JOINT CITY/COUNTY ADVISORY COMMITTEE
MEETING MINUTES
November 28, 2007
ATTENDEES
Commissioner Michael McLean, Seminole County, Chairman
Commissioner Susan Doerner, City of Casselberry, Vice-Chairman
Commissioner Jon Batman, City of Altamonte Springs
Commissioner Gary Brender, City of Lake Mary
Mayor John Bush, City of Winter Springs
David Gierach, Sanford C of C
Commissioner David Gilmore, City of Winter Springs
Steve Glazier, Winter Springs Business
Mayor Bob Goff, City of Casselberry
Mayor Thom Greene, City of Lake Mary
Mayor Russ Hauck, City of Altamonte Springs
Hank Lander, Casselberry C of C
Mayor John Maingot, City of Longwood
Tom Marin, Seminole C of C
Jonathon Moore, Seminole C of C
Commissioner Brian Sackett, City of Longwood
Mayor Tom Walters, City of Oviedo
ABSENT
Commissioner Brenda Carey, Seminole County
Marty Chan, PBAS Representative
Kim Hengehold, Oviedo C of C
Commissioner Randy Jones, City of Sanford
Mayor Linda Kuhn, City of Sanford
Councilman Dominic Persampiere, City of Oviedo
The meeting was called to order by Chairman McLean at 3:10 pm.
1. Chairman’s Report
Commissioner McLean gave an introductory overview regarding Floridians for Smarter Growth. This group works at providing more efficient governmental services and saving taxpayer dollars. Ryan Houck, Political Director, will speak to the Committee about Hometown Democracy Initiatives at the January meeting.
CH2MHill will be presenting an update on regional water cooperation and the Yankee Lake Treatment Plant at the February meeting.
Mayor Goff requested that the Highway 46 Plan be put on the February agenda.
2. Update on Seminole Way – Dori DeBord, Planning Director
Dori DeBord showed a power point presentation providing an update of Seminole Way. The partners of the group include the Cities Oviedo, Winter Springs, Sanford, the Orlando-Sanford Airport, the Florida Turnpike Enterprise and Seminole County.
Chairman McLean said this initiative has the potential to affect the entire County and the region beyond. There is a real opportunity, if this is done correctly, to not only affect the ad valorum tax structure today but for the next 20-25 years.
Mayor Bush asked if the timetable studies are going to be done by our staffs. Ms. DeBord said these studies are going to be contracted out to consultants. Our staffs are too busy doing the EAR Amendments and do not have the mechanisms in place right now to continue to do the study work. She said they also want to bring in some expertise in economic study. The committee will take the RFP proposals to the Board at the December 11th meeting.
Chairman McLean commented that Mayor Bush was one of the initiators of the concept of looking at the Seminole Way Corridor. Tom Green, Colonial Properties, and Mayor Bush are co-chairing the task force committee that is involved with this.
Mayor Goff requested Ms. DeBord give this presentation to the City of Casselberry Commission.
3. Approval of Minutes
Motion to approve October 17, 2007, minutes by Mayor Bush. Second by Mayor Maingot. Motion passed unanimously.
4. Educational Initiative for the Proposed Constitutional Amendment on Property Tax – Lisa Spriggs, Fiscal Services Director, Seminole County
Lisa Spriggs showed a power point presentation on developing a framework to deal with the potential challenges the proposed Constitutional Amendment will bring and how it will affect the County as a whole.
Chairman McLean stated that if the real estate market improves and more people move from point A to point B (city to city, county to county), the impact of the portability of “Save Our Homes” becomes larger because you are protecting more dollars with the more transfers that are occurring.
Lisa Spriggs said that would be correct if the move occurs within the State of Florida and are not out of state transactions. For example, someone from South Florida could now move their “Save Our Homes” differential to Seminole County.
Chairman McLean said we could be widening the gap as the market gets better assuming the moves are within the state.
Ms. Spriggs said the proposal does have a retroactive application. If a resident homesteaded in an old home on January 1, 2007, and during this calendar year purchased and homesteaded a new home as of January 1, 2008, the “Save Our Homes” differential will be able to be carried into the 2008 tax roll. It would not, however, apply to anyone who does not currently have a homesteaded property such as someone moving here from out of state or a first time homebuyer. They will have to pay the full tax bill.
Mayor Maingot asked about establishing the inflationary 3% millage rate and new construction.
Ms. Spriggs said 3% is the current cap on assessments under the “Save Our Homes” provision. Since the “Save Our Home” provision was enacted in 1995, a gap started to grow increasing in 2004. It started at $6.9 billion off the tax roll in 2004 and in 2007 that same amount, because of the “Save Our Home” differential, grew to $15.4 billion. Of the $15.4 billion, about $10 billion of that is “Save Our Homes” and that is in effect the 3% cap and will continue to grow.
New construction is always assessed at market value so that will not change. If there is a homesteaded property that has additions added, those additions will be at market value.
Mayor Goff said that the presentation assumes the County is not going to vote to override the Amendment.
Ms. Spriggs said her presentation was not meant to assume that. This year the County did set the millage at maximum millage levy. This information is being presented to try to educate the Committee as to the impact based on following everything to the letter of the law without doing any kind of override based on the County’s Home Rule authority.
Chairman McLean passed out an article from the Orlando Sentinel which detailed the percentage of the residential tax base each City in the central Florida region will lose if the proposed constitutional amendment passes.
Mayor Bush said the League of Cities and Florida Association of Counties recently hired Beth Rawlins as a political consultant for this issue.
Cindy Coto, County Manager, gave an update regarding the initiative that is being put forth by the Mayor and Managers Committee to address these issues. The managers were requested to discuss a common message as an education forum for the January 29th referendum. The first meeting was held on Tuesday, November 27th, and all of the cities were represented as well as Dr. Vogel, from the School Board. The group unanimously decided that there needed to be a single message that spoke for the entire Seminole County community.
Each staff has pubic information and community information experts who are working on this issue Their next meeting will be on December 10th to discuss suggestions. There is a conference call scheduled with Ms. Rawlins to get information as to what is being done on a statewide basis. They will be presenting information as to the core message, how it should be delivered and what the target audience should be. The goal is to bring it forward to the mayors and managers on December 13th to see if they concur and then each will work with their elected bodies. It should be ready by January 2nd to put out on SGTV, mailings and newsletters.
Mayor Maingot suggested contacting all the clubs such as Rotary, Kiwanis and Lions since most of them meet once a month and time is of the essence.
Ms. Coto said the message has to be educational and positive as why people chose Seminole County as their community and the potential effects the referendum will have on that choice. Also, January 2nd would be the most appropriate time to start delivering the message because of the holiday season and this is the time when individuals are distracted and do not necessarily want to hear some of the news that will be presented. The group is addressing timelines, target audiences, delivery, and the content of the message.
Ms Coto said the group understands the County has different demographics than each of the Cities. The message must be consistent but the Cities may decide to deliver it differently.
Steven Glazier, Winter Springs, said if the information provided educational benefit for voters it would be much easier to go to all the Chambers and ask them to distribute it to their members. He asked if the group had addressed distributing this information through utility bills and also Home Owners Associations.
Ms. Coto said those were a few of the means the group had discussed since the County and the municipalities all have utility customers and HOAs.
Mayor Goff suggested that the information provide statistics so property owners could actually see the increases that have happened over the past few years.
Ms Coto said that the group had discussed that and felt that if you start providing a lot of statistics you would lose your target audience. The message has to be kept simple.
Hank Lander, Casselberry Chamber, said you may want to approach it like a political campaign and target “super” voters that are going to come and vote. If you have a target audience, it could shape the message and the way to reach them as well.
Ms. Coto said the group had that discussion and that is one approach. They will be getting information from Ms. Rawlins based on her statewide findings and proceed from there.
5. Update on the Matrix Fire/EMS Efficiency and Effectiveness Study Report & the efforts to date of the subcommittee – Tad Stone, Public Safety Director
Chairman McLean gave a summary of the four items to be updated on at this meeting by Task Force Fire Chiefs.
Director Stone introduced Fire Chief Lars White, City of Oviedo who discussed the CAD and AVL issues.
Chief White presented a handout to the Committee explaining the different systems, communication center staffing and an assessment of the issues associated with each item.
Chairman McLean wanted to know the age of the current CAD system and who owns it. Chief White said it was approximately nine years old and it was purchased by Seminole County.
Chairman McLean said it was obvious from the assessment made by the Task Force, that a better job could have been done in anticipating the future a decade ago when some of those decisions were made. However, we need to look at the current situation and determine what options we have.
Chairman McLean asked Chief White if it would make sense to go back and look at some options regarding a totally new system. Chief White said that he thought they were on that path already.
Mayor Bush said equipment is needed at the City level for them to be able talk to the County CAD system. Chief White said there is no functional AVL equipment and only semi-functional MDT equipment. He does not know whether this same hardware would be suitable with a new CAD product until it goes out for RFP.
Chairman McLean said we want to be sure that any option includes both the Cities and the County. It has to be a comprehensive solution.
Director Stone said we must put a backbone in place that will support all the technology that is needed in the field. Ideally a platform would deal with the most important function, the CAD portion, but also work with the ability to deal with moving units from receiving the call, processing the call, getting the call on scene, tracking the data and doing all the primary things that CAD is supposed to do. The AVL and the MDT are add-on components that are secondary to the primary purpose of the CAD but will have to be integrated into the system. This is one of the current problems; the existing systems do not talk to each other correctly. First we need to deal with the CAD issue making sure that it plugs into the additional modules as we move forward into one system. We also want to make sure the CAD system talks to the massive upgrades that are about to be done to the 911 system.
Commissioner McLean asked Director Stone to come back to the January meeting and discuss more definitive options, how encompassing they are and the cost. Once that is determined, the policy makers will have to sit down and talk about how and when.
Mayor Hauck wanted to know the purpose of them coming back to the Committee with more information. He understood the need for a new CAD system and did not know what other decisions this Committee had to make.
Chairman McLean said it will give the Committee a clear understanding of the options to consider and the magnitude of the cost.
Fire Chief Jerry Ransom, City of Sanford, passed out a memorandum explaining the Technical Committee’s Position on Reciprocity. They are still working on the Interlocal Agreement and are not ready to present that at this time.
Chairman McLean asked if it would be possible to look at some other reciprocal arrangements outside of the realm of First Response such as equipment purchases, training or telecommunications.
Chief Ransom said they did look at those options when they first met as a technical committee and gave several suggestions in an earlier report. They looked at equipment purchases but there are so many avenues currently in the system there were no advantages not already being utilized. There are a couple of other issues that may be considered such as training and equipment sharing/loaning.
Mayor Goff said he was glad to see the Orlando-Sanford Airport included in the study and part of the future First Response Agreement because they use a tremendous amount of resources from the community when fire rescue is needed at the airport.
Commissioner Brender said there is a recommendation from the Task Force that the idea of reciprocity should go away.
Chairman McLean said the Committee is still interested in seeing options for the CAD system.
Commissioner Brender said we already are using what efficiencies we can with group health insurance and equipment buying. The key element is that the chiefs do adjust their systems as conditions change. Trying to put numbers into all of this will just result in a decline in service in the end which is not what any of us are looking for. He would like to continue discussions on the CAD and AVL systems and the sharing of equipment but at the same time make a motion to put an end to the reciprocity portion of the agreement.
Mr. Glazier said the Committee needs to be careful before they make a motion regarding putting an end to reciprocity. The fire chiefs were not against reciprocity they only disagreed with the way it was dealt with in the Matrix agreement. The issue of inequities is still out there from time to time but they deal with it on a long term basis with a different methodology. Before a motion is made to end this, we need to make sure we are satisfied with the way resource inequities are currently being dealt with.
Vice-Chairman Doerner agreed with Mr. Glazier to not make a motion at this time.
Mr. Gierach said one of the things that should be addressed in the interlocal agreement is the issue of planning. This would include the location of fire stations, growth patterns, and equipment buying.
Chief Leeana Raw, Seminole County Fire Chief, said the Fire Chiefs believe in First Response. The concern is that when we get into discussing reciprocity and dollars we lose sight of what the biggest benefit is to the citizens; that the closest unit goes regardless of whether it’s in the County or a City. When we get into exact issues of reciprocity, there are some cases where Cities come into County areas. There are some Cities that don’t have enough equipment for a first alarm assignment. We do not want to get into a tit for tat exchange. Therefore we are looking at a true first response agreement and not charges in the efforts of first response. If we find inequities outside of that agreement, then those may be the areas for additional specific agency agreements. If we look at just first response, we believe as fire chiefs and between our agencies, we can have a blanket agreement for all of us rather than the current individual ones.
The only issue that we collectively agreed on in the position paper is staying away from exchanging dollars for first response. We have a good system in place. Our system is idealized across the country. When there is a citizen out there that needs help, we want the closest unit to go; that is how we operate. As times progress and our systems grow, maybe there will be inequities that need to be addressed and we will continue to work through that. What we ask is that you view First Response as somewhat “untouchable” and keep that as the highest priority.
Chairman McLean asked that a blanket agreement be brought back to the Committee at the January meeting.
Chief Raw said they could also come back with a short list of the recommendations on other opportunities.
Mr. Glazier said it is worth pointing out what Matrix did say about the degree of cooperation among the agencies. He has attended EMS meetings with Dr. Husty and has never seen the level of cooperation and communication that exists there anywhere else. Everybody needs to recognize what a strength that is to build on as you identify and pursue some of those other opportunities.
Commissioner Brender said the only caution he has is that he does not want to over study this issue to the point that we start losing the efficiencies we have. As policy officials, he does not want to get into tampering in the effectiveness of the system.
Chairman McLean expressed his appreciation to Oviedo Mayor Tom Walters for the time he served on the Committee.
Commissioner Brender asked that there be no further discussion on the WIFI system issue that was brought up in previous meetings. Chairman McLean agreed.
The next meeting will be held on Wednesday, January 16th at 3:00 pm at the County Services Building, 1101 East First Street, Room 1028 (BCC Chambers), Sanford, FL.
Being no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 5:10 pm.