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BCC Minutes 03/31/1998 W (Goals) WORKSHOP MEETING OF MARCH 31, 1998 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 9:12 a.m. in WORKSHOP SESSION at the Glades Water Facility, 800 Teryl Road, Naples, Florida, with the following members present: CHAIRPERSON: Barbara B. Berry Timothy Hancock Pamela S. Hac'kie John C. Norris Timothy J. Constantine ALSO PRESENT: Robert Fernandez, County Administrator David C. Weigel, County Attorney Lyle Sumek MR. SUMEK: Let me go over the suggested agenda for today and we can go from there. Today -- itws been a couple of years since we have been together. Today is an opportunity, by the time we leave, to really focus that direction for the county looking relatively to the three years out and then one year. Outcomes, we focus the goals at 2001. Iwve got those written down that you set two years ago. This would be an opportunity to go and clarify your expectations and give any guidelines to the staff. Itws -- the intent this morning is not to redo them, but to refocus them, then look at what needs to be done this year. Iwve met with staff yesterday and talked with some others, and 19 targets for action have been identified for the next year. Actually, for the next nine months, so if you look at that -- COM~ffISSIONER NORRIS: Who identified the 197 MR. SUMEK: Staff, and I talked with Tim and any commissioner who wanted to talk to me. Thatws how those came up. And we can rip them off, revise them, John, I donwt care. At least it gives us a draft to start from so wewre not starting from a blank sheet. And we can add to it, subtract from it. (Commissioner MacwKie enters the room.) MR. SUMEK: But if you look at it, nineteen in the next nine months, thatws a fairly ambitious agenda. Hopefully get some understanding of each other of what you want to get done, what you want to have for a successful year, and have a common focus looking beyond. Iwd like to take a few minutes and talk about a little bit of framing of where you are and the life cycle of a County Commission. Talking about winner to being a champion, youwve gotten a lot of things done, how you sustain that over time. Youwve got nine months together as a board; what happens over the next nine months, you have control over. And wewll talk about the impact as you get a stretch drive towards an election. The bulk of the day, after about five minutes of talking about this, would be to go through the first hour and talk about what your expectations are. Refocusing those, what are some guidelines you would have for staff of opportunities that you would like to see addressed and retest the validity of these five. Then, spend the next hour or so going through and talking about each one of these 19 as well as prioritizing those in terms of the importance for the year. Due to the time limits, to go back and spend a lot of time on the past may not be as productive as looking at where do you want to go and what do you want to get done. Then, are there any suggestions you would have for the administrator staff or for the board during the next year. So thatws the intent. What wewve done in the past, couple years ago when I was here, we talked about where you are. You went out five years, and at that time, the five years was 2001 and said what are the outcomes we want for our community and thatws where the goals came from. You identified some benchmarks and established some guidelines. Now is the time to refocus those. Then the targets are what is our agenda; what do we want to get done during the next year. Now, a couple of opening comments. There is a lot of organizations where youwve had productive years. If you look at that list of accomplishments, you accomplished a lot of things aimed at your goals. A winner doesn't just say I achieved the goal. To be a true champion, there is a need to refocus that goal, because once you say we're done, it's accomplished, what happens is then you fall back either being competitive or even being a loser. You can go to counties in the states that say, boy, it doesn't look good, we're not getting anything done, there is no momentum. It's easy to fall back. The key here today is how do we sustain the momentum, the positive things as you look to the future. So today is a time to refocus, a time to revise our expectations, to establish clear guidelines for the staff, and determine what our priority is. Now, this is a strange time to do this. Let me explain why. Bob, who on staff are you going to volunteer today? MR. FERNANDEZ: What? MR. SUMEK: Which staff member are you going to volunteer today? COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Pick a sacrificial lamb. MR. FERNANDEZ: Oh, you mean I pick one -- I think today might be Mike Smykowski. MR. SUMEK: All right, Mike. MR. SMYKOWSKI: How did I know that? MR. SUMEK: You have an election out there on your horizon, right? MR. SMYKOWSKI: Oh, you're going to make me do that. MR. SUMEK: My point is, that's what happens. We have to stretch drive. We see this election out here. We're back here. You haven't quite entered it, but Mike's going to get down. Assume the position. MR. SUMEK: This is a visual demonstration. MR. SMYKOWSKI: It's quite embarrassing, I might add. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: I feel like I need to leave, Hike. COMMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Do we get to volunteer Fernandez to do this later? It seems only fair. MR. SUHEK: That's why I figured not to pick on him but one of the staff members. What tends to happen at this stretch drive, you say, you start riding the staff. MR. SHYKOWSKI: Oh, my back. MR. SUHEK: He's going to have workers' comp for that. And then you say are you going to get that one done, staff? What about this one? Oh, don't handle that one. And you start riding staff. There are certain things that you don't want addressed this year. How's your back, Hike? MR. SHYKOWSKI: They didn't teach us this in public administration. MR. SUHEK: This is a very serious comment. There are issues here that you want to get done. There are issues out there that probably should be avoided. It's not the time. There is a lot of pressure that starts to build and you say hold off, deal with that one in '99. I had one county this past year, their election was in October. They were going to deal with their comp plan revision in August, a CIP in September, and an employee compensation plan in October, including a revised tax rate. How many of those three were done? COMMISSIONER BERRY: Zero. MR. SUMEK: Right. They got into it. They tossed around it. They spent a lot of time. They should have said wait until next year to deal with those issues. I'm not saying that you need to force those through. That's just part of the reality. So when we start talking today, I think you have an ability to influence what's going to be done this year. This group could be different a year from now. I'm not saying it will. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: I don't think so, Pam, do you? COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: No, it's going to be just the same. MR. SUHEK: But what ends up happening is the pressure starts to build. You have different folks in the audience, and if you turn them down something, what does that person who may be attending do; they're out there running after them, tackle them before they leave. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: They might even write a letter to the editor saying we're playing cards. Did you guys read the paper today? COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Which paper is that? COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Never mind. MR. SUHEK: You're playing cards? COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Yeah. During the landfill discussion, I appeared to be playing cards. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Well, were you? COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Well, yeah. MR. SUHEK: Were you playing solitaire? COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: I guess. I don't know. MR. SUHEK: Weird things can happen. We start to focus on what do we need to get done now. We want to see the results, and we become -- Bob, this is just a little thing. Do you guys think you could get this sucker done so you can produce those results. I just put that as a contention setting for today. Today isn't time to get out and revise five-year goals. It's to say what do we expect; what do we want to see done looking at the next year. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: But if we say now is not the time because there is an election, there is always an election. I mean, Tim and I are this time. MR. SUHEK: Right. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: These guys are finished. I mean, we'll never do anything. MR. SUHEK: There is a productive time. You're still in the productive -- COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: It's like one gap a year. It's not much. MR. SUHEK: The political reality is you're going to avoid some things or end up delaying and recycling them. The key is, right now you haven't entered, Pam, your stretch drive yet. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: I have one foot in there. MR. SUHEK: You're close, but you haven't entered it totally. The time is during the past year. That's the time to get things done. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: I agree with what you're saying as an observation, but from a character standpoint, I think that's rolling over and playing dead. My concern is if I'm not going to be here in four years, I want to set the table for those who come after me to do MR. SUHEK: Right. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: That's exactly how I feel. I may have nine months yet. MR. SUHEK: Then you start thinking about legacy, so you still want to get maybe even more things done, if not a foundation laid for them, so it can go either way. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Okay. MR. SUMEK: I'm not saying it's just going to be roll over and play dead, because you're right. If you're not going to be here, I want to get something locked in before I leave. Maybe it's the project isn't done, but the funds are committed, the designs are done and the grounds broken, or at least momentum is moving in that direction. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Okay. I agree with that. MR. SUMEK: So there is a lot of different attitudes one can have here. You can also have another one. If one is not running for an election, they can drop out. They don't come to meetings. They're saying my term's over -- COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Deja vu. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: No honorable person would do that. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: We had that last time. MR. SUMEK: I've had groups that needed a super majority vote and you didn't have enough there to deal with that. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: You're looking at one. It was bizarre. MR. SUMEK: You guys didn't prep me on that one, did you? COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: That was pre Bob. MR. SUMEK: But anyway, that can happen as well. COMMISSIONER BERRY: That was before me. MR. SUMEK: That can -- you can end up having difficulties even getting a quorum there to make sure you have a vote, particularly if there's a super majority that might be -- COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: For an issue like a budget. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Yeah. MR. SUMEK: So there is a lot of different attitudes. My point is that stretch drive produces different set of lenses for viewing our world. With this in mind, today is an opportunity to do some refocusing. I'd like to just spend the next hour talking about your goals and what your expectations are looking over the next three years and looking at what do you expect -- what are some opportunities there. Again, blank here, this is -- okay. Citizen-oriented county government responsive to neighborhoods, what are some things you would like to see happen over the next three years? What would be success here? COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: It's going to sound kind of small, but -- COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Privatized Fox Fire. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I thought you were going to say get that landfill closed. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: We achieved that one a week ago. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: There are little things, little attentions to detail that you see with smaller municipalities that we don't do in the county. And one example is sign posts. All of our sign posts are bare wood or metal. They look kind of fatty. If you go to a city, they're painted or they're manicured. Something as simple as staining the wooden sign posts a green or something to show a little more attention to the little things people see every day. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: You just scratched the surface of what is really a big issue for neighborhoods for the entire county. The -- what we've done here lately with the architectural standards and the sign ordinances and the landscaping ordinances that came along with all of that, that is really under this global category here. It's a major step forward to accomplishing this goal and it's applied globally, not just very specifically, locally. MR. SUHEK: What needs to be done at this point, then, John? COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Well, what we're going to do is to continue to look at those to revise them and see what has worked in the interim here and what we can do to continue to put these regulations in force that guides our community to the outcome that we all want to see, and that is the appearance, as you're riding, the appearance, and just the feel of the entire community and the quality so that we don't end up looking like some of the other localities in Florida have. MR. SUHEK: And that is -- you talk about -- that is a symbolic thing when you start looking at being a winner versus a champion, how you look. People make a lot of judgments off that as they enter. That has a lot of impact on -- COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: And that ties into the one that's on my mind, and I don't know exactly how to articulate this, and you guys help me, is it's more maybe an HPO issue than a county issue, but we don't do a good job with communicating with the road network where planning to build is. And we don't do a good job of communicating to the neighborhoods what's going to be -- what's in the 20-year plan for the roads that affect your neighborhood. If -- we could do that better. You know, we talked about having some kind of update signs on road projects once they've started and that kind of stuff, keep us informed about what's going on in our particular districts about road projects. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Maybe it's as simple as publishing annually the 20-year map. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: In a way that you could read it and understand it. Because what we've got, you know, for a planner, maybe it makes sense. For just an English lit major -- COHMISSIONER BERRY: It comes back to the communications, though. I think you have to continually remember that you're not talking to professional individuals in building of infrastructure, in building those kinds of things. You need to communicate to them in something that is real language as far as they're concerned. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Isn't that our responsibility as individual commissioners? When I go meet with a homeowners' association, I don't tell them, you know, we're planting pretty flowers. I tell them about the dead cats being buried, too. You know, where are the things out there that are going to stink, that they're going to hate, that are going to bother them. In other words, the four-lane roadway that is planned next to them, when's it going to happen. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: You need to work with Animal Control. We're burying a lot of dead cats. The point being, you know, you can't just tell them what's going good. You have to tell them what to expect on the horizon not so good. And if we don't do that individually, that's how we end up with citizen groups that say we never do enough. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Well, you know, the example was Wyndemere's, you know, anger over Livingston. And, you know, those of us who pay attention like we're shocked, or I was, knew that's been on the 20-year plan forever, what do you mean you're surprised it's going to go through your backyard. How could you not know that. Well, they didn't know it. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: It's been on the 20-year plan for over 20 years. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: There you go. I think of it as anybody who's paying attention knows you should have checked that out before you bought your house. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: We also have to have a reality check of well, it's what we do for a living, but those people have lives outside all that. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Yes. COMMISSIONER BERRY: Are you insinuating we don't have a life? COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Pretty much, yes. They don't go home at the end of the day and wonder what's going to happen in Collier County 18 years from now. COMMISSIONER BERRY: That's true, and I don't think the average person -- unless you work in this business, you really just bob along from day to day. You go to work, if you're John Q. Public, and until the big sign appears that says roadway for so many million dollars is going to be built, you don't pay any attention. Then it's like, where did this come from? MR. SUMEK: Let me share two comments with you. If you look at -- you saw me do this, or most of you did before, where I talked about the 20 negative percent, remember that, 20 positive. Well, I've changed that. There are 40 percent plus of your population that don't realize that they live in your county. They take the services. They don't tend to get involved, and they don't vote. And this is a real challenge in that how do you reach out to that. It may be higher than the 40 percent. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: The fact that we're seasonal, I think it's higher here. MR. SUHEK: But then you add two other things. One is if you look at different parts of your communities, they're going to be communicated in different ways. Example, my son's 25. I sent him his birthday card with a check. I said, Brandon (phonetic), did you get your card. No, I just check the mail every two weeks, pull all the bills out, and throw everything else away. COMMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Oh, my gosh. MR. SUHEK: How would I best communicate with him? COMMISSIONER HAC'KIE: E-mail. MR. SUHEK: Bingo. He checks it daily. So, if I need to get to Brandon, it's 50/50 -- COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Could you E-mail him a check? MR. SUHEK: No, if you -- but if it's 50/50 by phone and about 10 percent by mail, my point here is, when you start reaching out, it's also using different modes because different age groups are going to respond in different ways. Some people will take a newsletter, some will look at the website. So it's maybe looking at different types and modes, depending on who's the communities that you're dealing with. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: We have taken a step with some of that as we have Channel 54 involved, and we actually take advantage of it. MR. SUHEK: We talked about the TV cruisers or surfers last time, Tim, and the need to utilize TV more because you may capture them in those five to ten-minute snippets. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: I think, though, that the Lyle's little bell curve chart there shows that, no matter what you do, you're going to have a hard time reaching 60 percent. They don't care until it affects them. MR. SUHEK: That's right, John. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: And that's why they elect us to come out here and take the beating and do this just so they don't have to get involved in all that. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: The fact that they aren't paying attention is almost, isn't it, in some way, an indication that we're doing okay because they don't feel the need -- COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: It allows us to take larger beatings. COHMISSIONER BERRY: By fewer people. MR. SUHEK: What other things would you like to see here looking out over the next one to three years? COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Something that just really came up last week when talking about being responsive to neighborhoods. All of a sudden we realized last week we had no standards for trip generations and trip numbers in neighborhoods. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: That's a great point. That's a huge -- COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: We have some major roadways, but we don't have them for outside your house. We need to bring some of those standards to a more residential application, and we don't really have it. We didn't have it in Pine Ridge. We don't have it in Fox Fire, and we haven't done anything to adopt it. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: We have to do something about that. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: I think Commissioner Constantine volunteered to chair that subcommittee. COHMISSIONER BERRY: We talked about that and it all kind of refers to, quote, the urban area, and there is, you know, a whole population that is beyond the urban area that needs to be looked at as well. I mean, it equates to the same kind of thing. I think we always think in terms of developments within the urban area, but there is a huge development outside the urban area that we're sometimes forgetting; however, it has a great impact on the urban area. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Whose district are you talking about? MR. SUHEK: What else does this mean to you all? What would you like to see on this one? Any other specific things? COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: That ought to fill the next nine months. COHMISSIONER BERRY: Roadways, I think, are a huge -- I think that is probably one of our biggest challenges in this county. MR. SUHEK: That's up here as a specific target to deal with during the next nine months. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: To our credit, we have begun in earnest dealing with that issue since the first time we adopted the growth management plan in '86, but we have a long way to go. MR. SUHEK: Any other comments on that one? If we add others -- as we trip through other issues, we will add them. A small-town feeling with quality urban services. What do you want to see on this one over the next -- COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Based on our action agenda, I think the quality urban services -- I love where we select and implement sludge disposal program because most people I meet need more of that. MR. SUHEK: I ain't touching that one. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I hear that in every civic group. COHMISSIONER BERRY: We need a better sludge disposal program; is that what you need, Tim? COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: We all have talked about the small-town feeling. The problem is that our development code disallows small-town feeling. Our land development code requires you to build suburban communities. COMMISSIONER BERRY: Tim, back up. I'm the dummy here. Define COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Okay. When we think of small town, we think of Main Street, USA. COMMISSIONER BERRY: Right. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: You have got shops and a commercial area downtown. And behind that, you have apartments and roadhouses. And behind that, you have single family. And behind that, you have rural and beyond that is open space and recreation. And it's kind of a concentric plan. That's a traditional town. That's how towns develop. Our code, like every other code in the United States with few exceptions, was really developed in the '70s when people wanted to move out to suburbia. They wanted a little more land for their house. They wanted wide streets. They wanted all these things. They didn't want small town. Moving out of the city was a status symbol. They got away from the towns. What happens is, if you look at our code, if you try and build a town, so to speak, a town center with roadhouses on it and whatnot, you are precluded from doing that because our code all but requires you to either build condominiums or single-family homes. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And commercial and activity centers. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Commercial and activity centers are not in the neighborhood. We've separated and compartmentalized every land use so it can be controlled better, but they don't work together anymore. They work separately and apart, and that's one reason we have the road system problems we have. If we want a small-town feeling, you're not going to get it if you keep designing suburbia. So we have to make a wholesale change in how we promote future development. I don't mean promote in the sense that we want more and more of it, but in the sense let's change the direction it takes so that we can provide quality urban services. If we have the people concentrated in smaller areas, we could provide water and sewer in a more effective and efficient way than we can if they're spread out. People are still going to spread out. They're still going to want it, but I'm just saying you can integrate it better than we do now, but our land development code won't let you do it even if you want to. COMMISSIONER BERRY: In other words, making centers closer to some of these, quote, developments, is that the kind of thing you're talking about? COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: I'm saying design around town centers. COMMISSIONER BERRY: In other words, like the Divosta project where they have the little center within the community. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I love that little town center. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: That is a step in the right direction. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Can I ask you to clarify the last thing you said was concentrate more people in smaller areas? COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Not increase density. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Thank you. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: What I'm saying is that it is more efficient for the developer or property owner to build units with nattower setbacks, and what we're talking about people are buying these things like they're going out of style. Look at Celebration and Disney. You know, granted everything in Disney, you're not actually sure if there is a house behind the front door sometimes, but -- COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: That's not really -- COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: But the bottom line is people are -- they want to walk to the store. They want their kids to walk to school if they -- you know, they want to be close to services. You can't do it the way our code tells you you have to build now. Look at setbacks. You know, people want to be closer together, not so much on top of each other, but they want to be closer to services. And the only way to do that is to change the development pattern. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: But why is it that -- is it because the City of Naples was developed in the old way, because you can walk to school and you can walk to Publix and the grid of streets end at the beach, and we are -- COMMISSIONER BERRY: It was a small town. That's what he said, though. A long time ago, that's the way it worked out naturally, but then as more people come and the geographical area expanded, we haven't kept that up because now it's like baking bread. Raisin bread, for example, everything gets farther apart as the bread expands. Every raisin gets further from the other one as the bread expands. That's really the problem. What he's saying is let's make muffins instead of one loaf of bread. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I like that. That's a food analogy, Mike. I like it. Where is the food? MR. SUMEK: That becomes part of looking at your land development code and making some key policy decisions. That's up there as Number 16. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: I can honestly tell you Vince Cautero and I are going to work on this with a design committee over the next couple of weeks. We're having our first meeting to try and set up a framework to bring to the board and say is this a path that you think is a good idea. If we don't make a wholesale change in how we not just allow, but direct the pattern of growth, we're going to continue growing the way we are now, continue burdening the road system the way we are now, and that is a -- I'll call it a certain path for an uncertain future. COMMISSIONER BERRY: So what you're going to look at is trying to, in the development community, is trying to have some of these services that we all look for provided within that community or very close at hand so it will reduce the number of trips on roadways? COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Internal on a binary road system that allows people to use it not from just within the development, but on the perimeter. COMMISSIONER BERRY: Right. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: You can still have your gated community, but you have to have inside framework of a public street network. MR. SUMEK: Let me give you a good example. Several counties that I work with have even decentralized their services where you can go in that they have -- Scott County, Iowa has four service areas where you can do everything. You don't need to go down to the county courthouse. They can get to those services by walking and they even modified their hours so they're open until seven at night. So, again, making it convenient -- that was a drastic change in their land view code. Bob, you've been trying to get in here. MR. FERNANDEZ: I think we probably passed it, but I was going to say what we've essentially done was develop an urban area outside -- or out of the urban area, and we developed it in a way that we have kind of backed into it to the point that now is a larger of an area outside of the incorporated areas of the county. The unincorporated area now is the largest area in this community. It hasn't been designed as though it is going to be the urban area. It has just kind of grown. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Our own policies contribute to it. How do we do parks now? We don't do neighborhood parks; we do regional parks. Why? Because we have a limited amount of funds and we have to get -- we have to build more soccer fields and more baseball fields to address the growth. The most effective cost-efficient way for us to provide parks is regional parks. Well, it's counter to what our citizens are asking for, yet they don't want us to raise their taxes to do it. So we're in that middle of trying to find a feasible solution -- COMMISSIONER BERRY: Well, I don't only think that county government is burdened that way. You have another county government in the school system that is experiencing the very same thing. You have to go to larger schools because you cut down on the operating cost. So you're basically doing every one -- every one of the government entities are doing the same thing to cut down on operating costs, and you're not creating what is that small-town feeling. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: We are regionalizing our county. MR. SUMEK: And you're making the services more difficult to even provide. COMMISSIONER BERRY: But you're doing it because of cost and people do not want -- you know, they don't want to pay. That's the bottom line. They don't want to pay so you have to maximize your dollars, and this is the way that they found that you can do it. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: There is a economic reality of how much of a small-town feel you can have when there are 200,000-plus people. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: That's why if we change the development pattern and put the onus on the project development, the onus is to set the design and land aside. How do we cause them to do that with impact fees and whatnot, we look at impact fee reductions in transportation because you're capturing more traffic in front of your project. We look at, if you are willing to design and build a school to this format for K. through eighth, you'll pay those school impact fees. You give the School Board a school at a certain point in your development built -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And a neighborhood park. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Yes. There are creative ways of -- instead of collecting impact fees and building an office building in the facilities, let them build them on site, give them to the county or School Board, and not pay the impact fees. I guarantee you that private developer is not going to get a better price than we are on anything outside of parks. You know, you talk about a school and everything the School Board has to go through just to put bricks and mortars together adds to the cost because it's regulated by the state so heavily. I think there are creative solutions out there that can -- MR. SUMEK: It gets everything from looking and possibly revising your impact fees to reflect this goal, to coordinate with school development so it's consistent with it, revising any master plans on facilities and parks including, like, where your buildings are and where you're going to be providing services, and revising the land development code to really reflect that small-town feeling. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: I understand the reality is there is not that much acreage out there that is unzoned in the urban area. We're going to be talking about retrofitting. We're going to be talking about how do we take a dinosaur and bring it up to date with these kinds of standards. It's not easy to do. It's not going to have a tremendous impact, but we can't keep going the way we are. MR. OLLIFF: I'm not sure the community is not willing to pay more for a certain type of smaller town service that's provided. And I think you can actually probably do an economic analysis to tell them that in the reduced number of trips per mile and the amount of gas that you're spending, the amount of time you're spending trying to get to our regional facilities, it may be a wash in terms of the actual tax impact that you have to pay to maintain a neighborhood park versus some mega park 10 miles away. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: The actual bottom line cost to the people hauling their kids to baseball practice -- MR. OLLIFF: I hear a lot more complaints about quality out there than I do about the millage increase that we may talk about. I think there are some other creative ways we can get there. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: We're talking to different people on that one '- COMMISSIONER BERRY: I think it depends on the age group that you talk to. I think parents with children are going to be very supportive of that kind of approach, but I think that some of our retired citizenry is not going to be so anxious to get involved in it. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: That's why we get paid the big bucks. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: What -- COMMISSIONER BERRY: Well, I understand, but we have an extremely large population, you know, who feels they've the done their thing with children and they really don't want to be bothered. But also, on the same hand, there are a lot of those same people, no, not those same people, but there are also some in that group who understand reality and they expect to pay. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: We may be able to prove, fiscally prove that's true, but trying to communicate that to people with their general trust of government, well, we're going to spend more, but it's really going to save you money, is going to be a hard sell. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: It's like, here, caster oil tastes bad when you swallow it, but it will help you later. MR. SUMEK: Last week I was working with Osceola County, you all know where that is, they're getting a lot more pressure to have similar developments like Celebration in their county because folks see that and they're paying a lot of money to live there, and that county right now is revising its land development code and zoning to look at -- because there is a -- that's changing the image of Osceola County. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: We did traditional neighborhood design. We took a step that direction. All we did was offer a small option. We didn't change the course significantly. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: It's harder to do from a redevelopment -- it's not like -- COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: I think we have the focus on raw land development for this concept. I don't think redevelopment or retrofitting is going to get us anywhere. MR. SUMEK: Other comments on that one? Okay. Fiscally sound and stable county government service. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Next. Property tax rates lower than it was four years ago. MR. SUHEK: What do you want to see over the next three years? COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: I want to see a continuing trend of being fiscally conservative. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Stay on the course. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Also, one thing to mention, our bond rating is the highest it's ever been. We talk about, you know, fiscally sound and stable, our bond ratings are -- COHMISSIONER NORRIS: The debt ratio is probably the lowest in the state. I think it probably is the lowest in the state. MR. SUHEK: What ratio? COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Your bond to debt ratio. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: We've almost completely paid as we go. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: That's it, continue to pay as you go. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: It's a measure of property tax -- MR. SUHEK: I know what it is. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: -- on all but the most essential projects. Like the one we have on the horizon that concerns me is the jail. A pay-as-you-go on the jail is going to be very, very difficult, if not impossible, so we may have do that, but we need to minimize any indebtedness on the county's part. Continue, when given the opportunity, to keep a low ad valorem tax rate and encourage our fellow constitutional officers to assist in that effort. MR. SUHEK: Right. COHMISSIONER BERRY: It ain't gonna happen. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: I said encourage. MR. SUHEK: Other things on this one? So it's basically staying the course and making sure -- again, this is something you always have to work at every time you get a budget and a lot of other critical decisions saying how is that going to impact this goal here. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: I'd like, before we leave that one, for a second, you know, while we're all patting ourselves on the back about what a great job we're doing, and we are, just to recognize, though, that there is a perception, you know, that we play a shell game with the tax rate, and that we pat ourselves lowest tax rate in the state, but we also have extremely high and regularly increasing property values, so even though I believe that we are doing an outstanding job in that particular department, I'm not sure that the community believes that we are. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Again, I think that's a communication issue. I tell people all the time, if your taxes went up last year, it's because your home is worth more not because we spent everything we could get our hands on. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Right. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Now, if your home is worth more this year than last year, what does that tell you about the kind of job your government is doing. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: It's really simple, too. You tell somebody they have a $200,000 home. If they moved across the line to Lee County they would pay one-third more on their property tax, one-third more just to go to Lee County. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I think I disagree with you, Pam. Host people are fairly comfortable with that, and I think Jim Wortle (phonetic) is not comfortable with that and so once a year it's like a shell game, but I don't think he's necessarily representative of the public at large. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Certainly he's not a representative of the public at large, but I hear it, too. I hear it -- that people kind of roll their eyes at us like, yeah, yeah, yeah. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: You live with a constant tax equity argument that has no good solid answer to it, so you're not going to be able to say, okay, next year we're going to bring in tax equity because, ladies and gentlemen, it doesn't exist. If your home is worth more than $140,000, you're a donor. If it's less than $140,000, you're a recipient. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Is that the magic number? COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: I think the average home value in Collier County is 140 or 150, which is what I bought a house at 140. I'm very average. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: I think we could -- COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: I think that maybe in a tax equity discussion more than anything -- COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Maybe it's my district more than the others. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: But the easiest thing for politicians to do is stand from the highest mount and say we didn't raise taxes. Well, not only did we not raise them, we have the opportunity for lowering them because the day is going to come when the growth curve slows that all those areas of fat that you have built into your budget are going to come home to roost, I mean, people are going to start seeing the cost of those. So we need to continue to trim that every year so that that hit doesn't occur. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: One other -- COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: To me that's, you know, fiscally sound. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: One other worry that I have in this department has to do with road maintenance and the gas tax and, you know, the fact that we allocated all the gas tax money. You know, that -- I keep listening to Mike Smykowski tell us how that's about to catch up with us. I think we need to face and deal with that. MR. SUHEK: Bob. MR. FERNANDEZ: That's along the lines of what I was going to say, at the risk of pouring cold water on this party you're having over your fiscal condition, and that is to ask yourselves the question if it's really realistic to maintain that kind of very conservative policy given everything up on this wall and given the things that we know are coming in the future and given the things that you are going to have to do to maintain the quality to meet the demand. That's something I keep saying and -- COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: In a word, yeah, I think it's realistic. I think to make a goal of, well, let's have a moderate increase or let's just do the best we can. I mean, that's not -- COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: The goal has to be to -- COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: And, frankly, it has been achieved for a long time. When you look at the road network, as much as we face challenges with it compared to other areas, it's not that bad. When you look at beautification, when you look at the parks network -- I spend a lot of time on the East Coast, and you're from Central Florida, and you're from up in the Tampa area, and you look around in those areas and compare those things to it, and we're doing very well. If we can do those things and maintain that low, then there is no reason why five years from now, as we strive to achieve these goals, we can't still maintain. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: I think that concern has a place in what we're talking about is that the key is recognizing long-term costs and amortizing them as early as possible in the process. If you continue to cut every year at the expense of putting off major items to those that come after you, then basically you're mortgaging the financial stability of the county. What we have to do is we have got to be out in front. When we see something out there -- for example, it's going to come up later, our storm water management system, those pipes have been in the ground over 20 years, for the most part. They're going to fail predominately within a 10-year window. We need to recognize that as early as possible and begin planning the replacement of those so we don't end up with that big-ticket item. And I think that's how we've been able to do what we've done is by not waiting until the last minute. That's the counter balance. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: It's a ditto on the storm water with all the roads we're building. COHMISSIONER BERRY: We're relatively new. As a community we're relatively new, but at some point in time, somebody is going to have start addressing, you know, that it's going to happen. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: We're about a teenager. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: We did the same thing with water and waste water when we realized there was almost no maintenance budget for those pumps. And for all the water and waste water equipment, this board stepped up and said that's ridiculous, we need a maintenance budget so we don't have to face replacement cost in a short period of time. It's listening to the concerns our staff brings to us from an operational standpoint and attaching the proper fiscal policy to them which is to amortize over the longest period possible so we don't pay MR. SUHEK: If you look at the targets for action, there are about five that are related very directly to this issue here of anticipating them now before it's a crisis. Mike, you had your hand up. MR. SHYKOWSKI: One of the ways we've constrained ourselves, and you used the word amortized, just as much as it is wrong to debt to fund short-term expenses, sometimes it's just as imprudent financially to use cash to fund long-term improvements. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: That's right. MR. SHYKOWSKI: As much as no debt has a great sound to it, you won't find very many businesses who fund their capital expansions with today's cash. And we have put ourselves somewhat -- and you talk about the gas tax issues. That position of forces ourselves to pay for everything with cash today which is causing this pressure on the general fund because we're not leveraging any of that gas tax used for roads that are going to last 20 years. And maybe no debt is not a prudent policy. Maybe a proper amount of debt with a proper capital funding mix is maybe more realistic that doesn't constrain your general fund quite as much as what we've done in the last few years. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: In other words, I have a mortgage so I can feed my family. If I had to pay cash for my house, I would probably have to give up my daughter because I couldn't afford to keep her. So, I mean that, in a ridiculous way -- COHMISSIONER BERRY: In my former life, we got chastised royally -- at one time, we were paying for school buildings on a pay-as-you-go basis. We had people -- this was back in the '80s, people came before us and said this was absolutely ludicrous that we were doing this; that we should have been bonding some of those buildings because the future generations are going to be using them and they should be paying for it as well. On the flip side of that, when we started using certificates of participation, we had people coming to us and saying, you know, you ought to be -- it's kind of a catch-22, but I do believe there is a balance there and you need to take a look at that very carefully. And, yes, it's nice to say, you know, we're debt free or we're virtually debt free, but there is a balance, and I think that's the biggest -- MR. SUHEK: It gets a policy in place which has a balance for that proper debt for capital funding. COHMISSIONER BERRY: Exactly. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: And it's exactly the issue that you said, and the focus about the roads, we're paying for roads with today's gas tax dollars, but my kids are going to be driving on those roads. That might be something that should be financed a different way. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: It sounds like we're all talking about shades of the same color. It's just a question of where in that mix do we fall individually and then collectively, so I think, you know -- COHMISSIONER BERRY: Yeah, we've got to find the balancing point here. MR. SUHEK: I think the balance is the key that you're comfortable with. This one was a big issue last time. I think there was a flood that had just happened. COHMISSIONER BERRY: 1995. MR. SUHEK: I'm pulling from my memory. This was one I said you don't need it. Oh, yes, we need it up there as a major goal. And so here it is, effective drainage for storm water. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: It belongs there. MR. SUHEK: What needs to be done during the next three years or five years looking out on the horizon? COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: One thing is in the Gateway triangle, we're doing a redevelopment project, and as we have done that, it had community meetings by the civilians, we've had every time, storm water drainage is the top priority. You can pretty it up all you want, but if it floods you better -- you know, you've got to address the bottom line first. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: If we make the people in Naples Park pay for it, we're not going to have the taxpayers pay -- COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Of course. No, I'm not suggesting it shouldn't be financed -- COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Okay, because I've had a couple of visits from folks -- COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: I bet you have. No, I've told them that, you know, this is how we do it in this county; this is how we've done it. And Naples Park is a perfect example. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Much like the maintenance on water -- we didn't have any maintenance on drainage on -- storm water drainage. We had a minimal budget, and they hit the hot spots that were the worst. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: We didn't have equipment. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: What this goal setting did for us is we all agreed on it as a priority we realized in the next budget cycle. What I want to be careful of is that we don't go lessening as a priority on the funding side just because we didn't have heavy rainfall last year. We take those funds and, you know, they don't need to necessarily grow by any means, but I think we want to be careful that we don't -- that we continue to fund the maintenance of the storm water system, because that's what got us into trouble the last time. We didn't -- the past board didn't maintain it well enough. All of a sudden, we had major construction projects we were facing instead of, you know, Aquatic Weed Control or going through and doing an annual digging of the bottom, or whatever. That's my assessment of how we kind of ended up last year. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: One of the problems is we've got a major project out there we've been trying to get done. Years ago, the state forced or tried to force us to do it a certain way, and we spent 10 years trying to permit it, and now they're saying, well, you can't permit that; we're not going to allow you to permit that, and that's what they told us to do in the first place. We wanted to do it one way, they said no you have to did it this way, and now they say no we won't permit it that way, so now we're back to square one. MR. SUHEK: What project is that, John? COHMISSIONER NORRIS: This is the Lely storm water drainage -- COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Which is desperate -- COHMISSIONER NORRIS: -- which covers many square miles, actually, the outflow there, and if we could get the state to cooperate -- we have the money funded. We're ready to start the project, but can't get them to go. I don't know where we are on that right this particular minute. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: I don't know if the rest of you have seen this. It was pretty obvious the natural drainage pattern actually was a split from the Immokalee area heading out the Cocohatchee area and the other counties. A couple things -- many things have happened to disrupt that, and some of them are private farming roads that severed the water flow and whatnot. Some of the drainage problems we had in '95 can be -- you know, you can walk back and find out this system wasn't operating the way it should and had it, the drainage issues would have been lessened downstream because water is being diverted flowing ways it normally or naturally didn't. Second, from a drainage standpoint, we had talked a lot about drainage projects and things that have been on the books. One thing that's never been on our books is trying to make sure those flow ways are as uninterrupted as possible, and, as things occur around them, that those property owners have a responsibility to provide that. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: We need to pay heed to the study on that. COHMISSIONER BERRY: It may be a culvert system, too, in some of these areas and to go ahead and allow that water to move through. I've looked at that. Rick has shared that with me, and I think there are a lot of areas there -- again, I think the Army Corps of Engineers is going to address this and they'll see it in their study. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: That's one of the most important things, frankly, and it's part of the reasons why the good news -- and they're doing it because they have the funds. They have the ability to look at that, you know, the big picture regardless of political boundaries between the counties and that kind of stuff. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Let's not forget, the Corp isn't going to come in and say here is the check to go fix the problem. They're going to say here is the problem and you're required to do X., Y. and Z. This is going to be a regulatory approach, not a funding approach. I am not sure we want them to fund it because we all know what happened down in Okeechobee, so -- COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: The money -- the important thing is this ties right back to that one about anticipating major needs and amortizing the costs because, you know, the reinstatement at that flow way that starts at CREW and goes all the way down, you know, we're going to have to face that. There are some serious interruptions in that waterway, and we're going to have to deal with that as we continue down -- COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: I think that's one of the less obvious drainage projects in '95 we weren't aware of, and thanks to Ray Barber (phonetic) and all the work he's put in on that -- MR. SUHEK: That's the flow ways, Tim? COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Yeah, Camp (phonetic) Keys and it actually goes to the Imperial River basin the other way. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: It may be a significant problem, but I don't think it's going to be an expensive one. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Not as much as -- COHMISSIONER NORRIS: You're just talking about farm roads, damming it up and redirecting it. You don't have a lot of fallout is, I think, what Rick is saying. A foot a mile or something of fall, so any little obstruction makes the water go somewhere else. If you can just probably put in a series of culverts, I suspect you're going to change the water flow in a major way. COHMISSIONER BERRY: When you talk about the drainage and storm water, though, I think just the mere thing of, like, cleaning out ditches, making sure we have enough money in a fund or we've provided enough money that they have an annual budget to clean out and maintain the ditches to keep the water flowing wherever it's possible instead of this having buildup with the sand and grass. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: It's still underfunded, if you ask me. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: It just so happens, and we'll talk about this in more detail, I did a workday with Aquatic Weed Control and learned a lot of interesting stuff. You guys may want to spend some time with that or go out and work with those guys. I have a much better understanding of what it is they do now, and it will help -- you know, little things like maybe an additional equipment operator makes a big difference. We have one heavy-equipment operator in that department, yet we have more than one piece of heavy equipment. Well, that means one is always sitting idle while the other is being used. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Well, there is a desperate need for -- COHMISSIONER BERRY: That's -- we need to know that, we need to provide for that. I mean, that's -- COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: But anyway, those are solution-oriented things -- COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: On that subject, one of the reasons I'm looking forward to getting Bob's first budget, you know, this is, you know, your real first budget. You won't have the same -- not having created some of the deficiencies, you won't have the same protectiveness about putting them on the table, hopefully, and showing us where a fresh set of eyes could see some soft spots. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: And prioritizing those, understanding what our fiscal restraints are. MR. SUHEK: One county in Florida, they cleaned all the ditches to get their flow ways going. There was one major problem. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: Cash 'ola? MR. SUMEK: No. They got all the water flowing real well. They got it flowing real quick, no flooding. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: That's the bad thing. MR. SUMEK: Except when it got here and it had nowhere to go and it flooded big time because this needed to be drained down into South Florida. They hadn't drained because of all the rain. So, yeah, their storm drainage system worked, no neighborhood flooding at all, but a few of the lakes are more than flooded, and there is no place for the water to go. Now it's starting to back up. Fortunately, for the last week, it's been dry, but -- COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Summer's coming. MR. SUMEK: Right. They're negotiating with other counties to say take the water down. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: We did that straw ballot on Lely. I can honestly say -- do you remember how many people were upset about that when we moved ahead with it? COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Yeah, I remember. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: After that thing was done, I got one phone call, one negative phone call from 3,500 property owners. I think it's one of those things that when people recognize the importance, they obviously don't want to pay for it. They want us to help as much as possible, but they do recognize its importance. MR. SUMEK: A lot of times they won't say thank you, but they will call you if it's flooded. Diversified economy with expanding job opportunities. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: We're good. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: We've stepped in the right direction. MR. SUMEK: You've made some significant headway there. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: My question on this one is that I think we set it as a goal, and with the assistance of the EDC, we were -- we kind of got there real quick, but I'm not sure where we go now because we have a certain amount of money allocated each year, and I think we need to be more targeted and specific with those funds and how they relate to an overall long-term goal. MR. SUMEK: That is really related to Number 4. Tim. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: One of the things I've talked with the E.D. folks about is we've laid it out as a goal, but we haven't been very specific on how we can participate. We've talked about having a liaison, somebody on the board to do that, and what she and I have talked about is rotate that every year so that each of us -- over the course of four years, everybody has participated and everybody has some investment in the economic development process. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: I think that's a great idea, but I would like to have formalized somewhat a policy and an approach with long-term goals because we feel a little bit of success here, and it's great, but it's kind of like I told Lyle, it's kind of like getting elected, you know, the first time you run and get elected you go, okay, and then you look around and say, oh, no, what do I do now. I think this partnership is the same way. We have achieved some success, and we need to know and we need to discuss and determine the next step. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I hate to be a negative person here -- COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: You really don't like this very much, do yOU? COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: The success we've achieved is that we have created the opportunities for the economy to diversify, as, you know, we've opened some doors, but if you ask me, has the economy in Collier County been diversified; have we achieved that goal, no, we've still got way long ways to go before we can say the economy is diversified. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: That's part of the goal. How do you know your economy is diversified. If we're talking about four-legged stool is better than a three-legged stool, does that mean equal parts get each, and, if so, what would that represent in the way of jobs and average wages? COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Well, the members of the council of economic advisors had a discussion about whether or not the plan that we were going to develop would be a part of our comprehensive plan and, of course, we all thought that was terrible, but we still need an economic development plan for the county. I think that's what you're saying, too, Tim, is we have to have a plan. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: They did that. COMMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Yeah, but where is it? COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Well, I have a copy. COMMISSIONER HAC'KIE: How is it being implemented? You know what I mean. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: That was my whole point. That's the discussion we've had. We have a plan and we've done wonderful lip service, but actual physical work on it from the county and others and Greg, we don't -- COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: If being a chairman means anything, Barbara is going to do a lot of work this next year because Susan is not shy about using the chairman. So you know, I think with this liaison position, it will help everyone else get involved in a hands-on way, and I really like the idea, but, you know, Pam, I disagree. I don't think that plan is collecting dust on the shelf. I think we have done everything to date we expected and accomplished more than we expected, so with that, it almost creates a little bit of a vacuum of the next step because we got there a little quicker and better than we thought we might. We've achieved some successes, hard work is a part of it, but there is always a little luck involved. MR. SUHEK: The other thing we talked about last time I was here was your success is equal to your reality compared to your expectations and that you need to keep those expectations real because by exceeding them, you build momentum. It's better to go out and exceed those expectations than not meet them. That gives you momentum for the future. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Well, you know, one of the things we need to keep in mind, it's a conscious decision of the board not to have major government subsidy to attracting businesses but to rely more on our quite competent and highly-productive private sector to do a lot of this diversification for us and attracting business to our community. We don't -- it's a conscious decision that we don't do tax breaks and that sort of thing to attract business. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Because if they're going to come here for money, they'll move from here for money, and that's not why we wanted them. We want them here for the long haul. We want them here for the community and the quality, and if we're just going to throw money at them, then we're like every other community. I don't think that's right. Remember what we talked about in '95 on this was this is one of the few goals we had in which there was no vocal constituency? COHMISSIONER NORRIS: That's one of the other problems is that this can be construed as being in conflict with our other desired goals that generally are small town and try to hold the growth under control and that sort of thing. Really, I don't think that it's in direct conflict, but it does show some minor dichotomy there when you say let's close the gate, and on the other hand, you're saying let's attract business, how do you rectify -- MR. SUHEK: There's another dimension on this as well. As you talk about strategy, and I work with cities and counties, when you have that success, retention and expansion becomes as much of that strategy because that is -- and a lot of times, that means going out and knocking on the door and saying what do you have for plans for the next few years. And Eugene, they knocked on Agropack (phonetic), this large business downtown, and they said, well, we're planning to relocate. The city had no knowledge of it. You're doing what? Oh, yeah, we're thinking of relocating. Have you determined a site? No. Well, we have out by our air park here is a site. They ended up moving this plan in about a two-year period of time from downtown to the air park, so it retained and expanded, put it at a better site for transportation, and guess what Agropack downtown is? They gave that to the county and it is now part of a park near the University of Oregon Campus. They said you think you helped us by helping us relocate to the industry park and we're -- it was totally out of the blue that that was given. They wouldn't have known about it if somebody hadn't knocked on the door. They could have been in another part of Oregon just like that, so that retention becomes a key part of it. That's an outsider's perspective on it. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: That's really what most of ours has been. Titon Hellerman was an expansion. Alan was an expansion. Shaw Aero came across the county line. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: The other related issue that just -- I'm going to be watching and I know everybody else is, too, is how much money are we going to spend on the airport. I have been, you know, a cheerleader for the airport. I'm starting to want to see some returns, you know. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: We have the business plan now, and we have something that we can gauge it by. MR. SUHEK: You want to see return about the airport. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: I want to see a return. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: It requires us to be realistic that we started from day one, we were going to see a return, and to stop now and say we're not seeing a return and turn away would be a terrible -- COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: I've had people who know better than I review a business plan and say it's got a lot of holes in it and how we can expect to be receiving return at the -- COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Well, I think we have a pretty competent Airport Authority. I think there is a lot of business experience on that board. My point is that there are two numbers in there that this board needs to pay strict attention to, and the others we obviously are concerned about, but that is what is their requested amount from the county per year and what is their return amount. We do everything we can to hold them to that. It's their business plan. If they fell short of it, a flag comes out. I am not going to judge that prematurely. It's a general report. It is not to a tenth of the penny kind of thing. I think it's a framework to work -- COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: If there are specific questions on the plan, pick up the phone instead of questioning the whole Airport Authority and its goals. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: No, I'm saying as we look at what is our budget, what, frankly, this came out of productivity committee where this discussion was had and that is as we decide how the priorities, whatever our economic development budget we have to look at the big picture. The airport is for, you know, the incubators and the -- COHMISSIONER NORRIS: True enough, but I think it's probably a separate budget item. There should be a separate economic development effort and leave those separate because we have established the Airport Authority and given it a 20-year goal, and that should just be kept as an isolated subject. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: As long as their subsidy, their request -- COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Yeah, as long as they at least come close to complying with the plan they presented or give us a good reason why not. MR. SUHEK: Implementing that plan, staying on focus with that goal becomes real critical in separating it out. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: I am saying it's separate, and economic development efforts should be separate as well. MR. SUHEK: Other comments on this one? COHMISSIONER BERRY: It's definitely the airport and, again, airports because you've got three of them that you're dealing with. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Whose district are they in? COHMISSIONER BERRY: I have all three of them. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: I've got Marco. COHMISSIONER BERRY: That's right, you did. I gave that one to you, John. MR. SUHEK: The purpose this morning was to do some refocusing of these goals, looking at what's important for you, looking out on the horizon that can be built into the budget and built into our next discussion what really you want to get done in the next year. Are these five goals still legitimate goals? Are the goals still legitimate? COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Yes. MR. FERNANDEZ: We didn't talk about the possibility of expanding Number 4 here, the drainage for storm water to a more general infrastructure goal, and having storm water serve as an element in that, we can still in include all the things that are in there in blue, but I'm wondering if we should have covered some other infrastructure issues under that. COHMISSIONER BERRY: I would question why that's a specific goal. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Because it was 1995. MR. SUHEK: Do you want to see my scar right there? COHMISSIONER BERRY: I understand that this was -- I do understand that, but I think it's part of infrastructure, or whatever. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Wouldn't it be appropriate to allow -- because we have made a priority out of roadways this past year. When it comes the infrastructure, we have identified roadways as our most deficient, potentially deficient piece of infrastructure. It sounds like you're bringing up additional infrastructure concerns. It sounds like there may be -- MR. SUMEK: Six. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: -- you know, an additional one that storm water, I think, can stand alone, but it sounds like to me this is a new goal, and this is an assessment of where we were in '95 and where we want to go with them. So, I'd like to see that as -- if we're going to have a new infrastructure goal, that we establish it by itself -- MR. FERNANDEZ: Separate from storm water. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: And the two can work together. COMMISSIONER BERRY: I don't think I would go more than five goals, though. I think that's -- I think you are getting so far out that -- MR. SUMEK: That's right. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Well, you can make infrastructure a subset of three. It's the same thing about anticipating future needs and amortizing the cost -- COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Why don't we develop it and see. MR. SUMEK: What do you want to see here, looking at that improved infrastructure? COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: A roadway system where people want instead of what they have to have. COMMISSIONER BERRY: I'll tell you what I'd want -- COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: You know, it's introducing the human factor into the engineering factor. I mean, how do the roadways feel and -- COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: It feels great in August. COMMISSIONER BERRY: Certain people can only drive on the roadways at certain times. Those who are in the working group have the roadways from 4:30 until 6:00 at night -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: There are communities that do that. There are. MR. SUMEK: What other ones would you add to this, other than the roadway, looking out at that three-year horizon? What else does this need? COMMISSIONER NORRIS: We're not talking about the storm water in this one? COMMISSIONER BERRY: Put the storm water in this. MR. SUMEK: Put storm water here? COMMISSIONER BERRY: Yes. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I think that requires a little vision from us because people drive on the roads every day, and I know they're impacted by it. We only hear about storm water in 1995. COMMISSIONER BERRY: If their feet are dry, you're not going to hear about, which is right now, but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't address it and provide for the maintenance of it. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: I don't know if we want to recognize it as a part of infrastructure -- I think a lot of people, obviously not a majority, but a lot, a third, truthfully, if they see open space -- (Commissioner Mac'kie leaves the room.) COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: -- as part of the overall picture, I don't know to what degree, but maybe that needs to be refined in a committee a little more, but it seems to mean open space is something that needs to start showing up on that infrastructure screen somewhere. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Agreed. MR. FERNANDEZ: What about water and waste water utility? COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Actually, we have a great system. What were we going to improve? Let's just keep the pace. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: What change in focus is required there? MR. FERNANDEZ: Well, one thing that comes to mind is are we going to have the same kind of locational controversy with water treatment plants that we had -- COHMISSIONER BERRY: Waste water? COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: It wouldn't be the first time. We did two years ago, three years. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: We're just getting ready to have a grand opening on modification. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: I guess what I need to know is, where are we planning to put one, in somebody's neighborhood, are we? COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Well, it's like the North Plant, you know, what becomes the neighborhood. MR. SUHEK: Right. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: What I think we ought to do is put a regional waste water treatment plant out on the new landfill -- (Commissioner Hac'kie enters the room.) COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Have you been talking to somebody on staff? COHMISSIONER NORRIS: No. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Okay. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: If you can find one central location where you have the less-than-desirable services all located at least you -- instead of having that problem three or four or six times, then COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: If we can identify a regional location that works -- look at the retrofitted expenses that Lely has cost us -- the North County Waste Water Treatment plant has cost us. When we built the North County plant, Pine Ridge was -- and this thing was north of there. This thing was so far back, Tom was two. MR. SUHEK: Relocate -- regionally locating the smelly stuff. Is that what you're talking about? COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Is that where you're heading with that, Bob, is the conflicts you're going to keep having -- MR. FERNANDEZ: I think so, yeah, so get out in front of it; plan for it. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Would that be amortizing -- COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Anticipating major needs and -- COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: That's really waste water. For improved infrastructure, I don't have a solution to it, but it seems to me we continue to have difficulty providing when necessary, and we can expand and expand and expand, but we've got to find a longer solution to the seasonal influx of everyone. When summertime is here, we can't get rid of it. In the wintertime, we have dry pipes. There's got to be a better solution. MR. FERNANDEZ: I think one of the things, Commissioner, that we're looking at is alternative storage recovery opportunities that we think exist. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Whether it's ASR or whether it's -- I don't know, but the -- you know, we were looking at ASR when we had to go deep well because we weren't given an option. The only other option was huge ponds that were just too expensive and whatnot. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Here is another stupid thought, aren't we sitting on an empty water tank? COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Let's fill it up. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: That's a concept. COHHISSIONER HANCOCK: It's millions of gallons we're talking about -- MR. SUHEK: Hike. MR. HCNEES: Back one step on the -- sort of an NIHBY issue, what we were talking about a minute ago with the waste water plant. It's not just the waste water plants. We've had that problem with the new North Water Treatment Plant. We've had that problem with the H2S at the original water treatment plant, so it's kind of a bigger issue of, you know, these things have to exist. What are our criteria or priorities going to be in terms of where is that tradeoff, where do you say somebody has to live with a certain amount of inconvenience. At the North Water Plant, sometimes it's just a little noise, but that's a rural area and those people don't want any noise, so we will never be able to put them somewhere where nobody cares. MR. SUHEK: So it's noisy, smelly stuff? MR. HCNEES: Yeah. We have some criteria or acceptable level of inconvenience for someone. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Like, you know, sometimes we get complaints about traffic in and out of this facility from the neighborhood. The truth is -- we get complaints from the people that live across from Golden Gate Community Park about lights. We get them at North Naples when we talk about lights. The truth is, there are things that we have to provide and they have to be somewhere and the most, you know, offending ones we need to put on our priority list, I think that's what we're talking about; land fill and waste water. From there, it goes down. MR. HCNEES: We talk about the North Waste Water Plant because Pelican Harsh and these developments are encroaching upon it and they're kind of making noise about it, but, frankly, the people in Victoria Park have lived closer to that plant than the people in Pelican Harsh do for many, many years. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: You will recall that we made them put into their documents at Pelican Harsh they were not going to complain about our waste water. MR. HCNEES: Absolutely, and we're spending money up there to deal with whatever issues we can, but, you know, there are people who have lived next to that plant for 15 years and who have been coexisting fairly peacefully, so it can happen. COHMISSIONER BERRY: I think it's something we ought to write in our plans to provide some kind of alternative activity for these people who insist on complaining about everything that happens to give them a little discomfort in life. They obviously don't have enough to do, and be it airplane noise or whatever, I think we ought to provide some kind of a program where they can volunteer and they won't have near as much time to sit around and think up complaints about this horrible place that they have chosen to live. MR. SUHEK: You all should see a movie. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Go Barbara. MR. SUHEK: This movie -- COHMISSIONER BERRY: Have you ever heard anything so ridiculous in your life? MR. SUHEK: Barbara, there's a movie coming out. It's called The Castle. I was working with Park City. It won the same award the Full Honty did last year at Sun Dance and it's about NIHBY issues and the city of Melbourne, Australia dealing with the residents around the airport and expansion for a cargo terminal and how they were -- anyway it deals with NIHBY issues. It is actually a hilarious movie. It will be out this -- it was done in ten days for less than a million dollars. COMMISSIONER BERRY: It's amazing that all these people choose to live down here. They can't wait to get here and get their house built and be a part of it and, man, the minute they arrive, they have their license to gripe. MR. SUMEK: We need to move on. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: We want to stay on this one for awhile. MR. SUMEK: If we had a solution to NIMBY, we could get up a business and -- activities for NIMBYs -- COMMISSIONER BERRY: I really like that. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Today on the NIMBY schedule -- MR. SUMEK: If we put that out in a newsletter, we would have unbelievable response. John. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Let's organize a county NIMBY catching squad. MR. SUMEK: Anyway, just a quick question on this. Does four stay up there or does six take over four, or did you leave it with six goals? COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I think we could put four and six together. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Integrate four and six. MR. SUMEK: Yeah. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Yeah. MR. SUMEK: We'll integrate that in your final reports. Let's take a short 10-minute break, and then I want to focus in on what we need to get done next year. (A brief recess was held.) MR. SUMEK: I did tell John this morning that this group -- it would be a challenge today, but it's not like one from the past. This last six months, I was working with the City of Eugene, and I was sitting next the mayor as we were going through the goal setting, and one of the citizens got so upset, so pissed off, that he came up and barfed on the mayor. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Thank you, Lyle. COMMISSIONER BERRY: Don't even think about it. MR. SUMEK: They had to call the fire department to come in, and they took him to the hospital. They cleaned him up. This is true. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Was he on fire? MR. SUHEK: No, but he had to get Hepatitis shots and several other things. MR. FERNANDEZ: I thought that was background for us. MR. SUHEK: The staff said go ahead, Lyle. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Raise your hands. That's what I thought. MR. SUHEK: I was working with an urban county in Minnesota and one commissioner brought out a gun on another commissioner. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: We haven't had that happen in weeks. MR. SUHEK: The chair, Susan, said Lyle, you're getting paid the big bucks, go take care of it. I looked at this thing and it was a loaded gun. She wanted something out of her district and the others were not funding it, so she -- COMMISSIONER HAC'KIE: That's how you do it. MR. SUHEK: You have a small gun in there. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Make sure you bring at least four bullets. MR. SUHEK: You laugh about it, but those were two incidents, so if I have to wear a bulletproof vest, I think I'm in trouble. These are targets for the next year. The intent now is to get real specific about what you would like to see done during the next nine to twelve months. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Just as I look at Number 1, does that mean we're going to try to take NASA away from the East Coast? I see the words space plan -- MR. SUHEK: You all have orbital centers for service as they -- folks can beam up to them and you can put your staff in orbit. COHMISSIONER BERRY: Our staff in orbit. MR. SUHEK: You wouldn't have to do it by computer and you wouldn't -- COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: This is where we send the NIHBYs. MR. SUHEK: Anyway, these are specific targets to get you to where you want to go. We talked in general about some of them. Let me go through them, and the intent this morning is to get your expectations looking at nine to twelve months out there. Let me just go over the major headings first, and then we'll come back and touch base with each one of these. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Where did these come from? MR. SUHEK: These came from the staff when I met with them yesterday. There was an offer that I was here yesterday if anybody wanted to talk at any time, so whoever I talked to, I just listened. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Okay. Just wanted to know. MR. SUHEK: Space plan for the county buildings, jail expansion, road network and density reduction strategy -- COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Who gave him that one? MR. SUHEK: I even got a memo on that one. Economic development direction, two parts to this evaluating and adjusting and really clarifying the working relationship and the strategic plan, at least starting that process. Marco Island policy direction, I did do -- last night I decided to take a little tour, so I drove down there while it was still light. There are some real opportunities down there. COHMISSIONER BERRY: For what? COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: He knows for what. MR. SUHEK: Yeah. Agricultural land policy. Where is the county going with agricultural land. Infrastructure maintenance plan and funding, we added that as a goal over here. This is putting together something that is workable during the next year. Revenue diversification, short term and long term. New development standards, which we talked about in terms of designing around neighborhoods. Urban services, you've got areas that are expecting urban services and in areas where it's difficult to provide urban services, what is your policy and where you want to go when citizens have that expectation and there is problems with it. Storm drainage, continue expansion. I added our discussion earlier obtaining state approval on the project. Qualified work force, making sure that you are retaining quality employees. Commercial architectural standards, there is work being done on that as we speak. County reorganization, Bob brought you system ideas a week ago. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Where is that? COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Number 15, thank you. COHHISSIONER HAC'KIE: Thank you. MR. SUMEK: A public golf course. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: We have 300 acres we don't need anymore. MR. SUHEK: Anyway, an opportunity. We're going to prioritize these a little bit later. Some of these may not make it to the real action -- COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Let's not prejudge, Lyle. MR. SUHEK: Land development code, we talked about the need to revise it making it more consistent with your goals. Gateway redevelopment plan, that's in the process of being developed. Waste water treatment plan dealing with the NIHBY issue long term, where do you go with that when nobody wants to have it around there. In Boulder, Colorado, in the county, they developed around it. Now they have strawberry and raspberry fufu being sprayed out to scent the area to reduce -- MR. HCNEES: I said it smells like hell. Excuse me for using that term. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Where is Tim -- didn't we do that with the -- we had a banana flavor about four years ago. God's honest truth. Whole neighborhood smelled like bananas. MR. SUHEK: Is that true, Tim? COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I can't remember if it was vanilla or banana. I just remember it was a flavor over there. MR. SUHEK: Vanilla? MR. HCNEES: It was vanilla. MR. SUHEK: You gave them a range of choices, Hike, and they chose vanilla, is that it? COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: It smelled like vanilla and we got a phone call from a woman who lives over there who actually asked do you have banana. MR. HCNEES: If there is an opposite to gilding a lily, that would be it. MR. SUHEK: We laugh about it, but that's some of the things that have been done out there is spraying to make it smell nice. Information technology. You've done a lot of work, but information technology is sort of a lifetime -- it's a perpetual opportunity. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: A/k/a, job creation. MR. SUHEK: Well, or how do you keep current. I had one city -- actually, it's a county. They upgraded their system and they paid for it with 15-year bonds. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Oh, my God. MR. SUHEK: They figured that the life expectancy is three to five, and so they're going to be paying for the next ten years. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Is there a 2020 solution and/or problem in Collier? Bound to be a problem -- MR. SUHEK: 2000? COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Sorry, 2000. MR. HCNEES: The billing system is one we're working on right now. CONNISSIONER HANCOCK: Don't we already have those on the funding horizon by the year 2000? MR. SUMEK: Let me go through these real quickly, not aimed at prolonged debates, but getting you to get your expectations looking at three to nine months. And then we're going to come back again and prioritize where you're going to say which ones are the most important to you. Space plan and building need to address the issue of satellite buildings and facilities, which is consistent with that neighborhood discussion we had earlier. Develop plans, determine costs and funding, and decide where you're going to go with county buildings. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Bob, don't we have a study 80 percent done or something at this point now? MR. FERNANDEZ: I think even further along than that. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I'm wondering how much discussion we can have without having seen that but knowing we're well into completing it. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: It seems to me that study will take us through the third out of four points there which is cost. The funding is our starting point, funding and direction, is that fair, Bob, based on what you believe the study is going to show? MR. FERNANDEZ: I guess what we're saying here is the study is going to be based on some assumptions, for example, that the campus -- central campus concept will be continued to be developed over the longer term. In other words, that's where we're going to be. If, in fact, we're moving in a different direction, we may have direction before you get to the funding issues that we need to -- COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: We might find going in that direction might be cheaper at the outset. MR. SUMEK: Maybe there is a need to, before that study comes back, to test with this group, not today but at some time, those underlying assumptions. Is that what you're saying, Bob? COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: The completion of the study marks the beginning of that discussion. MR. FERNANDEZ: The presentation of that study will give that opportunity to comment on those assumptions. COMMISSIONER BERRY: Well, I think you have to decide what should be in the main campus, what has to be there, and then you start talking about what could be a satellite if that's an option. MR. SUMEK: Again, today we're not going to resolve the issues but say is this one really important compared to what else we have got to get done. Other comments on this one? Jail expansion, finalize plans and cost determining funding and decide where to go with it. That's underway, too. COMMISSIONER BERRY: Yeah. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: On that subject, I want to make sure that we are fully exploring the possibility of contracting jail services out, and, by that, I mean housing and everything; shipping the inmates from here to some contract. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Send them to Pompano. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: We send them to the East Coast. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Seriously, if we're talking about a major expansion, we could see if there is an opportunity to house them under a contract basis somewhere else then it may be more cost effective to do it that way. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Have you heard of a regional jail where someone is doing this? COMMISSIONER NORRIS: We went through that discussion before and it turned out to be Fort Myers or Lee County's jail that they would let us fund and maybe use it if things worked out. COHHISSIONER HANCOCK: We have had that relationship on one other project. MR. SUHEK: Out west, what John's talking about is a very common practice. If you go to the states of Oregon, Washington and Arizona you'll find -- and Colorado, you'll find what John is talking about. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Maybe we could send them to Hanford (phonetic). MR. SUHEK: We'd bury them. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: By the time they get to trial, they've served their year of jail time so it's kind of a wash, but isn't it -- with a year or less in waiting for trial the transport issues of the regional facility make it almost impossible -- COHMISSIONER NORRIS: That was one of the arguments, yes. MR. SUHEK: So adding that bullet there, exploring that? COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Considering the expenses, I think it's worth exploring. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: When you look at it, there is bound to be a fatal flaw, but if there's not, we have something to look at. MR. SUHEK: Other comments on this one? Road network and density reduction, Vince gave me a nice, thick packet of stuff that I read through. You're in the process of reviewing that analysis, evaluating your options, and then there is a real need to decide where you want to go with this. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: April 14th, in front of the board, that's scheduled, isn't it? MR. FERNANDEZ: Right. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: It can't exist all by itself. If we look at some of the other things we've talked about today that have an impact on that, you know, it -- we want to look at it in a comprehensive way, but I think there are some recommendations in there that would be fairly simple and logical to act on. Others may be a little more integrated with some of the other concepts we've talked about, but I think -- COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Well, frankly, this has been an action item for us for 24 months. We've been plugging away at this. MR. SUHEK: That was talked about in our last session. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Right. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: The key is the difference here is we have tied it to an actual piece of infrastructure which, you know, is no longer subjective or just whimsical about what we can or can't do. We're not talking about reducing densities just because it's popular; we're talking about looking at densities in relation to the ability -- COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I have to take exception to that comment. Those of us who talked about reducing density weren't talking about it because it was popular. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: I was talking about our constituents that say well, why don't you just stop the building because that's what they want us to do. We can't do it just for that reason no matter how much you like to or may not. That was the reference, certainly not aimed at anyone. We keep telling them we can't just do it on a whim; there has to be a justification for it. I think that provides a justification. MR. SUHEK: Other comments on three? Four, there were two parts. The first part, A, would be evaluating and making adjustments, evaluating the current performance, clarifying that relationship. It's working now because of the personalities involved, but let's say those changed, putting that in a formal way, feeling good about the progress that -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I had to be sure Susan wasn't leaving. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: I just asked Barb the same thing. MR. SUMEK: I heard that from several of the different sources. The other one is consistent with what was up there is initiate a process for a more specific, strategic plan, probably not likely to be done in nine months, but significant headway could be made on it. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: I would say that's something that, during next fiscal year, because we're close to this budget cycle, to really have an impact on it. Obviously, more of the same funding coordination for next year, but maybe during the next fiscal year that becomes -- that gives us ample time to have the liaison position established to work through and try to formalize that relationship a little bit. MR. FERNANDEZ: On the liaison, since you brought it back up, how do you feel about the chairman being the ex officio liaison? I'm wondering if that helps Susan with her role because she can call upon the chairman to be the representative of the Board of County Commissioners? MR. MCNEES: We did have a policy conversation about this at the board meeting Thursday, and one of the issues that came up was the ability the rotate all of the commissioners through it maybe even on a quarterly basis because we feel it's very -- I call all of you, so I don't think that we need one specific person above the other four, but we find it's an opportunity maybe to share with each of you what we're trying to do. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: That's a good idea. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I assume we don't need to make that decision now. We're looking at broad policies on that one. MR. SUMEK: We'll identify it as an action step, though. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Is that a nice way of saying I don't have to worry about it? MR. SUMEK: We'll make sure it gets past it. Marco Island. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: I think we can accomplish that within the next nine months. That's one I mentioned to Lyle yesterday just simply because as we look at our budget process this year -- COMMISSIONER NORRIS: That's going to determine really our policy and direction and -- COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: And our relationship with them. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Yeah. We're going to have some input from the new City of Marco in order to make those decisions. They are aware of this, and hopefully they'll be forthcoming in short order with what they want from the county and how that relationship's going to work out. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Should we be thinking about a joint meeting with them? COMMISSIONER NORRIS: We may -- if they didn't get back with us soon, we may need to do that. COMMISSIONER BERRY: I think if you do that, you're going to go into a political situation. I think it's much better that staff works with them and keep the politics out of it. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: If it boils down to a couple of specific issues like the budget -- COMMISSIONER BERRY: Exactly. It will come to us, but I'm not sure at this point in time -- I think staff needs to and try to accomplish as much agreement or agree to disagree on as many items as possible prior to our getting into it, but I really -- I think youwre going to open up, Pam, a bucket of worms of -- MR. FERNANDEZ: I think before we consider that, you may want to take a look at the product we get from them during the process of working on an amicable agreement right now and wewll see what that includes and what it doesnwt. If we can bring it through in, what I would call, a normal staff process for you to consider on the policy issues, then wewre okay. If that process doesnwt work, there are a lot of loose ends hanging out there. Then, we may decide we need to do that. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Probably very similar to the beach parking issue. (Commissioner Constantine leaves the room.) COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: The issues were raised on those fronts. They were discussed at a staff level, and when two or three items remained hanging, we had a joint meeting resulting in a matter of 60 minutes and we were done. I would see us doing it much the same way. What about that -- I understand that interlocal agreement, but it seems to me we skipped one important step, or may have if itws not considered, and that is, donwt we need a list from them of what are you going to do for yourself? I mean, you know, what services are you going to provide that -- (Commissioner Constantine enters the room.) COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Wewre not interested in that as much as what -- thatws what we want. We need to know that before our people can build the budget. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: What do you want to buy from us. COMMISSIONER BERRY: Have they talked about this, Bob? MR. FERNANDEZ: I understand they have, and that's the basis for the interlocal agreement that's coming our way. We've essentially put them on notice, through the series of white papers coming next budget year, we're not planning to recommend funding for these services, and we've listed them. COMMISSIONER BERRY: They're aware of all that. MR. SMYKOWSKI: Bob did send a letter to Mr. McCool (phonetic), as directed by the board, for what services and what duration, you know, would you anticipate receiving services from the county and when do you think they would be phased out, so we're waiting for a response. MR. FERNANDEZ: We've asked the questions we needed to ask, and we've let them know what the issues are and told them what our intentions are in terms of not receiving services unless we hear from them otherwise. COMMISSIONER BERRY: Have we given them a time frame so they have an idea when they need to respond to you? COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: You have to have a deadline. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: That might be what you need to do. COMMISSIONER BERRY: I really think they need to have a drop-dead date for all of you to know exactly what their expectations are because they're going to be preparing the budget, and we need to have that information back here. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: We've since advertised it as a workshop, not a meeting, so we can eventually get direction -- COMMISSIONER BERRY: It's a discussion, but it -- MR. SUMEK: Capture it as action item. MR. FERNANDEZ: We discussed it. We both agreed, the manager and myself, we need to have these decisions made early on so we can budget for it, but a specific date probably is in order. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Very early on is like about now. MR. SUMEK: Who represents that area? COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Lucky me. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Mr. Marco, as we call him. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Captain Marco, as we call him. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: We'll talk. MR. SUMEK: Please do. I'm serious about that. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Okay. MR. SUMEK: Agricultural land policy, evaluate approaches used by similar counties -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Is what's meant by that non-urban development, you know, outside the boundary development or what did we mean by that? MR. OLLIFF: There were things discussed and one was the economic component of agriculture to this county and what's going on with it or what role, if any, should the county want to play in that. Secondly, the agriculture land in terms of that green space discussion, and what, if any, policies does the board want to have to try and coordinate resolution of either AG land and/or green space. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: I'll be more specific. We're seeing development patterns downtown out to the AG areas and some are done in a responsible manner and some may not be. My concern is that I think when the growth management plan was adopted in '86, the rural AG at one unit per five acres was established because, quote, who's going to build out there, end quote. Well, here we sit 12 years later and the answer is today very different than it was then. The idea is to keep that land predominantly agriculture, then one unit per five acres is not consistent with agricultural use. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: May be time for one to twenty. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: We have somewhat of a scrawled density. We have things to consider, Butt Harris being one and whatnot, but right now I think we have an entire half of the county that could be a rural development. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Well, that's going to be interesting to see how Butt Harris would apply if it's zoned agricultural, how much can it apply to you taking away my right to build homes. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Particularly if all of the data supports precisely what we may do, which is a density closer to one unit per twenty acres or something to that effect. I guess the concern is if we're talking about how to change the pattern in the urban areas, the Estates has 26,000 zoned and yet built units out there. The last thing we want to do is start having a density issue and a growth issue occurring outside of those and we don't really firmly have our arms around what's going on in the near area. I think we need to -- I think that's a big item for us, and I think it's a big item for us because of particularly one or two projects that have come in the last 12 to 18 months we can't -- they all can't be a Twin Eagles project. They all can't be done on former pasture land and use high preservation. We're going to have to adopt a policy -- COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: The other part of that is the discussion the Conservancy had with Twin Eagles and where we can take pieces, a part of that, and implement it as policy. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: I think the density issue for the AG lands is significant. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: And is separate from cjustering and rural development because I would love to see us look at one to forty, one to twenty. COHMISSIONER BERRY: There are areas out in the west that you can't sell off -- it's ranch land out there, and some of -- obviously, people want to purchase some of this land, and they're saying you can't sell anything less than a 35-acre parcel. MR. SUHEK: I've worked with several counties that are dealing with this. Virginia Beach is both a city and a county. They are in their third year of an agricultural reserve program where their actually going out and appraising property today, what it would be if it was fully developed and reimbursing, and it's a funded program, and that is a significant policy issue they made. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: That would be significant. MR. SUHEK: If urban goes into these areas, the infrastructure cost would be so prohibitive because it's in -- to get there, you're going to have to go through some wetland areas, and that's what that county board has made a decision on. I'm not suggesting that's what you need to do here, but that's -- COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: What we've heard over the last couple of years from the farm community is just how important and vital and valuable their AG land is. I would be hard-pressed to hear an argument on their behalf that they should be compensated for keeping it AG. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: At the same time, face the economic realities. MR. SUHEK: This is dealing with policy for your county here. Infrastructure maintenance plan and funding. It would be to evaluate the condition of the infrastructure, determine needs and problem areas, develop a plan for maintenance, looking at upgrades and keeping that an ongoing process, determining the cost and funding, and making some decisions where you want to go with it. It's dealing with -- what was that, Tom? MR. OLLIFF: I was talking about the -- we were down to 15 already trying to figure out what we are doing there. MR. SUHEK: Are you guys laying out the course here? COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Meeting at my office today, 3:30. MR. SUHEK: That goes back to some of our earlier discussion about importance of infrastructure and anticipating problems and expenditures, not waiting until you have a crisis. Questions, comments or additions on seven? COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: I think we covered it. MR. SUHEK: Revenue diversification. Evaluate revenue needs and cost of service. What are some of your revenue options beyond property tax, and make some policy decisions, short term and long term, to support. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: How about elect as little as we need, as little money as we -- COHMISSIONER NORRIS: We're having further discussion at 1:00. MR. SUHEK: This is a 1:00 discussion? Mike. MR. HCNEES: I'll throw an issue out and hopefully won't regret it. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Just by saying that, Mike -- MR. HCNEES: At your direction a couple years ago, we considered a utility franchise fee. At that time we discovered it, or we talked about it, we were talking about it in the terms of a revenue enhancement, how can we raise more money to take away some of this general fund pressure. We talked about it also in terms of a revenue diversification. Maybe it's time to talk about that in a revenue neutral standpoint, meaning raise no more money than we're already raising but substituting some of what is now ad valorem for something like utility franchise fee so that we just diversify the burden a little bit, we don't ask any more from anyone except to change the way we're distributing that a little bit so that as one is volatile, the other isn't. That may be something we want to consider when we're not doing it as an increase but as a diversification measure. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I liked it the first time -- MR. MCNEES: You can legitimately say we are going to offset ad valorem, have a concurrent decrease in the ad valorem rate for whatever amount of money you're going to raise from the franchise. MR. SUMEK: Other comments on that one? COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: I think I referred to it then as a bit of a shell game. People pay property taxes and they see it on their bill, and they know it. Every month when you pay a 3 percent franchise fee, it doesn't hit you that I'm giving money to the government. You think in some way it has something to do with your cable bill. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Your property tax bill is helpful two from weeks tomorrow; utility tax is not. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Your point is logical. It makes sense, and if it's a net wash to the individual, then is it a positive or negative? I guess my concern is, and it goes back to what you said earlier about the level of distrust. What I was hearing is, oh, sure, you're going to sneak it in on my bill and later you're going raise the ad valorem tax, and in the end, you have more of my money, and it was a little convoluted from the public standpoint as government finding a new way to tax me. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: The only thing is it does -- in the back of your mind somewhere, keep it as a potential for the diversifying when we're talking about anticipating long-term needs and amortizing them. This is one that, if we agree the growth curve is going to level off at some point, we're going to start the -- some future board will either start raising property taxes or we'll diversify and come up with another revenue source because, we all agree, the property values are, at some point, going to level off. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: We're doing our job to have the appropriate maintenance funds set up in such a way that that isn't -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: No, I'm talking about when the growth curve -- COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Don't forget when the growth curve slows down, the expansion of county government also slows down in proportion, so you're really only operating what you've got with minimal further capital expenditures. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: I don't have a strong objection to it. I just think the perception to the average person out there is government finding another way to tax and there has to be a real good reason for us to do something like that, and I don't feel the decision imminent. MR. FERNANDEZ: I think you need to ask yourself if you are serious about the diversification goal. That's just what this is. It changes who pays and it changes as you distribute, as Mike said, the burden of the cost of government service. It will be regarded as a shell game. People will say, I know what ad valorem taxes are; I'm comfortable with them staying where they are or lower, but this new thing, I don't know what it is. Sometimes it's hard to convince people of the validity of using another tool. That's what the diversification goal is all about. It means changing who you're collecting tax from; who's bearing the burden of the service. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: The philosophy is that all taxation is inherently -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Equal. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Not necessarily equal, it's inequitable. All tax taxation is inequitable. MR. FERNANDEZ: Does this add this to your mix -- COMMISSIONER NORRIS: If you can trust yourselves to collect the same amount of money but at some time diversify the sources of that money, you spread the inequities out so that the -- it is more equitable by having more inequities. MR. SUMEK: Mike, if may bring this to a closure so we can move on. We can get into a -- Mike. MR. MCNEES: Two issues it's not a shell game when you say, yes, this is a new tax mechanism because it is. It's a way, but not to raise more money, just a way to raise the same amount of money in a new way. Commissioner Norris hit the nail on the head. We're facing constantly -- and any incorporation is driven by this tax equity issue. It's a way to address that and say, okay, we will take some of the burden off the donor property owner and spread that among some of the other people who don't pay much property tax and put that on utility franchise. It's a way to address something that you all hear every day, this tax equity argument. This is a valid tool to address that and give yourself a little more flexibility MR. SUMEK: Anyway, we'll see where it falls in the priorities. Next one is new development standards, and we talked about that this morning in terms of neighborhoods. Comments about nine? COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Just a big priority for me. We've got to make a wholesale change in the growth pattern in Collier County or else we know where we're heading and we don't like it. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Mark your number one in that one right now, would you, please? MR. SUMEK: For him? We'll see how it is for the rest of you. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: They get to vote, too? MR. SUMEK: Yes. Remember this is important here. This doesn't mean a hell of a lot. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Welcome to my life, Lyle. MR. SUMEK: Urban services. We talked earlier about that, how folks in the non-urban areas are expecting urban services; what is our policy going to be today and looking to the future. Draft a policy -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I thought that was a done deal; we're not expanding urban boundary. MR. SUMEK: It is done? COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Not if you're Barb. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: That's not the question. If you live in the Estates community, you expect the exact same services if you lived in the metropolitan area. COMMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Water and sewer. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Police response times, EMS response times. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Okay. I was just -- MR. SUMEK: Because if you say yes on that, then that has -- COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Far reaching financial implications. MR. SUMEK: This one can be impacted by what that decision is. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: To me, a policy on that, and this sounds very -- but look at where you buy. When I buy my house, I look at where the nearest fire station is; where is the nearest school; where is the nearest shopping center. What do I expect, to buy it and ask government to make up for deficiencies that weren't there when I bought my house. If you choose to live in the country, then you get a country doctor. I mean, you know, if you live out in the farm land, the services just weren't there. If you live in the city, the services are. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: We need to be fairly clear about that. We all take some of that for granted, but maybe if you buy in the Estates or agricultural property -- it may or may not get through to the thought process to get you to that point. COMMISSIONER BERRY: Let me give you an example of one of the concerns, Pam, that has been brought out. Just a simple desire for having a fire hydrant, not in front of every house, but at the end of every street. It's something that we've been talking about and we think -- I think it's been addressed. What happened, there were a group of people that moved out there a long time ago they wanted strictly to get away, and they didn't want to be burdened with those kinds of things. You have a new group of people that are moving out into the Estates that are going out there, number one, because they can get a piece of property that's less expensive; they can put more money into a home; they can have a nice home out there. At the same time, they're starting to think about how they like some of the urban services. They are kind of desiring this, and they're not understanding necessarily why the county isn't -- they think as the county grows, they think the urban area grows, and there is some desire on, not all of them, but on many of their cases, they would like to have some of these urban services provided. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Does that include the 7-Eleven next to their house? COMMISSIONER BERRY: No. MR. SUMEK: But not next door. COMMISSIONER BERRY: That is a divided issue. You have a group of people who would love to have some of these kinds of things closer and more available for them. You have others out there that absolutely want no kinds of -- no business -- anything close. They don't want a grocery store within a mile of their house, or whatever, two miles, so those are the kinds of things. MR. SUMEK: There is a third group that moved out there originally because they thought they wanted it, and now they say they're getting amenities over there; now we want them in our neighborhood. So that's a third group that I see out there as I work with counties. MR. OLLIFF: Not only that, but to complicate the matter more, those people who moved out there are still paying their impact fees when they build those houses for parks, for libraries and all those services, and they're saying, we paid -- MR. SUMEK: Where are ours. MR. OLLIFF: -- where are ours. MR. SUMEK: That gets at -- there are some major policy choices. This is a simple little heading, but there are some really significant policies as well as costs. MR. OLLIFF: From a policy standpoint, I'm not sure we thought about this early enough that we were consistent all along, because now I have provided a park to certain parts of the Estates. If you look at the entire Estates map, if I continue that, you've got a lot of infrastructure to be built. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: You're right. We need a policy because we're not going to continue that because we can't afford to. When you move out to the country, you drive further for everything. That's a reasonable -- MR. SUMEK: It may also undercut some of your goals. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Which one? MR. SUMEK: This and this. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I think it reinforces the small-town feel. MR. SUMEK: It can. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: It doesn't undercut it at all. Wal-Mart in the Estates, that undercuts the small-town feel. MR. SUMEK: Right. That's why that policy, to be consistent with that goal, is very important. Did I respond, Pam, to your -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: You did. Thank you. MR. SUMEK: Storm drainage, we talked about that. Any further discussion needed there? Is it getting warm in here? It was cold earlier with my bald head. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: It was cold without a bald head. MR. SUMEK: Quality work force, that is addressing the issue of employee compensation and expanding training and professional development. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Did that come from staff by chance? MR. SUMEK: If you are retaining them, it's less cost than having to hire and retrain them. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Yes. Are we preparing for an item the board is hearing later this year? MR. FERNANDEZ: That's part of your budget policy document that you have already adopted, and the point here is that it's going to be an issue during the budget. MR. SUMEK: There will be some key decisions there. MR. FERNANDEZ: There are going to be some important recommendations made in that regard. MR. SUMEK: Commercial architectural standards. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Yeah, yeah, yeah. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Keep going. COMMISSIONER BERRY: Do away with them. Move on here. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Hope you enjoyed your time on the board. COMMISSIONER BERRY: I think that's one of the better things. MR. SUMEK: That's progressing at this point and it's a matter of making decision in the next few months about -- COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: John said earlier, we need to stay on top of it and continue to revise it to make sure that it continues to channel things in the right direction. MR. SUMEK: Consistent with your goals as you talked about earlier. COMMISSIONER BERRY: I have one question. It seems to me that every new building that's popping up has something in it that looks like this. Is there anything with that part of the architectural -- that they're all going to have a peak to them? COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: You mean to do this? COHMISSIONER BERRY: Couldn't it be rounded once in awhile? COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: As opposed to this, a flat front. It just so happens it's the exact same architect on each one, so -- actually, in our standards, in our pictures, it says do this, don't do this; that's kind of what the picture looks like. Maybe we need to draw two pictures. Do one of these. Don't do this. That's just -- it requires articulation and that is just the key design people are choosing. COHMISSIONER BERRY: I just thought that was the Hancock -- COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: It is now. MR. SUHEK: I should have brought Fred in. He's my assistant and will referee. County reorganization. Bob has brought you a proposal at this point in time. It's for you to decide where you go with that. Other comments on that one? COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Enough said. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: When will we be seeing that again? MR. FERNANDEZ: As soon as we get the figures on the financial side, the costs and the change -- COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Do we have a balipark time frame on that? MR. FERNANDEZ: Hopefully -- do you have an idea within two weeks? UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: It can be ready in a couple weeks, yeah. MR. SUHEK: Number 15. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Honestly, everywhere I go, we talk about parks and recreation. Everyone says how come we don't have a golf course, and I've always said in the past because they lose money. Guess what? Boca Raton contributes back to the general fund from its golf course significantly every year. COHMISSIONER BERRY: What do they charge? COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: They charge a membership fee for residents per year of, you know, it depends on -- it's $700, $800. It's not chump change. When you go out and play, your greens fees are $15 or $19. The point is if somebody wants to pay $10 to play golf, you're going to lose money. We don't live in a community where people want to subsidize somebody else's recreation, so if we're going to build a municipal golf course, it has to pay for itself. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: If it -- who are we serving if you have to pay 1,000 bucks for the privilege. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Tell me where you can play for $19 in this town. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I don't know. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: If you play golf once a week, and let's remember we have a lot of retired people who come here to do that but can't afford 35 to 50 grand to join a golf club, when you divvy it up for a round of golf, average it once a week, you know, $35 or so, and in season to play a round of golf at the worst course in this town is 80 bucks -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I thought I didn't play golf because I didn't have time. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: No, it is expensive. My point is we have a huge segment that wants to do this as a form of recreation. We build piers for fishermen. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Tennis courts. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: How much does it cost to build a pier, to rebuild the Naples pier so people could -- my point is we spent all this money at the sanctuary state park. MR. SUMEK: This is what this is about. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: I think it's one that -- it's not obviously an idea -- I really don't think is going to fall in number one, two or three, but there is enough talk in the community -- COMMISSIONER NORRIS: I think it deserves an analysis soon. COMMISSIONER BERRY: We'll talk -- MR. SUMEK: That's what this is really doing is analyzing it, what are some sites and design links into that analysis, what are you really trying to build here if most municipal courses are not as long as the TPC -- COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: This is the average person's golf course designed in such a way as to reduce the maintenance cost and hopefully get an Audubon signature on it for being environmentally friendly. MR. SUHEK: I was telling Tim yesterday several municipal courses I work with don't even use tees; they have flat areas. The USGH puts their little plaque down but it reduced maintenance costs because you have a person get out, move the tees. And the ground rules in a couple of these municipal courses, the person who won the hole gets to choose where the tee is, so they have a little fun with it, too. There are some ways there because that reduces maintenance costs by a third by not having tees there. COHMISSIONER BERRY: John uses the ladies tees -- COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Yeah. Not very successfully. MR. SUHEK: To get out of your equipment -- moving right along, land development code revision, we talked about that consistent with your goals. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: That's a big one. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Does that fall within nine almost -- MR. SUHEK: Do you want to combine them? COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: And three. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: That's an ongoing process. You do that every year. You've identified some major projects that you have to see in the revision. MR. SUHEK: Gateway redevelopment plan is being completed, right? COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Yeah, that's going to happen and come to the board -- COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Except that it didn't cover all of the activity centers. The interchange activity center at Immokalee Road and 1-75 is not -- COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: I was talking about the Davis -- COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: I was thinking activity centers that have been called gateways on 951 in required master plan and whatnot. COHMISSIONER BERRY: All right. Right here is we don't have a meeting of the minds of what the, quote, gateways are into this county. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: She's talking about gateway as to the city, and you're talking about gateway to the county. COHMISSIONER BERRY: Which gateways are we talking about? COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: That particular one was one of the things we were talking about in the redevelopment plan and we probably ought to be also looking at the activity plan -- COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: When we did our master plan requirements on 951 the term gateway and whatnot, there were some like Immokalee and 1-75 that we didn't designate as a gateway or required part of that because you can't cross 1-75 is -- it's still a gateway, the image people -- COHMISSIONER BERRY: Now I can give you a different perspective from people in my district who will tell you -- COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: What district is that? COHMISSIONER BERRY: The biggest one. -- that they look at the gateway of, quote, into Collier County and what are we -- what do we do? COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: What are they saying is that gateway -- COHMISSIONER BERRY: It depends on if you come on Highway 29 from the north and you come into the town of Immokalee and gateway redevelopment. I mean, this is -- the whole thing is we need to define what we're referring to in terms of gateway and letting them know what we're talking about gateway. Are we talking about gateway off of 1-757 Are we talking about gateway -- Pam's talking about Davis triangle. MR. SUHEK: There are really two parts; one is dealing specific with the triangle, and the other is dealing with the redevelopment opportunities at gateways, plural. COHMISSIONER BERRY: Right. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: You can landscape all the medians you want, but at the point they enter our community, if it looks like garbage, no pun intended, Tim, you know, it doesn't do much. COHMISSIONER BERRY: It's not his district. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: He started working on it before you were here. You can have the dump. COHMISSIONER BERRY: You wait till you see what we're going to do with that dump. MR. SUHEK: All right. Ready to move on? COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Moving right along. MR. SUHEK: Waste water treatment plant dealing with that long term NIHBY potential there. That's the smelly, noise stuff. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Didn't we cover that in general infrastructure? COHMISSIONER NORRIS: We did. MR. SUHEK: Number 7, this one is dealing more with this. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: We didn't talk about seven because we folded that into this. MR. SUHEK: This is the goal, but this is saying do you want to deal with that issue now, specific target. It's a goal, but do you want to do anything during the next nine months? COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: If it's a goal, I don't know that we can accomplish a long-term policy direction in nine months. MR. SUHEK: You can maybe start it. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Start it, but not -- certainly -- I mean MR. SUHEK: Probably those are out. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: I think that's going to take longer to do correctly than the time frame we're talking and with these other ones. MR. SUHEK: If we initiate the process -- COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Of the Norris Waste Water Treatment Facility? MR. SUHEK: Are you planning to leave John soon, or -- COHMISSIONER BERRY: This is going to be a living memorial. COHHISSIONER HANCOCK: He's being called back to Area 51. MR. SUHEK: John, I work with Kenowick (phonetic) and Walla Walla (phonetic), which were impacted by -- they're starting to see it in their water systems. COHMISSIONER BERRY: Are they all glowing? MR. SUHEK: Not as bad as Los Almos County that I worked with. That one is a -- that's that neighborhood -- if there is a problem with the landfill that it detects, it blocks off certain neighborhoods and you can't leave those neighborhoods. I mean, there are gates that swing shut. Do you know where Los Almos is? Their county board is real interesting because you have to have one Ph.D. to be on it. Their meetings last for seven to eight hours. They get a box with four notebooks in it to do their analysis for agenda. Moving right along, this board would last a few minutes there. COHMISSIONER BERRY: Very few. MR. SUHEK: Information technology systems, making sure those are continually upgraded. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: You know, I hesitate about that. MR. SUHEK: I wanted to rip it off. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: I'd rip it off. COHMISSIONER BERRY: I want to hear something about it. MR. FERNANDEZ: This is not a hardware question as much as it's the need to properly maintain the system that we have. What we have got is a system that has become a fundamental part of every office. This is how we operate. This is the only way we can check books out of the library. This is the only way we can conduct our daily functions. I'm finding that we're going to need to make more of an investment in positions in order to keep that system operating at the reliable levels we need to have. COHMISSIONER BERRY: Technician or technology -- MR. FERNANDEZ: We need people, staff people. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: We were told that getting this system would reduce staff. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Mr. Coakley assured us that would not be required, so if he's changing his tune now, he has some explaining to do. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: I don't doubt what he's telling you, but I think the consistency of what you're being told and what Neal was told and this board was told isn't there. MR. FERNANDEZ: Well, I wonder -- I wasn't here for that, but I wonder if in order to get the process moving some representations were made that were optimistic and may not have been -- COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Or misleading. MR. FERNANDEZ: Could have been. MR. HCNEES: If you look at the executive summary that the board approved adopting the department a few years back and you look at the fiscal impact section, what it said was we believe that we could do the job being done currently or prior to that by the clerk's HIS Department for the same money and do a better job. We never said we were going to do it for less money, and we never said that over time that we would go backward knowing what the cost of putting a new system was going to be over time. When I talk about information technology, I want to take it off the desktop and talk about the field. The board has made significant investment in the work station at the desktop, don't forget you've also made a significant commitment in the public safety arena with the sheriff's enhanced 911 computer-aided dispatch system which you funded over the last couple years. We're getting increasing requests from the development community and the focus group, for example, for a GIS system in this community. We're looking at mobile data terminals in the public safety area for your sheriff's deputies and paramedics to improve service, so the goal obviously is not to create some huge bureaucracy, but when you talk about the investment that you have made over the last three years to put you in a position now to leverage that infrastructure to improve services out in the community, it takes a certain amount of support staff just like it does to support infrastructure for roads and utilities. When you talk about going from a system that had virtually no personal computers three years ago to just in your own agency five hundred-plus work stations that were connected everywhere from Immokalee to Marco Island to Everglades City and you throw on top of this investment you've made in the 800 megahertz radio communication system, so again, when I talk about information technology systems, I'm not talking about PCs on desktops; I'm talking about voice, data, images now that we're getting commands with GIS and mapping and it's a significant investment that we've already made and there is a substantial cost to support that type of investment. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Adding a number of people seems to contradict the very beginning of your statement and that was referencing the executive summary that we would not have to -- if we could do it for the same as what was happening with the clerk -- MR. HCNEES: At the time we put it in, correct. Now, again, those of you that were here at the time, the way we used to work, we had to go to the clerk and fight for a priority on a mainframe system. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: It's better. No question. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I understand that, but is this staff under the impression that we just want to know what the immediate fiscal impact is and don't really care three years down the road or five years down the road if it's going to be a dramatic increase? UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: No. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: I understand we'll always be able to do it for the same. MR. HCNEES: What we were doing then? UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I don't know that we can. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Dollar for dollar -- COHMISSIONER NORRIS: What they're saying is that job X. that they were doing at this time, they can to it better and for the same cost, but now the job is X. plus Y., and therefore you need to expand to the people for Y. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Unless -- COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Why do we need to do that? COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: I guess my point is, and what Tim is saying, too, is when we are making this up-front investment, please tell us that you should expect to see a plus Y on this budget in the future because as we buy -- as we make capital expenditures, it's generally that we're told, especially with things like information systems, this is going to make us so much more efficient that where you would have seen a growth in the budget for more personnel, we'll be able to work more efficiently and therefore -- you can hear the contradictions. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: The automation argument doesn't hold up. The idea that we're going to get more computerized and have more productivity is the biggest pile of hogwash you could ever hear in government. You hear the same thing in business; automate and you'll be more productive. No, you're not more productive. What happens is the cover of your report has little pictures on it instead of black and white print. You start doing more with the same people, the same time with the same output you had. The improvements in efficiency are marginal. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: That's not true in the private sector. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: It's blue instead of black and white. Those are fine. When we talk about things like GIS, talk to him about what the cost of adding a GIS system is and what its benefits are. Let's talk about it in pieces. One of the problems I have, I don't mean to say this to embarrass anybody, but as commissioners, we're hearing from different departments that they're not getting the service they were told they were going to get from. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: I'm hearing that a lot. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: When I hear that and I have a request that we don't have enough personnel, the logic is they don't have enough people. That's not where the service-related problems are. It's not doing what we thought it was going to do, so then to add money to it, we need a more comprehensive look at it other than that, so, again, I'm not saying that to embarrass anybody or put them on the spot, but before you ask us to add to, we need to feel that this has been a success of step one, and in some ways it obviously has in others -- MR. SUHEK: We'll put down a review of the past, what was said and update it. We could spend a lot of time on that last one. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Everyone put your names on these. MR. SUHEK: Are there any others that you can think of that we ought to add up there? COHMISSIONER BERRY: I'm going to write Tim Hancock on mine. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I'm putting all five names on mine. MR. SUHEK: If you look at those 19, what I would like to do is we're going to prioritize these, and we're going to do it in steps. So take one sheet and put top priority on it. Right beneath your name, right beneath your name. You're the only place that does this. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: That's because we're the only place with the Naples Daily News. MR. SUHEK: And then if you could only work on six of these, what would be your six most important? Don't assume that they're naturally going to get done, and we're going to do a couple of rounds. If you were to say what are the six most important for the next nine to twelve months, nine to twelve months, what are the ones that are the most important, and all I need are numbers. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Tim, you cannot write -- COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Fifteen, fifteen and fifteen. MR. SUHEK: He cannot do that. That is not -- all right. From your point of view, what are the six most points, and I want to collect it. COHMISSIONER BERRY: Is the order that we put them down -- MR. SUHEK: No, we're going with the majority vote. MR. SUHEK: Ready to go, guys? Three, six, five, seven, thirteen, sixteen. Two -- COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Two? MR. SUMEK: Three. COHHISSIONER NORRIS: Three? MR. SUMEK: Five, six, nine, seventeen. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Yeah, that was mine. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: When fifteen shows up, we'll know who that was. MR. SUHEK: Nine, thirteen, sixteen, seven, three, five. Nine, five, three, four, fifteen. Two, three, nine, seven, six, and twelve. Your top priorities -- COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Bob, did you fill one out? MR. SUHEK: -- are the road network and density reduction strategy, Marco Island, infrastructure -- actually, I skipped one. Agricultural land policy, infrastructure and maintenance, new development standards. Those are your top five priorities. Go to your second page and put high on this one, and of the remaining, give me the five next highest. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Eliminate the ones that are up there? MR. SUHEK: Yeah, don't vote for three, five, six, seven or nine. Those are already top priorities. Below that, what are the most important. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Anything on top, leave those out. MR. SUHEK: Ready to go? Here's five, four, eleven, twelve, sixteen, seventeen. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: She skipped over fifteen. MR. SUHEK: This is Pam's. One, two, four, eleven, seventeen. Two, four, thirteen, fifteen, seventeen. Four, thirteen, eleven, sixteen, eighteen. Two, eleven, thirteen, fifteen, sixteen and seventeen. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Everything with two or more gets -- MR. SUHEK: No, no, the high priorities are jail expansion, economic development, storm drainage, commercial architectural standards, land development code and some of these are linked and the gateway. That's where we'll stop. The purpose today was to refine and refocus your goals and to establish a specific agenda for the year that staff can follow through on. If you look at the top and high priorities, very closely lead to the goals that you have identified. We did it quick. Other comments before we adjourn, because I know you guys have a 1:00 meeting. It was nice seeing you all again, and you'll get a report back summarizing all this, and good luck. There being no further business for the good of the County, the meeting was adjourned by order of the Chair at 11:55 a.m. BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS BOARD OF ZONING APPEALS/EX OFFICIO GOVERNING BOARD(S) OF SPECIAL DISTRICTS UNDER ITS CONTROL BARBARA B. BERRY, CHAIRPERSON ATTEST: DWIGHT E. BROCK, CLERK These minutes approved by the Board on , as presented or as corrected TRANSCRIPT PREPARED ON BEHALF OF GREGORY COURT REPORTING SERVICE, INC. BY TRACI L. BRANTER