complete agenda - Florida Department of Environmental Protection

ARC Summary August 13, 2010
papers that will come out at the end of this process. This may get at some of the questions that
ARC has about the climate change category.
Mr. Ballard asked Mr. Farr to talk about ranking and the pros and cons of ranking once a year or
twice a year. Mr. Farr said that because there was a discussion yesterday of carry-over projects
and the fact that they would be worked on because they had already been started on and partly
because people had been asking whether ARC was really going to rank twice a year or is that
too much, staff has been discussing in-house whether it would make more sense to reshuffle
just once a year. The thought has been that if ARC ranks in December, staff could bring back a
work plan in February, get it to the Governor and Cabinet before the beginning of the fiscal year
then a work plan would be in place based on the most recent ranking by the beginning of the
fiscal year. It really takes six months to get stuff in the works and reshuffling or reprioritizing the
list kind of undoes what is already in the works. It’s also partly a public perception thing
because there’s the carry over stuff and then also it makes staff scramble to try and reassess
priorities in the work plan. So, staff thinks that ranking once in December would make more
sense from practical and workload standpoints. From a stability standpoint, it would allow staff
to get some results done before its reshuffled.
There would still be two acquisition cycles a year. ARC could approve new Florida Forever
projects at the June meeting so they would be in the hopper to be melded into the ranking ARC
does in December. If a project came up that was really important that needed to be added to
the list and worked on immediately, there would be the option of taking an interim report to the
Governor and Cabinet to get their blessing on whatever new project is being done. That was
done in the past, as well. Staff wanted to offer this as an idea to ARC to see what ARC and the
public think about it – only ranking once a year and still continuing the twice-a-year acquisition
cycle for new projects.
Mr. Reecy said that from his prospective working in an acquisition program as well, he
wholeheartedly agreed with the points Mr. Farr made. He thought that ranking once a year
made a lot of sense and lining it up just as Mr. Farr described also made a lot of sense. He
would support that.
Dr. Frederick said he thought there was something in statute that said ARC had to rank twice a
year. Mr. Farr said “no”, the rule requires us to take a report to the Governor and Cabinet twice
a year. The report that is done after the June meeting which goes up in August could be an
interim report that reports on new projects that ARC had voted on and any other things ARC
had done with reducing acreage in projects. There’s nothing that says there has to be a fullblown
monster report that is now done every six months. He said that he thought that statute
required the work plan be taken to the Governor and Cabinet by October of each year, but if it
was taken in May – that is still by October, just early. He said he thought those were the only
statute and rule requirements and asked Dr. Brock to respond.
Dr. Brock said there is a requirement that a list be submitted to the Governor and Cabinet by
May of each year and a work plan by October of each year. So, there are two discordant dates
in statute, but if the list and work plan are taken to them in February or March, then we should
be able to accomplish both. It would be very early for one and just a little early for the other.
The interim report could be done to appease those who go through the interim evaluation cycle
if ARC wants to continue to do that. That was done, by and large, because people who came in
the door after the submittal deadline often had to wait two years before receiving any kind of
signal about whether the state was interested. So, the interim was to shorten that timeframe so
they could quickly find out whether the state had any interest typically within a six-month period.
He said this was what he described the previous day – ARC could just rank the three new
projects by taking an average score across the board of where a project should be ranked and
inserting it into the existing list and submitting that as the interim report without a work plan
during that August/September cycle. Then, in ARC’s December ranking and for the following
February’s work plan development following those events, DSL could take a work plan and the
annual list in which ARC ranks all the projects.
Mr. Stroh said his agency would strongly support once a year ranking. It was a great idea.
Mr. Ballard then asked for public comments, saying it was very helpful to ARC to hear them.
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