impeded that. And I felt it necessary -- I wanted to clarify it in any own mind, and I wanted to bring it publicly to you today from what I have -- what has been determined. Also, in regard to the contract change -- and I'll -- well, I don't have to be the first to tell you; you were all here, but I did vote against that change in that contract. And as it was described, it was kind of a -- the whole contract issue and payment of the tourist development funds, it's been like a square peg in a round hole; it didn't really fit exactly the ground rules, I guess, in the past. And so I did vote against the change in the contact, and I did that because I felt that the contract had already been executed. However, I think the important part to note here is that the request for amending that contract came from the clerk's office, and I think that that's an important point to note, that that amendment was made on the recommendation from the clerk's office to change that contract. And I think that that needs to be noted. As I said, I don't want to belabor this point, but I did want to clarify that one point to the rest of the commissioners. And knowing that, I wanted you to know that I have had this meeting with the clerk. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I guess, you know, I'm at a little bit of a loss, because I continue to be listed as a -- and with due deference to you -- quote, anyone but Commissioner Mac'Kie apparently doesn't give a rat's butt about where this money went and -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And, of course, you know that I haven't said that. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I know that. And I'm not attributing to you. You've raised some questions. And the answers to those questions, I didn't have at my fingertips. And as I've done some of the research, to a lesser extent than Commissioner Berry, my recollection was on the mark. My recollection was that there were two funding issues that were raised at that January 14th meeting, that we revised the contract to deal with 32,000 of it that was anticipated as an expenditure, that another 45,000 that was a -- some type of a licensing issue, we left language in the contract that allowed the clerk to request any information he deemed necessary to resolve questions he had. And since it's his job to administer these contracts, I would assume the questions would emanate from him or from his office. And somehow -- any perception that we were either impeding or not asking the clerk to do his job, I found offensive, I found inaccurate, and I found them slanderous when something is being said that would imply that we don't care how tax dollars are spent. This board has been so fiscally conservative, I think that's been a major rub between us and the editorial board in the past. So to claim anything other than that, I think, is just so far from the truth it's not even funny. But something did come out that I did not know that I think the people in this community need to know. That contract originally was a reimbursement contract. It said that the award is $500,000 and upon the submission of approved invoices, the bills will be paid. COMMISSIONER BERRY: Absolutely. Stated right here, Mr. Chairman. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Yet on February 6th a lump-sum payment was made by the clerk to the tune of $500,000. And yet invoices were submitted after the lump-sum payment. Part of the revision we made was to change that contract after the fact from invoice reimbursement to lump-sum payment to match what the clerk's office had already done. You can't dispute that; it's exactly what happened, yet it seems to be lost in the shuffle that had the clerk adhered to the original contract, he wouldn't have paid these invoices he questioned. But since he had already made a lump-sum payment, somehow it's coming back into our court that we have to go after the PGA for these dollars. That's not our responsibility. It was his initially. But I'll go ahead and step up now and say if there are dollars that the clerk feels the PGA owes this county for double payment, God speed. Go get them and bring them back. But what I will not take is any blame for that not happening, because it's being misplaced. Now, that's an opinion and the clerk will have a different one, and tomorrow you'll get to read about how I had my head in the sand apparently from the clerk. I think that was his last statement. The bottom line is those are the facts. A lump-sum payment was made on an invoice reimbursement contract. And how we end up being the bad guy out of that, is something that just -- I don't understand. The bottom line is we all seriously are concerned about how these tax dollars are spent and put this event to the same auditing requirement as every other Category C event. Now, if that's not sufficient, then let's go after the criteria and requirements. But I'm tired of being labeled as I don't care by the editorial board of the Naples Daily News, because that seems to be a convenient statement. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: How many times have they spoken to you about it? CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: None, not a single phone call from a member of the editorial board. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Mr. Chairman, one of the other frustrating things for me and over the years occasionally we get criticized for communication with the different officers, the clerk, the sheriff, and so on. And what's frustrating is as individuals, another member of the board have reached out to the clerk on this issue, and I wish he would come and talk to us as a group in this forum for the public's benefit, because Commissioner Mac'Kie a few weeks ago said the clerk was concerned that we're impeding. In a sit-down with another commissioner and the staff, he said there's no concern about that whatsoever. And so clearly miscommunication is happening somewhere, and you brought a point over and above all of that. So perhaps the clerk could come to a Tuesday meeting and share with the public what, if any, his concerns are and what intention he has to address them from this point forward and how we can be of help. Obviously, if there is a way we can, we will. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: And just so you know, I have written the clerk a letter saying, look, if there's stuff out there that -- that shouldn't have been paid and it needs to be sought after, then go get it. And I'll it again, and I'll it a hundred more times that if there are inappropriate expenditures, they should be recouped. But since he is the contract administrator, that is his job. We don't even have a department or division that does that. So I don't know much clearer I can be. But, you know, basically what I'm saying is, you know, whoever is making the conscious decision to put the monkey on this board's back, put it where it belongs, and it's in a joint relationship with us and the clerk that is not right now working as efficiently and as well as it should, because I feel like I'm giving direction, I feel like I'm saying this is what I want as an individual commissioner, and I don't hear anyone objecting to that. Matter of fact I've heard support the last time we talked about this for going after whatever expend -- expenditures were inappropriate, yet it keeps coming back in the paper about some little, you know, snips in quotes and sniping back and forth. That's not how we get things done, and it's inappropriate. I'm tired of it. So let's either go after inappropriate expenditures -- and if he needs to come next Tuesday and hear me say that in person, then please be here and do it, or let's get on with business. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: That's fine. I totally agree with you. But there is the other issue that I'd like to clarify is, Commissioner Mac'Kie, did you not state directly a couple of weeks ago that this board was impeding the clerk? COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Yes, as a matter of fact. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Are you ready to retract that today? COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: No, no. I was ready to be quiet today, but I'll answer the question instead. And that was -- the way that the impediment exists is that when we eliminated the guidelines, the TDC guidelines, from the contract, we eliminated the -- the portion of the contract -- let me see. We changed the description of what qualified for an expenditure of what qualified. As a result of that, the clerk would not -- it would be silly for the clerk to say please prove to me how this expenditure qualified under the contract, because we globally grandfathered in the expenditures that were made. The net effect of that circle is that the question became irrelevant. The question of whether or not a certain expenditure was appropriate under the contract became irrelevant as a result of an amendment to the contract. That's my opinion on the -- COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Two things. What you're saying is not the same as this board intentionally impeded the clerk's ability to service the contract, and the other thing is that the contract was amended at the recommendation of the clerk's office. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Let me read that word for word. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: It's right here on this page if you'd like to. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Let me read that word for word from the clerk -- CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Let me interrupt quickly. This isn't about Commissioner Hac'Kie, and it's not about personalities on this board. I think it's defining the responsibilities of the clerk and the board more than anything. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: And let me read that word for word. We recommend that they enter into another agreement that would retroactively rescind and modify the provisions of the original contract. That's the clerk's recommendation. So one of two things happened. Either he recommended that we impede or we're not impeding. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I think we have -- and I want to clear up what you said, because there were two issues that were raised to us: $32,000 which, I believe, the record reflects that Jim Hitchell said we know where that went, we don't question where it went, it just was not -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Qualified. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: -- qualified under the original contract. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: Right. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: So we amended the contract to say, well, that $32,000 was part of the production part of the contract. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: Therefore, any further inquire about the 32,000 is irrelevant and inappropriate. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: About the 32,000. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: Okay. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: But there's a second item, the $45,000. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: But please understand that that's where we made that inquiry moot by amending the contract. COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: The clerk's recommendation. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: But I also still think it was a good -- it was a good decision because the $32,000 was production related. We did know where it went. It wasn't an audit question that we said, we don't know where it went, but we'll just amend the contract. Jim Mitchell said, "We know where it went." And for the types of expenditures it went toward, they were production related, so I think that's an individual decision. What I think is being applied is there was a second issue of $45,000 that the clerk said may have been a double payment. Someone may have paid for that and so did we. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: The licensing fee for PGA. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Right. By changing the requirement on what was a qualified or not qualified expenditure, that does not preempt a double payment of any amount in the contract. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: Absolutely. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: So if that $45,000 was in question then, it's still in question now. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: I agree with you. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: And nothing in that contract and nothing this board did kept the clerk from going after that $45,000. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: Let me tell you the bigger picture -- CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Do we agree on that? COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: We agree. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: We agree. The one other place where I don't know if we agree or not is that by eliminating the guidelines from the contract, I'm concerned that we lost the opportunity to look into a much bigger question. The guidelines say things like if there is a significant change in the -- in the event, that that has to be approved by both the TDC and the county commission. The guidelines say -- make reference to significant changes. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Uh-huh. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: For my money, there were significant changes in both golf tournaments. In the first tournament, the significant change was the fact that the title sponsor never paid his title-sponsor fee. That may give us some third-party beneficiary kinds of legal rights against that sponsor. And I think that by eliminating the TDC guidelines, that significant change provision came out. Secondly, in the second tournament, the significant change was the new title sponsor, a new million dollars or a new half-a-million dollars into the tournament that we didn't know about when we gave the half-a-million dollar grant. The elimination of the guidelines from the contract eliminates the right to look at the contract as a result of significant changes. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: An important point here still remains that this board -- the only action that this board took was at the request and recommendation of the clerk's office. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: I don't think all of the action that we took was at their recommendation. I think the initial recommendation to fix the reimbursement part of the contract was at the recommendation of the clerk after having had a meeting with Mr. Rasmussen, with Mr. Norris, with Mr. Weigel, and members of the clerk's staff when they first discovered the problem. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Commissioner Hac'Kie, I'm going to give you due credit in one area. I think we're talking about difference between intended results and unintended results. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Absolutely. I don't think the board ever intended those results, and that's why I continue to bring -- that's exactly why I brought up, in the hopes -- I brought it up the second time after I voted against it the first time, was in the hopes that in hindsight you would see perhaps some unintended results and reconsider them. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Those are quite obvious. As to our responsibility on those, I think is what deserves discussion. I know this is going a little longer than what was originally anticipated, but I think it's important that we talk about this element of it. The second tournament we had a new title sponsor that brought in more money. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Uh-huh. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: So we have two different cases. You're saying on the first tournament, Mr. Rasmussen said that he was the other sponsor. We're half; he's half. And there are some papers that have been filed that say he has not -- he did not supply those funds, and we weren't told about that. And do I like that? No. Do I think it's lousy? Yes. But do we have a legal position to pursue Mr. Rasmussen or the PGA I think is the question that needs to be answered. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: And it might. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Well, let me -- I'm going to go to Mr. Weigel on this, because my understanding of contract law is very minimal, but let me give it a shot. We had a contract with the PGA, not with Mr. Rasmussen, not with the man on the moon. It was just with the PGA that said we provide this and you in turn provide that. Okay. Mr. Rasmussen made oral presentations and oral statements that he was going to supply the other half of the sponsor fee. But that was not mentioned in our contract with the PGA in any way, shape, or form. Mr. Rasmussen's commitment was not referenced in any way as I reviewed -- because, again, I was concerned as you were. I just came to a different conclusion than you did. So when I looked at that contract, we fulfilled our responsibilities in that contract by making payment. The PGA fulfilled its responsibilities in that contract by providing services. What Mr. Rasmussen, a third party, did was not an element of that contract and not enforceable by law by us. That's my opinion. And if we need to get a formal opinion from Mr. Weigel and give him more than ten seconds to come up with it, then I would like to get that, because that's an important part of this. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I would like to give him more than ten seconds to come up with it, frankly, because I would encourage looking at theories such as third-party beneficiaries if, in fact, Collier County might be a third-party beneficiary of the agreement between Mr. Rasmussen or Intellinet and whomever he contracted with, which I assume is PGA. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: And also since the tournament happened in full and occurred -- we got all the coverage, then our benefit was derived in full. So a third-party beneficiary has to be harmed in some way in order to have a third-party beneficiary claim. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And I think that the way in which we may have been harmed is that we invested in a million-dollar project that became a half-a-million-dollar project when Mr. Rasmussen failed to make his contribution. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: And I don't want to -- I don't want to get involved in a lawsuit between People and Properties and all that kind of garbage, but if there's a question of third-party beneficiary and whether or not we have the ability -- whether you want to argue we have the right or responsibility, if we have the ability to be involved in that, I want to at least know that. So that's the one side. The second tournament I disagree with you on. When you bring in a new sponsor that infuses more money in the tournament, makes it bigger and better, I have no problem with how the second tournament happened. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: My problem with the second tournament is whether or not it was an appropriate tourist development tax expenditure since our decision to fund it, or my vote anyway, was based on the fact that the tournament is not going to happen if Collier County -- we don't have a title sponsor. It's not going to happen if the county doesn't come up with tourist development money; therefore, we violated or bent all of the guidelines in order to sponsor an event -- I'm sorry that will offend you. Therefore, we came up with a way to provide a benefit in the off season so that we could fund the golf tournament. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Commissioner Mac'Kie, did you vote in favor of the Marco cat? COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I'm sorry, Commissioner Constantine. I was quiet when you talked, and I'll appreciate it if you'll do the same thing for me. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Go ahead. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: When we did that, we did it because there was going to be no tournament since there was no sponsor. Now I'm looking at from the perspective of the payors and the hoteliers and the tourism interests. Should we have spent a half a million dollars for the tournament if, in fact, there was a month later a title sponsor who could put up that half million dollars. Totally separate question, totally different perspective, but still a valid question. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Commissioner Mac'Kie, did you vote in favor of the Marco cat exhibit and funding that with tourist tax dollars? COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: You're quite aware of the fact that I voted for that. I voted for both golf tournament fundings. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I guess the point is that it seems as though you're trying to single this out, and we were misled in some way. The board has voted from time to time outside the parameters of the guidelines of the TDC money. And to suggest that the way that happened was because we were misled, I don't think, for me anyway, certainly wasn't the case. I know this has made great political fuel for some people, but I think an important point needs to be reiterated you brought up is, if the clerk had followed the contract and paid by invoice instead of by lump sum, all of this would be moot. We wouldn't be in this -- any of this concern to begin with. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: You're right. I'm going to disagree with you on the second tournament, because I think bringing a title sponsor in -- an additional title sponsor in place of what was to be Intellinet the year before and bumping the prize money up -- we know where that money went -- and the prize money went up two or three hundred thousand dollars. So I don't think that is as much an issue as the first tournament and the third-party contract. Let's find that out. Let's find out if we were harmed in any way by that and if we have a legal leg to stand on. And then we can have a discussion whether we should pursue it. But on the second one, I'm going to disagree with you. All of this has come about -- and it's ironic. But if you look at all the Category C expenditures, the most successful Category C event has been the golf tournament. It's the only one that has occurred at the scale we were told it would occur. Now, you can talk about room nights. I think the Marco cat was also a great success. But how many room nights did it really generate? It didn't. The Lely Band Boosters wanted another couple thousand dollars and generated, what, a hundred, hundred and fifty room nights -- COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: Isn't it off-season room nights, though, how many off-season room nights? CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Yeah, but you have to remember the first tournament had an off-season marketing package with it that brought it in line with the effort to bring off-season visitors here. That was the whole idea. It didn't happen as well as we wanted it to, but the event itself occurred. Let me say one word, fireworks; it didn't even happen. The event didn't even go on. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: It was better than fireworks. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Yet where's the third-party audit? Where's the third-party element of going after those people who didn't even provide what they said they were going to provide. Okay. Who do we go after there? Is it as sexy as the golf tournament? No. So the golf tournament's going to get more hay about it. It's going to get more publicity from the media. And we can be -- we're more popular targets on that one than we are on the fireworks, because it didn't happen. Nobody made any money. In fact, local businesses lost money. When the golf tournament came to town, our printers made money, our hotels did make money even though it was in season. There were rooms they wouldn't have had. Our restaurants made money. Our shopping -- all of our shopping areas made money. The mall made money. At least it infused dollars into this economy. The fireworks took dollars from this economy. Work was done that was not paid for. So all of the effort being paid, what I don't understand is it's being paid on an event that was -- the event itself was successful. And we said we don't really have a long-term role in this, and we got out after doing what we originally wanted to do, and that was at least try and retain it for the community, and we did that. So I guess I'm -- it's a little balanced there. I'm looking for some scope. But again, the only issue in front of us other than the question we asked -- I've asked of Mr. Weigel -- and whether the board wants to jump in on that or not, I could care less. I want to know about third-party question, because you brought it up, and I don't want to be painted with a brush for saying I don't care. So I want to know if we have a leg to stand on there. I don't need to give any more ammunition to the folks over on Central Avenue. But the question about appropriate expenditures, it is clear by words of the clerk to Commissioner Berry and by documents from the clerk's office and by our action, that we did not impede the clerk from pursuing expenditures that should not have been paid. And that $45,000 that he said may have been double paid, why hasn't it come back? COMMISSIONER BERRY: That was a question that I asked, Mr. Chairman, because then I think the second vote was taken in January or some such time. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: January 14th. COMMISSIONER BERRY: And I thought -- I personally -- and maybe -- maybe I just let it go and maybe should have followed up in some way, but I don't think that it necessarily is -- it's a responsibility of each commissioner to say, well, now how did this come out. If there's a problem, I would think it would come back to us. And I asked the clerk in this regard that if he was experiencing problems -- now this was in August, you know, when I believe we started hearing some more things about this, and I said, "Why didn't you come back to the commission? If there is a problem, why didn't you come back to us?" And he said he felt it was our responsibility to come to him. And how in the world -- if I don't know that he's having a problem, how do I know that I should go to him? And so maybe if there's some way that this can be clarified, I'd like to know. But I would have thought and I would hope -- I believe that door is always open to anyone -- CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Particularly a constitutional officer. COMMISSIONER BERRY: Absolutely -- to come in and talk to us, and if we have done something that has created a problem for a constitutional officer, I would hope that they would come and talk to us. And this is something -- and, again, because we were being painted and have been painted in the local media of not caring and just totally disregarding our duties as commissioners -- and I really resent that. I have to tell you, this whole thing has been very disturbing to me and to minimize how much time and effort I believe that each of us puts into this particular office, and to come about and say that almost to the point that we lie, cheat, and steal, I'm very, very concerned about this allegation and accusation that some of us have been painted with up here. And that's the reason I said I'm going to go back and clarify this and say come on forward here. Let's go back and reiterate. Let's restate. Let's find out where, if we erred, where did we err? What can we do to correct it? And I didn't find out that there really was an error here that we as commissioners, sitting at this table, have committed. Quite the contrary. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: And I guess the final answer to that question will depend on the outcome of Mr. Weigel's legal research on whether or not we have a right of redress as a result of the failure to commit the other half million dollars. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I know that we're supposed to be all knowing. We're supposed to have crystal balls. That way we can do everything perfectly. COHMISSIONER BERRY: We're pretty good. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: But as I did what you did, Commissioner Berry, and looked back on this, I think -- to wrap this up, we are being criticized by the clerk's office for following his advice, which is beyond me and how someone could take that position. We followed his advice on a fiscal matter and we're now being criticized for doing so. In fact, he has spent taxpayer's dollars on an attorney to research his recommendation and the fact that his recommendation is illegal, according to his attorney. Mr. Weigel disagrees with that, as I understand it. So we're being criticized for following the advice of the clerk on a fiscal matter. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: And we're being criticized for following our own county attorney's advice instead of the clerk's. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Correct. So I think we need to right that one. The second item is -- and I think this discussion has been healthy today in that if one more word comes out of Central Avenue about how this board didn't want to track the dollars from that tournament, then I think they have set themselves up for slander and libel, because there are five people up here saying exactly how we feel and taking action on that -- in that regard. And if there is -- if I just hear one more word about that, you know, I may make a career out of -- out of suing the paper, because I'm getting sick of it. I'm getting sick of it. So that being that, I think we beat this horse about all we can, so let's -- let's go on with a happy rest of our day. Anything further? Thank you everybody. ***** Commissioner Constantine moved, seconded by Commissioner Mac'Kie and carried unanimously, that the following items be approved and/or adopted under the Consent Agenda: ***** Item #16A1 COHMERCIAL EXCAVATION PERMIT #59.616 "RAMSEY EXCAVATION", LOCATED IN SECTION 14, TOWNSHIP 49 SOUTH, RANGE 26 EAST, (UNIT 27, TRACT 18, GOLDEN GATE ESTATES) COLLIER COUNTY, FLORIDA Item #16A2 RECORDING THE FINAL PLAT OF "STERLING OAKS PHASE 3A" - WITH CONSTRUCTION AND MAINTENANCE AGREEMENT & STIPULATIONS Item #16B1 - This item has been deleted. Item #1682 RESOLUTION 97-340 PROHIBITING THE OPERATION OF TRUCKS AND OTHER COHMERCIAL VEHICLES HAVING A RATED LOAD-CARRYING CAPACITY IN EXCESS OF FIVE (5) TONS FROM THROUGH MOVEMENTS ON AND ANDREW DRIVE, CALDONIA AVENUE AND CALUSA AVENUE; RESOLUTION 97-341 AUTHORIZING REDUCTIONS OF SPEED LIMITS TO TWENTY-FIVE MILES PER HOUR (25 HPH) ON COHMERCIAL DRIVE AND KIRKWOOD AVENUE Item #1683 RESOLUTION 97-342 RE THE ESTABLISHMENT A "NO PARKING" ZONE ON C.R. 901 (VANDERBILT DR.) IN THE VICINITY OF C.R. 888 (WIGGINS PASS RD.) Item #16B4 PETITION AV-97-016 TO VACATE A 10' WIDE UTILITY EASEMENT AS RECORDED IN O.R. BOOK 1640 AT PAGE 1256 AND TO VACATE THE ADJACENT AND CONTIGUOUS 10' WIDE UTILITY EASEMENT AS RECORDED IN O.R. BOOK 1675 AT PAGE 515, PUBLIC RECORDS OF COLLIER COUNTY, FLORIDA, BEING IN SECTION 36, TOWNSHIP 49 SOUTH, RANGE 25 EAST Item #1685 AWARD BID #97-2692, FOR THE PURCHASE OF ONE OF ONE HINI-EXCAVATOR FOR THE WASTEWATER COLLECTIONS SECTION, TO KELLY TRACTOR COMPANY, IN THE A_MOUNT OF $38,367.45 Item #16C1 REQUIREHENT OF AN APPRAISAL WAIVED; ACCEPTANCE OF THE WARRANTY DEED FROM AVATAR PROPERTIES, INC., FOR PURPOSES OF CONSTRUCTING A NEIGHBORHOOD PARK IN GOLDEN GATE Item #16D1 AUTHORIZATION TO ADVERTISE FOR A PUBLIC HEARING TO CONSIDER THE ADOPTION OF AN ORDINANCE A_MENDING ORDINANCE NO. 80-47, CALLED THE COLLIER COUNTY PARKING ORDINANCE, RAISING PARKING FINES AND INCLUDING FOR OTHER PROVISIONS Item #16D2 LIHITED LICENSE AGREEHENT BETWEEN BOARD OF COUNTY COHMISSIONERS, COLLIER COUNTY, FLORIDA, A GOLDEN GATE AREA CHAMBER OF COHMERCE, INC. Item #16D3 RESOLUTION 97-343 CANCELING CURRENT TAXES UPON LAND DONATED FOR PUBLIC USE Item #16El INCREASE IN THE CONTRACTS FOR SERVICES FOR CONSULTANTS, ASSISTING IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE LONG TERM CLAM BAY RESTORATION PLAN - IN THE AMOUNT OF $226,400.00 Item #16E2 RECOGNIZE ADDITIONAL REVENUE IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE TRUST FUND AND TRANSFER TO THE GENERAL FUND Item #16E3 BUDGET AMENDMENT NO. 97-417 Item #16G1 SATISFACTION OF LIEN FOR SERVICES OF THE PUBLIC DEFENDER Item #1662 MISCELLANEOUS CORRESPONDENCE - FILED AND/OR REFERRED The following miscellaneous correspondence as presented by the Board of County Commissioners has been directed to the various departments as indicated on the miscellaneous correspondence. There being no further business for the good of the County· the meeting was adjourned by order of the Chair at 1:34 p.m. BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS BOARD OF ZONING APPEALS/EX OFFICIO GOVERNING BOARD(S) OF SPECIAL DISTRICTS UNDER ITS CONTROL ATTEST: DWIGHT E. BROCK, CLERK TIMOTHY L. HANCOCK, CHAIRMAN These minutes approved by the Board on presented or as corrected · as TRANSCRIPT PREPARED ON BEHALF OF GREGORY COURT REPORTING SERVICE, INC. BY DEBRA J. DeLAP, NOTARY PUBLIC.