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Sonoma County, a diverse county of over one million acres is famed for its agriculture industry and recreation boasting a booming economy and a unique lifestyle for its citizens described by the same Luther Burbank as the chosen spot of all the earth. Sonoma County is the place

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to live, work and play as we move into the 21st century. Led by the forward looking philosophy of its governing bodies. Sonoma County's 340,000 residents are a harmonious, successful blend of ethnic and economic backgrounds. We invite you to take a closer look at Sonoma County in

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the nineties with your host Rich McGlinchey. Hi everybody, welcome to another edition of Sonoma County the nineties. We're gonna be talking about the subject of architecture and we'll be talking to the Sonoma County architect, robert cam beck, you know, for many years the county when it

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had the county government that is of course when it had something to do in the way of architecture or building plants or something like that, it went outside into the community and I think a few years back and determined that it would be much wiser if

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this were done in house. And we now have a Sonoma County architect name is robert came back and his first time he's visited with us and it's nice to have here mom. Yeah. Um, as I said, we, we used to go out, but then we decided

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that wasn't a wise way to go and we're now in house. So why is there a county architect and when was the position actually established? Well like you say Rich, the each department used to go out, if they had a remodeling to do, go out and

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hire their own architect and it resulted in mixed results and inconsistencies and so forth and doing remodeling or new buildings or any type of that construction work is really specialized field and you need somebody with experience and training to manage it. So uh in 1985 the

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director of general services felt it necessary to establish an architecture division and he established the position of county architect to run that that position in that division. Um When did you become our county architect? And there was one person before you? That's right, that's right. I

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came to the county in 1991 so I've been there about 2.5 years before me. The first county architect was rene cardinal and he was hired when the division was established in 1985 he left the county in 19 9 and went to Solano County and then subsequently

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he went to san Diego County where he's the director of architecture and engineering down there before I came to work. And after Renee left paul nicely acted as the interim county architect and he was acting architect for about six months, I think. Um bob what is

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your background and experience? Well, I'm a licensed architect, I have a bachelor of architecture degree from Berkeley uh 1969 and I have about 23 years of experience in architecture. I've worked a couple of years for a contractor. When I was first out of college, we did

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warehouses and, and we even remodeled the race track down at Golden Gate Fields a couple of years for a stock brokerage firm. I've worked on my own for seven years for residential work and then I ended up working for stone martini in Paterson, which is a

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large architectural firm in san Francisco. I worked for them for about 10 years. We did hospitals and I also was involved with the jail for Stanislaus County. Good background. Well, extensive and very interesting. Yeah. Um what is the agriculture talking about? Eric, what does the architectural

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division do? Well, we've actually been working on our mission statement trying to bring it up to date and trying to boil it down to 25 words or less is very difficult. But essentially we're responsible for the planning design and construction of all projects at general government

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facilities. And I'll explain the difference between, you know what other facilities there are a little later on. But we were responsible for all that work and there's quite a bit of work because the facility is growing old, they need to be updated and operational needs are

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changing. So we do quite a bit of work at general government facilities. Well bob, I see you have information about this. Uh and you can explain this to us, how is the architecture division organized, who's in it and what's their background or experience if you will.

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Sure we have an organization chart here that will help me explain that first. I want to say that the architects offices is really blessed with uh a staff of very knowledgeable, experienced and energetic people and and they really make the, the office work. Um we've organized

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the office kind of around a a team approach um there's a small administrative staff which includes Pat Ryan who's my administrative assistant and nobody mcusic which is my secretary and then the rest of the office is divided up into four project categories. There's two major uh

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facility teams we call them which are headed by the associate architects. The one on the left is the paul nicely team and you can see the his team includes down at the bottom there for project managers, john taylor, Don Hughes Bill Garden and Gerry Anderson. Um

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Then there is another major facility team on the right side of the chart there which is headed by the other associate architect Don Daikin and he has a team of four project managers. Wayne, harvey ed Fritts Ron Thompson and sally Glendenning. Then there's two specialists that

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are in the office. Uh one project manager ken meyer who is responsible for all the hazardous materials abatement and projects that we have with hazardous materials which is a substantial amount of work there and then a special project manager rich Fernando, who's handling the expansion to

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the jail project, which is our largest job in our probably the longest job. Very, very informative there. Um What kind of projects you kind of touched on this a little bit when I asked about what division does, but what kind of projects is the division responsible

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for? Well, we we are responsible for typical architectural projects that you would expect an architect's office to to do like new buildings, remodeling, interiors, space, planning, tenant improvements. Um, that type of work, however, we are also responsible for projects that go beyond what a normal architects

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office does. We we do roads and parking and sidewalks, landscape and irrigation, underground utility system, sewer district, you know, sewer collection, uh, water distribution, power distribution and and a big part of our work also is hazardous materials, asbestos abatement, underground tanks, abatement and uh, and removal.

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So we it's it's quite an experience for an architect to come into a situation like this because you're, you're in a position where you have to learn a lot of trades that you really weren't trained in. And it's, it's been very interesting for me, bob this

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next question here, I'm gonna kind of wind around here at what county facilities do or does your architectural division work. Okay. That that gets at what we call the general government facilities that I mentioned earlier. And again, if we can refer to the organization chart the

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two facility teams are are responsible for the general government facilities and they're, they're broken up between the two teams. If we look at paul nice lee's team there, you see that he's, his team is responsible for the administration center, which includes the recently acquired La Plaza

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building. And also he's responsible for the adult detention facilities, which is the main adult detention facility and the North county detention facility. Um, Don's team on the other hand, is responsible for the Loss Gila Coast facility, which is a juvenile facility out on highway 12. Uh,

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he's responsible for the work that we do at the veterans uh and community service buildings throughout the county. He's responsible for the buildings at the Senate medical complex with the exception of community hospital, which is a an enterprise fund and not a general government facility and

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other facilities throughout the county, like the Orange a center of the record center and so forth. The facilities are spread far and wide. And so we've split it up this way to manage it better. And we also do work for other county facilities which are not

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general government facilities. These are like community hospital is one. We've done work at the fairgrounds at the airport. We've done work at public works facilities even though they are not general services responsibilities. They, those groups will come and ask us to do work for them. Now.

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You also have another seems to be a flow chart, what process does the project go through to get completed? According to your chart. This is a flow chart that we developed a while back to help us understand what a project has to go through. Uh from

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from inception to completion and it looks a little bit like the wiring diagram of a 54 chevy pickup but it's not, it's a project flow flow chart. The reason why we had to put this together was kind of decipher for ourselves. All the rules, regulations, resolutions,

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codes and laws that a government public works project has to go through. The chart divides up a typical project into six phases. The project initiation phase, which would be the first phase. The second phase is the consultant selection phase. The third phase would be the design

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phase, fourth is bidding, fifth is construction and finally the sixth is post construction. Each phase has a set of rules and regulations that we have to follow depending on the size of the project, what its value is and uh and what type of project it is.

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It's a very complicated jungle to get through. And it's uh, the chart helps us decipher all the chart shows you there's an awful lot of steps and there's an awful lot of inspection I imagine on your part, isn't there? Yes, and that the inspection lane that

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comes in phase five which is during construction but yes, we do on site inspection throughout the project to make sure that the contractors installing it the way that it was designed inspect. How does a permanent religious say how does the county department request a project from

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your division. Okay. Uh Back to the chart if it's uh it's in phase one, the project initiation phase, there's two types of projects we do and that determines how the department goes about requesting it. One type is a maintenance project which is a smaller project that's

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usually worth less than $25,000 and is meant to upgrade an existing system and maintain the building in operation. Uh Those projects are requested directly from the architects office and there's a project request form that the department fills out and submits to us. Um The larger projects

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are called capital improvement projects and those projects are worth more than $25,000 and actually result in increasing the value or life of a facility. Those projects are requested once a year and they have to fit into the budgeting process. They're paid for by a separate budget,

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our separate part of the budget. And those requests also are submitted to the architects office but only once a year. Whereas the maintenance projects can be requested throughout the year. Um Actually if anyone with the county is interested in in submitting project requests, they can call

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our office and uh my secretary or the administrative assistant would be glad to explain to them how to submit a project request bob. How are projects? County government projects funded the funding again depends on what type of project it is. If it's a maintenance project, uh

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They are funded out of the general services maintenance project budget, which is part of the Department of General Services operating budget every year. Uh We generally get in the neighborhood of a million to a million and half dollars a year to fund maintenance projects. Um so

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that is funded out of the out of the operating budget. Capital improvement projects on the other hand, have a variety of funding sources. Uh they are covered in the capital projects budget in the in the county budget and for instance this year's budget list 21 different

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funding sources that pay for capital projects. Uh General Fund being a primary source. But there's also funds like the courthouse and criminal justice fund. There's other funds, such things as parking enforcement funds that help pave roads and so forth. So there's a variety of funds available

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for capital projects. Got a lot more questions to ask you. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, first this pause and then bob came back and I will come back and talk more about agriculture. Can't get agriculture again. Talking to the Agricultural Commissioner just recently. Now I'm making

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our architecture agriculture. We'll be talking to our architect bob. Come back more about architecture in Sonoma County in just a moment. That's my dad and that's mom, dad's got an idea a way to get rid of all the grody garbage is polluting the world. He's invented

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a big rocket ship to shoot all the garbage into outer space. Mom's not sure, but dad says his invention will save the world. There's an easier way to save the world. Recycle for your free recycling action guide, right? Recycle environmental defense fund to 57 park Avenue

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south new york new york. He protects all living things in the forest but he can't do it alone. Please don't play with matches put out campfires. I never ever forget the words of smokey Bear only you can prevent forest fires. Welcome back to this edition of

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Sonoma County in the 90s were talking to Robert came back and he is our architect in Sonoma County and I have twice maligned him by insisting that he's an agricultural person. He is not, he is our architect. We've been talking about the importance of the architect

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to the Sonoma County government. As I mentioned earlier on the program for many years that county farmed out this type of work. Each department seemingly went its way it would determine, it would be a lot more sensible, a lot more compact, a lot more cost effective

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to have our own architectural division which we now have. And Renee Cardinal was our first architect. Now it is robert came back and he heads the division which we saw a little bit earlier. Now what types of design and engineering consultants does the architecture division hire

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and how do you select those? Well we have a tremendous workload and I might be able to explain that later on, but it's such a workload that we rely on outside consultants to help us with design primarily. And we hire all types of design consultants, architects,

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uh engineers including electrical mechanical plumbing engineers. We hire hazardous material specialists, industrial hygienists, testing agencies and uh and geologists. So we we run the gamut for all types of construction consultants and design consultants. Yes, I mean all the different kinds of people contractors, how our contractors

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selected to build your various projects. Well the selection of contractors dip Depends on the size and the cost of the project. We're under the public contract code which requires us to go to public bid for projects that are worth more than $10,000. That's a full open

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public bid. Any licensed architect in good standing, I mean licensed contractor in good standing can put in a bid on a job if they have the right license. Projects that are under $10,000 fall under the uh purchasing ordinance in the county. And that's broken down by

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two categories. Projects that are valued from 4 to $10,000. They have to go through something we call an informal bidding process which is handled by the purchasing division of general services and then projects that are valued less than $4000. We can uh negotiate directly with one

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or two contractors to get a reasonable price. And and go that way since the inception of the architecture division. I know you've you've done a great many things first under rene and now under you bob. What projects specifically has your architecture division completed? Well, it's interesting.

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We get so wrapped up in the projects that we're doing right now and sometimes we don't take the time to look back and see just how much we have done. But this interview has given me an opportunity to kind of reflect on what the office has

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done. And I was really quite amazed at how much work has come out of the office. The last two fiscal years we have completed over 460 maintenance projects and 38 capital improvement projects. That's just the last two fiscal years. Um That includes such things as major

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remodeling projects to the board of supervisors in the Ceo's office, remodeling the auditor's office, the recorder's office, part of the assessor's office. Um We've done major repairs to ventura Avenue on the county center, we've installed a schoolroom out at La Scala Coast um improvements to Orinda

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center. You know on and on um before I came here, the first five years of the architect's office saw a great deal of work and a lot of new building construction which we've haven't seen a lot of lately. Uh The architect's office was responsible for a

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work furlough building out at North county detention facility. Families family practice building up at the medical center that remodeled the morgue or what used to be the laundry into the morgue. Uh The child care center at the, at the county center, um a major uh central

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mechanical plant at the, at the county center which has resulted in cost savings and uh a lot of road work and and other other types of projects that too numerous to go on. Yes, In keeping with that, how many projects are, what projects are underway at

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the president? Well, we've got some very interesting projects under under way right now. Um, I think our, our biggest job, as I mentioned earlier is the expansion project to the main adult detention facility. Uh this is a estimated at $16 million 239 inmates. Um It's uh,

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it's quite a large job and and we've hired one project manager, Rich Van and is specifically to manage that job. And, and uh, not much else. We've got some other interesting jobs. One is a related to the reorganization effort. Currently, there's a building on the county

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center called the Education Building because it used to house the Sonoma County Office of Education. They moved out a few years ago and personnel is still there and we've used the rest of the building for interim moves so we can do all this remodeling that's now

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being considered for a permit center. Um One major proposal going coming out of the reorganization is to combine all the permitting functions into one location and they're looking at the education building which is a good location, it's the right size, has plenty of parking. Yeah, I

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think the community at large is really in favor of this and I think it's going to go ahead. So that's that's a project that we're getting into the space planning for. Uh As a result of that project, we will probably have to remodel significant portions of

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the administration building because planning department and building department which are now in the administration building will be moving to the education building. Um and personnel has to find a new home. It might be the administration building might be the appropriate home for them. Um There's other

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projects that are in design. There's a new light vehicle maintenance facility at county center or garage if you would. That's under design and and some other long term planning for the Sheriff's building and expansion Hall of Justice, you know, bob the idea of moving the permit

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people all into one office planning for instance, building inspection, whatever else, public mental health, whomever I mean, public health, excuse me. Um because personnel could possibly relocate, could in the planning area and personnel actually belongs next to the administrative really. Yes, it seems very sensible on

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the surface anyway. We haven't done any in depth study of it, but it does seem like a good idea, like a logical idea bob, what is the american with disabilities act and how is the county meeting its responsibility under that act? Right. This is a very

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important project to us right now. We've, well recently the federal government passed the americans with disabilities act. Uh This is a civil rights law, it's not a building code, it's a civil rights Act and will actually be enforced by the federal courts. Um As a result

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of the act, all new construction will have to follow the access guidelines that the act has established, but also as a result of the act, county governments and other public entities have had to look at their existing facilities And to evaluate them in terms of access

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for people with disabilities. Uh this is all types of disabilities. We're talking about, the first thought is people in wheelchairs, that's just one disability, there's sight impaired, hearing impaired, other types of disabilities that have an impact on access. In uh July of 1992, we went to

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the board with a transition plan. Uh This transition plan kind of described the results of the extensive surveys that we had undertaken in county facilities and brought to their attention the deficiencies that needed to be corrected. Now the act doesn't necessarily require all facilities to be

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accessible. It does require all programs and services to be accessible. So we're undergoing some evaluation about meeting the requirements of the act and still meeting the budget constraints that were the county is going through. Um If we were to do all the corrective work that we've

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identified so far Countywide, it could cost anywhere from 4 to $7 million for the work that we know. Uh we have cost estimates for and there's numerous deficiencies that were unable to estimate. So the cost impact is, is very significant. We're looking at developing priorities to

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do the work and alternatives to provide access. All this is under the guidance of a steering committee or a facility subcommittee actually, which is made up of county departments and representatives from Community Resource uh for Independence and Community Access Network which both represent people with disabilities.

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So it's a very important job to us. It will be going on for quite some time to three moments left here. Two or three other things in here. How is the new building a remodeled space planned and designed? Well, it's it's an interesting process and sometimes

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longer than people realize, but you start by trying to establish what the needs are of that department or whoever is going to occupy that building. What we do is we fill out a census form, which asked the department to tell us how many people work in

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the in the existing department and how many people, uh they expect to have there in the in the future years. Uh This results in some kind of a space program and uh a space and functional program which we can take then into a schematic design phase,

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a lot of drawing a lot of uh sketching and then that eventually results in a construction document phase which ends up with a bid package that goes out to bid. It's uh sometimes depending on the size of the job for instance, the jail expansion is going

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to take in the neighborhood of two years for planning and design and another year and a half for construction. So it's a lengthy job. And if anybody wants to find out more about that process, they can call our office at 5-73211 if they want to know

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how to fill out a project request or how to go about getting some remodeling or new work done. We'd be glad to talk to them 5-73211. How does the county plan for growth and changes as the fertility. Now you've been talking a little bit about that

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the program, but how specifically would you do that? Well, we we try to look at especially the major centers and the county center being one of our primary focus. Uh We look at the center as a whole and we try to um what we call assess

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the needs or the long range needs for the center and that includes putting together all these space needs that we've developed by use of the census form and uh, and then comparing that to what the facility has now, what the problems are and what we have

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to do to build an infrastructure and plan for long range needs. It's uh, it's an extensive planning process. We try to account for all the utilities, traffic and circulation parking and so forth. There is a general government or a county center development plan and we're in

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the midst of updating. That bob took a long time for me to get you over here glad to be here. But it's a real pleasure. It's a pleasure to know not only what you folks do, the staff involved and then how the process transpires because it's

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been a real fine thing for the county. I know I've been over there for many years and it has really been a big help. I'm glad to hear that. I really appreciate that. Ladies and gentlemen, my guest has been robert came back the architect for Sonoma

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County. We've talked about the architecture division and all the jobs they do and I hope that you found it's an interesting as I did because there was a lot of it. I didn't know my name is Crystal Country, the program. Sonoma County in the nineties. I'll

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be back with you next week and we'll talk to another member of the Sonoma County government family or perhaps a related agency. We do this in order to bring you a little bit better understanding of how your local government and the local community agencies operate in

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order to serve you and me so until we meet again. Good night, good luck and good health to each and every one of you.