Speakers Address Florida Amendment Three

It was a busy luncheon for East Naples Civic & Commerce on July 16 at The Arlington in Naples. Greater Naples Fire District Chief Chris Wolfe and Collier County Clerk of the Circuit Court and Comptroller Crystal K. Kinzel were the speakers. Marco Island Noontime Rotary were guests, along with a handful of local dignitaries.

Joe Nolan, president of the MI Noontime Rotary, addressed his club with updates before Barbara Ann Heegan, Director of Business Development at The Arlington, welcomed everyone.

Hegan, who is celebrating one year in her position, shared that they have undergone some remodeling in the apartments and had tours available after the luncheon.

Another guest was Sara Luckenbach, Regional Marketing and Sales Director for The Arlington’s corporate office, LCS. LCS is the third largest senior living provider in the country, and they have operated The Arlington for almost four years. LCS owns or manages 120 communities nationwide, 16 of which are in Florida, and recently acquired all Vi Communities.

The keynote speaker, The Greater Naples Fire District Chief Chris Wolfe, took the podium and touched on important topics that included the mission of the District and his thoughts on the proposed Amendment Three.

As a father of three, married to a nurse, and entering his 25th year in fire service, Wolfe moved to Collier County about four years ago. Having a vast operational background, he is also heavily involved in the state response system and has been deployed every hurricane since Hurricane Matthew.

Touching on the mission of the district, he said, “We provide life safety and emergency response to visitors, residents, and our community. Through a vision of effectiveness, effective response, professionalism, and operational efficiencies.”

Wolfe gave an overview of the creation of their department, starting in the year 2014 when the Golden Gate and East Naples fire departments merged. In 2015, they merged with ILOCA Three. “We also provide services to the Chaffee Fire District through an interlocal agreement and contract with Collier County, and a separate one with the Fire Department of Transportation for the station out on Alligator Alley.” In totality, they cover about 1,512 square miles – larger than the state of Rhode Island.

16 stations and around 300 staff are responsible for this.

They are trending 10% up year-to-date in calls. In East Naples alone, they ran 1,2000 calls for service last month.

In a display of the growth of the area, Wolfe shared that he went back to the year 2019 and noted that there were less than 50% of calls compared to what they are trending towards today.

With this growth comes the rising need for service. A 24-hour, seven days a week, minimum notice service that requires highly motivated and trained personnel.

From a taxpayer’s perspective, he reassured that dollar for dollar is going for the sole purpose of service: “It doesn't go into parks and recreation, roads, or beautification. It solely goes for fire and rescue services.”

His district operates with the smallest form of local government, meaning that they provide HR, IT, finance, logistics, administrative functions, and operation of a fleet maintenance division all in-house.

Wolfe is big on promoting within and guiding current staff on a pathway to leadership, implementing task books that help this process. “I’ve been told I’ve hired and promoted more people in two and a half years as Fire Chief than the agency did for 10 years prior!”

Towards the end of his overview, he was happy to announce that they have reduced their ISO rating. ISO is a grading system for the department that provides data to insurance company underwriters, assigns a rating, and then a cost risk is assessed, directly affecting property insurance.

Statistics were given that an average person experiences three significant traumatic events in their life, however, people in public safety and the military experience six to eight per year. An expansion and focus on mental health coverage is high on Wolfe's list to tackle.

Shifting gears, Wolfe was candid and honest with his opinions on the proposed Amendment Three. “We are not funded through the county; we are our own line on your tax bill,” calculated on a $1 per $1,000 assessed value, “ $.85 cents of that dollar you provide goes towards staffing. If Amendment Three was to happen, it would directly impact that.”

With a 10% or 20% reduction in revenue on the table, going for the largest part of the pie chart is the first move – which is people.

Wolfe took the time to add that from a fiscal efficiency standpoint, they have made incredible strides, including leveraging technology and grants. “In totality, we have received $8.5 million in grants over the past four years.”

Unfortunately, along with the rest of the country, fire service is not inflation-proof. “FRS equipment has increased between 75%- 100% over the past five years,” said Wolfe.

Legislatures have called for expanded benefits for mental health, cancer benefits, FRS equipment, COLA, workgroup recommendations, and recommendations for the purchase of more gear. “We know there's a lot of unfunded mandates, yet the irony is the same people who are supporting us to be safer are trying to erode our funding source, which is 90%-95% funded from tax dollars.”

Wolfe acknowledged their good standing relationship with local government and law enforcement. “We'll come up with other ways to get through this storm together,” he finished by saying, “If we lay people off, it's going to kick us back pre-2014. It'll be decades, if ever, to catch this agency back up.”

Collier County Clerk of the Circuit Court and Comptroller Crystal K. Kinzel took the mic next, echoing further sentiment into the impact of the estimated tax reduction, “Then you have the MSTUs, the CRA, and every other millage rate that’s assessed to the property taxes.” These will be impacted because the basis of the millage rate is the property values.

Kinzel shared that the Florida Association of Counties has sent out a base-level analysis, “As an example, for Collier, they're estimating for ‘27-‘28 there would be a $63 million reduction to our budget required. When you get to '28, that would raise to about $121 million – if they raise the value exemption to $250,000.”

Kinzel added that these numbers change with growth and that those numbers are just an estimate, “We have about 450,000 permanent population right now, and that's expected to double to 850,000. With that growth comes costs.”

She urged the public to go to the website collierclerk.com for education and information, “We have the financial report for the year-end of ’25; this tells you how the county gets the money and what they spend it on.”

“Originally, there were four elements back in December that had gone forward through the House and the Senate, and then they had a reconciliation bill with that language moving forward to the proposed ballot language,” said Kinzel. “That is being contested and part of their argument is that it's misleading; it did not take into account that it says that everyone will get a tax reduction.”

She clarified that originally in one of the four proposals in December, law enforcement and emergency services were in the draft language, but it was excluded. Right now, there is only an exclusion for the school board: “The schools will at least have the benefit of their base school amount of money that won't be bothered. But if you look at the reductions that are proposed for that, what do you do and how do you pay for the other services?”

“The example of things that are covered by property taxes are museums, parks, administration categories, the clerk's office, paying bills, paying payroll – all of those support elements for government would be paid for by property taxes.”

“There are some critical elements that serve you, including fire MSTUs that were mentioned. Those are all based on the millage rate you're assessed for property taxes.”

Encouraging research and education on the ballot in November, Kinzel said, “Collier County is much better off than almost anyone else in the state.” Sharing that many counties have considerable general obligation debt, “29 out of the 67 counties in Florida are already fiscally constrained at the maximum of their millage to assess for services. So they won't be able to just raise a millage rate.”

Amendment Three is on the ballot in November.