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r in the community and they have formulated a plan to present to the Commission and to the various local governments within the county. The proposed workshop is a format which has been successfully completed in a number of other communities including Tallahassee, Jacksonville and Culver City, California. In West Palm Beach,a workshop resulted in a report which led to a change in their form of city government. The workshop which the committee is asking to be funded is a process for dialogue. It is not to set an agenda nor to discuss particular issues. It is to recognize that there are general areas of community interest on which honorable people disagree and this workshop is a vehicle that can be put in place to have those people meet for open dialogue to discuss those issues without the pressures of trying to address a particular bill or a particular opinion. It is a process to find out where the disagreeing parties may reach a consensus on a number of issues which are important to the County. In addition to financial support Mr. Wetzig requested that the Board add their personal involvement in two ways: first, to have someone be a liaison with the steering committee and, secondly, but more important in the long run, each Commissioner spend some time at the two-day workshop to observe, to move around among the different working groups and hear the different discussions and listen and glean personally from the process, and in that way be able to determine whether the process makes sense to do again. These processes, once started, do repeat because they raise issues that participants want to talk about "next year." The budget itself has been constructed to allow for a number of issues. The amount budgeted for the professional facilitator is an outside number. We sent formal requests for written proposals to three professional facilitators and two responded. One was substantially higher, that is, $30,000 to $40,000 higher and really wanted to change the entire process from a community meeting and get together into a questionnaire and a totally different kind of format. The budgeted amount is consistent with what a facilitator has cost in other communities. The professional fee for the facilitator, as with most consultants, is a $1,000 a day. That does not include time that is spent in preparation but does include those days when the facilitator physically comes here plus the preparation of the final report, so this is an outside budget number. Commissioner Scurlock asked if the steering committee anticipates future workshops each year or two, and Mr. Wetzig responded that in his experience once a community has gone through these workshops they have found enough value in it to want to do it 29 ARR 41992 3or� 61�F,t