Tavares, FL - Aug. 1, 2011 - Tomorrow morning at 9am is the regular weekly Lake County Board meeting held at the Lake County Administrative Building in Tavares.
I reviewed the agenda HERE and have the following comments listed by selected "Tab" numbers:
This is a regular meeting, so they DO allow public input, but ONLY at the beginning of the meeting AFTER Tab 1 on the agenda. So, if you want to speak for 3-minutes, then be ready to do it then. The Board Chair, Jennifer Hill, still refuses to allow public input as each agenda item is discussed, which the School District DOES allow.
Entire Agenda: READ the agenda HERE and watch the meeting online from the same page or attend the meeting and watch for any surprise additions or addendums. Both the staff and Commissioners tend to add last minute surprises, and sometimes they are key issues not defined well in the agenda page.
Tab 7 - 4th Annual Green Fair VS Jobs, Economic Development and Foreclosure Reduction - The County staff organized this Green fair and arrange all types of vendors to attend. I applaud the effort, but why not do the same thing to improve the job climate, reduce foreclosures and expand economic development? The graphic shows that NY State has such a program for job creation and retention. Why not Lake County?
- Jobs: Why doesn't the Lake County government use the same organizational talents to create quarterly job hunting and skills development fairs?
- Foreclosures: Why don't they also do the same for foreclosure sales. I don't mean advising owners of foreclosed properties, but developing co-op groups to market, finance and sell foreclosed properties to reverse falling property values caused by the huge numbers of foreclosed homes.
- Economic Development: Why isn't the County the LEAD agency in developing quarterly Economic Development Fairs (i.e. building, creating businesses - maybe with SCORE, etc).
Ask your Commissioners, especially Chairwoman Hill and Welton Cadwell, why this hasn't and isn't being done. Is a Green Fair more important than building employment, the local economy and reducing foreclosures in Lake County?
Recommendation: The County has a manager for Veteran Affairs, one for Elders and one for Children and one for giving Federal money away to just a few homeowners using renovation grants. Why isn't there a manager, budget & program for Job Creation, and one for Foreclosure reduction?
Tab 9 - Is Lake County mandating use of the E-verify program yet for all County contractors and sub-contractors to verify citizenship status and to exclude illegal aliens from work projects? This agenda item modifies an existing agreement and the Florida Dept. of Transportation to require use of the Federal governments "E-verify" system. At a prior meeting, during a discussion of another State agreement, the Commissioners asked staff whether E-verify was being used for LOCAL County contracts and I don't think there was a clear answer. Commissioners should ask the question again and set a specific deadline for modifying all County contracts to require usage of E-verify to determine citizenship status of every employee, including those of sub-contractors.
Tab 10 - The County wants to spend $482,141 to BUY land from CSX railroad for Public Land use (a goal of Agenda 21 advocates). This is in the CONSENT agenda and normally would NOT be discussed by the Board unless one of them pulls it for discussion.
- This agenda item should be pulled for Board discussion.
- Staff should be required to describe the objectivity of the appraisal process that defined the payment amount. Some governments require THREE separate appraisals, then use the average. In this case, however, CSX AND the County only used ONE appraiser, and we don't know if he has a lot of business with CSX and has a bias.
- Hasn't Lake County given CSX enough revenues by agreeing to restore the Orange Blossom Express railroad line for $18-million and yet LET CSX still own the repaired tracks and earn revenue from it without any payback requirement?
- The four attached documents do not indicate any type of PLAN for the property, just the contracts and maps related to the purchase agreement. Thus, the Board and staff should justify publicly why we are buying MORE public lands with tax funds when they haven't the budget to open many of the existing public land purchases. WHY BUY MORE PUBLIC LAND THAT CAN'T BE USED BY RESIDENTS. Discuss whether residents can use these purchased sites, or they lie fallow and unused.
- Approval should not be granted without a budget allocation to prepare the trail for public use and setting a specific deadline, PLUS an annual maintenance budget in the budget projections.
- An inspection of the site purchase map indicates there are segments of the railroad line that are NOT part of the purchase. Does this mean that eliminates the use of the land for a connected trail, or does the County already own the other segments.
Excerpt from Agenda Request Document on the CSX $482,000 public land purchase:
"This agreement is for the purchase of land in conjunction with the South Lake Trail – Phase 3 Project, based on a joint appraisal prepared for CSX and Lake County. The purchase agreement is for the purchase of approximately 9.75 acres of land (parcels the RR owns “fee” interest) for the appraised value of $482,141.00. As part of this agreement, the Railroad has agreed to donate approximately 6-9 acres of land (parcels the RR owns in “less than fee” interest).
The property is located in Sections 14, 15, 16 & 23, Township 22 South, Range 25 East, in the Groveland area, lying adjacent to C565A. This agreement also includes a small railroad parcel needed for our North Hancock Extension Project, located in Section 16, Township 22 South, Range 26 East, in the Clermont area. The Public Land Acquisition Advisory Council and the BCC approved the funding to begin acquisition on this Trail Project.
David Hansen, Public Lands Program Manager, is aware of this purchase contract and will keep the Parks and Trails Advisory Board informed of the details of this and future purchase contracts."
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Presentations - usually pretty good - look at attachments first, if possible. However, many times, staff doesn't get the Powerpoints or details from presenters so they are not on the website and you have to request them from staff.
Tab 12 - Creation of a Lake County Enterprise Zone and related Agency. Lakeland has one, and now Lake County might get one. Unfortunately, there is only an Agenda Request document light on details AND NO EXPLANATION OF WHAT AN ENTERPRISE ZONE IS, AND THE BENEFIT OF HAVING AN ENTERPRISE ZONE. So, they leave us in the dark until we see the presentation. I think this is something that Rep. Larry Metz worked on in order for Lake County to be eligible to create an EZ, but I am not certain. BUT. I found a website that explains what they are HERE.
"An Enterprise Zone is a specific geographic area targeted for economic revitalizing. Enterprise Zones encourage economic growth and investment in distressed areas by offering tax advantages and incentives to businesses locating within the zone boundaries.
Currently there are 59 Florida state Enterprise Zones. Included within that total are:
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- 3 Federal Enterprise Communities
- 2 Federal Empowerment Zones
- 30 Rural Enterprise Zones
- 29 Urban Enterprise Zones "
This is a good thing for Lake County, but I don't know why staff can't explain more in the agenda. They write as if they expect everyone to know what it is. You can go to the website and read some reports with more details. If you are in business, real estate or economic development, you might keep up to date on this one.
TAB 13 - Quarterly update on the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant. - Again, there are no attachments and a lightweight agenda request document. I am guessing this includes an update on the energy rebate program GoGreen, GetGreen, which is explained HERE. This page indicates there are still $723,000 in rebates available, so people are not applying very quickly. For instance, you can get a rebate of $600 for a QUALIFYING solar water heater, or $350 rebate on a QUALIFYING clothes washer.
TAB 15 - Approval of Contract with ABC Clean-All for $434,689. Is E-Verify required for this contract? This is a big contract and they selected the vendor from 13 proposals. Reviewing the attachments, it seems they agreed to 1) NOT use sub-contractors, 2) Only use Lake County residents. That's good, BUT, the CONTRACT was not included in the attachments, thus I could not review the terms or whether E-Verfiy was to be used to ensure all employees are US citizens or "legal" residents. The board should PULL this item for discussion to determine if E-Verify was required and if not, why not. This is a big contract with lots of basic "labor" hours and E-Verify should be used.
TABS 11, 16 & 17 - Appointments to Committees - Readers who have an interest in the topic covered by any of these committees should examine the attachments for an idea on who is being appointed, and provide feedback to Commioners if needed.
That's it.
I will post more articles soon on:
- County Committee Procedures: The Cub Scout Pack program seems to even have a patch for Chairman, but does the County even train their Committee Chairs? I will later write about how a better system is needed to define roles of Committee chairs, and their duties. We can't afford to have well meaning, inexperienced amateurs OR staff who have no facilitation experience running some of the important County Committees. This also includes the need for a defined, professional decision analysis method for each committee that makes decisions and recommendations. Right now, it doesn't seem there is any training or defined decision analysis procedures for Committees or Chairs or members. For instance, at a recent meeting of the Tourism Development Council, where they had three applicants for over $800,000 in subsidies to increase tourist traffic, the "justification" data provided regarding to increased tourist nights was laughable and destroyed by one of the Committee members. We can't afford amateur committee decision processes.
- Agenda 21 (see my recent post as a starter...). Every time I read a County document exclaiming the need for more public lands, "sustainability" or "regional" cooperation, I get woozy about the possible effect of reduced liberty, property rights and reduced qualify of life of humans (over gopher turtles). By the way, the new County budget allocates a millage rate for public land purchases. We already have over $30-million in public lands and do not have the funds to make them open to residents. Why buy more?
- How the Capital Planning Advisory Committee CFAC) is being run poorly, and needs better direction, otherwise staff and MPO will be setting all the recommendations. This committee is reviewing budget and priorities for roads and other capital spending (Schools). The assigned Board Liasion arrives late, leaves early or missed meetings (at least one recently). Having attended most recent meetings, it seems to me that staff and MPO are driving the entire discussion, there is no organized process to assemble objective data to make recommendations, the quality of data, or analysis is not being challenged, there is a focus on increasing taxes rather than controlling spending, and that might not be good for the taxpayers. The Chair needs better facilitation and decision objective skills. Of course, the Board Chair, Jennifer Hill, could decide not to bring the recommendations to the Board for open discussion. She failed as prior liasion in bringing the 2008 Transportation Study to the Board, and also didn't bring the Impact Fee Consultant's study from last year to the Board for any discussion. It makes you wonder why you would want to volunteer for any committee. It seems the Board in the past was not really willing to publicly discuss the shortages in road funds after waiving their impact fee revenues for two years. We will see if they actually get to hear the committee information, or only Sean Park's views.
vj
