Board Workshop - Jan 20, 2026

Happy New Year. Welcome, everybody. Everybody, before we start, I wanted to mention tomorrow is the big guy's birthday. Beam for her. It's his 50th birthday. And anyway, happy birthday. They keep coming. That's a good thing. So today I want to do something a little different today as a workshop. I want to just focus on something that hopefully this won't take long. I really want to focus on policy and instead of getting down and dirty into the trenches of all the different topics, we, worst case scenario, may face a time where we have less money, and I think there's something that we don't talk about enough, and that's called ROI, return on investment. And so I'd like to take a couple items, four items, and talk about things that have to do with our economics, ROI, the speed in which we do them, and take it from there. I'm looking to get everybody's opinion. So let me start with our headquarters. We've been talking for how many years? Seven, eight years? Monica, how many years have we been talking about headquarters? Well, just like the Convention Center, there was a couple of starts and stops. How many years have we been talking about headquarters? Probably 10, 15 years at least. So I'd like to- Probably predates me here. My goal is that we finally do something to headquarters while I'm still alive. And what I'd like to do is throw an idea to everybody here today. We have had Siskovich come and give two different renderings or two different designs if we decide to build. Building is going to cost us a fortune. So I'd like to go around the room. This is what I'd like to talk about. We can go to a realtor. Anybody here can go pick up the phone, call a realtor, and say, show me every building that's for rent or sale that has 60,000 square feet or more. That's it. And we don't have to fill the building with everybody that's in this building. People can go to other offices that we have. But all we have to do is get a realtor saying, show me within the next week every building that has 60,000 square feet or more for rent or purchase. Monica, I talked to you about this already. You said that you did that. Yes, we have. Okay. And so what I think is we can make a decision in one month of what we want to do. Do we want to spend hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars and build something which we may not have the money to do it anyway? Or do we finally want to stop and just finally get something done? And that is let's either rent a space, rent a space, or buy something that's already built and sell this building, you know, and we could certainly get a lot of money for the property we have here. I'd just like to go and spend 10 minutes on the topic and go around the room and see what everybody feels. Ten minutes a piece or ten minutes collectively? Ten minutes collectively. I'm looking for we could sit here and go through design again and again and then talk about construction and talk about the cause and spend years and more years and talk about or we could save money and we can get something done now. I want to get something done now. Let's get let's come to some type of decision and I'll start with Commissioner Fisher. Start with somebody. I used to. A couple of things, Monica, in the sense that I know we had talked about purchasing a building and I'm going to get into that in a minute. But where are we are on the update with the Gore building that we purchased or purposely put in a government center there? And I understand the mayor's frustration by just trying to figure out where we are. Do we have kind of some kind of a timeline and then I'm going to you know don't take too long to only have 10 minutes to be so go ahead. All right. So so I'm glad you asked the question and and just for everyone's benefit what we have been working with CBRE for quite some time you know back from the other presentations we've given but also we were ready and the full deliverables will be to us for February 1st. We've already on track for that and my hope was that we could have a full-blown workshop with the board in February on the government center property and that project. The exercise that the mayor had referenced about the real estate analysis that has been done. We're prepared to go through it today. The bottom line is there is no property that can house all of us. We all know that. We looked at it from Fort Lauderdale to plantation every piece of property that is for sale or for lease commercial. And so CBRE is here and they can go through that today. We have a couple of slides where they have a presentation but the full presentation we were hoping to have a workshop with you all in February. And to specifically answer your question we have been working through and Lenny you might be able to speak to it or estimate better about where we are specifically with CORE but in a nutshell we've been working to get the remediation done because it's an old building to get it demolished you have to do the remediation for asbestos. So all of that takes time as you know it takes a long time to demolish and bring down a building but that was the direction we've been going on is to build on that property because that was the last direction we got from the board. You know with renting anything there's going to be in excess we've done the back of the napkin analysis we'd be all spread out everywhere but it could be as much as 27 to 30 million dollars annually for leasing a property because we've got the numbers on all pardon 27 to what to 30 million dollars annually to lease the amount of property the square footage that we need to house all of this how much square feet do we need Mike's you guys so about 400,000 for the the sort of condensed plan and about 639,000 for the this current building staffing level plus growth so it would be either four to six hundred thousand yeah if we're looking at and obviously being in the industry real estate industry and and understanding that if we bought a building which we could do when we had this discussion before Commissioner Dean brought it up you know several years ago first of all if you buy a office building today CB will will attest to this they have tenants so and normally when you buy a building it's based on an NOI this I think 350 and 450 East Los Angeles just traded I think not too long ago actually traded for the same price they they they paid in 2019 it did it today CB count where's CB at you know that transaction don't you but the point is if you can buy a wonderful office building of 200,000 300,000 square feet there'd be tenant size so you're going to have to remove the tenants because you need the space if they have long-term leases there's going to cost you money so it's it sounds great to be just go buy a building but there's so many complications to that acquisition that it's cost prohibitive at the end of the day you know and and we all want and I want today I want to be in a new building today myself and I think the mayor's right but let's plan it out but let's don't let's plan it out now so we can move it and get something going but again the easiest way to do is to build it I don't know how fast you can fast track it Monica I know you have to the asbestos abatement and all that good stuff but that's the site we had chosen and it's go which I don't know where they're at but I look forward to a workshop in February or if not today you can give us the updates today on where we at with with the design and the demolition issues with it so we can move it forward but I just like again I just see an acquisition of an existing infrastructure to me just there's too many complications to it thank you mayor yeah first of all the number you're giving Lenny was different from the number I got from admin I was told that the fourth floor alone was how many square feet Monica fourth floor is different than all of it so it's two different conversations the fourth floor alone is about sixty three thousand sixty five thousand six hundred thousand square feet four hundred thousand square feet we don't all need to be in this building everybody in this building doesn't need to be here and if you want to talk about the Gore building you know what the the old courthouse has been scheduled to be demolished eight to ten years eight years ago why is it because we have to get rid of asbestos and now we're at the asbestos and it's just going to be another eight years the way things move it's just going to take forever and the longer we take the more expensive it's going to be it's just the prices keep going up but if I'm just you know if you guys want to wait I just am going to vocalize that I don't think we're giving accurate information I was told that we can put people that are not on the fourth floor put them out at the other offices that we have and that there is empty buildings for rent and there are other options so all I'm trying to get to is is that we could sit here yeah we have to get rid of the asbestos it's been eight years that old courthouse isn't even down yet and we had to get rid of asbestos they were supposed to put a parking lot up eight years ago it's not even they can't do that because the old courthouse I'm just frustrated I'd like to run this like a business and not like a government entity and we would be put out of business for how long things take so I'm sorry I'm not trying to blame you Monica I take all the Isaac one that's the nine commissioners blame myself because I'm not vocalizing what I wanted to vocalize for a long time so you you execute our policy we're the ones that make the policy so if we want to take 20 30 years to do something that's on us not you and if we want something done in a year or two that's so you know I just want everyone to realize the longer we wait the more expensive if we want to build there are buildings I've been told for rent I'm happy to go get my own realtor and prove you wrong and find that there is 60,000 to 100,000 square feet available in lots of buildings yes sir you're right about 60,000 square feet but but with all the needs that we have if we're getting out of this building and trying to monetize this property in this building we're going to be beholden to somebody and many somebodies by spreading everybody out because we don't have the existing I just it's important we don't have the existing ability within our existing outside facilities to get everybody from this building and put them somewhere it would be disjointed and we'd be dealing with other older buildings that we'd have to retrofit to move people out of this one to go to other places and we'd be all over the place but I mean you're right we could put 65,000 with all due respect I don't agree with your comment I you know would be disjointed so if a department is in that building instead of this building it's going to be disjointed I don't agree it's a phone call the people on the third floor or the second floor don't need to be in this building they could be somewhere else and we do I was told we have the space somewhere else so I don't know what you mean by disjointed but if everyone else feels disjointed then I'm the I'll be the only one that speaks away go ahead also me um the administrator said it was at least 10 to 13 years that we've been trying to do it and I'm sure before you guys came along another commissioner commission tried to do it so I have five to six years trying to do it both jointly from city um and the three years that I've been sitting here um tried to do rounds at the city for large just without you guys and we never got there and then now they don't have a city hall uh or administration building right now so I'm out of time um and it was a priority day when I got here and that priority has not changed and it will not change um and if we got if I have to take the political uh feedback or or whatever happens when we make huge decisions like this true um I'm willing to do that because we have to do something and we all acknowledge that six years just six years ago jointly we acknowledge it when I first came on board here I think what we need to do um is and Monica you help me with this one is um give direction to the administrator to move with this because when we gave direction before we bought the Gore builder Gore business been sitting over how many years now and I have two years June of 2023 is when we and we at that time said that it could it could accommodate all of us yep right um the demolition part is not hard and I respect my real estate friend um and my my attorney friends at the table and just all the commissioners but you can get through that stuff expeditiously or expedient if you if you want to and I'll give you an example the building we bought for the forensic site we bought this since I've been here right am I correct I think we purchased it around the same time you got here it's gone the motel in pompano we bought while I was sitting here and that took about a year but it's gone demolished it's gone um and there's others I can name but I know that you can get through all the and all the environmental stuff is it midsummer midsummer this year that's minor we can do it if we give you direction am I correct yes sir give you direction and we don't deviate we don't kick a can so where I want to go is new I don't want to rent I explore renting at city of Fort Lauderdale it did not work the numbers didn't work and then at the end of the day 30 or 40 years from now you'll be holding to someone else somewhere else so and we can always sell some of the things that we leave behind uh to cover our debt um or future debt that we'll bring on board so my thing is moving forward I think I heard the same thing it's just I want to say here today I know we can't vote here but let's give her direction to move forward and we keep a monthly timer on a tickler tickler and progress report as to where we are um and add it to the dashboard mix I got all my stuff covered here and I think we can get this done quicker than we can get this modest building uh evicting the tenants and all the things that we have to do uh um legally to make that happen and we will do what we're supposed to be doing we do it at the airport we do it at seaport we do it in public works every department does what they need to do until it comes to this commission making a decision and we and we think about you know uh or we do other things I've been here three years my appetite is to move this thing forward and um hopefully we have enough uh folks to have a consensus to give Monica clear direction to move forward I don't want to start talking about what condition this building is in I don't want to talk about what kind of money we have because we've seen money and we said we're going to come back and talk about money at our next um budget workshop uh so there's places where we can we can figure these things out along the way I want to move forward with the new building we've already invested how many million across the street 65 56 so why are we 63 million to purchase the property so why are we 62 and a half why are we retreating now why are we we you know let's do it thank you man and mayor just to jump into real quickly yes you know and I'm not opposed to a p3 at all I think uh I think it's wise to let the private sector get engaged they can build it quicker and better probably more efficient and I think it's cost productive that way thank you mayor I'm in I'm in agreement with you birthday boy yeah um I'm not for going out to find some find some places to rent um I think I think buildings speak to people I think when you walk in a church you know you're in a church and you act accordingly like when you when you walk into a library you walk in there and you you act accordingly I think the same thing goes for government buildings I think they speak to people and I think that's you know we we want to build something that actually speaks to people if you go and just buy you know rent some building that's not going to work that's not the same um so I think and I think that the property that we bought is in the right place I think because of the the nexus with transportation both bus rail at some point hopefully it allows for people to be coming from various counties to there it makes sense to build it there um because I don't want to be renting for forever that didn't make sense Broward County should have its own building they should own it and they should build it the way that they that we feel like it would speak to the people the most the best put it you know design it so that it is you know something that people when they walk in they know they're in a government building and they're and they're acting like it and and the work of the people gets done there so that's kind of where I'm at thank you mr. mayor I uh agree with uh mayor bogan that this has been taking too long um I had hoped that uh we would be in a new building while I was still on the commission I have two years and 10 months left I find it highly highly unlikely I think I will come back and visit but I will never actually be in a new building uh as a commissioner um when we were talking about our billion dollar joint venture with the city I said then that I thought that was too much I do believe that we need to be careful with money I'm kind of glad that we did not proceed for a lot of reasons but had we done so there is a hundred and ten percent certainty which is more than a hundred percent that doge would have been pointing to that as an example of our flagrant waste so I think all of us we know it's not our money it's the taxpayers money and we need to be uh you know appropriate with it so I don't need think that we need to build a gorgeous giant building that makes an architectural statement I think we need to build an efficient building that works for the citizens of Broward County um I do believe that we need to own not buy not rent because over the long run it's much cheaper if we own the building if we're renting then you know we are at the mercy of whoever our landlord is unless we sign a 80 year lease and if we sign a you know a 99 year lease might as well own it um governments last forever so I do think that it makes much more sense to own which doesn't mean uh that we couldn't find the building that I'm in the 110 east uh uh east Broward building well probably I think that that's a 20 some 22 story 23 story building um that was sold for like 80 million dollars um not that many years ago um did need rehab but uh same building the alliance is in and had we bought that building that probably would have made sense if with rehab we probably could have been in there a lot cheaper and still fit everything and probably had enough space to rent to some private tenants uh and that building just so you know was 82 is 82 percent leased now yeah and I don't know what it was at the time of sale but I think I don't know either but I know that recently somebody came in and rented the top four floors in the last year so that's not available now but I'm saying something like that may exist um I do want to point out I know this will shock you all but uh renting or buying in downtown Fort Lauderdale is the most expensive real estate in the county and we do have sufficient land I believe in government center west to build a uh a government center like we have here um that would accommodate all of our needs without having to pay for real estate and we would be in the center of the county and I will remind everybody Fort Lauderdale is not and has not been for 40 or 50 years the center of the county but whatever uh I am not sure I'd need to see data as to whether or not it would help or hurt if we moved the 60th if we moved the fourth floor to one building and and then we bought other space for the what we have on the first second and third floor I have no knowledge I'd like to see data intuitively it seems we're better off being in one location but I don't want to make a judgment intuitively I'd like to see any data that we would have uh wherever we go and I think it would be better to move to the center of the county where land is cheaper but wherever we go I think we need to own a building but Commissioner Mayor Bogian is right we do need to do some more quickly than we've been doing thank you just from uh a little stream of consciousness since I wasn't sure of all the depth of this uh a couple things that I would say I I didn't vote for the Gore building I don't think we should have bought it for a government center anyway but that's a story for another day once the majority votes for it I'm with the majority and I'm supportive of what we did um no one's building huge office buildings right now I think Ken Griffin's going to build one in Miami they haven't even started it yet there's a few that are going in downtown Miami but nobody's spending the type of dollars that it would take right now to build office buildings I know they did do a study um and I think Larry Mahoney or somebody had said they did a look back like Commissioner Bogan was talking about but they did that a few years ago and they said yeah there's not x number of square foot available contiguous in one building but to me that was a lack of creativity because you don't have to have the space all available at once we could buy a building as was said and start moving people in slowly even to a point where we could do our commission meetings at the Parker Playhouse or at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts or at the MPO office or somewhere that we could be it's it's not this is not rocket science um you know a county attorney's space could very easily be in the building next to the courthouse as opposed in the building next to the county administrator's office it's just six one half dozen the other it doesn't matter but I don't think anybody's building that those type of size I think most of the property around the Gore building is now uh problematic Brightline sold their garage for 17 million dollars and leased it back because they needed to raise dollars that property and land around there is a lot for sale I've spoken to some of the people that own it there's deals to be made with some of these developers if we said to them we're coming in to take x number of floors build the rest of your building kind of like a p3 and and that would be done I also think at the end of the day a conversation needs to be had with the school board there is a building right downtown that's up and there and the school board wants to do something so that should be a conversation that we should have maybe to just go in there with them they want to move some people into some of their administrative offices I mean it's a it's a very complex discussion and it's easy to throw these out there but what I can say is the numbers that we're talking about to build something are going to be the type of thing where if you're early in your political career and you vote for it it's going to end your political career I guess if you're late in your political career it's not going to matter as much because these numbers are going to be astronomical when it comes in to build a new building from scratch especially when we start talking about I remember when we were doing the joint center I mean you were talking about putting things in that building that would make it far superior than what a private sector building is doing right now basically right now and I guess the CBR people would tell you I don't even know what class building this would be in that we're in maybe D D plus D minus or maybe whatever I mean if we move to a class B building we would we would be making a vast improvement on what life would be like for our employees and our workforce senator rich now for the other side I I feel I feel that we we we have the Gore building control delete uh we determined yes that that was an appropriate place uh and we bought the building so um I feel that we uh we need to move ahead with the Gore building and I think personally I think it would be the astronomical down the down the road to rent and to have multiple places where we're renting where we have absolutely no control of what happens and so I and I I don't want to build you know uh one of these you know Taj Mahal that's good whoever said that yeah Taj Mahal I I want an efficient building that is going to house our people in one place where we can all be together and and and do the business of the county and I think it's appropriate for me to for us to have one location where we can do that so um I I think um as I said renting you're at someone else's mercy and um so I I I'm just I'm a I'm in favor of moving forward as quickly as we can and I don't mind the p3 as was mentioned um but uh I I just don't I I just don't see that the that we should be in multiple locations all over the place uh uh kind of with no continuity there and um and also not have control over what it's going to cost so I'd rather pay the cost the one time and own it than to do that and I just you know would like us to move ahead quickly now we've wasted a tremendous amount of time already and I think it's because we have the property everything we should just continue thank you Commissioner Davis I just asked for a point of information from the county admin what does the Gore building mean when we say Gore building what do we what do we mean by that the property where the Gore building stands today which is that whole corner block in front of Brightline facing Broward Boulevard and all the property that surrounds that that we so there's a building on there right now yes and that so mid midsummer it should be starting the demolition in earnest all the permitting and all that stuff is in the works now um for the asbestos remediation that we need to do to bring that building physically down what's the timeline to just bring that building down well starting the summer that's Lenny you guys want to you want to speak to that yes it was once it starts so essentially the the demo docs have been prepared and we're waiting on permission from DEP for the remediation of all the asbestos and then we'll begin hopefully demo uh middle of this summer and then it'll you know come down as quickly as we can get it down after we get there then why is it taking eight years for the courthouse to be knocked down it is all right go ahead commissioner Davis you're right you're right you're right it's you got the floor i know i mean we have questions and we can go back around the room but i so um when i first got here i know i met with monica and my one of my first topics was the new building and this is an old decrepit building it's not something that i would when you have a home you want to be proud of where you live you want to fix it make it look good smell good um you know you come up you have to mount these stairs um for us which is the easiest way in here and you know it's quite challenging sometimes i must say and so i think we need to move expeditiously now what i'd like to find out is why it's taking so long since you already acquired the building why is it only now we're doing the demolition would you stop from doing that before or for as far as the demolition is we just acquired the property in 2022 23 right now 2026 23 right the beginning of 20 yeah we bought it almost towards the end of 23 and so part of that has been analysis on asbestos and what we needed to do there's been some other timeline issues that we can get to um but my hope is is that we can give you a full robust the board a full robust update in february february 17th meeting if the mayor and you all are open to that um during the lunch time of your day that you're going to be here for commission meeting you can come back in here and cbr will return we will do a full robust uh presentation of all of it the timelines where we are where where we think we will need to finish the whole building um and they have deliverables included the p3 conversation is part of one of their deliverables that they're supposed to get back to us on february 1st so all of the things that you guys have been talking about we have in this deliverable package and so february 17th if you all are amenable to it we could do it at lunch time and and be in this room and give you the all of the answers to all of these questions i know one of the questions was um the timeline so once you get the demolition done typically you know and you have a simi here who's been touted as the one that you brought in to really help us move this along so what timeline are we looking at for a building over there we're basically five and good afternoon we're basically five years out from opening day so to speak five years out okay so that gives us a little idea five years i can live with but it means that we have to have consistent updates as was mentioned by someone monthly and you have you see me working on it hopefully that's one of the only things she's doing i don't see that but that it will actually not take 15 years it won't take 10. we're looking at five from today from the day the building comes down which will start in mid-summer we're on a five-year time mine from mid-2026 from when the building starts coming down which is mid-2026 we're getting into the presentation for february right you can spill the beans a little bit but basically just to give you an idea of where we stand today if the administrator is okay with it we have the dcp document completed that is side criteria package right that was prepared by siscovish we have a general overview and a condensed one as well on that programming assuming we continue to move forward and the board authorizes us to proceed with the project we have demolition hopefully starting in mid-summer that will take about nine months and you're looking at a project completion of five years and that includes permitting design permitting and actual construction with the procurement processes that come along with it right so we need to select who's going to build it and the comment about a p3 was mentioned that's part of the deliverables that cbre will have for us on february 1st right the final question the selling of this building afterwards and help to bring down the costs of the new one is that because i mean the public would like to know where's the money coming from i'm sure so is that part of the narrative it is part of the analysis as well so back in 2023 cbre assisted the board back then precisely in putting together that analysis we have asked them to update that analysis under current market conditions okay thank you mr mayor that's part of that p3 so part of the financing of the new building could be obviously part of monetizing the property we're on today commissioner rogers mr mayor thank you colleagues good happy birthday right when it comes i will agree i can share with you i will agree that we should be prioritizing our new building okay i 100 percent support us prioritize it make it a priority so i'm hearing that from this discussion so at least we can build consensus oh i'm not in support of us renting or renovating or any of those because whenever you start renovating an old building you're in serious trouble so i'm glad that we're on the pathway of what we're saying we're going to break tear down that building and we're going to build from scratch i think i heard that from staff that's where we are don't know why the delay then if we know the process we know there's urgency you might not feel the steers like we do guys okay the shoes that we wear and the knees that we now have all right so we're putting it out there we have been wondering when is this going to happen i am glad the mayor brought this topic up as one of his priorities he could have chosen anything else but this building for us to have a discussion so i'm glad the mayor did that because and when you talk about a building yes when it's new and when you have input from our community in it home ownership pride we talk about home ownership pride this is our home so we're going to be proud of the product that we develop out here office efficiency i was listening to where we are considering or would even consider moving or attorney from admin in this vicinity i think the attorney's office should be close to admin the courthouse don't need us okay we don't work for the courthouse you know that's a separate job i i would like for admin to be considered whenever we are relocating everyone that we don't move the attorney too far i like the fact that they are close by right so that's me um let me see i believe we'll be more productive not that we're we can't with you being on the other side because of all of the technology and all of that good stuff but i think it's more productive with the person you talk to a lot for staff to have that that's my comment i we learn from everything we are on the right track if we can agree yes we're going to use the building that we own yes we are going to put our priorities forward and we're going to get it done right we pull our own permits my god it shouldn't take forever all right thank you mr mayor thank you thank you um i want to stop i want to go around you want to have a comment just 30 30 seconds because i listed some comments and i think that i just want to point out too when you talk about rent you got cam involved you got real estate taxes involved there i don't want to go there um but also i think it is efficient mayor to have all disciplines in one building i think it's efficient for the customer that we serve here in broward county i i think if they had to go to different areas one of the things when i first came here was uh to create a kiosk in 29 to 31 cities that were getting permits for broward county for instance you go to hollywood you're at the city you do your permian there and you can go right over here and do your permian right then and there in the city of hollywood for broward county so i think it's very important to have efficiency at the disciplines all in one place i'm interesting uh commissioner dean when did that uh garage trade i didn't see that i know they were asking 17 did it trade somebody bought it did it really okay cool last last month because it was interesting too because we tried to chase a piece of property the bright line owned uh with ismi working hard on that and it was available through a broker and so she was on that unfortunately it came with a 10-year option to keep charging stations in place and there was no way that we could afford we could you know the price was great a decent right it was a good negotiation but we can't take the property with 10-year leases on on charging stations which would have been added to our real estate inventory around where the gordon building is at so we could still chase it if bright line can terminate i'm sure we'll still buy that but that's another addition to what our government center will be like so thank you mayor i was like i was going to be saying very similar things i think the synergy of having everybody in the same place makes a lot of sense i do think over the from this point on we should be actually asking ourselves which which departments which disciplines should work best together or where is there that where is that synergy i mean much like now you have resilience with public works those kind of things make a lot of sense but those i don't think we've um examined those maybe we have okay so so we have okay and that is what we'll share with you if you guys are wanting to have the full thing and but that's part of that design criteria package we have yeah and i think that makes all the difference in the world it's been done i think there's something to be said just walking down the hall sometimes and seeing colleagues and you're you're battling you're you're knocking ideas around and i think it's it's productive i'm not as gung-ho on a p3 and i do want to see the the roi on that there are some p3s i could see but and i'm i'll just voice my concerns now i don't want to see it being rented out to this this and this law firm all over the place and then they're in the same and then there we're having to um vote on say on something that they're going to be you know that they're dealing with on a regular basis if we're renting it out to um organizations uh non-profits things like that i think it's a it's different um that's my only concern um i think you have to be careful who's you know if you're doing a p3 somehow they have to make money on it and so i'm i'm i'm yeah i think he has something against law firms it's not law firms he wants dunkin donuts down there i just don't i just don't want to see any it's not the lawyers but i just don't want to see any but you know they could design the building in a way that there would be zero interaction like the government center could be front you could make it look like a government building just like big commercial and then there would be no i mean there's ways they can do it and i think there's ways that as well as nobody at all and having the monetization piece over here right like we ran out here to broward league of cities all those kind of there's a ton of organizations that would probably want to do that that that would make some synergy um so i that's my only concern that's all first miss mayor on the issue of a p3 i have absolutely no opinion either way show me the numbers uh secondly um i am fine waiting to the february workshop because it's late january now or mid january so i have no problem with waiting a month less than a month for that third i have complained bitterly to you monica for a long time that i thought we needed a construction person in house and um i think that is one of the reasons that things have gotten delayed based on my interactions with this i believe that you have found somebody that can deal with these issues so i'm glad that you're here because i've been saying all along we need somebody we have so many construction projects i've been saying for a year or two or more we need somebody just to concentrate on our construction and i'm glad that you're here and finally uh i love commissioner fur but i disagree with him on the issue of if we decide that we're going to build extra space for rental and i'm not saying we should or should not but we want to get return the people that could pay that return to us are the brokerage companies maybe a bank of the large law firms the large accounting firms it's not going to be the league of cities it's not going to be non-profits so i have absolutely no problem if we decide and i'm not sure we should do that if we decide we want to build a large building and rent it should be to the people that can afford it and as commissioner you dean said um that can uh be done with you know two towers or something like that i don't care but if we do rent i want to get the most available rent thank you mr mayor seriously go ahead oh i'm just saying that i i want to i'm going to reserve ruling on whether we're in the right spot with as far as construction management i'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt but from what i've seen in the 10 years that i've been up here and this is not a criticism to county administration we're not good at building things we're just not we even the even the supervisor of elections office at the end it came in okay but there was a lot of hems and haws along the way so i'm hopefully that you're going to be the answer to this but when you do bring us this workshop on in the beginning of february i'd like to know how long it is going to take from demolition start to when that pad is ready for building to start because i'm hearing a number that and i'd like to know who on staff is going to be responsible for that date so that they don't bring us back something that says well it's going to be ready in six months to be built on when we know it's a number i'm i think you should under promise and over deliver on that and that should be a real number because if i'm still up here in two and a half year i only have two and a half years left or three years i'm going to be holding that person responsible when they say well they said it was going to be six months to get this pad ready and now it's six years i mean i was told we would be in the new building before i started my third term that's what i was told i act i actually had no it was before you were administrator so i'm going to let you know that uh we we now have the dashboard you guys we have the dashboard everything on this is going on the dashboard meaning we're going to be every meeting uh getting a status but uh i think senator rich i i really wanted to keep this kind of step one but we'll go go ahead i just had one question so we talked about um no this is only my second time excuse me um uh uh that the sometimes going outside of county construction you know can make things quicker uh not necessarily less expensive but certainly the same and uh i'm just wondering if if that is the case if we did um what is the record of i think commissioner fisher mentioned about the p3s and so would it have any impact on the speed with which the um the you know building would come to fruition certainly subject to the selection process and that is going to be the critical point so allow me to share this i think the ability to have a successful p3 effort depends on how good your specs are right so in order for you as an owner to be in a good position to negotiate any contract uh much more so a p3 contract you need to be very clear as to what your expectations are on that building to be delivered right and that is part of what we will share with the board come in february i i think i have heard there is uh agreement for for that item to come back as to the dcp that was put together the base dcp and modify one taking care of the comment that commissioner ferr made as to making sure we have to look at the synergies and the departments that need or should be in this building all that information combined with the analysis coming from cbre as to what a p3 could look like what this building could be monetized for and the plus and minuses is the document that staff has put together uh and is finalizing for february thank you so um ismi are you in charge of the construction is is ismi is the assistant county administrator overseeing public works environmental services department and almost all of the most of the construction i just want you all to know we we um paid for we're going to get our water department to put in the you know the filters to to get rid of all the p fast we've already we're moving forward with that and the problem i have is that thanks to if not for lenny thanks to lenny um we were going to do design and then take another year to build and then but thanks to lenny we're now doing design build at the same time saving a year i want to make sure it's me you understand that this old way of doing things will take a year to do this and then maybe we'll take another year to do this i i i'm going to go berserk with it and i'm not going to be uh quiet about it or you know so you know i don't know why we're not doing design build with the gore building right now why haven't we even i don't even want you to answer it but there are so many there's so many ways to things could get done quickly and fast and this five-year timeline once the building is down to me seems ridiculous we're not talking about a 20-story building and and so um i just want you to know where i'm coming from i keep seeing the county doing things the longest way and the most expensive way and that's just driving me crazy you want to move up yeah no i want to go ahead just a clarification really because when i ask my questions um no different than any other person at this table time frames and and then why can't we tear down the building i think somewhere doing these inquiries your staff answered that you never stopped working on the demolition am i correct we never stopped the time that we talked about it so you were working towards that um and bringing us back options yes so talk about what you're talking about this expediency that we're looking for i think we're on the right track i think only thing can shoot us in the foot and i'm not dismissing anything anybody else put on the table is that it's p3 p3s are efficient p3s are scary to me just paid a few of them uh one was good uh the others were in my um perspective weren't good especially when it comes to your assets um we did water in fort lauderdale my perspective bad um this is gonna be our building we're all saying we want our own building right yeah p3 would get us after the aftermath of us on this side and how we put procurement together everybody's gonna experience that whether it's um competitive bid or p3 everybody's got to go through the same weeds and i think they all can be just as expedient after the procurement piece to get them built p3s whatever the term is they would be owning and operating that building not us that's just so i'm just saying i want to see it but i just want to see the number but i'm just like you said you want a p3 um the others said they didn't want a p3 i just want us to get everything we can about how a p3 works soccer stadium real brief soccer stadium we did it and then the day that we finished we had five public five public opportunities to go back in that park because it was owned by the p3 folks that built it and we agreed to do concerts and all these other things for the community we couldn't do it the park isn't even built over yet because of the entanglement of the private sector and the return on their investment as we said some of you said at this table so i want p3 to be really put flushed out so that we'll we understand because we're not those people but we have the right people i think now in place to bring that back to us i wanted to be clear on the record today that i want to know everything about a p3 that i think staff has been doing what we asked them to i was shocked what happened i thought we had kicked it kicked the can so i like where we're going but i want us to go faster and i want us to get there okay mr mr otherwise we're going to be here all day i just have one last question question well it's a quick no go ahead i can wait until february but my question is since we closed on the gore property in 2023 and somebody tell me why we haven't started remediating it yet yeah we are absolutely so there was contamination in the soil and so we had to do what's called a sar a site assessment report and we had to submit that to dep and they have to evaluate it and they have to approve our remediation plan and there's a certain amount of time you have to monitor for and identify the extent of the plume and keep looking you know doing various investigations submitting to them getting a response back until you've identified the limits of the plume right and we're waiting for them right now to approve our remediation plan and once they do approve our remediation plan then we'll be able to do the clean up and then we've prepared in the meantime all of the demolition documents and we will be submitting for demolition and hopefully starting that mid-summer so to your point you know all of these things we've been diligently doing them but we did find contamination which is unfortunately very common in south florida nowadays pretty much all the properties are left have some sort of contamination on them and so we have to get permission to do good remediation okay can we move on mr mayor just to clarify can i or do i hear consensus to make a calendar adjustment to reflect a workshop please on february 17th okay so we'll do additional material please make this the only subject so that there's not a bunch of if this we're doing it for long this this is it we're not adding more on to that workshop absolutely i i actually just wanted to get a quick i thought i'd give a couple minutes everyone said yeah and this was stage one so so on the next topic i'm just looking not for a deep dive just a kind of a superficial feeling on it okay all right ready yeah all right i want to give you guys i want to give you guys an example you're all using one of the big law firms here they have 100 lawyers and they charge 800 bucks an hour they do they charge 800 maybe even more an hour thousand dollars an hour okay 100 lawyers now half the firm leaves and they start their new firm and they go i'm 500 an hour would you use us the new firm says i want to use us we're going to only be 500 you could use this other law firm we left it's a thousand when you if you're using the same lawyers and your same experience and the same services why wouldn't you consider somebody that's going to charge 30 to 50 less so what am i talking about what i'm talking about the so we spend 95 million dollars a year on law enforcement at the airport and seaport okay here's my hypothetical and i'll tell you where i'm going what if we can have experienced trained law enforcement at a much lower price like the law firms people who are already experienced or already trained we can save millions and millions of dollars and so i've talked to former chiefs of police i've already spoken to some former sheriffs who've told me that they can find within six to eight months experienced people who are already working at other places we're looking at budgets being cut we're looking at things getting more expensive if we can save 10 20 30 million dollars i think it's incumbent upon us it's taxpayer money okay if someone says well you're not getting experienced people of course we want people who are already trained and experienced just like i'm a lawyer i can work for my firm or i can go work for somebody else there are trained deputies around the state uh there are trained law enforcement around the state that would come and work as long as they could be in our retirement system they would work for the county and there are a former chief of police who i've spoken to a former sheriff i've spoken to that would love to be able to use their experience in overseeing this and so um here's a way we could save again potentially tens if not 10 20 or more millions of dollars and um it's something that i think that we should be doing quicker than than what we're doing now they told me it takes six to eight months put it together and if you guys think i'm crazy and you want to keep what we have that's fine i'd like to go and start with your opinions who wants to start first i'm going to go with thank you this is something that i asked for for six years at least in workshops to do the study i don't know what the answers hold but i definitely think it's worth looking at i think mr mayor i agree with you completely i've been asking for this for a long time the uh i want to be clear i have zero concerns with the job that the sheriff has been doing my concerns are financial i don't believe there's any amount of money that we can give him that will make him happy and uh if we can get certified law enforcement officials i think that that is critical we don't want a private company doing this but if we set up a for a broward county police department that would be responsible and mr mayor i would consider the airport and seaport okay so that would do airport and seaport using sworn law enforcement officers at a substantially less expensive price at a minimum we need to consider it i think we should do it but i'll just say we need to consider it and thank you for bringing this up by the way this has nothing to do with sheriff this i use the law firm example because the lawyers i gave example they're they're all qualified i'm talking about safety is priority so you have to have a trained law enforcement as nothing it's all about money and finances commissioner fisher yep thank you thank you mayor again i'm just going to say ditto ditto to uh commissioner udine and to senator geller i've been talking about it as well the good news is that and mr gale can talk about this uh this morning before the meeting i met with the consultant firm is actually looking into this and hopefully we'll have us to report soon uh so mr gale like to hear from that so yes i'm all in anytime again i i think we actually have the finest our sheriff's office right here in our building right now today i think these folks right here that gentleman right there i'm looking at is just absolutely superb uh but it's not that mary you're right it's the dollars and it's going to keep going up and we can save that dollars to our taxpayers and provide the same service or better i've been talking about as well and so but mr gale could you just bring us a brief update on on the uh consultant that we have now already in place working on this are you a ringer for uh are you a ringer no no no i monica did you ask him to do that that is i don't believe her i just met with these folks deborah honestly it's right out there i wanted to have the report read i said not now i want to get i'm sorry but if you want a ringer you call being fur he's the ringer okay i'm actually the ringer mr mayor i'm actually the ringer for mr gale before wait before you talk mark before you bring up i just want to get everyone's opinion and then we'll go do that i got it i think everyone wants to go next no i already spoke you already spoke that's awesome i'll go i'll go um yes i would like to yeah um i i just want to make sure that before we were to do anything that we had a proper report because if you look at what's been going on with deerfield i mean they were beginning to make decisions not based on accurate information and i don't want to do that so i'm comfortable if we're you know i'm i'm comfortable but let's wait for the outcome and then we can make a decision just for the this is just for the airport and the seaport that we're talking about okay same here same same same same same same same same and i think i think all of us have been waiting to see this report because you've been how long you've been working on this quite a while we've been talking about it for a while and um we finally have been able to get the consultant on board and they're here today um if you before they leave town if you want to just say a quick hello they're in the room we can have a safe but just i just want to get everyone yeah but but i think yeah i think i think all of us are i've been looking forward to seeing that yep and looking at this as an option i think all of us probably think it's a good idea great mark gale what a great job you do mark mark you're turning red you okay everybody should know this is the best airport director in the country i wouldn't say i would make a correction it's not one of he no he's the best he is the he's the best airport director in the country i was choking on your comment already vice mayor you're getting me red so uh good afternoon mayor vice mayor uh commissioners yeah appreciate all of the the early feedback on this and yes we've been talking about this for a long time and we're getting it going pleased to report that we're moving forward with this um just to bring everybody back uh this uh that we're undertaking right now the study uh with the consultant uh is uh an outgrowth if you will of a report that county auditor melton did um about a year and a half or so ago uh that the number one recommendation was to look at the feasibility of the airport primarily starting its own public safety agency i.e law enforcement and then we'll see where it goes from there uh the consultant after doing a lot of research we think we found uh the right professional firm to actually look at this those folks are joining us today who have extensive experience in law enforcement uh from around the country so that engagement is now underway it's going to take approximately 14 weeks or so for us to go through the full assessment start to finish on every aspect of what it takes in order to start a law enforcement research of all everything for equipment training state certifications ongoing certifications everything what happens when you arrest somebody at the airport mutual aid agreements with other agencies potentially to even include bso or other cities so that we can come back to you with the right recommendations uh that the county commission then could move on going forward you see an additional 14 weeks from today i thought monica said it's done no no okay so 14 weeks from today we just had to kick off meeting with them uh at new year so we are in the process with those folks today so the end of april so approximately the end of april okay that right now okay end of april beginning uh go ahead i was just gonna and i i see joe in the back i just want to make sure if if there's any distinctions that we have to be taking into consideration that it's that is different from the airport to seaport if one you know i assume we're thinking for both but is there any reason we wouldn't shouldn't be thinking that uh i'll let the county administrator uh look at that but the right now the scope is is obviously to to look at the airport under the federal regulations that we're required to do uh the law enforcement services that we're required to provide uh to the tsa but we are looking at a model similar to what u.s customs and border protection uses where we have one port director with those officers that float back and forth between airport and seaport that is something that the county administrator myself and director morris have talked about yes okay so when you're doing the report it's going to be able to cover for both we're going to be looking at that yes because we don't want to at the end of april say and now we got to do one for the seaport yeah okay okay mr fisher yeah monica too um isn't the bso on our transportation level as well are they doing security for us so can we add that into the component too are we talking about airport seaport can we add transportation that that would be honestly um the best of all worlds um i think that's a great um observation suggestion as you know we've had increases in a lot of um you know violence on buses and and things towards operators so that would be really great to look at that as well yeah absolutely we'll add transportation to that it might add a little bit more time obviously but we'll do it we'll give them a day don't worry about it okay there you go mayor thank you we'd ask that they coordinate with us on on that because there's a different statute that imposes different restrictions for transportation okay yes senator geller real quick thank you and this would have to be separate but one of the issues also when you're looking at this at specifically at the seaport there is still a substantial backup uh whenever you've got a lot of cruise lines there on us1 17th street etc even with the new thing so one of the i've had people discuss with me the possibility of moving the gates in some areas so that they are primarily guarding for example the oil tank so as a separate issue but included uh i'm hoping that there can also be a review of security at the port to determine the seaport to determine whether or not there are ways of moving the gates to uh somewhat alleviate the traffic on us1 and 17th street when there's cruises in the spirit of expeditiously reviewing the security side i would suggest that we do that separately okay i agree separate but i would like to see that done mr rogers the response you just got commissioner i think i'm going to get that also in your evaluation as you look to this project right are you thinking capital projects or kept anything that we have to change buildings that we might have to you know different capacity different things i'm looking at the sheriff's office i see all and i'm you know that's the model i know so i look at that what properties they need what buildings they need and where are the you know those things when do you have those conversations so my expectation um would be that it would be on the personnel side this discussion um for for these types of um review um and because we already have in the works some some space that we've discussed for build out um at the airport for example um and at the seaport i think the existing accommodations that those personnel are utilizing today would be the same ones that we're looking to utilize um we certainly can can look at it um the only capital um investment would be more of like the vehicles and things like that that we would need to buy um because they would not be the same vehicles that bso currently has today or lease or what i utilize yes lease or purchase and what services would you need to support what you're doing that's what the report's going to show they're going to give us a whole detailed report i just want to make sure it is in the report so i'm better be throwing it out right now absolutely yes and that is all part of um the the contemplated scope that we're looking at thank you thank you yep um when we do this report and i don't mean this to sound snarky in any way please make sure that they're looking at how they're moving people throughout that airport and whether there is some kind of perception by having a bso officer versus an airport type officer because i have to tell you i'm getting a ton of come and i know it's the with the way the airport is situated like we've talked about postage stamp it's hard to move in and out of that airport especially when it's busy time really yeah and we're not we're not getting i mean i'm starting to see uh i'll use a good government stakeholders in my part of in my district that are looking to travel to our neighbor from our neighbor up north because it's impossible to get in and out of our airport we move on you ready i'll put all this on the dashboard for our next meeting next has to do with uh i think this is going to be the most uh interesting but you shouldn't put it on the dashboard for the next meeting because we're not going to have anything and it diminishes your dashboard okay we could do it i'd like the dashboard but put it in april when we're 14 weeks ronnie you put that down all right next would be economic development sandy michael mcdonald done next we're going to have um sandy and maribel join us real quick okay real quick so i want to just talk to everybody here about return on investment what we're getting for our money and uh and here we go first of all sandy i i dealt with you first when i was elected you put on the greatest uh we went into the to the neighborhoods to help small businesses help them grow it was great what sandy does and did and um i really admired everything you do about helping our business community here in florida we do fitzy we've done fitzy for 10 years i asked how much it costs i was told it's 150 000 a year that we spend that's 1.5 million over 10 years and then i asked how many businesses from broward county are actually out there and benefiting from fitzy and correct me if i'm wrong sandy but based on the number i was saying are we're not getting a good return on our investment or actually we're not getting a return on our investment for what we're investing is that correct or am i incorrect you're not incorrect but that's the part of the question that you did ask so yes okay so we spend 1.5 million i think our taxpayers are paying us to help broward businesses we're not being paid to help businesses from australia japan china come here we're being paid to help our business community go out either grow here in broward dade or go overseas and um and so i've been doing this i've been here going 11 years i went and did a canada trip and i think it was a failure and the reason i think it was a failure was because i don't know of one broward business that got to do business in canada because of our canada trip i know a canadian business now that's trying to do business here but not one broward business and then when i looked at what businesses we are helping it's the same this beauty business that we've helped you know we're not the marketing arm for one business because i see that in the uae and somewhere else this beauty business made contacts but we're not the marketing arm for one or two businesses here in broward we are either here for all of our broward businesses or you know we have to look at a return i'm as the mayor that you guys vote that i'm the one that gets to go and travel it sounds great but why am i going to travel if we don't have business community that we can travel to so what what got me thinking was the new japanese uh consulate general wonderful person came to meet me introduce himself talk about what the business community in japan would like to do here i didn't have anything really prepared to tell them what business want to do in japan and the next thing i know is that that mirabelle your department's meeting with this guy without what businesses here are going to be doing business in japan it's you know it's nice to set up meetings it's all nice to travel it's all nice but it's money and it's time and and if we can't show like in fitzy if we can't show our businesses are benefiting what it's a great trade show but we're not in the trade show business we're not here to put on trade shows we're here to help our business community and if we can't show a number of businesses that are going and benefiting from this 1.5 million that we're spending i don't get it you know bob swindell if there is a business that wants to relocate that's handed off to bob swindell and the alliance that's their job so we can't sit here and say well we want to bring businesses here to open up an office that's bob swindell and the alliance that's what we give money and that's what he does a great job over there but i don't see how we're helping our business community we do these overseas stuff i love traveling you all know i travel all the time i love to travel sounds great feels great but if there's no return on investment this is a waste of taxpayer money and we can't just keep doing the same thing over and over and over without looking at a return so so if you allow me mayor that's the part i would like to just take the two minutes on because you're to explain what you just said well i'll let let everybody will be able to talk i just want so to conclude let me just say my conclusion my conclusion is your department could do a great thing which it's done before maribel department sorry maribel's department a great thing for our business community like what we do when the neighborhoods hey this is how you can grow this is how you get contracts here that maybe we can help you grow domestically that's a great service but this overseas stuff i have not seen in 10 years um i know that there was a couple businesses when you went to dubai but did the cost justify the end result and return i don't think any private business would agree that the cost is there the return is there go ahead no so thank you mayor so the only thing i'll add to what you're saying and it's existing with maribel and the team is currently doing as you describe the roi your fact on when you simply say how many businesses are getting international contracts due to fitzy and that's not only worth sharing it's worth showing that dollar value so you can see the roi but the scenario needs to read is that when fitzy began it was a larger footprint that roi is included but it did make sense for our businesses and small business if you meet an international company or even if you meet an international government and you realize you can manufacture and get a service material or product cheaper if i can introduce you to that to fitzy that too had its roi if you could end up being a consultant because there was a group of individuals though you don't have a contract with the actual country i can end up consulting where there's multiple businesses who then decide to come here that was also a part of it so what i want to say is you're right in terms of a specific roi and by all means the commission should revisit after 10 years how we do fitzy if we keep doing fitzy or if we tweak fitzy you're 100 on but we definitely want to make sure that we recognize there was different reasons of engaging the international activities with i want to make sure i'm being specific this is not just about fitzy it's about us any of our international trips maribel could say hey we've got 10 businesses that want to do business in tokyo these are our 10 businesses make sense but all i know is is that when i have traveled or when i talk to somebody i don't have that now what you're saying makes sense but let's see the data it sounds good it all sounds good maribel told me we had all these prep former presidents coming to our fitzy we have all these countries it sounds all really good where's our return on investment show me data and that's what we should be working on otherwise it's a big waste of taxpayer money and waste of time where we could be really doing what you guys did great on helping our local businesses and i think the data that's reported in your last report with the specifics to your point of the ris is exactly what we should share and yes decide how you want to continue it if you don't want to continue it or how to tweak it we're in agreement with that the data would really explain because we do have the list of businesses if not a government contract can actually say hey mr mcdonald i met x x now manufactures my good i've now increased those sales by 80 percent i've saved those dollars so we can share the data okay i've asked for i've asked for these things many times i haven't seen it uh what you're talking about yet anyway commissioner rogers you want to go first okay uh thank you mr mayor and marabella would you like she she might be responding yes uh on october 8th uh we delivered the fitzy report the 2024 fitzy report page 18 and 19 is 27 examples of roi direct investment brower businesses the secure contracts which you have the list you received that from sandy um and additional collaborations that have done from the people that are visiting fitzy uh with brower college and other cities etc um so again we'll be glad to provide that again to to the board and resend that information but that was sent to all of you october 8th and it's again two pages 27 examples of um basically direct investment actual sales uh mous etc and we continue to work on collecting that information uh regularly uh we're doing 50 over the years where we're documenting now for 2025 the same information so we can bring back to the board additional information as relates to the roi can you explain to the board mou and how an mou is an roi no what i indicated was that um direct sales we have documentation of direct sales but in addition to that we also provide other benefits of fitzy building the relationships right you said mous i was wondering if you could talk is that part of your roi it's part of the report that we're providing of fitzy over the years in addition to in addition to the roi in addition to the roi sandy with all due respect i just you know i i you know i i operate two businesses and it's all about sales okay you don't sell you don't you don't you know it's all about sales in this world and if a company can get business uh if a company could get business or benefit some way you know then that's a roi to me and uh maybe someone else has another definition but uh i'm on commissioner rogers start off okay we're talking about return on investments we're talking about memorandum of understanding that we're going to engage in some way fashion of okay so we're on the same page where that is concerned but like my colleagues would say sometimes we need to focus on broward county businesses and you know that's where i have focused i love international trade and yes i love foreign trade zone because it's still business it's business especially when we talk about off port site how does cities benefit from the work you're doing so we're this year i think maybe for the first or second time i'm not too sure that we were telling those that are visiting us some of the things that we're going to do when they get here and the businesses here also were better prepared this year to participate with those foreign visitors i saw that myself colleen because maybe because i was with the small businesses i was i was encouraging my cities that i represent to look at fitzi look at how you can attract business into your city or just create partnership and be able to supplement or support some of those type of initiatives and yes we need to take care of home first all right and some of our businesses can't go on trade mission they can't afford to leave their business but they will come to a program that fitzi provide and they might come to a program that i see or airport or is it or seaport is trying to do a summit i'm hearing something is rumbling in that order which is necessary they are businesses here that needs the market here also they don't even know that they are partners here in broward county because we're looking outside we have some of those partners here and if we're not networking with our cities making it a priority to network with the 31 cities before we even go to miami or palm beach there are businesses here and more than ever we need broward county to take the lead in making sure they understand what the county has to offer now that we are in a different environment now that we can't find employees now that you know there's a lot of things that we're lacking now and they're looking to us to help to bridge bridge those type of vacancies that has just been created over the last four or five months i don't know if that makes sense but make a lot of sense to me because that is what i'm hearing from the businesses that i encounter they need for us to know they're here and know what their needs are so we can help to market that no agree commissioner and you are right especially the last two years but this year maribel did put forth that additional effort for the matchmaking to make sure that the companies knew who we had and based on those who we did have to make sure that they had real connections so that is something we can actually do more of but you're absolutely right that did start with extra emphasis this year you are correct a good job with our small business grant program we went out into the community before you even launch the fact that we have the funding available to educate those businesses so they can participate and benefit from their own tax dollars don't believe think you're giving them or doing a favor they pay taxes here and need more help that's correct and we did workshops for the micro grant program throughout the county whenever we have workshops for our chambers of commerce we do the same we move around the county to ensure that that businesses countywide have access to those resources and and the workshops and and those workshops also include how to do business with brower county contracting opportunities not only with brower county but beyond brower county as well we connect them with brower schools brower health brower college and additional opportunities to ensure that they have the capacity they need to do contracts successfully with other organizations as well if you're mr mirror i'm i'm just doing some things so i'm going to turn the mic back over to you shortly okay you're good whatever you are very good honestly it's costly to travel all right so sometimes with all the technology that we have i know a friend that her business boomed i mean took off just from using social media okay there's different ways of traveling without getting on a plane and because i've decided i'm not getting on too many flights and going anywhere all right i have no control up there so i feel safer down here their technology if you follow some of the other businesses you will see how their business have grown because they're using technology to do help them to do so thank you mr mayor thank you mr davis thank you i appreciate it mr mayor and so fitzy um i was heavily involved this year this past year but to learn the ins and outs it is a lot of work and i think with the limited staff they do a tremendous job could they improve yes but they would need help in doing that there's so much there's so much need out there from the community uh one thing we did do better this year is marketing because if people don't know that there are things that they can businesses that can connect with other overseas businesses at fitzy that they can come and they could be at our um was it the expo marketplace they could be there and provide their goods to a wide variety of folks so there is a lot involved there's trainings that they do there as well could it be improved yes it can be improved should we eliminate it absolutely not as was just said many of the businesses can't travel overseas they don't know that their products are marketed when we're talking about small business we're not talking about the large conglomerates they are good they can go first class anywhere in the world it's the small mom and pops that's who you see coming to these events am i right who's coming to these events small mom and pops one thing i find the municipalities are not participating as they should one of the main ones that participate is miramar out of that they've had several companies that are now producing they do a coffee and chocolate expo companies from south america that use their products here now are these companies employing people here they may do they build a coffee house here they're going to employ people so it's not just about the businesses employment opportunities from these foreign countries i remember i i just came back i've been to several um overseas trade missions and on the ones that i've been to i've advertised in my district that this is what i'm doing if you're a business you can afford to go here are opportunities for you i've had several come with me this last one there was a gentleman out of western who got a lot of resources from south africa to do business as a lady who has affiliations with perry airport she also was on the trade mission so you know you meant you're not going to help everybody but the same reason why they have select florida there's a reason why they have that and those other types of agencies is because it's important to expose our businesses to what's outside of the united states and that's the main thing and locally with fitzi i think that's helping the local market and don't knock something until you've really gone deep had a deep dive into what it takes i went there both days spent majority of my time there and made sure that even the evening events because again people work so there were some opportunities after what time was it four five thirty five thirty where we made sure tell telling people listen you can come after work if you can't come to the day events and there are still people that you can talk to get engaged with our our department as well so i think they do a good job can it improve yes can they have a better vision and focus from the board probably um but i think it's important for the reasons i mentioned that we do fitzi but also outside trade missions and it's not just again you talk about private companies we're a government agency there's a reason why we're not privatized we're government and so it's not just about the bottom line because then many of us probably wouldn't even be here if it was that if we were supposed to be constantly making money we're not in the business of making money as an agency as a government entity there are many things that we do she mentioned mous there's a cultural component of it okay there is the interactions with other government entities um around the world to see how best practices are done there are different things involved so it's not just about the money as a government entity it's more than just the money so what i what i think i need to do because i i think generalities aren't really making my point one of the two pages that was provided just i'm going to take 60 seconds naza a local visual artist from brazil we're not here to help people from brazil we're here to help broward businesses uh command production a local artist cultural division i don't know uh sold their art to barbara sharif uh no another company grammy award winner from south africa great world trade center guiana's idea was born here um a cultural dancing group from honduras performed these are the successes of fitzi uh uh nosa radio um secured exclusive portuguese language broadcasting rights in the united states um okay the city of uh bacalaar in mexico all i see the second page here made in china made in chile trades that we're helping all these other foreign businesses that is not what our tax dollars are for we are not here to be helping unless they want to open an office and they want to bring employees here and manufacturing here this whole page i can go down this whole page pretty much tony the greek i can't read my eyesight's bad renowned publicist uh i mean i don't see how these are successes and i know we're not in business to make money but we are to use our tax dollars for the benefit of broward businesses and to say that this what we're spending here is helping our business community yeah it might be helping i think we got five six contracts in ten years you can correct me if i'm wrong but but but you know it's not just that commissioner it's also you know you went to south africa i went to canada i don't know one brower business benefit you may know one or two does that cost justify this board needs to answer for that does that cost justify versus taking that cost and helping getting down and dirty what what i worked with sandy on into the neighborhoods and helping our local businesses grow more where's that dollar better spent but that's what i'm getting at versus yeah we could show we've helped a couple businesses here and there but that you know that it just doesn't make economic sense to me and that's what i think we can do all of that all at once you don't have to eliminate one for the other i do believe there's more that should be done for local businesses i i met with somebody earlier who they believe cbes need to have more training they need to spend some money on making sure that maybe the sba does some training for small business there's a lot we can do and they're doing some there's improvements that need to be made but i don't think you should throw out all of it and say focus only on this area there are sister city ports sister city agreements there are things in place for a reason and it's not just monetary it's some of it it's cultural exchange some of it is making sure that our regions connect with say if it's europe you're doing something with or africa there are synergies there and the departments can tell you what the benefits are so i think that we can do both all at once and that we should improve on both yeah just just to correct we have no sister city agreements there's no sister with our county and that's what we should be doing and there's some port agreements there should be more of those okay and there's reasons for that and maybe you should have a just as a workshop specifically because what you read there is that's high school stuff it's her that report but i'm saying it's not the depth that we would need for what this meeting requires you know that's just information agreed that i'm sure we could get more data stuff there's ai out there now that can pull all this stuff so that kind of report i don't think is no but that's what we share with the mayor we will give more data as he has asked for and specifically it's not my decision it's a it's this board's decision i just need to know where i'm coming from because i participated going to canada and i found it a waste of money and time i help i'm still helping a business now from canada come here but i mean that's not my job really i'm not being paid for that and and and and so anyway um i don't know just very briefly i i don't have enough information to be honest to say yes or no about bitsy i think there are some good things about bitsy and i think the cultural things that you mentioned are very are very positive um i'm wondering even if maybe tourism is impacted in some way which maybe we don't have information about that about people coming here even after the people who come from fit for for fitzy so um but i do agree on the other side that we definitely need to put more of a focus on borrowed small businesses um that's what the money is supposed to go for and i think we should be i'm not saying we should negate this other but i think that the main focus has to be on our small businesses because they're the ones that are having difficulty i mean when you think about it of all the all the economic we talk about economic development and the economic issues for families and housing and affordable housing and and even feeding of the food insecurity we know i mean there's just a lot of the health care now so i i just think we our main focus needs to be yeah thank you a couple things um again i wasn't totally prepared for this but i know some of it from memory so i'll give you some a lot of what we do when we when we're in the county and what our team over there is and and anything that they're doing in the communities they're excellent at that get our piece of the pie or get your piece of the the things when they go in the counties i'm they're they're great they know how to do that i'm not even talking about that that they have when you when you do a trade mission in my opinion when you when you go and try and get businesses you need the businesses to step up as much as the government that's going so when you talked about the trip to dubai the beauties palladio beauty is a warehouse of beauty company in hollywood they sent multiple people to dubai they paid multiple dollars of their own out of their own pocket the county i think only paid seven thousand dollars to send somebody there the rest was picked up by private sector for that seven thousand dollars that company uh is now importing and exporting through the world now i spent a lot of time with those executives there they were not sitting around waiting for the next uh let's talk about you know small business workshop they had meetings set up with every different business in that area where they could ship to and when we left they went to another one you had the greater fort lauderdale realtors or the miami i think they're called the miami board of realtors now which now covers our area they set up there they sent multiple people there i know the people that are doing that now they're out doing business in those things you need to have the private sector involved they spent a ton of money sent a ton of people peter leon and his team now actually have a beachhead in the middle east and they're selling property from broward and that's another thing when we have these events that we're doing and i think from broward county's point of view and i've spoken to bob swindell about some of this stuff in the past since we lost mr huizinga and i know there's other ones that we've had since then we've taken a big hit on bringing uh on on having that major business cheerleader for broward county miami has ken griffin now palm beach has steve roth steve ross when we were at the winter classic i was commenting to bob that there should have been a picture of wayne huizing on the screen when they had that tournament there even though they played the game in miami it was a broward thing the broward sports business has become a home run for our area the panthers um the dollars that we spend for the national championship sponsorship forgetting about what it costs where it was i was at a business in davie over the weekend for six straight days there was a two-hour wait to get into this small business and there was a 45 minute wait to pay and get out i spoke to the guy when he found out i was a county commissioner and what we're doing with the businesses and sports businesses coming down here he was ecstatic um local business in district three when they had the super bowl a number of years ago i think i talked to sandy or it may have even been before sandy actually and this group said we're going to go cook for the super ball they're now one of the largest catering companies employing multiple people in northwest broward they opened up two restaurants when you had uh f1 came and i think we did one sponsorship the first year and then we got a little bit well i don't know if we like it or not there's a huge security company out of miramar now that's doing i forget the gentleman's name i have it on my phone somewhere doing multiple security events hiring multiple people to do that these things take a lot of effort on the government and the private sector i'm not going to comment on fitzy i just don't know enough about it what i do know about fitzy is to to walk into the convention to go in there as a as a person involved it costs zero and many people think that's a good thing it's not a good thing if you don't charge somebody to come to one of these conferences that means you're not going to do a lot of business after that there's a reason the boat show charges a few dollars to get into the boat show they want people that want to make an investment and want to do business and maybe fitzy is a different category of what it needs to be but that's not going to generate business for broward county i think that the alliance if i was on the board again this year it's hard because we we're sporadic i would revisit in the strategic plan like the number of site visits they're doing because we're going to have a report on thursday where it's in our backup you can read it it's good they do a very good job but they need to revisit post-covid whether these numbers still make sense as far as what they're looking at i don't know the answer to that but they have very smart people on the board and newsflash it's not me and it's not really anybody sitting on this table it's the business people there that are the professionals and noted that i would do that if i was on the alliance board this year i would ask them to do a new strategic plan on site visits how they're bringing more businesses here and what the thing is i would try and find one of these angels that we could get that could come i was talking about it last night there is a group in miami now it's led by riders ceo it's led by ken griffin and a few other people that is just talking about education they're donating money to the educational facilities because they want their executives to get a better education by the way a lot of that is private schools because there are people that are coming and bringing their businesses there want their children in a different educational environment don't shoot the messenger that's just what the reality is they're talking about transportation they're talking about look at the health google in the south florida business journal and look at the health care investments that are being made in the other counties by some of these um high-end people that are coming in so i agree this is this this is worthy of a workshop also in the future but i'll leave that to somebody else there's more that can be done on this end the alliance does a good job but we need to do a better job in reaching out and selling broward county we're not we're not there yet and if you want an example i get why they had to do the hockey game at marlin stadium because it had a retractable roof you needed to have that ice open but the night before when they did the major nhl welcome dinner they didn't do that in broward county they did that in miami-dade county i get it but don't you think that there's places on las olas don't you think that there's high-end restaurants where we could do that we weren't responsible for that even the panthers weren't responsible for that but we should give a product and have a product where the people that are making those decisions look to our area we have it now maybe with the omni hotel we have some level most people aren't staying in the hotels in broward county they're staying at the boca resort they're staying at turnbury they're staying at the fountain blue when they're coming for these big events i think now with the omni maybe we have we're starting to get more of it and like i said don't shoot the messenger i'm just telling you the things that i hear from people thank you mr mayor i concur in part and dissent in part um that's a lawyer joke okay first let me talk about fitzy um i withhold judgment on it again would like to see better numbers here's the problem that i have with it it's the numbers that we're talking about county investment are i think wildly misleading because uh i think we did direct a hundred thousand and another 42 000 in uh in kind but what we're missing is the vast amount of employee time that sandy and maribel and the rest of staff are spending on it and you guys are spending a lot of time on that and if you factor in and it's not just the two of you if you factor in the large amount of staff time that's going for it our investment is actually very substantial and if we are getting a good as as mayor bogan said good return on investment i've absolutely no problem with that i haven't seen that the issues that i've got your report right here i've looked at it and i had previously looked at it and that's why it's highlighted everywhere um i'm just going to read one page on the uh the return on investment got contacts of people interested in our projects better understanding of ft's ftz free trade zone working on expanding opportunities looking to send the delegation to uzbekistan showcased our hotel for future opportunities gain knowledge of exporting none of these are what i think commissioner bogan is looking mayor i'm sorry bogan is looking at which is substance you can't look at one year and say that because i recognize that this is something that takes years to build and i saw there was a couple of you know five million here two million there but i'm not sure that you can attribute that specifically to um to fitzy because somebody that went there that had already been working with uzbekistan ended up signing a contract with a company in uzbekistan so i would like to see better actual i'm far less interested interested in got contact scheduled appointments than i am with signed contracts now where i will disagree a little is a couple places with what's been said is i think that both businesses coming into broward and broward businesses going out those are both important because if you have a business from saudi arabia that is coming here a business from south africa coming here presumably that will create jobs here and if you have a business here that's exporting to england presumably that will also create so i'm interested in both jobs created here and well jobs created here whether that's coming or going i think that's important um i disagree that we're looking at just small businesses i think small businesses are extremely important they are far less likely to do business internationally because of all of the complications if we can get a large business here that is employing 100 people and now they have to go out and hire another 20 people because they've successfully navigated through fitzy or anything else and are um creating high-paid jobs in broward which you've heard me say that's what i'm all about create high-paid jobs here in broward i think that's good i have not seen sufficient evidence of that yet and i'm hoping that next time you give us presentation you can give us more in what i've just explained and i think that's what mayor bogan was talking about return on investment not i i spoke with somebody and i hope in the future maybe it'll turn into a deal and then the last thing on the trade missions i think if there's i i agree and disagree with uh what what mayor bogan was saying one thing that i think is growing increasingly critical is tourism um the i don't want to be political but i will where the president turning the rest of the world against us and canada canceling um tourism here canadian tourists and pretty clearly england and the eu are are not going to be thrilled to be coming here any longer i think it is important that we continue uh trade missions partially for business but also for tourism because we have to have people that can go overseas and say yeah the president is a madman but we're not like that please keep sending your tourists here so um i agree that it's important to we have to be focused if we're spending tax dollars we have to see returns on that and i agree completely with my mayor bogan has to say said about that but i just want to elaborate that that includes tourism and it includes job creation whether it's jobs coming in well jobs located in broward whether it's because of business coming in or business going out and mr mayor thank you for bringing this item up okay thank you um i was i always like going to fitzy i always get it i always like seeing all the you know different people and businesses from all over my concern is this is i i see for like six months going before fitzy is that it is all consuming it seems to be it's like when fitzy's coming around it's like all you know all hands on deck to get this going when when at the same time what i what i'm seeing is necessary is for us to be working on the alignment with our education system and with small jobs and those kind of things i i think we're lacking there i don't think we're working and making those connections with the school board with small businesses that that needs to be happening um i mean there's i think you're seeing i think right now there's 25 000 jobs that we don't have people for you know they we're not making those matches there's 25 000 you know they're both ways jobs that aren't being filled and you know somehow we have to be doing that but there's also a lot of kids out there that don't know what's available here and what we've seen over the last couple years is we a lot of kids are you know are leaving our county a lot of young people are leaving our county because they're not they don't know what the opportunities are we're seeing it we're seeing it on a you know a real pretty big basis they don't know that those that those contracts for being able to um those those contracts are for 2 million they don't know about all those apprenticeships and there's great jobs there but they're not seeing that they don't know about it i when i tell somebody about that they're going really we need that to me that's where i would if i was spending a lot of time with small jobs and people i'd be out there every day in every school talking about how to make that those kids that aren't going to college i know and we work together on uh my next move and now and they were getting jobs that day those kind of things need to happen on a regular basis things like the trade missions i'm my my concern is that takes away for the return on investment the real business of what we need to have be happening on a regular basis and that those connections with the that alignment with what are what our industries are and what the school board is providing we need to be there on a regular basis and say you know what here's where the disconnect is so that so that we're able to do that um so i thought that's kind of where i'd like to see you all being able to spend way more time um i know with uh with the alliance six pillars and all that there's a lot of good stuff there but it but it but it needs you know it needs kind of some support from us to to help some of that come together um that's where i'd like to see a lot more emphasis because i think to your to your point the stuff that you're doing with the small businesses in the neighborhoods great work for those small businesses when they when they get when they i've watched what happens when you're in when you're in those rooms with them they their eyes light up they're learning they're they're connecting with you know they're seeing oh i can i'm connected to this county now and the more we can do that the better but there's also but like i said that that disconnect with our education educational system and and those jobs that that we need to be working on that so i you know if i could that's where i would be putting more emphasis more time my concern is with some of these trade missions it takes it takes away from that because it takes it's a whole lot of work for what i'm not i'm not convinced is the roi on it where i think on the other the other stuff is invaluable and i think you know it would be working and you're then you're really working with the the kids and the students in our county that really need that connection i think you had four great topics today i think they needed to be um dealt with one at a time as we all have deep thoughts concerns about how do we feel about those items since we're on the last one um it just made me go back to my priorities monica uh when i first got here i haven't heard anything different today that took place uh when i first arrived and i even went and did a deeper dive um into sandy's department and understand how things work so i agree because i heard it from one of my constituents colleagues that need to separate the two um if i had to talk about 50 i probably a couldn't b wouldn't because i don't know a whole lot because i didn't know i inquired from staff time time time again even today i'm not satisfied with the reports or how things are reported um coming from there um what i did hear that was interesting that i use as example all the time that um commissioner your dean brought up which is no one remembers those people who turned the tides here in broward county jim blosses the wayne heising they turned it they invested they got a return on investment they sold it and they went on and no one can even remember them so had you put the picture up probably wouldn't matter um so i've heard this this song and dance you did today at the broward workshop i was a speaker last week i kept saying wow 14 years of being elected and finally getting to go over there and sit with them i know most of them individually i remember when on the ray rodriguez and those folks were a part of when they started the broward workshop they kind of shaped where we went and what we did so what i did come out of that with that i thought was powerful and i say it all the time reimagining and i think i hear mr alexandra and the mayor saying the same thing i think you knew and you're saying uh some things can be done better to look at this i don't have the data yet saying it to to say that because i've asked for a time you came in you you have a great presentation uh we have a great relationship but the return on the investment is what i'm trying to evaluate everybody else that has talked today i think all of us said the same thing and i want to see where those small businesses are thriving i mean i know we have some successes with the duty thing i know we have some successes in miramar but miramar is a different makeup and i heard it in this meeting the other day when we were trying to talk about relocating people bob swindell uh in broward county in class a office space that's not here but yet we talk about a governmental building talking about you know bringing some space in there that can be um offered for class a but they're saying really there's no there's no place in broward county for that but miramar because of how the city was built it when it first out west of 95 turnpike it was all warehousing out there and they started new warehousing and now you have a what i think is a very exciting commission there that are doing wonderful things and it's all coming together because of the vision because of the folks like the housing because of the folks that are sitting at this table now that have great ideas uh and we're moving it forward but what what concerns me is the same thing that concerns everybody else i don't know what fitzy does so i'm not going to give it that much criticism i think of i think of fitzy i think of port everglaze what it could do for our local our longshoremen and our shipping companies i think and how do we put the small businesses that you cultivate how do we get them contracts i'm hoping that's what fitzy does i'm sure that's what the intent was when it became an idea so how we reimagine it i would trust on you and stay after that i don't know what more it's going to take us in terms of investment but i want to see that before i can say yay or nay but what really concerns me is the economic development piece for our small businesses you know and how that works and i've been knee-deep with you all about how it works and i think we have to reimagine our processes our procurement is one of the heavy deterrent factors right now uh with that i've witnessed it firsthand in the bmsd a witness firsthand monica when your staff came to me day one and wanted to um look at land uses and look at rezoning in the bmsd because we had a corridor corridors that were killed by visions from the past um now we think we could turn the corner on that but we had some small businesses but i've referred to as lipstick on a pig and i think you you did it too and it's amazing that they're still fighting some procurement processes just to get um a reimbursement from a project that was completed years ago um there's another one that's in the hopper that has more issues than that but when we dig deeper with staff it's the it's our own process it's our own bureaucracy that that's that's holding these small businesses back if anyone needs leniency it's gonna be small businesses so it's like you said the company in hollywood had the resources to pay their own way uh wanted to do better they're doing better what about the mom and pop deal i don't have a lot of people import export in my district our landscapes are different all of us but i think that's the issue you get the smaller folks to participate in import export but we'll get back there but these small businesses economic development shop that we have may we need to do a different we need to do a deeper dive we need to figure out why isn't it working because i did ask for uh successes and failures and we got them but the results were alarming in terms of how hard it is to get a project done and you guys have helped me since i've been here because i'm bringing light to it say you know give a few more dollars or uh let's do that let's buy this piece but there's a whole corridor economically has been choked out of out of this county and it's the only really city uh geller that the county is responsible for which is unincorporated uh pockets and he has like he has like two two percent but but he's looking for a different vision in his little pocket of it what's happening over in broadview my corridor has just been shipwrecked and i think we're turning the corner we gotta gotta reimagine what we're doing we gotta go now look at procedures here you've mentioned it you know every subject matter you brought today a lot of times it's us getting in our own way how do we do that but i think we got to break it down this workshop's not going to fix it the next one's not going to fix it but when we do start looking at these four pockets i think we need to do them separately um and if we dedicate an hour we could put all the input we gave today on one subject matter instead of trying to water it all down in one big meeting this is great because i would have thought of the same subject matters had it been day one for me to be mayor i would have thought the same exact ones but i'll close with this in that workshop the fear for our workshop the fear of the room was our mayor made a decision he didn't want to serve on our board and he asked the vice mayor to do it i accept it because that's what i'm here for is to support the mayor support this this commission and everyone was worried about what i'm going to do i think all of you know what i'm going to do you saw it on day one i'm going to roll up my sleeves i'm going to work for borough county each and every day that i come to work but fitzy reminds me of day one when i sat in the committee my first commission i started talking about visit lauderdale the tdt dollars and how that stuff worked and i was asking not for myself but someone came and said hey robert's up there maybe we can get some money for jazz in the gardens but as nikki udine has said here today mr udine um these events are in miami why can't we get some of the things to be held here but when i asked for those dollars i was told all that i could not do and all that we had to do for a smaller business to participate or to drink from that well and that entity is housed at harvard rock stadium right where formula one is right where tennis is right where the championship is and they have been denied each and every time but he said it had to be the electronic fencing to give us that data that we're looking for the base to see if our monies were being invested properly for return on our investment but anytime there's a venue that's held in that stadium people stay in palm beach broward and dade county and we all know it because the hotels don't lie leadership we start changing department heads we started changing changing a commission and we started talking about who's the next uh person who's going to run visit lauderdale i think we have to think outside the box now we can no longer come from within we have to go find the best of the best that can deliver this of these products of these services or what we're crying for three or four commissions removed to just get things more efficiently done here and and not keep doing the same old thing over and over again and to hear the broward workshop talk about reimagining the alliance reimagining visit lauderdale this is not so much that alliance is doing anything wrong but let's take a look at what we're doing and how we can make it and any other thing we do in this county better so i think reimagining a lot of these things is where we need to start now with your new ideas or that new idea it's just 13 years of frustration it seems like to me but i don't have that much time um so separate the two that 50 standards on marriage economic development we need to dig a deeper dive in processes and and bureaucracy and we talked about this money that commissioner hazel rogers uh bought up uh initially with the incentive programs for the smaller business we started at 2000 i think in the last uh budget workshop monica you said we're going to going to raise that but even that is detrimental you you you you cry about 1.5 million and then you put 2000 into the same people that you say you want to help which is the small businesses uh uh around this is not the place for for it to happen but i think if we're going to try to help smaller businesses we got to do a deeper dive than two and four thousand dollars what that is moving forward that's up to us as a commission and we work that out but we're talking about they're not doing it here and we're not doing it over here with our own programs and services that we offer in house so i wanted to see how we move forward with that to really help small businesses because people aren't just coming here because i took a trip somewhere and said hey bring i'm going to use a company from from way back in ibm here ibm has already done all their all their uh uh uh pre-work and where they want to go they've done the demographics and they're coming here because they've already figured out that they're going to get return on the investment it just happened to the wine and diners you know uh uh uh uh with bob squindell or or whomever and then they you know it's not because we went and brought the panthers here or brought the miami dogs it's the wayne high zingers uh it's the folks that are going to invest the money that that that turns the corner and yes we do need a new cheerleader with lots of money um i don't know who that is but stephen ross does business with us little business and what he tries to do regionally so let's bring him here let him be the spokesman i mean we have somebody's got to be able to do that and over there they said who in this room brown workshop and pick up the phone and make that call say stephen ross do this who can do it monica so we should have someone on your staff that or someone in our in our reach that could that could do what we have so desperately said we need to turn the corner on the on on on this county so i want to revisit them and i didn't mean to go this long but since we went past three i decided to go ahead and just you know do a deeper dive but something's wrong here something's wrong we're not pointing fingers but i need to have you all give me the data i need to make decisions obviously no one's gotten the data we've gotten reports we've gotten presentations how many that program that i knew here a long time ago that helped small business you guys wrote business plans you did all kind of stuff is that working what's what's what are the successes where are the numbers for all of this stuff on both sides of the fence and thank you for allowing me the extra time you killed me that was intent mr fisher first of all whether commissioner mckenzie is vice mayor mayor he's still going to roll his sleeves up for the best for brown county so i don't think you're waiting for that you're doing that already okay so don't you don't need a title for that you're already doing it already i don't think we're doing anything wrong i think what discussions we're having and mayor thank you for this here today is you know this board sets policy and then the administration carries it forward and i agree that we need their expertise and i'm going to talk about fitzy right now and you've heard a lot about fitzy i have been on the outskirts of that and that kind of was obviously our former commissioner baby and uh commissioner wholeness and how he brought that to fruition maybe the results that the mayor wrote about is all the results that we have so i i look to um um to maribel and and to sandy and you're the experts you tell us if it's really worth doing every year if it's worth the million and a half dollar investment over 10 years you're in it day to day you're working it if it's not working be honest with us right and on the roi what is it and and if it's not working then we can make a decision whether continue or not continue it and and if there's other venues out there that you see that can help our small businesses throughout brow county and i know you'll bring those forward to us you know let's think about what we can do i encourage everybody here if you have not been to the businesses and beyond that is where you need to go because i think you'll get a real insight on what this department does this is focusing on small businesses bringing them to us getting them properly registered there's a not you know businesses have a real problem there might be too small to understand how to register to become a vendor with only broward county but with others this is what businesses of beyond does so it's a very very productive conference and then we bring in experts to help them if your abc company started today and you call maribel and said listen i need their help she's going to help them get registered so we're doing the right things we can't do it all and that leads me to the workshop that leads me to the alliance pops swindell is is a huge advocate and doing a tremendous job for us at the alliance he has the ability vice mayor to be able to talk to those big companies commissioner dean like the hyzingis of life to be able to help promote us and maybe become our spokesperson that's what they do that's their expertise so i'm looking for mr swindell's group to come forward that i'm also looking for the workshop you know they have a lot of things that they like to talk about and i love every one of them they're in there but by george let them step up and find that spokesperson and what we can do to help further broward county partnerships produce success and so we we broward county can't do it all so we have our partners we have the alliance we have the workshop we have all these other opportunities collectively we can get what our vision is done but we got to tell them the vision don't let them come to us with the problems let them come to us with solutions and and i get frustrated at times when somebody says well we need to do this and that well then why don't you help us get there don't just look at us to do it how do we do that put your money where your mouth is you know you're you're successful because of broward county you love broward county let's let you get involved and become that partner look at the the i mean you mentioned the port look at that the company uh accordia shipping this is a local company that is supporting our haitian american folks that are giving jobs and we need to be able to support those folks at the port those are small businesses that are thriving and growing they need that additional push whether the extra acreage whatever it is to help them be successful we need to look at that component as well not any of our economic engines that we have today um i agree with i think it was commissioner fur talking about our youth one of our former colleagues tori austin president of broward college that's one of his focuses is making sure those folks come out of college to get involved in our businesses in broward county he's a strategic partner or just produce success we need to have somebody in constant contact with tori how we can help them get these young people into our community and not move away you're right and to other other parts of the country so i think that is important uh let me see the rest of my notes so again we're not doing anything wrong i just think we need to engage more with our partners uh at the end of the day and if we need to have a workshop with them or have a conversation with them to collectively uh let's do it you know let's let's let's let's get serious about it but i commend staff with the resources that you have and what you're working with is is is there it's just we also need feedback from you if something's not working be honest with us whether you might not want to hear commissioner or commissioners might say no you're wrong don't be fearful tell us of your opinion you're in the day-to-day operations of that organization of that issue that you're putting together you know and be and be if you think it's worth it fitzy is just we're here to fitzy then tell us about it don't be shy because we're here to make policy we also want to hear from you because we're not there day-to-day working with you all so please please engage us back and engage our partnerships that's my spiel thank you thank you um in reference to what both commissioner fur and commissioner fisher the two commissioners with an f i guess uh we're bringing up i i wanted to um invite people again to something i've been doing for the last seven years i have quarterly meetings because as i've said repeatedly my highest priority is high pay job creation in broward um and we have quarterly meetings that are held in the commission chamber that are noticed that any commissioner is invited to and just some of the people that we have are sandy and maribel we have broward county schools we have broward college we have a bunch of unions advanced roofing um the boys and girls club career source a bunch of cities for department of education the alliance uh junior achievement mcfatter technical and the other technicals a bunch of subcontractors the levan center the marine research hub marine industries association oic of south florida the salvation army south florida tech hub the west side gazette i have these meetings once a quarter and they're designed specifically to encourage people because the schools the west side gazette they that all of these oic the they're designed to let people know about all of the high paid jobs that exist we have the unions we have uh abc's as i said builders and contractors the employers the contractors the subcontractors we have a hundred people on our meeting list we have probably 60 or so 60 to 70 attend each meeting y'all are invited and we're doing exactly what commissioner fur commissioner fisher you both suggested doing so please if you're interested contact my office or have your aid contact my office we'll make sure you get the invite to the next meeting it's not a secret i keep telling you about these so please come and then the second thing although he's not here right now about commissioner mckenzie the one thing i wanted to say in response is i i don't want him to be confusing and it sounded like he may have been the convention and visitors bureau visit waterdale with sandy's uh office or with the alliance because there are and we've had this fight at the commission level there are very very statutory strict limits as to what visit waterdale can spend their money on the county if we're doing economic development coming through sandy's office coming through maribel coming through the administrator may be able to do other things but if you're looking at coming at funding from visit waterdale those are very very strict statutory requirements thank you mr mayor and mr merrick if you'd come to our next meeting in march i'll make sure we save you with speaking spot thanks steve you know what i'm talking about basically what happened here today excuse me mayor is that same illustrations keep coming up with depends on when the commissioner wants to do something um he or she wants to do if it doesn't meet my satisfaction we want to figure out how not to let it happen in this case mark said that another commissioner did it i could have come in very easily and said i don't want this that's not what i came in for if it's working we work on it not working we work to make it better what was said to me in the alliance was that was the kick on my good friend bob swindale is that they are looking at everything too to reimagine if they're doing things right because they don't have the right people in the room anymore but we're still talking about whether it's tourism dollars whether it's port money whether it's airport money whether it's fitzy money that came out of our our budget um if it's not working revisit it it doesn't work we make a decision up or down it's out of here we've done that before um let's do it again so i'm not confused i know exactly what i'm talking about i'm just tired of bureaucracy uh politics um getting in the way of us really trying to turn the corner on something that i think staff could easily work out but you're listening to what we're telling you and the direction we give you each and every time so um i just want to be clear mayor that i want to fix the economic development piece of it i want to revisit fitzy and see if it's working or not working and move it forward i don't want to kick a can i'll pick a can up and put it where it needs to be but i want to just help you get to where you want to go but i've already spent three years trying to get an understanding of a return on investment i still don't understand or haven't seen that piece in conclusion i'm looking for by our next meeting an roi on fitzy again separate exactly how many businesses have gotten business from brower business have gotten business i don't care about foreign businesses coming here i don't think our tax dollars are paying us to help foreign companies come here unless it shows a benefit to our economy and second i'd like you to consider that money versus using it to doing a shark tank doing a some type of mentor program for our businesses here so you've got 150 000 for fitzy or 150 000 to help small businesses grow like a shark tank or using the workshop or the alliance come to them and saying hey how about we can do a mentor program because you only have so much money and so much resources and and all and also the foreign trips again you you met with the japanese i'm happy to go to tokyo okay but it's not fair to the taxpayers unless we have businesses for me to promote and or you know i don't really know about your trip to south africa how many actual businesses went well and the thing is sometimes we knock things without going into a deep dive i believe the report is inadequate and insufficient so we're going to go back and get the report done i just want to know not somebody met somebody somebody met this somebody met that i want fact did was there business has business been conducted what contracts have been in so we could all share the facts that's all i'm looking for thank you and sandy by the way you know and i keep saying sandy that's maribel's department no i really enjoy what you what we've been able to do in the past and it's a great job what you guys do for small businesses thank you thank you what yes ma'am okay well the other topic was going to be very it was going to be just a question on affordable housing and that was really one question nan it's not a deep dive here it was it was supposed to be a deep dive but i really don't want to do a deep time fine i'm going to stop i'm saying at the very end to have the discussion that needs to be had because everything we talked about here today goes back to affordable housing it does yes absolutely you're talking about people that are moving out of here we have we have stats ralph is here okay we have statistics from dr murray wait a minute everybody was talking for an hour here that we have we have status we have figures on dade and broward and how many people are leaving here young people who why do you think they're leaving it's not about so much the job as it is about the cost of living and being able to have affordable housing so everything ties into that and we take it at the last thing after we've done all of this so i think maybe we need to have a separate workshop on this that we can have a conversation about what we need to do here all i wanted to ask is can we do we do we ever go out instead of waiting for company for developers to come in here and say hey i see you got 25 million i want to do this do we go to strip centers that are hurting do we go to different property venues do we aggressively go out proactively go out and say you know your strip center's half dead why don't we talk about doing some joint venture and doing affordable housing do we go out and do that type of proactiveness yes or no yes we do in in two ways first of all you wouldn't believe how many come to us uh kind of proffering that kind of question but i defer to lenny i know that real estate's been been doing this for quite a while in in different contexts so you know i'll defer to that i i all i was looking for was a way to increase affordable housing was to i didn't realize we're proactive we're going out and trying to cut deals i thought we were more waiting for people to come to us and saying hey i got an affordable housing project that i would like to do with you guys let me make one one quick quick quick quick comment the the the major thing that's happened in the last four or five years specifically in that regard was that prior to the geller amendment in broward county you could not do residential in any commercial or industrial land use in the whole county didn't matter how bad it was didn't matter how bad it looked it didn't matter how good the deal was and until we got the geller amendment in place that and since that time the world has changed i mean deals are happening we're collecting money off the payment in lieu of i've heard that i haven't talked directly to to fort lauderdale but they have 10 million dollars in payment in lieu of in the pipeline and about 15 deals that are associated with the geller amendment so i just stopped there i have a simple question though i'm sorry i have a simple the simple question is what are we doing proactively going out to to cut to seek deals so i would i would say yes we are probably reactive we're probably not doing what you're mentioning only because we don't as an agency or the county hasn't as a county done our own affordable housing development right where we've approached the developer and partnered with them you're right it's traditionally where they they come to us we do sort of like a gap financing deal or you know get them to do so many affordable units we haven't built our own projects or you know we do have a standing order to our brokers to look for distressed properties that we could that we could purchase and we have an inventory of those kinds of properties like for example the motel 6 property was purchased after that we've got the old forensic science center site so we will offer those properties once we purchase them to a developer as a partnership for you know affordable housing but we have not to my knowledge gone to a developer and said hey i think your shopping center looks dead and maybe you would like to partner with us excuse me the reason i'm bringing it up i've read costco in another state is building affordable housing units on their property so i'm thinking why aren't we having somebody be proactive instead of waiting that i don't want to go into an hour discussion about it i just wanted to ask because because nan the you know that issue i don't believe has been discussed of what we can do to increase affordable housing inventory by going out and and and seeking deals well we part of it is you can just mention all the deals with the developers as a result of our gap financing and how we've had to add attorneys to our our staff there because we have so many deals coming in now so we have so many deals coming in now we have way more deals than we have capacity to fund them uh we're oh you know do you know why we're closing about a deal a month closing why you know the developers still make money when we come in with the gap financing there's a big piece in there that that comes for them do you know that the at the uli conference the geller amendment and live local combined together i think that's what ralph was kind of opining has really started to open the door and when we keep calling it affordable housing we need more housing supply you don't have to call it affordable housing there's not enough housing in broward county by the way most people aren't moving out of broward county broward county seeing people move in that's the problem there's too much demand there are different kind of people and a lot of the people the young professionals that are moving out they're not moving into any of our gap financed affordable housing the live local thing is taking care of that middle area there we would be much better off and there are studies that say this if you increase the supply of market rate rental housing it flows into affordable housing every study that's looked at that those areas have said there's been become more affordable housing because there's more supply this is all supply and demand a b fiu they're fantastic mr mr dr murray's fantastic at what he's doing i don't see fiu building tons of affordable housing right on their campus in response to mr or dr murray these people there's a there's an industry of the affordable housing industry that come around and tell everyone to do this you want quicker affordable housing and i'm not i'm not asking for this go to these permitting places and say put all the multi-family right to top and get them through in sixty days as opposed to two years you don't even have to give them gap financing they'll do it let them build right away and then they won't need the gap financing from us there's more than one way to skin the cat here we keep taking the way that crowds out regular development because everyone's now competing against the affordable housing stipends that we're doing and it's a problem no one's doing anything wrong i vote for it too because some of these are only going to go with a with a stipend but it's not the only way to skin the cat and it may not even be the best way to skin um i agree with what commissioner make one quick comment that the uh in order for supply and demand torque in broward county the number of market rate units that would have to be built that over supplied the demand for market rate units so that it started to bite into the 75 000 rental unit deficiency in the 75 000 or cell deficiency in affordable housing is not possible it's not humanly or financially possible and we're really at a disadvantage in broward because we don't have dirt and the dirt that we have is in the commercial corridors that mayor bogan's talking about which is the most expensive dirt and uh it it requires the highest density and therefore is supported by structured parking everything is stacked against us here in terms of supply and demand so i absolutely believe in supply and demand but it has contexts and it has limits and supply and demand is not a really good uh opportunity here in broward just not are you checking with the uh market rate rental companies as far as concessions that they're giving to new renters to come in now yeah pretty closely we'll stay up with that and there's pretty it's pretty excessive now what they're offering now new renters because they're starting to catch up with supply now i think that's going to all turn around because i think a lot of stuff got stuck in the pipeline because it's not penciling out but if you look at all the rental stuff that's out there there's a tremendous amount of concessions that's coming online and i would tell you that a lot of our young professionals don't want to live in this gap financed affordable housing there's a place for it and it's important but it's not what they're what they're asking for and that's why a lot of them are leaving but still at the end of the day our numbers of people moving into broward county are way up they're not leaving broward county our number of tourists by the way that are coming to broward county are up they're not even with all the craziness our tourism is going up it could just be going up differently and in a better way so i don't think it's all doom and gloom but i think a lot of times with this affordable housing we get bogged down into stuff that really makes it worse rather than better but we do a good job and i think we should do some of these people that there are seniors that need to be protected that live in it there are people that are super poor that senator geller thank you um i heard from a very reliable individual who was ralph stone um that broward county's population over the last five years or over the last 30 years increases by around 14 000 people per year and that our current population uh housing per housing unit people per housing units is 2.1 which i'm going to round to two just to make the math easier that means just to keep up with population growth we need 7 000 new housing units a year i've been in government for 110 years i've changed a lot of laws and a lot of ordinance they cannot change the law of supply and demand so if we build more than 7 000 units per year that should result in net um i won't say decline in housing but a reduction in the rate of increase in housing if we build less than 7 000 units it will cause an increase in housing so i agree with commissioner you deem the best way of fixing this and what i've been working towards is trying to get more units built there's a lot of ways some of which are out of county control in the single family areas we need to permit duplexes triplexes etc which will cause some people to be unhappy but we need more housing we need more accessory dwelling units we need more as commissioner you deem says we need more housing units if we get more housing units i believe that it will deal with that now of course senator rich is right the silver tsunami is coming in particular seniors in particular with the condominiums that people you know never put money in to maintain them and so now they're being hit with vast um uh special assessments and the fastest growing group of of homeless people is seniors so yes we have to do something senator rich is right but i just want to say i agree that we have to do more in the way of of building more units and there's a lot of ways of doing that but some are out of our control and rely on the cities and in commission and mayor i should say this uh this commission and administration has done so much good and smart in the last 10 years on affordable housing the place was on fire we were we were getting destroyed by the affordable housing circumstance and we've dug into that and now uh if you go to the state conferences i was i was asked to participate in a call with the florida housing finance corporation with a couple urban counties so we could tell them how broward has figured out how to get at this so i i don't want the board to feel that we're just beat down beat down beat down we're making some progress between live local what we're doing on the gap the geller amendment and etc but but there's some realities we have to face and i'll just mention that really quickly and by the way uh tomorrow night the housing finance authority is refinancing fiu to to uh bring up bring up to date the needs assessment hadn't been done in four years i'm hoping that we're finding exactly what y'all are talking about is occurring every year florida housing looks at statewide rentals by county uh basically for workforce persistently we continue to be last we're still dead last in the state for employees that make 60 percent of area median income that's about 40 000 a year just so happens half the workforce in broward county makes 60 percent of area median income just so happens that eight out of nine of the largest companies in broward county are service employee counties it just so happens according to dr murray and i hope this new study changes is that the the inflow of businesses are those that employ service first service employees so we've got some headwinds in spite of the good work that we've done and i i just i just don't want to leave you uh with the idea that we're going to lose this battle because i think we've turned the corner but i will tell you it's really hard okay did you want to say anything yeah so i i was just at the fort lauderdale um opening of the affordable housing complex there forget the name of it now and it was a the lowest was i think 100 ami a studio was 1895 a studio and that's supposed to be affordable can you imagine if it was market rate so you know the fact of the matter is people with jobs cannot afford market rate homes so what do they do when you build a lot of market rate you've really got to do the affordable housing you don't like the name but the fact of the matter is maybe workforce housing would work because most of these people cannot afford and they're making 75 000 a year they can't afford rents and they're not qualifying for homes and what they can qualify for are affordable ones at maybe 120 ami 100 ami so i don't see how market rate is going to be helping and people can't afford it kids have to be living with their parents transportation they can't afford a car and transportation is not where it needs to be it's another whole other topic but folks are living at home they're converting their garages at a rampant rate the cars are all up on the streets because everybody's staying home now they cannot afford thank god you know some people are making you have to make at least six figures and six figures are not what it used to be but six figures can't even afford to buy a home at this point you need double that so i mean i don't know maybe i'm not seeing something like when you say market made homes need to be or just since she asked the question that's what senator rich wants to she had asked me a question i was oh go ahead and i was going to respond back so like i i agree with what commissioner davis is saying and if you go into a development and there's a bunch of studios for 1850 and no one can afford them you have a developer with a bunch of empty studios at 1850 so what does the developer have to do either lock the door and you have empty units that a bank is going to take or you have to start reducing the rent a little bit and when you reduce the rent somebody can go and move in and at some point you hit equilibrium well let's just use an example hollywood when they opened up their their uh development along the transportation corridor and they had 100 units open and they're opening up 100 more and they had 21 000 people apply for the apartment units is that correct in two minutes two weeks two weeks yes okay so i mean it's an overwhelming need i just want to say you know i am not i always use the words affordable housing and i'm not ashamed to use that and you know what we've made progress in our county with our cities who understand affordable housing is not a dirty word affordable housing means people that work that are in your communities and we have gotten that message across and you can go back now to the number of cities that are now participating with us that never were in the past so we're making progress it's you know it is tough it's tough but i just want us to understand that we are not going to solve this in this county with market rate there is no way