City Commission - Regular Meeting - Aug 18, 2026

26th. If the clerk could please call the roll. Deputy Vice Mayor Marker. Here. Commissioner Mollica. Here. Commissioner Cassell. Here. Vice Mayor Burns. Here. Mayor Kearney. Here. We have a quorum. Thank you very much. If you could all rise, please, to the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for our world. Agenda approval. We have 4A on the agenda has been removed. I'm going to ask that we ask for discussion. Agenda item 6L1. It's regarding the Tennis Center contract. Just kind of wanted to discuss. That's 6I1 you mean there? That's 6I1. I couldn't tell if it was an I or a small L. So 6I1. Are there any other items on the agenda? Are you making that 7AA? I'm going to make that 7AA. Yes. Correct. Thank you. I have none. Any others? I have none. All right. Then I need a motion to approve the agenda as amended. So moved. Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. The first item is going to be the special recognition to the Palm Beach County Department of Engineering for timely resumption of the George Bush Boulevard Bridge. Let me tell you a little story. Some of you get my newsletter, and one of the things that I kind of pushed was this concept of I called it the Mayor's Challenge, but Mayor's Award, whatever I called it, and it was to get citizens to start writing into We all hear how, usually when you talk about government, everyone says how bad things are. What I'm trying to get people to do is to start writing when things are going well, when you are treated well by the city, and to give recognition to the staff who works very, very hard sometimes without any positive recognition. So I had gotten a call from this fellow who said they were so thrilled that the George Bush Boulevard Bridge, which had been scheduled to open July 15th or 18th or 20th, suddenly got done three weeks ahead of schedule because of the work done by three individuals, and those individuals are Palm Beach County Engineer David Ricks, Bridge Superintendent Tom Coppini, and Maintenance Supervider Christian Martinez. And so the city is giving a special recognition to these individuals who frankly really, having that bridge open on the 4th of July was key. Everyone who knows what it's like getting down to the beach and everything on the 4th of July knows it. So you're going to be making the presentation? Sure. And if I may, Mr. Mayor, to go ahead and continue to facilitate the opportunity. So what we're referring to is a very specific recognition to the Palm Beach County Department of Engineering for timely resumption of the George Bush Boulevard Bridge operation. As the Mayor alluded, it was initially anticipated to be completed by late July, circa July 27th in that time frame, the final week of the month of July. However, working closely with the Department of Public Works and the city of Delray Beach aggregately, a great partnership was achieved to yield an advanced completion of the work, not impacting the city's Independence Day holiday festivities. So with that, we have Mr. David Ricks, who is the county engineer, Palm Beach County. Mr. David Ricks, professional engineer, as well as notable members of his team, Mr. Tom Company, as well as Christian Martinez. And Missy Barletto, Director of Public Works, I would like to ask you to please come forward and join the gentlemen as we celebrate their achievements and contributions to our community. Thank you, John. This is a great collaborative effort in the city of Delray Beach, Missy Barletto, and Palm Beach County Engineering. May I say a few words? Yes, please do. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Councilor. Thank you, City Manager. This is a tremendous honor. I like how you talk about positive feedback. It's huge because we in public service, you know, we do it because we're passionate about. But on this context, this bridge definitely is a work in progress to keep it up and running until we replace the bridge sometime in the future. But, you know, the timeline was, you know, one June to sometime late July, like you're talking about. But we had, this was a huge team effort. We had a couple of our engineers in railway production, Christine Smith, and also Sandra Obscena, who worked with Hardesty, who was the designer who helped fix repairs. And then Tom and Mr. Martinez, there was just two of 20 people that worked on the bridge during that time frame. And what's unique, we're the only public agency, kind of public agency, that do repairs on the Basco Bridge. So it's kind of unique. Then on top of that, I met with some of my new employees about a month ago. And form had just started about a couple months, and they worked on this project. And so what it tells, what it is indicating that we have a tremendous leadership and dedication for doing in terms of quality work. And so we bring people in, we make them part of our team. And so this is just a work of love and passion to help the community. So thank you again for this effort. Thank you for your efforts. We should take a picture. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, picture. We got our head of parks and rec is here with us. You're in the photos. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You part of the team. No, no, no, no, no. You part of the team. I'm happy to do this. This is a celebration. Yeah, there you go. All right. Ready, right here. Three, two, one. Thank you. Thank you. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your job. That was a good job. It was like, we're correct. And that's your getting on the call. It's very good. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. I got to go get. Yeah. I got to go get. Yeah. Somebody call. That's kind of cool. You don't want to hear something positive. I think you do. It's good for you. Because normally it's the office. Thank you. All right. The next item on the agenda is a brief tutorial for assessing city, official city of Delray Beach online meetings and agenda. That will be Patricia. I don't know. Mr. Mayor, let me discuss this. So we made a commitment to offer a brief tutorial. It was actually Commissioner Kosal who initiated the idea and dialogue. And this is actually, this actually aligns with some thoughts Commissioner Judy Mollica brought up as well previous weeks in terms of accessing the city of Delray Beach information online meetings, agendas. We'll do something more comprehensive later. However, given our current technology use and abilities, we thought it would be appropriate for us to offer a brief demonstration in response to the thought as offered by Commissioner Kosal just one week ago. So with that, we introduce our deputy city clerk, Patrice Harris, to offer a brief electronic tutorial, if you will, to highlight what our capabilities are in this regard. Ms. Harris, if you would, please. Good evening. Good evening. So as you stated, the purpose is just to demonstrate, excuse me, how to access the meetings and the video recordings. So this is the homepage, and there are three options to end up to where I'm going to take you, and I'll show you all three. Some residents have already signed up to get email notifications when the agenda is published. That link that's in that notification is the exact page that I'm going to take you to. So option one, you would just scroll down a little bit, and you'll see quick links, and you'll access agendas and minutes, and you can wait for the page to load, or you can just click that link, and this is the page. So from here, you'll see the meetings and the agendas, the minutes, and you can change the search parameters, but for the purpose of today, it's just going to be 2026 City Commission, but it's just a drop-down, and you'd select the year, or if you're not interested in the City Commission, the other boards. So we're going to look at February 3rd, the regular meeting, and you'll select meeting details, and from this page, you can see the agenda that's posted, the minutes once they're published, and then the video. So the agenda, when you open it, all of the attachments are hyperlinked, so as you scroll through, you can access whatever attachment you might be interested in, with just a click. Yeah, I didn't pick a good one, so it doesn't... We didn't say brief. I thought it was... Yes! Well, just because that was said. No, I'm just busting your topic. That's all. Okay. So yeah, this is one of the larger attachments, so that was why. But you'll have access, once you open the agenda, to all of those attachments. Now, this is also the agenda. This outlines all of the items on this agenda. So you just saw this version that you scroll through, and you can look at all the attachments, and then if you go back here, it's the same thing, it's just a different view. So now, let's look at 7C. Let me go back. So this action and result column, that will let you know if the item was approved or denied, and when you don't see anything in these columns, it's not applicable. And under the action details, anything that's listed here would contain everything that was included in the minutes. So you can view the minutes for that particular item from this column. And then the video will take you to the start of that particular item. I don't want to listen to that guy. So, and then let's look at 7C. You'll see under action details, you can see who made the motion, who seconded it. And all of this is all of the details from the minutes. And you can see that the motion to approve it, that it passed. And then there's the votes down here. And you just close that window there. This is informative for me as well. And also, let's see, let me go back again. I think this is the same item. So for each item, there's an agenda cover report, and you can view that by clicking here. And it's just a memo that contains all of the background information for that item. So you have the option to select it from the agenda here, or from meeting details for that particular agenda item. And all you would have to do is click on the file number, which is here. And it takes you to this page. And all of these attachments are the same ones that were included in the PDF version of the agenda. So you can click here to look at it. This is also the memo. When you click here, you'll have to scroll. And if you want the full thing, just click here for the full text. And then there's the memo. And you can always hit the back arrows to go back. So that's pretty much it. Now the other option to get you to the same spot is going to be from the homepage. You're going to go to I Want To, and then City Meetings on Legistar. And it's going to take you to the same page, which gives you access to the list view for the calendar page. The third option is from the homepage. You'll hover over Government. And then under Department, select City Clerk. And then Agendas and Minutes. And you'll get the same page. Now for the meetings that are recorded off-site, to access those, if they're recorded, you'll select I Want To. And then underneath Watch, it'll be Delray Beach Special Workshops. So you'll find the town hall meetings and goal setting. And they'll be captured here. And also YouTube. So from... Okay. So here's the link to the YouTube videos. It's going to take you to the live page for Delray. This is an option so that you can access the YouTube videos. But note for YouTube, those recordings will not be indexed and timestamps. So you can't just go and find exactly where you want to be for the items that you're interested in. You can also, from I Want To Watch, access the YouTube from underneath Watch, and then City Meetings on YouTube. And then it's going to take you to the live page for YouTube. So, as you can see, there's a variety of features and options for you to access the meetings and their recordings. And as always, if you need help navigating these pages, the Office of the City Clerk is willing to assist. Thank you very much. Any questions for Ms. Harris? You're welcome. This is a page I don't normally use, and it's actually a lot better. I usually go to the meeting and then scroll through it to find where I'm supposed to go. Oh my goodness. So this is very useful. I agree. I usually go to this, and then I get the meeting, and then I click through the links below the video. So this is helpful. We can always learn something new. Thank you. You're very welcome. Thank you very much, and thank you to the Clerk's Office. Thank you. Comments, inquiry, and agenda and non-agenda items. First, the City Manager's response to inquiries and highlights. Yes, Mr. Mayor, and that actually involves one formal presentation, and that is titled Path Forward Guidance to Address Operational and Maintenance Considerations at the Derry Beach Memorial Gardens Municipal Cemetery. I've made a commitment during the July 14, 2026 City Commission meeting to offer a presentation in terms of what the anticipated Path Forward looks like. And what this involves, ladies and gentlemen, is the use of external consultancy services to help us get us to where we need to be. I'd like to give the Department of Information Technology a second or two to upload the presentation. It is fairly brief. However, it is quite comprehensive in that I believe we will be in position to offer the City Commission with specific recommendations as a result of an external objective overview of operations and practices at the Derry Beach Municipal Cemetery. So, in essence, as I just stated, the use of an outside firm to review and confirm facts, validate current practices, and define the next phase of cemetery stewardship. The course for objective fact-finding, verify conditions and current practices, improvement focus to likewise take under consideration, recognize what works and what can be improved, as well as future capacity and strategic options, evaluate options before making recommendations. So, in essence, what this involves, ladies and gentlemen, is the focus regarding ground maintenance, service levels, and other related activities, administration and work floor, roles, procedures, and controls, customer communication. There's been a lot of commentary and observations about customer communication, and for the record, ladies and gentlemen, there is no remote working environment at this juncture. Staff assigned to the Derry Beach Municipal Cemetery are physically operating at that location, as well as in the community center building right next door here to City Hall. Records, mapping, and technology. Inventory, software, and access. Financial sustainability relative to fees, controls, and perpetual care. Capacity and future options. Infill, redevelopment, and feasibility. Of course, we've talked a lot over the last couple years regarding the development and construction of mausoleum facilities at the Derry Beach Municipal Cemetery. However, given some other interests regarding additional plots and other review activities along those lines, our interest is to objectively evaluate and review any considerations, if at all possible, to be made available. This opportunity will likewise help the City of Derry Beach to A, confirm facts. B, establish benchmarked best practices, as well as C, recommend specific policies that we need to execute so as to achieve a cogent set of priorities. Just a second, please. So, target outcomes, some of the next steps we talked a little bit about, confirmed facts already. Measurable standards, clear expectations, capacity options, feasibility and tradeoffs, and the implementation of a course forward. Outlining priorities, costs, and key performance indicators to get us to where we need to be. So, since the July 14th City Commission meeting, I've been working closely with Chief Procurement Officer Paul Narcisse in terms of initiating a formal selection process. And I'm pleased to report that we've actually received several responses, and a formal selection process regarding external consultancy services will be made in the next couple weeks. I anticipate advising the City Commission in terms of who that will be via the information letter report to you before Labor Day weekend. So, that's literally in the next couple weeks or so. So, that we can complete the applicable assessment process comprehensively along the lines of what I talked about to likewise yield in the coming weeks thereafter a City Commission presentation and what phase considerations are to be implemented as a result of receiving this objective overview. Given the cost thresholds associated with this consideration, this will be a contractual services to be executed by the Office of the City Manager. I will not have to wait to a City Commission meeting to formalize this particular agreement. Likewise, I will keep the City Commission informed relative to the services being rendered, the name of the consultancy, and the specific steps to be finalized to yield recommendations for your review and consideration in the coming weeks. So, for that reason, ladies and gentlemen, to the City Commission and, quite frankly, to the public before we exercise additional specific thoughts or observations, editorial and otherwise, I'd like to give this opportunity a chance to be productive and successful. What's great about this approach, ladies and gentlemen, is the objectivity, number one. This is not an internal staff review by any means. This is external consultancy services reporting to the Office of the City Manager, speaking in second person, yours truly. So, and third person, excuse me. Thank you, Ms. Jelen, of course. So, I will likewise work closely, as with all involved, to get us to the place in which we need to be to likewise result in recommendations for City Commission update and evaluation. So, this will be accomplished rather soon for the reasons I've talked about. Direction is to, therefore, make this a priority in terms of a selection process, and, again, I anticipate informing the City Council, the Commission, pardon me, who that will be within the next couple weeks via my weekly report to you all. With that, ladies and gentlemen, I'm available for any questions or concerns you may have regarding the process, but the commitment is underway and, therefore, being executed. I just would like to say a couple things. First of all, I'm glad we're going to be finally doing this exercise. It's a multi-layer issue because, you know, I had the occasion to visit the cemetery a couple times over the weekend. Actually, one of them, I had a telephone guide, Commissioner Vice Mayor Burns was on the other line directing me to places. I said, where is this? Where is this? So, I was able to walk the cemetery. You know, there's been, I mean, she doesn't even know where her father was buried, for example. So, I mean, there's a lot of systemic problems that have been here that I don't know that we're ever going to be able to correct. But there are things that we can't correct. We can improve the way the cemetery looks. We can improve the landscaping. We can improve certain things there to make it look better. And because some of the graves that I saw are kind of, you know, they're all grown over and everything. And I think that those are the kinds of things that's level one. Level two is certainly going to be capacity options because we have, there's going to be capacity. I know we're building the new mausoleum. I visited that site. But, you know, I think that we've got a bigger issue, which we're going to be facing in terms of volume there, notwithstanding the new mausoleum, because there are some people who don't want to be buried in the mausoleum. They want to be buried, you know, in the ground. So, I just think there's a lot of other issues that we've got to look at. I'm glad this is the first step. And I just want to underscore to everyone, this really is just the first step, this plan, because these other items about improving the maintenance and improving all these other kinds of stuff need to be a continuing obligation with the city. So that when people go, they know where they're supposed to go. But even if they don't know where they're supposed to go, because there may have been mistakes made 20 years ago and 30 years, which I can't make up for. But what I can do is make it, what the city can do, not me, but what the city can do is to make at least the graves that are there be taken care of to the sense where it shows that there's a continuing, you know, perpetual care type of situation. So that's what I'm, my point. But I'm glad we're doing the study. Could I ask a question? Yes, please. Thank you. Could you go back a slide? You said it's under the threshold. Your threshold is currently, what, $65,000? It's actually $100,000. However, it will not be anywhere near that amount. And, again, I'll bring you up to speed in terms of what that is. That's not the cost of the project, Commissioner. Nowhere near it. Are we looking for an outside consultant on a long-term basis to maintain this place? No. Okay, so quick question, just curious, because you're looking at a consultant. Could you go back, please, a slide? Ground maintenance is very different than capacity, right? Customer communication is sort of, like, accepting and addressing complaints. You're saying one consultant is working on all these things, records mapping, because this seems like six very different and very specialized functions that won't qualify under one consultant. No, ma'am. What this will provide is a review of the respective practices and opportunities, and an individual consulting firm can help us outline some initial steps to take a look at the different categories. However, to more or less support what the mayor just talked about, this is simply a first step to get to that place. From this exercise, we'll be able to determine what additional needs and aggregate steps will be necessary in the six-category areas. Can I give you a timeline on all of this? So we right now are looking at our consultant. Presumably you'll have somebody within maybe 60 to 90 days on your consultant. How long will the consultant work? When can residents, because this has been ongoing complaints for years, to start to expect? We need a timeline so that people can have expectations reasonable and understand what's happening, because this is like the fifth meeting on the same subject. If I may, Commissioner, as I mentioned as part of my presentation, I anticipate announcing who the consulting firm will be within the next couple weeks. I'm anticipating during the Labor Day weekend, and from that standpoint, I'll be able to outline for you all in writing as part of my weekly report some of the specifics you've shared in terms of timeline, what's anticipated in that regard. So we're talking the coming weeks thereafter. So I don't anticipate this initial step taking a terrible amount of time. However, it will open the door in terms of what additional focus that the city of Derebury Beach will have to engage and interact so as to get to the absolute best place possible. So a singular consulting firm that would be approved by the Office of the City Manager to initially address the various aggregate categories, as I've outlined in the presentation, so that we can achieve a longer-term path forward to also define what additional resource considerations might be necessary. And I think we should update. I understand it's multi-level, but it says consultant review areas implying they're all happening at one time, which seems unlikely. I think what we need to do is get on the cemetery page, put some information in, and as the timeline builds and the information becomes available, update it with regularity so that people know what's going on. Thank you so much. Thank you. So in the meantime, while we're going through the process of getting someone hired to an outside agency to do this consulting, what are we doing at the cemetery before this time and during this observation? So this full assessment process will take up a fair amount of time. There will be interactions with the grounds, interaction with the facilities, review of records, ascertaining any and all possibilities to make improvements in that regard, as well as to take under consideration as to objectively whether or not the City of DeRay Beach can answer some of the outstanding questions in terms of bodies being positioned many decades ago, what can be done to audit those questions, et cetera. Otherwise, normal operations will continue, and as I've also stated as part of my overall presentation, there's no remote work assignments in this realm, so there's some availability in that regard to interface with staff and the Department of Parks and Recreation assigned to the cemetery facilities so that we can get ourselves taken care of in that regard. However, the objective outside review via the external consultancy services will necessitate interactions and a review of grounds, operations, maintenance, all the associated details so that we can be at the best place we possibly can be. And quite frankly, what I believe will be achieved, ladies and gentlemen, objectively, externally, is that a number of opportunities can be made to achieve improvements, number one. Some opportunities may not become available, number two. Number three, there may be some confirmation of what works well and what doesn't work well. And the opportunity to highlight for the Commission and the public, what does not work well will likewise yield specific recommendations and how we build upon that moving forward. But I do think that we should probably create something on, if we're doing this as a project for the city of the cemetery, which we really should be doing because other cities have them and they have probably some of the same problems, but we should be able to have, you know, when we have our schedule online, we're regularly updating that so that people can sign on to see where we are in the process. And I think that's a great idea. Sure, and we will support that consideration, and I'm comfortable in that regard. So let me complete the first step over the next couple of weeks in terms of the selection, and that will be incorporated as part of the process because at the conclusion of this dialogue, I would like to formally ask for City Commission's consensus to be able to proceed. Don't think it's necessary. However, given the public interest in this particular topic, I think it would be a good approach for everyone. I think everybody in this commission is really anxious to get. Yeah, you have my consensus. However, I want to know, in your pursuit of trying to secure someone to do this, will the residents be included in the process? Yes, ma'am. I'm glad you asked that question, Vice Mayor, because the external consultant will likewise engage and interact with the community. That would be part of the scope so that they can understand what the expectations and, quite frankly, frustrations have been. So that can be taken under consideration as we come back and evaluate opportunities to get to the best place possible. So what is envisioned is a potential community meeting of sorts for any group of individuals, residents, stakeholders who may have had concerns, some expression of frustrations in recent times in this regard, working closely with the consultants so that that can objectively be vetted as well. So that would be part of the mix. And, again, once we get the selection squared away, we'll outline a path forward to include that particular feature as well. Okay. And would, I mean, we talked about back in June and July having a workshop. So would an appropriate place for the workshop to be the reporting of whoever does this outside review? Yes, ma'am. Okay. And then, lastly, what was it? You know, as the mayor said, this is a multi-management approach. We got ground maintenance, and then we got historic situation going on, preservation. So there has already been – we have already been designated as a historic designation for the grounds. Will that also be a part of this review? It would have to be. Yes, ma'am. Okay, because we got – I'm just concerned about what's the maintenance. We do not. No, we don't have the designation. We had the study done, but the study was done. Exactly. If I may, the study will be, if I may, ladies and gentlemen, to respond to Vice Mayor. The study's been done, but it's a simple process to get it done. Correct. It's like we own the property, city owns the property, so it doesn't take but two steps to go ahead and make that designation. There are two separate endeavors, however, that will be a next step in the aftermath of the initial consultancy so that we can go about that process based on what clarifications are made and what analysis is achieved. So technically a separate step, but it does align with the opportunity to get to the best place possible. It has to be recognized. That would be part of the review and due diligence on part of the consultant working on behalf of the City of Delray Beach to showcase what opportunities are possible. Okay. May I? All right. Thank you. Commissioner. Thank you very much. So in the interim with this consultancy, we have, in fact, hired somebody to do the ground maintenance. Is that accurate? That's a separate relationship. A relationship. Yes, ground maintenance is in place as a separate contractual arrangement. Yes. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. That was what I asked. Yes, no, that is being, that is why I said it's supposed to be doing the maintenance. Thank you. That's what I wanted to know. I said, in the meantime, while we're waiting to hire someone, what are we doing about current conditions? So a maintenance company has been hired. Thank you. That's what I was asking. Sorry, I wasn't clear. Should we give our consensus? I did already. I'm sorry. Commissioner, yes? Yeah, just a couple of comments. I'm also happy to hear about the ground maintenance. I think that's a minimum, and it's a great place to start. We've got six pretty big areas up here. I would ask the consultant to focus on number one and number four. I've been in touch with a lot of residents who have individuals and friends and loved ones that are buried at the cemetery, and they're not sure where they are. And I know from a little bit of digging that I've done, there were records that were lost. There was a flood, and most of the people that are sitting up here weren't even born when all this happened. Correct. But nonetheless, we want to get to the bottom of it as best we can. I don't know if we're going to be 100% successful, but I think some time spent on trying to map some of the records keeping would bring some peace to some of our residents, and I'd like to make sure we focus on that as quick as we can. Of course, and if I may, Deputy Vice Mayor Markert, one of the reasons for number four in the consultancy review areas, records mapping and technology, addresses that particular concern. Agreed. I think many people spoke loudly about mayors to address that and get to the absolute best place possible, thus being one of the six focus areas, and therefore I think that's reasonable. So some of the categories are more easy to deal with, others are more challenging, and of course I think that will be revealed as we go about the objective process of getting to where we need to be. So for that reason, ladies and gentlemen, again, and Vice Mayor, please forgive me. When I responded to your question, I talked about normal operations resuming. I had that in mind in the context of ground maintenance. So thank you, Commissioner Malika, for helping to clarify the question that Vice Mayor was asking so that we can be clear that the ground maintenance protocols are in place. However, we do take a look at it and we touch it as part of this process to make sure that we are doing as well as we possibly can because ground maintenance is not only essential but imperative in terms of any cemetery operation. Is there a log of complaints or concerns that's presented to the city concerning what's going on in the city? Is there a log so that we know who's called in, who's complained about their loved one, or who's searching? Do we have a log of that information? I believe we have some information that outlines interaction communications along those lines. I don't know if I would go as far as to define it as a complaint log, per se. Concerns. Let's call it concerns. Yes, ma'am. Okay. Let's call it looking for our loved ones log. Yes, ma'am. Okay. So, I mean, I have a list of things that I wanted to suggest. However, I think it's more appropriate for, you know, at the workshop. However, I'm willing to give, you know, this consultant, outside consultant, to do whatever they're going to do. But I really think that, you know, we need a cemetery master plan, and we need to have this historic preservation plan and a maintenance plan for this. So, I'll put a marker by this, so I'll bring this back up at the appropriate time. But thank you. Yes, ma'am. And I would ask that once the consultant is engaged, that you ask that consultant to interact with those commissioners who wish to sit down and discuss with them the issues and what they're hearing, and so that he has a better sense or he or she has a better sense of, you know, what the complaints have been, what we're looking to do, and where we're trying to go, you know, capacity and future options kind of thing. So, I would hope that if you make that available to all the commissioners, that would be a great opportunity for them to talk about stuff. Sometimes families have historical information and records that the city does not, so it's a great idea to involve the community and residents with this. Yes, ma'am. Yes, ladies and gentlemen. So, in the context of seeking consultancy, I'm asking that this is given an opportunity to be productive and successful as possible. However, to the point that many of you all have made, several other outcomes will be outlined in terms of what our focus and programming will be for municipal cemetery operation. So, incorporating all our comments, do we have consensus to the city manager to hire this person? Yes. It doesn't need it, but yes. Yeah, I appreciate having this so that the public can experience and demonstrate and witness that you are supportive of the recommendations so that we can get to the best place possible. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. Okay. Do you have anything else, Mr. City Manager? I do not, Mr. Mayor. I yield at this time. Thank you. We are now at the portion of the meeting for comments from the public. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Please come up to the podium. State your name and zip code for the record. Steve Blum. I've lived here 30 years. I've received my water bill for 30 years, and I never had a problem. All of a sudden, we've got a massive problem of incompetence in the way this transition is being run. We were told by the city that the last week of July, and I spoke to Hassan about this at length this afternoon, last week of July, this new company that we chose said it would be done in five days. Well, it's four weeks now, and nobody here that I know of has their water bill. And not only that, when I go online or go to call you, it's 25 minutes on hold because people are calling saying, where's my water bill? Where's my water bill? They're worried they could have me cut off or whatever the story is. So, basically, to the city manager, I think the whole way you've handled this has been totally incompetent, okay? This whole thing, there is no PDF file. They say, well, go to the PDF file and get your bill. There is no bill available. And it says to pay month and year. It doesn't say when it expires. There's cookies. There's no choice because none of us want cookies because they just spy on you, okay? There's no choice to eradicate the cookies. And then it says, remember your card when you want to pay. And I don't want you to remember my card. So, there's no choice. You can't do it that way. This has been grossly handled incompetently. And I don't know who it is, who you put in charge, or the people that you said are going to handle this. They said four days, like Hassan said. Well, they said it would be done in five days. And he knew it wouldn't be done for another month. But you went ahead and put it through. And we're sitting here now a month later, and we don't have our water bills. And it just shows me that if you can't handle this situation, what other situations are you incompetent in? That's my story for today. No insults. No insults. What? No insults. Thank you, Mr. Blum. The way it was handled was incompetent. Made your point. Thank you, Mr. Blum. Okay. Hi. My name is Rachel McGinn, 33444. I actually live on Northeast 13th Street, which I've been here before about our flooding. I actually was coming to thank the city because I was able to go on the right-to-know public record thing where you ask for – and I saw a receipt for $41,000 where the city has paid an outside engineering firm to try to design a system. So I was actually coming to thank you guys. Thank you very much. Hello, Ministrers. My name is Julian Ray. I live at 33483 on Marine Way. I'm here for two reasons. The first is just to inquire, generally speaking, about where the contract on the seawall is at. I know you had a meeting about it a little while ago. There's been no update since then, and the residents of Marine Way would really appreciate an update, considering as well that there is an agenda item on tonight's meeting for proposed variances. And speaking to that specifically – No, you have to – that portion of your comment, you'll have to wait until that item comes on the agenda. So I can't – will I have another opportunity? You'll have another opportunity when that item is called on the agenda because it's a – the public will be allowed to comment. I wasn't aware. Thank you for letting me know. No, that's fine. But your first comment is noted. Thank you. Albert Richwagon, 33483. Submit some photos for the record. Wow. All I can really say is, wow. Here we go again. 650-plus days after the opening of subculture grab-and-go coffee location. Still no four off-site parking spaces for staff. No sidewalk. No up-to-current code parking area. No handicapped parking space. No life safety plan. No access through their driveway. What happened to the requirements of bringing their parking lot up to code? Oh, it's okay. A little paint and staff will sleep it under the rug. Nothing to see here. Now, is this all Mr. Rose and my fault? Well, as the owner states on his online posts, when they didn't do what they were required to by the city when they got a gift of in lieu of parking, as they had agreed to when they were approved as a grab-and-go coffee shop. How has it been administratively approved for a 50-seat restaurant when a grab-and-go coffee shop has created such a problem and a nuisance for the motorists, cyclists, pedestrians, and neighboring businesses surrounding residents? It's a big nightmare daily for me and my staff. When their parking area does not work, their clients now back into my parking spaces, and when I walk outside to ask them to not have parked there, they say, oh, I didn't see it, because they backed in now. That's their new plan. So they didn't see the no parking tow-away signs. I thought we lived in a city that follows their own rules and regulations. I guess those rules don't apply to everyone. All I can really say is, wow. I used to be proud to say I lived and worked in Delray Beach as a second-generation native. Currently, I don't feel that way. Wow. Thank you very much. Dan DeRose, 33444. Before I start my speech, I encourage you to set up an advisory board for the cemetery issue. I talked to some people here tonight that I've known for years, and I think there needs to be an advisory board so there can be workshops and charrettes where the people can bring their thoughts to the issue, because I think what you're proposing isn't going to work. I've done litigation in that area, and it's not going to work. Now, as far as with subculture, where's the accountability? You gave them a punch list on March 31st, and you gave them 90 days. We're 135 days in, and somehow what was asked wasn't done. There's no accountability. So my issue is, for purposes of this issue, the owner comes in to the city commission under oath and says, I'm just a grab-and-go coffee shop. However, outside these walls, he continuously refers to the location as a community gathering place. So for you guys, he's a grab-and-go, but for everyone else, he's a community gathering place. Parking situation has been a mess for over two years now. The owner's done nothing to remedy the situation whatsoever. So you guys create policies, and the people who work for you are supposed to enforce them. So what happens when city employees and staff decide to go against your policies and overtly and openly allow business or businesses to operate without following the rules and there being no accountability? This is why we're here, and this is where we're at. We have someone who continues to make a mockery of the city commission and the policies they created. He continues to misrepresent his issue with this, and in my opinion, irresponsible social media posting. None will be more evident today, in my opinion, when he lambasts the city on social media and creates a false narrative that somehow he won his appeal, when in reality, the appeals court sent it back to the special magistrate so the opinion can be rewritten in compliance with the law, and the fines are going to be upheld. So he didn't win. There's going to be a new Dunkin' Donuts opening by Tropical Smokehouse. They're doing everything right. They're obtaining their permits. They're doing everything they can, the right way, as we call it. But when you look at what I'm dealing with and what Albert's dealing with, everyone else in the neighborhood across the street with that coffee shop, why don't they just open their doors tomorrow without a BTR, without any approval, and there's no accountability, and you've set a precedent? And that's the problem. Good actors are being punished. Bad actors get rewarded. It's time that people in this matter are held responsible and accountable, as much as I've owned businesses, still do, and I've never fired anyone. I don't believe in that, but in this case, I think people should be fired over what happened. Lastly, I'm opening a new business in Delray. I've done everything right. We should hopefully be open at the end of September. Me and my partner's got all the BTRs, all the approvals, spent everything we had to spend. I'm even spending money right now on things that I don't need right now, but I need them to remain in compliance with my BTR, because if I stop paying for certain services and I'm not using right now, I won't be in compliance. So I gave myself pause tonight and I asked myself, why am I spending hundreds of dollars a month to remain in compliance for a business I haven't even opened up yet, when the one across the street doesn't have to do anything and is never held accountable? Thank you. Thank you very much. Good evening, Stacey Wright, 33444. Consultant, consultants, they are nothing but out-of-town businesses making money that should be spent on maintenance and the right staff to assist and ask questions concerning our cemetery. We don't need another consultant firm coming in and trying to tell us what we need when we already know what is needed there. Maintenance needs to come from the parks department with a full-time worker and the cemetery needs to come under the city manager, report directly under the city manager. What we really need is a board, an advisory board, to overlook the operation of the cemetery and someone that the community can come to and talk to and voice their concerns. We don't need another consultant firm. We need some action. Thank you very much. Good evening. I'm Sandra Owens. My zip code is 33444. My concern is this. You've seen me before, and I'm going to keep coming back. I was reading this manual here. It said the City of Delray Beach Administrative Policies and Procedure Manual, dated January 17, 2018. And when I got to the last page, it says the department will compare and reconcile inventory records to intimate slash disintimate records on file. Any and all discrepancies shall be resolved immediately. Well, I've been here before concerning my plot. You sold it. You buried somebody in it. My concern is this. In 2006, when I finished paying for it because I didn't install my plans, I paid $500 and some dollars. All the city wants to do is give me my $500 back plus an extra $100. I can rest assured that whoever you sold this to did not pay $600 for it. Now, between each commissioner's meeting, I voiced my concerns, and I'm telling you, I want to be buried next to my mother. That's it. Between each one of these commissioners' meetings, not one person has called me, and that's a concern. And I live in the city of Delray. My friends live in the city of Delray. I want to be buried in the city of Delray next to my mother. And that's it. And I don't see any harm in that. And I guess it's not going to make any sense until this happens to you. I guarantee you somebody paid a couple thousand dollars for that same plot. And so my thing is, again, I'm Sandra Owens. All I want is my plot. I presented you with the records. I emailed everybody here. It's been two years now. It's been two years. I want my plot. That's all I got to say. Have a good one. Thank you very much, Mrs. Kevin Mitchell, zip code 33444. I commend you all for listening to us on the July 14th meeting. But I share with you some of the concerns that we as members of Delray Beach have voiced in the profession of the funeral service. And several of us that are in the funeral industry got together. And we came up with some core issues that we want to present to the city. In lieu of your consultants, recommendations, and findings, we would hope that you would listen to this and take it under consideration. That a complete and comprehensive audit be commenced specific to the southeast and southwest section of the Delray Beach Municipal Cemetery for any pre-purchased available and sold burial plots and mausoleum crypts, utilizing comparative of plot cards against the cemetery maps and computer database, and reviewing of stored records which may or may not be stored and in storage closets, file cabinets, or boxes that have not been physically inspected and categorized between 2018 and 2026. The 2018 report only reviewed the north section of the cemetery, and that was for historical fact-finding and analysis. The second one is cemetery operations and administrative and management be relocated from any off-site location and moved to a permanent on-site fixed or leased facility on the grounds of the Delray Beach Municipal Cemetery. Since 1902-1903, they had a shed that served as a place to store equipment and for the workers. We need to move down on-site is our recommendation. The City Council recommended to create a minimum five-member cemetery board and committee that best represents the interests of the citizens and city consisting of a minimum of one council member, no more than two council members that will serve on this committee or board to make the necessary recommendations to the commission for ratification and actions inclusive of exploration for future expansions, locations, and reasonable costs for burials and attunements with an emphasis on developing a proposed strategic plan for the cemetery. With the significant possibility that the City of Delray Beach Municipal Cemetery become a National Historic Landmark and being a city treasure, and in light of the significant issues and concerns of the citizens that the operational chain of command should be transferred from the oversight of the Parks and Recreation Director to a cemetery superintendent who will supervise the cemetery manager, groundskeepers, and support staff that will report directly to the city manager and or assistant city manager. Review, implement, change, and adopt the job description of a cemetery superintendent or manager with the requirement of at least 18 months preview experience in cemetery and funeral home management and the mandatory requirement for sensitivity training and grief awareness be inclusive and obtained within 12 months of being hired, and ensure that the newly constructed mausoleum and future allocated burial grade spaces remain affordable for residents only. And I yield my time. I had one other, but I yield my time. Say the last one. The last one. Yes, yes, sir. To hire, I'm sorry, set a maximum cap for the number of pre-purchase grave spaces by any one individual who is a resident only with restrictions that they cannot be brokered to a third party but can only be resold back to the city with first option of refusal. When I came into the set of maximum cap, it says in city policy, city administrative policy and procedures manual number CC2, revision 2 January 17, 2018, 2.4, 2.2.4. For sale of services, lot plots, scripts, niches, the sale of intermittent rights shall be restricted to individuals who at the time of sale reside in the city or are purchased for a terminal or deceased city resident or immediate family member of the resident to be interred. The individual must provide adequate proof of residency or kinship. I added terminal window as related to the issue I dealt with you on. I yield my time. Thank you very much, sir. Good evening, everyone. Timothy E. Kitchens, 33444. Past president of the Florida Morticians Association. Currently now the district governor of Florida, Georgia, and Alabama of the National Funeral Directors and Morticians Association. Of course, a licensed funeral director. I want to first concur with the mayor in his findings of the upkeep of the cemetery. In contrast to the manager of the parks and reparations, the cemetery is not being kept the way that it should be kept. Graves are, grave markers are coming up. The grass is looking terrible out there, among other things. But yet I sit here and listen to how the George W. Bush Bridge is being, has been upgraded. But yet our loved ones are out there on 8th Avenue and it's not being taken care of. I want to ask our city manager if he would include professionals that are in the funeral profession to be on a board, to be included in the decisions of what is going to affect our cemetery and our future going forward. Also, has hard drives on Congress been considered as a site that we could relocate or we could form a cemetery there? We need a commission. We need a task force on that. Also, again, you may be looking at some lawsuits, City of Delray Beach, that you can't stand. Lawsuits. We need an audit from 2020 of the finances of this city of Delray Beach cemetery. We need an audit. Can I say it again? Audit. Audit. All the way from 2020 all the way up to the present of the finances and where they have gone and what has been done. Of 2017. I'm sorry. On up to now. And we need that. So, city manager, get on your job. Thank you. Thank you very much. Hello. I'm sure you all know me. My name is Queen. We'll figure out the zip code. The first thing I wanted to do is tell Commissioner Burns thank you so much for fighting for us and being a voice because we definitely need it. I wasn't here when you all started, but I heard it on YouTube. And for those that can't make it, understand that you can have your senior citizens that normally come in this building and stand up and stand proud and speak up for what we want. Tell them they can be found. This same meeting can be found on YouTube if you need any kind of look so you don't want to go out there because it's hazardous out there. I have hundreds of videos on my channel so y'all can see the disgrace that our grave has been enduring. And I'm starting with the graveyard part, not the cemetery. So, I wanted to know why would the mayor be sitting here acting as if these are new conversations? Why would the city manager be sitting here acting as if they're new conversations? Why would our city attorney, Lynn, be sitting there as if these are new conversations? You all knew this. This is not new. And when you lost my Enoch and you lost my Manny and I came to you in a nice manner asking you to please take care of it instead of retaliating against me, sending officers, stalking me, harassing me, you notice I wouldn't sit down. Because when you're protected, there's nothing you can do. I want to know, I went out there today. There are some new names that's been put on the graves on the north side. Where did you all get those names from? I've been asking for list after list after list after paperwork after vendor after Fresh Start lawn service out there that's doing a crappy job and they can't tell you who hired them why. Why is a lawn service out there not knowing? Don't look at the time. I know I got this city manager. Why would Fresh Start be out there? Why would Fresh Start be out there and you all know that they've been half taking care of the job or did you condone it? Because I know if Fresh Start is a lawn care service with maintenance, they should have already seen and known that there was nothing that they could do for the fungi that's out there. It's heavily infested. You scraped off the mold and then you scraped off names. So where did you all get the names from if you couldn't provide me the name or the list? That's the question. I also wanted to make sure when we talk, let's make sure we gear our attention over to the graveyard side. That's the north wing because that's the side that what are you trying to do? Take it from the town, take it from us. Why? Because that's a historical land which y'all want mausoleums there. Us as a black American community, we don't want mausoleums. Whether we're looking down or not, we know God up there. We want you to leave our land alone and we want you to make sure that the budget is prepared. I mean, you got a mayor in the middle of a $600 million Ponzi scheme. There's nothing else we can do but put a budget there. I mean, to be in a $600 million Ponzi scheme, what is $50,000 in my historical land? That's the most historical land other than the beach. That's the most historical land other than the land on the ground. And when you lost my Mamie and you lost my Enoch and you would not provide me with the adequate answers, did you think I was going to sit down? No, I'm never going to sit down until y'all get that ground right. And the next thing I want from you all, because we want the history too, not just in your paperwork, we want the history on paper. We want you to come up with a document so you can tell us if those names were in the system and our loved ones were out there, I want my paper so I can put it in the plaque. That's my historical record. That's our historical record. I have more, but I'll wait for the next meeting. Thank you very much. I don't know if you all are paying attention, but we have no black America police officers here. Why are there no black America female police officers? Every time I'm approached, I'll be in approach by a white officer. Ma'am, ma'am, ma'am, please. Thank you. Hello, my name is Julie Griffin Nixon. My zip code is 33444. And I'm here because I missed the other meeting. I didn't know about it. But I'm here because my parents purchased plots. And my brother was buried in one. My mother was buried in one. My father was supposed to go in the next one and come to find out someone else is already there. What was told to me by Yasmin is that they can't go back and pull up all those documents because they're in a warehouse. It's boxes and boxes of documents where my parents, my grandparents, and my great-grandparents bought plots, paid for them cash money, had the certificates, provided them. But now, all of a sudden, we no longer own those plots. So my question is, I understand floods, but there's no digital. At the courthouse, you have digital. If you need to go back so far, you can pull it up digital because it's no longer paper. But the same thing should happen here with the city. It's not fair to me for me and my sister and my brother to come out of our pockets to pay for a new plot for my father to be buried in with monies that we could have spent somewhere else when he already had a plot, which should have been next to his wife, where he wanted to be buried. So her suggestion to me was, I would get you as close as possible, but you have to pay. So not only did I pay $1,500 to bury my father in the next plot over, the block over, from my mother, but it was already paid for. So I'm not understanding when you say we can't go back. Why? Y'all got our money? When you hired that company to accept money and to say, hey, you guys can pay for your plots ahead of time, you allowed it. So it's not fair to us as citizens to say, hey, you paid your money over there, but we lost the boxes or we can't go through. She said, we don't have the manpower to go. I said, well, honey, I'll go through the boxes for you because I really, I did not have $1,500 to bury my father. But guess what? Something happened and it happened. I got the money to bury my dad, but why should it even come to that? Because somebody else is there now. I didn't even bury my dad, even if it was available. I couldn't bury him there because guess what? My brother died in 2002. My mother died in 2004. I was going to bury my grandmother in that spot, but my sister took her to Georgia. In 2016, my dad died. And guess what? Somebody was already buried there in 2007. So how's that fair to me? So that's my dilemma. When y'all say, oh, we can't go back because it was a flood, it was this, it was that. That's not fair to the citizens. Thank you very much. That's not fair. Thank you very much. Deborah Cartwright-Clough, 33444. Good evening, commissioners. This evening, I will speak on the current lack of available ground burial plots in Delray Beach Memorial Garden Cemetery. Despite the availability of alternatives such as a cremation and entombment, many cultures and individuals shall prefer traditional ground burials. The restriction of burial space in Delray is not limited to a mere logistical problem. It has profound implications for the cost of burials, cultural practices, and even our relationship with the grieving process. Cemeteries hold history, love, and community memories. Cemeteries are places where families return for generations, keeping the lineage alive. This cemetery was established in 1902, and the population of Delray was 1,000. It felt endless, but due to population growth, urban development, and long family lines, a lack of a vision with plans for expansion on the city's part, we are now faced with a cemetery that has reached ground burial capacity. The population of Delray now is approximately 70,000, which reflects a growth rate of 1.08 annually. The population has increased by 5.6% since the last census in 2020. As of now, hypothetically, there are approximately 10,000-plus deceased records at the cemetery somewhere. Running out of space is not just a logistical challenge, it's also emotional. The residents of Delray Beach want to be buried in the same cemetery as their other family members. Why can't this be done? A lack of efficient planning by our city officials. Today, we, the city of Delray, is faced with the challenge of lack of space for a ground burial. The city's availability to innovate, adapt, and show cultural sensitivity will be decisive. A solution exists, but its success depends on our collective will to implement them ethically and thoughtfully. Land space is at the highest premium, but we, the city of Delray Beach, a three-time All-American city, and a finalist in 2025, must acquire the much-needed land. We must live up to the civic designation. This recognition highlights the city's commitment to civic engagement and community-driven problem-solving. The lack of ground burial is a problem that the community needs an innovative, sustainable solution with positive outcome that will make a real difference in Delray Beach. We must follow a structured process that includes ground maintenance, record, and mapping, identifying the land, conducting feasible studies, securing funding, and obtaining necessary approval from local authorities. I, Deborah Cartwright-Clough, licensed funeral director, license number F04-3653, is requesting workshops, a detailed audit commencing with the year 2017 to the present, a 40- to 50-year plan for cemetery expansion and future growth, a task force which will include a current local funeral directors and owners, a knowledgeable superintendent with funeral experience that reports directly to the city manager and works from an established on-site office. I would also like to know the total number of ground burials broken down from 2017 to the present, including how many were pre-needs and how many were at needs, and the breakdown of what funeral homes by year presented the request for these ground burials. I reside on 8th Avenue, and I am seeing one funeral home heading to the cemetery every week. I am committed to seeing a sustainable solution with a positive outcome. We, the residents of Delray Beach and the local funeral director owners, are committed to building a better Delray. Thank you very much. I'm very conflicted about speaking, but I came to say thank you. It does not mean to, at all, demean the passionate community neighbors that spoke before me. My name is Marjorie Waldo, 33444 Arts Garage. All of you here have supported what I've been doing at Arts Garage for the last 10 years, in some manner. All of you have. And I have the best job in the world because I'm surrounded by incredible music, theater, comedy, and visual arts. And recently, we had an artist who helped us with a fundraiser, and so I wanted to share with the commission his doodle for our fundraiser. I purchased the doodle today, and as a thank you to the city, I am donating it to the city because I feel certain that you will want it in the conference room. Absolutely. Mr. Marker, forever grateful. Thank you. Madam Clerk. Oh, my God. There you are. I had a frame for that one. That's so bad. Give me a roll that for you. You're welcome. Hello. How are y'all doing tonight? My name is Kedrick. Zil Code 33484. I just wanted to say I've been in the cemetery business for, like, over 20 years. I work at other cemeteries. That's what I do. I noticed the problem that you're having is about the law and baitness. Every two weeks, it ain't going to work. You need some guys out there every week. I'm quite sure y'all can make that happen, have guys out there every two weeks. And I'm noticing that you're trying to put paperwork back to on the computer. It's called legacy. That's what we use at City of Pompano. And we're having a problem with our lawn maintenance, but we fix that by having guys right there on the spot. Like, we have a foreman on the spot. We have a foreman city manager on the spot. And I think that can dial down a lot of complaints that people are having covered. When they come out there, they're not getting any answers. And that can help you out, just having somebody, like, you can build, whatever you're going to do, you can build something to have out there. Because I do a lot of installs in y'all's cemetery. And I noticed that it's hard to upkeep it. You got some guys out there who work for the city. They working hard, but it just ain't enough. They need more help. That's all it is. And these people need more answers. And we're not always going to run around if we're not going to sit down and just address the situation. And I've been dealing with Yasmin. I call. I get answers. She's okay. She's okay. There's nothing wrong. But she needs to be on the site. And that can help a lot because a lot of people got answers. And I was told if you make it on a historic cemetery, those people who want to get buried, less than they love, when you can't go in that cemetery, you're going to be able to touch a cemetery no more. So you got to look into that before you make that decision. But other than that, I just want to say y'all got a beautiful city. And I'm proud to come here to help do work. And I can help you out at the cemetery if you need my help. That's all I'm saying. Thank you very much for your kind offer. This has nothing to do with the cemetery. This is part of the overhead. Ma'am, can you introduce yourself? Introduce yourself. My name is Marilyn. My name is Marilyn. Parish. Actually, I'm not a resident of Delray Beach, but I attend Pompey Park Senior Club there. Like I say, and it's not on the agenda, but there's an issue that has come up. And the seniors were not pleased at the decision that they have made as to where the seniors like to come out. They don't want to be at home looking at the four walls. And there's different things that we do there, but they have put a time limit now on when we could be there as to where before we could stay three, four o'clock. Because they enjoy playing the different games and stuff. But now we have been told that we have to be up out of there by 1.30. And I don't think that that is right, stating that they have to make room for the kids or something. But beforehand, they had the kids in a different area, and there was no problems before when we were there. So I'm just saying they're taking life, really, out of some of the seniors. You know, because they don't have anything else to do. And that's part of where they come there. They enjoy themselves and everything. And I seem a little nervous, but not really nervous. But we just want to know, is there any way that we can have more time instead of cutting our time short? So whoever it has to go to, I don't know, but we would appreciate if they would extend the time back to where it was before. Thank you very much. I'm finished. Thank you very much. My name is Eleanor Parker. I go to Pompeii Park also, 33444. I'm going to piggyback on what she said, that they are cutting back out time. Also, that I wanted to ask a question that I heard the cemetery was going to be maintained by Parks and Recreation. And this is what I'm thinking, that are you cutting back funds for the senior program due to the fact money's going other places because they are cutting out time, cutting different programs, like going out, going different places. We used to have items like going to the park or going down to another county, and they're cutting a lot of that out. And we're wondering why, but I did hear something mentioned today about Parks and Recreation would be helping attend the graveyard. So I was wondering maybe it's all tied in and you're taking monies from the old people. No, different, different, different. We don't normally answer questions from the floor, but I will tell you that the linkage is not correct, that one is not affecting the other at all. But it is a fair point about why the senior center is being changed in time, and that's something that I'm actually at the end of the meeting in comments. I'm going to direct the city manager to see what the issue is. Because it could very well be because of the Palm Beach County School Board. Because when kids are being moved, they have to empty out space for others. So sometimes it's I don't know the answer, but we will get the answer for you. Okay. There's adequate space there. Point's been made. We will get an answer for you. Okay. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. I'm here for a couple reasons. One, my name is Laura Simon. I'm with the Downtown Development Authority, and I am born and raised here in Delray Beach. So first, as a DDA, I wanted just to say thank you to the city. In July, we've had quite a few events, and the city services, city team, city partnership. We're amazing with art and jazz and a lot of things that we're doing at Old School Square. We do have one of our last concerts for the summer next week at Old School Square. It's Jimmy Buffett tribute. So we look forward to celebrating that, along with a fun night in Libby Wesley Plaza at Sounds of the Set on the 27th. So, but I just also wanted to let you know that we have selected a beautification task force to focus on downtown beautification as we transition into our next hundred years. Our city celebrates its centennial this year, which is significant. A lot of hundreds are running around here. We're heading some serious milestones, and it is serious. Our family arrived here as a Simon. Our family arrived here in 1911. So I say that because, and I'm going to get emotional, and I apologize, but my father, Roy Simon, passed away two years ago. And he's in the cemetery with my uncle and aunt and my grandparents. And it looks horrible. And I am a city partner, and I appreciate the work that happens there. I know it's difficult. And I know I've been here since 2010 with this organization, and I've seen that the investment that the city has done in that cemetery through the audits, through the studies, through the many, many things. And a lot has been done. A lot has been done. And I say that because there's a lot still to be done. But it's, we look, we have this beautiful gem. We have 500 veterans there. 500. Flags and wreaths are going to be put out there this December. It's amazing. Let's figure it out. We have a lot of work to do just to make it look as beautiful as it can be with the magnolia trees. But just to have buried gravestones that are, like, sinking into the ground, that there's no irrigation. There's a lot of things that can be done. And I'm in agreement. Task force are great. Consultants are fabulous. But there's short-term fixes that can be handled. And investment, funding. You all are responsible for funding and where the investment goes. And I think, as a priority, this community has spoken. You know, I really do. And I really, I, I, and I, that's what I want, is that people speak out. And I will listen, and I, as a DDA, and I hope that you will, too. Thank you. Thank you very much. Seeing no other members of the public wishing to address the commission. Public comment is closed. We now go to the regular agenda. Oh, don't we have to approve the consent? Approve the consent. Huh? Approve consent. We approve consent. You need to do that. Yeah, I know. I saw it. I need a motion to approve the consent agenda. So moved. Second. Okay. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? That's fine. I don't see it. Usually it's right above this, but I went to approve consent, so we didn't do that. So anyway. We are dealing, the next item is former item 6I1, which is now item 7AA. And it's the resolution 107-26, approving the agreement with Dubin and Associates. Presentation will be made by Mr. Sam Mehta. Good evening, Mayor and Commissioners. Again, once again, Sam Mehta, Parks and Recreation Director. And yes, you just kind of outlined it. This is a renewal of the tennis management contract that oversees both the tennis center here next door as well as the one over on the south side, Delray Beach Swimming Tennis. Dubin and Associates has been a long-time contractor for us. We did an RFP over the summer here, and this is the award of that. There were, I believe there were four or five different bidders on that, five total different bidders on that project in the scoring. One of the things I will tell you is that throughout the scoring, one of the main key features are both price and experience. And that's where you'll see the biggest discrepancy in the scoring of that is this award was to significantly reduced price compared to many of the other options. And so, therefore, we present this to you for your approval. Okay. I received, I don't know whether you all received, I received a bunch of letters today and, like, three or four phone calls talking about this. I don't really use the tennis center that much. I know people that do, some love it, some issues, but they, I think that there was some, by what I'm reading is, and I can, I'm only saying by what I've received for the letters, I don't know if they're accurate or not accurate, that they think that they're not happy with the current management. Now, people like management, don't like it. I mean, you hear that all the time. And they are asking that we kind of take a look at the grading process to see whether or not the selections that, that maybe not to necessarily take your selections, but to allow the commission to look at it in a broader scale so everyone, the public can hear all of the presentations as to these and then move forward. But, again, I don't use the tennis center. I mean, I go to the tennis tournaments. Every time I go, you know, I've never had an issue, so I go to some special events there. But that's essentially what the letters said. Am I correct? So I throw it out to the commission as to what the commission wants to do, as to whether or not we want to have them come and make a presentation to us so we have a better understanding and the public has a better understanding of what each of these groups are offering in terms of services or not. And that's really where we are now. Thank you. Yeah, I will say that, just for the record, this is not a Parks and Recreation scoring system. This goes through our purchasing department. It's legal. No, I'm sure. I'm sure. I just wanted to clarify. This isn't a Parks and Recreation go-got-three-quotes. This was a formal solicitation. I guess what the people were trying to say, it's not just a dollar and cents. Managing a tennis court isn't just a dollar and cents item. Well, that's why I mentioned experience. If you're going to look at one thing, I may look at something else. A tennis player may look at something. I mean, we all may look at it have a different perspective. Correct. And that's why I mentioned the experience part was a big way of doing it. No, I understand. I understand. Can I just say something? I'm looking at the agenda cover. Remember, the last time we had a situation similar to this, it was for Pompeii Park. And the reason why we did it that time, which is basically allow the public presentations, was because there was a one-point difference. This time, there's a six-point difference. And so that doesn't sound like a lot, but when you look at scoring, that is a pretty significant discrepancy. And so, you know, it's the commission's pleasure. You can do that, but I would just say that our selection committee is based on staff with the training, experience, and professional capacity to be able to do this. Not that the commission can't do it, but we really should put staff's almost judgment at a higher... If I could just... If there were a Parks and Rec staff trying to do it, I would feel differently. And not because purchasing looks at different elements. Purchasing doesn't sit on the selection committee. Huh? Purchasing doesn't typically sit on the selection committee. Right. You were saying that it's the... So two points. One, I was just making sure you understood this went through the purchasing department. This wasn't just... Oh, I see. Okay. Parks and Recreation getting three quotes. They use independent people from other departments that review some of this. But, Ms. Gillen, I just wanted to double-check that when you look at... You said a six-point difference, but I believe it's even much more substantial than that. It's way... It's 50 points almost. I'm sorry. It was a substantial difference in the score. I just wanted to make sure we were clear for the record. 287 and 238. My apologies. I was looking at two and three. So... I'm only responding to the letters that I got today, and I... Fair enough. I say... And I'm the first to say that I don't... You know, people get letters, write letters, and I don't know... Candidly, when this process was happening, I was under a cone of silence during this, like much of the city, but I received many phone calls, both for and against. And I just couldn't explain too much to them during this process, but it was both sides making their calls, so I understand what you're... So, that's all. So, I'm throwing it out to the commission. What does the commission want to do? I mean, Commissioner Malik, do you have thoughts about Commissioner Marker? Commissioner Gasol, you play tennis. You're a user of the tennis facility. Frequent. I am, and I'm conflicted here for a number of reasons. I did read the letters, and part of the concern is a lot of those letters reference things that are really not the responsibility of the management company, but are, in fact, our responsibility. Funding the capital improvements for the bathroom, even though the bathroom, I agree, I don't love the bathroom. I try to avoid it, but that's our obligation up here. That's not the management company's obligation. And I will... I met with the other management company, and I've played in Boynton. Boynton does look amazing. The gentlemen are lovely. I play here, and it's a hard position for me, but I am concerned about the education aspect of it, because people should understand what truly is the management company's responsibility and what is not, so they can attribute proper blame to us. And one of the things that the current management company has done for us is protected us against that and taken the blame every time something doesn't work, like the water fountain on Court One, which didn't work for six months and was really our fault. Procurement issue. You know, the way things work in the city is very different. And so, well, you know, I'm amenable to what everybody wants. I just want people to understand there's a lot more involved in this process. And, you know, whether or not you agree, I had a lovely conversation with the gentleman who's managing, and he understands some of the shortcomings. I lost an entire team. I was the captain of the top team at the Delray Tennis Center, and I don't have a tennis team anymore. And not to fault anybody, but it's a disappointment, and some people, you know, it's an amazing hobby. I used to play ladies five days a week, I mean, and now I'm playing two with guys. It's a different situation, but if we're doing the presentation, I just want to make sure that we are giving the information out that is imperative to the people. What is the responsibility? And giving proper credit, Jeff Bingo called me for coffee. I spent two hours with him trying to figure out how to get new lights for that tennis center. It's, there's, this is, I'm conflicted on this. I have an allegiance to the current leaders of this facility, and I have met the potential new leaders, and I know some of the pros who work at the other facility, and I have the utmost respect for them. So I'll listen to what everybody has to say. Okay, I'm going to say, because tennis center is real important to the city, and I, I, that's why I'm throwing it out. Well, remember this when we're funding our budget. So I'm not, because. I will be willing to support my colleagues. I don't play tennis. I very rarely go out there. However, I know how important it is to the city. So I will trust your judgment, and whatever you decide, I will support that. Commissioner Marker. Well, I, I, I, again, I'm not a tennis player like yourself, so my, my knowledge base is kind of thin. Um, but if I throw my corporate hat on, it, it sounds like there's a lot of interest in maybe, Sam, you presenting to us the results of the RFP that went out, and we can mask some of the names if you prefer to do that. He doesn't have to mask the names. But I, I, I think that can happen now, you know, and I, and I agree with, with what Julie said a minute ago. It would help everybody here who doesn't play tennis to, to understand the responsibilities of the management company versus the city. I think just so we clarify that so that the, the, the, the playing field is level for everybody. I think that would be beneficial. Yeah, um, I can try. Um, one of the things that you, you really are looking at is very similar to the golf course in some ways, like, um, where the management company out there took, took some heat for the way things are happening, but it is a much older course that, as you all know, needed to be renovated. Um, we deal with some of the same things here. Now, as a city operation, we have tried, um, like crazy for the last number of years to improve that facility. But as you mostly know, there's been very little capital available to infuse into that center. So we've done a lot of fix this this year and fix this this year. And although it gets better, it's still a facility that was built in the 90s. Um, and we've read, you know, we've prioritized the courts themselves. They've been re, you know, redone a number of times. Um, we've lighted the stadium. So there's a lot of that day to day structural thing that not everybody loves because it's an aging facility that the management company can only do with what we allow within a budget constraint for them to fix on an annual basis. So that part is, is, is true. Um, I will say from a management company, um, that even with those constraints, we've seen an increase in, in participation over the years, as well as an increase in revenue streams. Mr. Mayor, may I contribute to Mr. Mita's presentation briefly? Yes, please. There are a couple of points. First of all, Mr. Markert, last month you talked about the prospect and consensus was offered to bring forth the aggregate path forward regarding the tennis facility, the Taylor Beach Tennis Center. I plan to offer a initial written summary as to what that may look like because we plan to engage in October in terms of what considerations may very well become available. So Mr. Mita and I are actually meeting tomorrow afternoon to begin crafting that structure and focus, number one. Number two, in the context of addressing the concerns relative to the specific recommendation for this evening, perhaps it would be appropriate for you to talk a little bit about the price differential via the proposals that were submitted as part of the evaluation process resulting in the recommendation being made available. If I think that might be helpful. But if I can just say, I mean, part of the issue is that we hear from, we hear from constituents, right? And they, and the tennis court's a very important thing. And, and I don't know enough about it. And I'm the first to say, I don't, I don't understand it. I don't play tennis. I mean, I like tennis, but I don't play it, but I, I'm not so sure why, why it's not a bad idea for us to hear the various management companies and their visions for the tennis court, which I, please, no, we don't applaud. Well, unless it's for me and then we feel, feel free. It was. But, so, I mean, I, I understand that you can give all these facts and figures stuff, but I, I know, I haven't heard the presentations. I don't know whether they're saying, whether a particular management company, and I, and I don't know who the applicants are other than the letter I got today. So, I don't know any of them. So, if, if it would be beneficial for us to hear, because we're hearing from the constituents as to what they're looking for, shouldn't we hear the vision of the people that are managing, that are proposing to manage the tennis court so we can impart our thoughts to them? But we're hearing from the constituents is my point. Okay. Yes. So, I think staff already did this evaluation, and I'm, I'm hearing a distinction between management and maintenance, and that we don't really have the, we don't keep the maintenance as, as high as we'd like to, but I don't think any of the management companies' scope included maintenance. I don't know. I didn't see the proposals. That's correct. But when staff weighed that out, I imagine it had to do, it was budgetary, correct? I'm sorry. Henry Dagwitz. That's a question. Yes. CFO, resident of Delaware Beach. I used to supervise the purchasing and procurement department. It's now very ably handled by Paul Narcisse. Just want to make two points. This is done by an RFP. First of all, we specify the scope of activities we ask people to respond to. I don't think it was put in there. Please give us your vision. We had a scope of what we were looking for, and we asked for responses. So maybe in the future, we might ask for something different. Secondly, as in accordance with all of our RFPs, there's a selection committee. Mr. Meatop might have been on the committee, but he does not select the vendor by himself. So whether it's credit or blame, he should not be given that attribution by himself. So I just wanted to clarify how the world works here in Delaware Beach. Thank you. No, I can't. I thought that's not what I was saying. No. So this isn't. No, are you trying to speak? Yes. That was public comment part. No. I thought you said we couldn't speak on a future agenda. Quasi-judicial. Until that agenda is judicial. Upper quasi-judicial. That's for quasi-judicial. They misunderstood. What do you want to do? I would, in this particular instance, I would stick to the staff's recommendation of who they chose. Okay. Do we want to let these people speak because they made a mistake, or do we, I mean, that's really what we're asking. They misunderstood, I think. They misunderstood. All right. I'm going to ask Mr. Meatop if you could sit down. I'm going to give you three minutes to speak. You know, I will just say that this is, I'm doing it as a courtesy. Thank you for that. Because you've been standing there politely, and you have three minutes. Great. Thank you. My name is Jewel Schlecker. No, there's only one, there's only one, you're the only one speaking on this matter. Everyone else was, you know, if you had your chance, and I know you know better. So go ahead. My name is Jewel Schlecker. First of all, I'd like to thank all of you for the hard work that you do, and for giving us the opportunity to hear us and express our thoughts about the Delray Beach Tennis Center. The decision to renew the contract with the incumbent tennis management company is a very important one that not only affects Delray residents, but everyone and anyone that plays at Delray. So about me, I'm a captain and a co-captain for about 15 years for various teams in New Jersey and Florida. I currently captain a team at Boynton, and I'm also a former player at the Delray Beach Tennis Center. It's very accurate to say that I've been around the block when it comes to tennis in Palm Beach County, and know a thing or two when it comes to tennis teams, tennis clubs, tennis courts, tennis pros, and all things tennis. I played at Delray for about five years, going on six, took private lessons with various pros, including tennis clinics, boot camps every summer, as well as countless games and matches from the South Beach County Women's Tennis Association to USTA and Claymates. Given what's at stake for the future of the Delray Tennis Center for the next 10 years and beyond, I just want to shed some light on what may or may not be known. As of May of this year, it was estimated that 70 ladies left Delray Tennis to play tennis teams at Boynton and other clubs. By my estimates, I believe the number to actually be higher because on my team alone, I don't want to say the number, but I have more than a handful. And each year, for the last three years that I've been aware, there has been an erosion and exodus of players each year, with this past May most likely being the highest number of players that left to date, plus tennis pros that have left as well. And if you know anything about tennis players, once they leave, they usually don't go back. It costs about $2,000 to play on a tennis team at Delray, which is higher than most clubs. Let's round up to 100 players for quick math. The membership cost is $447 for residents or $780 for non-residents. So let's say it's about $600 on average, that's at least $60,000 plus loss of revenue from lessons, clinics, and court fees. So these players that left didn't leave because of the money. They left because of the mismanagement of the tennis center, tennis teams, and mistreatment of their players and pros. You know, the one thing that you don't do is upset your customers or clients. So I urge the commission to hold off on approving this decision to renew the contract with the incumbent tennis management company until the fall, when more residents or more city residents in Delray players are back. Or at least to look and consider the following. Follow the membership to the money. Look at the revenue or loss of revenue for the past three years, especially from this past May, and if at least 70 players are gone, then what that loss is and means to the city. With all the improvements in downtown Delray and surrounding Delray, and all the work that you've done to improve the city, that really shows. The word on Delray is that it's fun, cool, and vibrant. Unfortunately, the most common words described at Delray Tennis Center are deplorable, abusive, and unsafe. Thank you. Thank you very much. I know, but I'm going to... Are you together? No. I'll be quick. Yeah, that's good. I won't even take three minutes. My name is Glenn Udean, 33445. I've been a resident for 30 years. I've been playing tennis in Delray and around the area in many different courts for all that time, and I would just echo what he said. The courts are a mess, unplayable, unsafe, tripping, sliding. They're not properly maintained, and so when you talk about maintenance versus management company, maintenance of the courts is a key part of what the responsibility is for the management company that's running the courts. That's probably the number one thing. And, you know, I play on a team that we decided not to have any of our home games at Lavers because it was embarrassing to have other clubs come and play at that facility. So I would say do everything you can to reconsider and to listen to the management companies to give them your pitch. Thank you very much. And I'm going to allow one more because I will say, by the way, with our new instructions, we don't talk about quasi-idu. You get the chance to speak later. So while I do understand we're doing it for the civility portion, we need to add that part back so that people are not confused as to when they can and they can't speak. So I'm not blaming anybody. The new instructions here, we're probably – we need to amplify it a little bit so that it's clearer as to when you can and can't get up. So please identify yourself with the record. Hello, Sharon Painter, 33445. I'm with the current management company. I actually am the CEO. And the contract – I've heard the complaints. I've met with some of these ladies. I know the ladies – I've met with the team ladies. I met with Jean Mills who is in the USTA Hall of Fame. She's been the Florida president. She started the South Palm Beach Ladies Golf – excuse me, I'm back on golf – Tennis Association. And, you know, they have rules and it's a little different in tennis. Everybody in tennis kind of wants to go the next level higher, where in golf, you know, we all want to have a handicap that's higher. We want to go the other way. And so there was some discontent because some people, if you don't win as many matches, you have to go down a team or go up a team. Some ladies left. Two of the people on the other team that – on the other management company, they worked for us at Delray Beach Tennis Center. They're good guys. But we have increased 177 percent the revenues. They're not going down. They're going up. You can look. That's on the city books. The participation, it's all about programming. It's not just about the ladies' leagues or the men's. It's the kids. It's all – it's everybody in the city. It's about running special events. The courts are so bad, but Coco Goff is here. Francis TFO is here practicing. We've run – why did we just get picked for the Billie Jean King Cup again if we're so bad? We've had the – I mean, there's just a lot of things been going on here. We have the experience. We've been running the tennis commercials. We have – we bring in a lot of extra revenue when we have the events around here. So, I mean, like I said, look at the money, look at the revenues, and look at our team. They've done an excellent job. And when the city – they didn't choose us for the golf course, so it's not like they're on our side. But they chose about what was the best for the city. Thank you very much, Sharon. Again, Mayor, Commissioner, if there's anything else I can answer, happy to do so, or I leave it to you. Okay. Would you – I mean, I'm going to ask Commissioner Casale this. I mean, because you are – would you say that what was represented is your experience as well? I would say that the gentleman is 100% correct. That facility over at Lavers needs a ton of money put into it, and I wouldn't dispute that. I slide, too, but sometimes I want to. Just don't want to fall. I don't – I wouldn't – I don't know if dangerous is a strong word, but there's also – you know, we have the above-ground watering system, which is very different than on Atlantic where you have the watering system under the courts. There's a lot to it. I mean, have women left? Yes. Have they left unhappy? Yes. Half of my team that I no longer have because we didn't have a team went to Boynton with a few pros. Pros left for – and I won't argue that they weren't – the justification wasn't unreasonable. So I'm not going to say that any of what they're saying is untrue at all. But I do, you know, also understand there's a monetary component to this that if we are opening this up, we have to be prepared. And I know also, look, when we have this tennis tournament, you know, the whole facility becomes a different job in a different place. And when I asked Sam what's – tell me about this RFP and what's going on, some of the components that are required. How many years has this organization been in business? It's a factor. Do they have experience with certain things that go on at the tennis center? Because we are a much bigger facility. We're two locations. We have pickleball. We have the stadium. There's a lot of components to it. If you want to hear the presentation so that you understand all the components to it, then do it. But I think at the end of the day, the biggest issue we need to ask ourselves up here, do we want to pay a lot more money into the tennis center? Because that's part of the issue. Whether you're contracting with another organization, I just did a cursory view online, their RFP to Boynton Beach was way substantially higher than what we're paying our management company. So if we're opening this up, we have to be prepared to pay a lot more money. And their facility is smaller. It's not two facilities. So there's a lot of components to think about. They're lovely gentlemen. I wish this situation weren't this way. This is hard for me. Half of my friends are no longer playing at Delray, and I'm trying to, you know, figure out how to get games. It's not amazing. But sometimes I think what Ms. Painter says is sometimes that stuff happens in tennis for reasons that – and, you know, and I've had very honest conversations with the gentleman running the facility. He's a little – he can be a little rough. I mean, one of the things I think that I would be – you know, you've said something which is interesting. I mean, a lot of these years. But, you know, we don't understand up here what it takes, what expenses. And I think one thing, if we heard all the presentations, we would better understand what the maintenance costs are. The maintenance is totally separate from – Where we are failing. You're completing two things. There's a management contract, and then there's maintenance. I'm not. But part of the management contract is what we need to do. And I don't think we understand what – I don't really – I don't know what we need to do at the tennis center, quite frankly. You know, I hear different things, and by hearing the different presentations, maybe I'm better informed. Listen, if you need more information, we'll get more information. I'm not opposed. I'm always – you know me. I'm always asking for more information. I think it's a big asset for the city, and I think if they all come up and say, look, we can manage this for you for this price, but you're going to need to spend this, I'd kind of like to know that. Right. And that's what we don't know now. So – Well, that's, I guess, where I am on that. It's because I'm confused. I don't understand. I don't like making the decision, but I don't understand the subject. Let's talk the logistics of this. Are we then – so we're – what is the contractual date that this contract was supposed to begin? Are we already in their contract period currently of the current arrangement? No. Okay. No, the current contract has not expired. Depending on time frames, it may need 60- to 90-day extension from the city manager to make sure you don't have an overlap. But – You can see that. I just – off the top of my head, I don't know the date. Okay. Okay. And are we then going to have – we're going to have to allow – are we asking for a staff presentation? Are we going to allow every RFP applicant to come in here and do a presentation? It would not be a staff presentation. If you want to reject the recommendation and ask for presentations, Sam indicated there were five proposers. You don't have to have them all come in. You don't have to have them all come in. But you can say we want the top three, the top two. You can make that determination. I think if you're being fair, you have to have all five come in. Well, you know, I don't mind having all five, but we just have to have a brief – you know, I don't want them each coming in for 15 minutes. If they want to come in for, you know, like five minutes, so we keep it a manageable time. You can give them five minutes to explain to you the whole process. Well, ten minutes. It's a 20-minute presentation. Respectively, you're probably looking at a whole workshop. A double workshop. It would be a special meeting. It's not all day. It's two hours. We'd have a special meeting. Yeah, yeah. Because we're going to have an action item. And so is this – is the commission – I would recommend the top three. Okay. That would be my recommendation. The top three? Okay. That's fine. You know, I don't know who they are, but – well, I know who the top one was because I read their name, but I don't know who else. I mean, to be perfectly fair, I'm looking at the agenda item, and what I would recommend going forward is that all of this information be included. I think all of the proposals should have been included for you because I think a lot of these questions would not be asked today. That would have been helpful. Well, perfect. Right. I mean, we wouldn't be debating this. This is a management contract. The maintenance is separate. Does the management company make recommendations to you on what maintenance is necessary? Yes. But as a commission, you give that budget to Sam, and then he, you know, effectuates the policy that's given. So – I would like to see if there's consensus for the – for a presentation for the top – to a special meeting. We've got time for the top three result getters, you know, come in to make a presentation in our workshop so that we can hear from them what it takes to manage it, what we should expect to pay for it, and to make it a world-class facility because you're right. When we're doing our big tennis tournaments, boy, we're doing great. But the rest of the year, you know, it may be a different dynamic. The only thing I would ask is I think we need to hear – and maybe it's from you, Sam – what are the maintenance needs that we have? I don't know that it makes sense for us to have the three – They wouldn't tell us the maintenance needs. We have time to get into the weeds a little bit more if we're going to have another meeting, but just so everyone understands, like, there's multiple levels and types of maintenance, right? There's capital improvements. There's structural maintenance. But then there's daily court maintenance that they do do. So I just don't want to use the blanket term maintenance. They do have some. We have some. Yeah. So capital improvement and operational, it's two very distinct things. Yeah, and Alex, I didn't want to get any weeds. I just want to – So do we have consensus for a special meeting to do this? Yes. For the top three? Yes. One, two, three? Yes. Yes? Yeah, sure. So to summarize, ladies and gentlemen, we're looking at some time in September. We need a motion. Fine. So it would be a motion to reject the recommendation to approve the agreement with Dubin and Associates with direction to schedule a special meeting. And I'm sorry, was it the top three or you want all five? Top three. I think you should do all five if you're opening it back up. Give them to all five. I don't care. If you want to do all five, let's do all five. So moved for all five. Let's do all five. Okay, so we got a motion for all five. Second. We got a motion to deny with the thing for the all five. Do we have a second? Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Fine. Adopted. Thank you all for your time. Thank you, Sam. Thank you, Sam. Didn't mean to put you on the spot, Sam. No, no. A dozen times. Okay. Regular agenda. The regular agenda, City Manager's Performance Evaluation, 7A. Dwayne D'Andrea, it's your turn. Mayor, commissioners, good to be in front of you. For your consideration tonight is the City Manager's Performance Evaluation. Dwayne, can you talk closer for me? Thank you. I know you're talking. For your consideration tonight is the City Manager's Performance Evaluation. We know that you've done them. You've received them all. The City Manager has seen them, reviewed them, and knows the score. The aggregate score for the City Manager's Performance Evaluation was 3.3, and that is up for your consideration tonight. What was the aggregate last year? I don't have that number. I didn't bring that number. And the average, what you said, was what? 3.3. 3.3. It was 3.3 last year as well. Okay. So we need to, I motion that we go with the 3.3. A second. Sorry. I'm sorry. A second. I'm sorry, Mayor. I'm sorry. Is this retroactive? Retroactive, yes. So it would have to be retroactive. Make sure you amend your motion to make sure it's retroactive. I make a motion that we go with the recommended 3.3 retroactive to? This anniversary date. The anniversary date. Second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? I'm sorry, I am. My number was below the 3, and therefore I'm not in support. I'm sorry, Mr. Moore. Although I will say I'd like to say publicly, and I noted this in my review, I think there has been improvement. I very much appreciated that you're doing a really, a better job of getting a consensus, and I did make some positive notes because my review did increase from last time. Thank you. By the way, I would ask that you send to each of the commissioners all of the events. So we all know each other's evaluation. So, I mean. I did. Oh, you already did that? Okay, that's fine. I didn't see it. All right. Thank you. I barely got my own email. I turned mine in in paper today because I printed it in sign. Yeah, mine too. Thank you. 7B. Discussion of potential amnesty program for outstanding special events costs owed to the city for events held prior to September 30, 2024. Assistant City Manager Orris, you have the floor. Mayor. On this. I'm sorry. You need to. On this matter, Vice Mayor Burns is not going to participate. There's a conflict of interest for her. Oh, okay. Well, then. Does she need to leave the room? She will be leaving the room. Oh, we'll do. Would you go get up? Really? If I'd have known you were leaving, I'd have ordered a pizza. You could have gone and picked it up. And paid for it. And paid for it, of course. I paid for it. I'm a hoarder. Mr. Orris. Jeff Orris, Assistant City Manager. As you know, we've had some discussions at this level about there are a couple of outstanding invoices due for special event costs to the city. A number of them are older. Some of them are a little bit newer. The idea is what exactly do we do with these? How do we handle these? And the important thing really is that we want to make sure that we're collecting money that we should collect, that we're not having ongoing issues with folks who are putting on events. So we did look at the outstanding invoices. What we've got at this point is 44 distinct unpaid invoices due from 23 different special event producers that are more than 12 months old. Producers whose costs have been waived in the past, this is one of our big issues, indicated when we changed our special event policy and we made it clear that we did not have the ability to waive costs. They felt they were unaware of this in their eyes and felt they didn't have to pay these. And several of those invoices have not yet been paid. Some of those outstanding invoices are also business organizations that are no longer operating. They're just gone. So what we did devise in order to try to get some money out of some of these folks is to be a temporary amnesty program that would be available to producers of special events held prior to September 30th, 2024. This is the point at which no one's complaining that they didn't know they were supposed to pay. That's why we chose that date. Oh, excuse me. I struggle with that. Up to 90% of the outstanding amount due will be discounted if they pay prior to October 30th, 2026. If by the end of the day on that date they have not paid, no discount will be offered moving forward and the full amount due will need to be paid to reinstate them. Any producer, we did want to make sure that if people participate, there is something they've got to stay on board with us. And that said, if any producer that participates in the amnesty program that has a future invoice that becomes delinquent under the city's receivables policy, which is once it's 90 days old, it's declared delinquent, that that producer would then lose the, first of all, they have to pay us back before they can do anything more. And the producer would lose the right to host an event for at least five years. The decision to allow them to host events after that five years would be up to the commission. They would have to appear to the commission and the commission would need to reinstate them. Payment in full will allow these folks to be able to submit to host new events. The program will, like I said, will assist the city in collecting some of the outstanding amounts that are due. Currently, it is questionable whether we would get anything from any of these producers. I also want to make it a point that since this time frame, we have not really had any problems collecting on events. Even those folks who have said to us, we don't think we had to pay you, you never told us, all understand that if they do an event now, they have to pay us. We're much more diligent in getting invoices out in a timely manner. We did have a period of time where they were not going out very quickly. Since we hired the special events manager, she has time to devote to making sure people are paying, the invoices are getting out, all costs are coming in from all city departments. The penalties that are allowed in the 2024 special event policy have allowed us to tell people, you can't submit a new application until you pay for the old law. So we don't have those issues. Additional changes to the special event policy are being contemplated that will make it very clear what these penalties are if you don't pay. We're looking at adding a 1.5 monthly late fee onto any amount that's not paid and include additional penalties for those who have more than two invoices that have declared delinquent. Those are people who do not participate in this program. If you participate in the program, you get one shot at it and that's it. Now, I did also want to state that right now, like I said, those penalties are there, but they're not real clear. It says, these are the things we can do in penalties, so we want to make it clear, these are what's at stake here. That's the quickie version of this. You know, you and I have had this conversation. I also spoke with Mr. Dokowitz about it. I fundamentally don't like charge-offs. I just don't like charge-offs. I had a conversation with a couple of the people that I know who do special events. Now, they happen to all have paid. But one of the problems, and I think the city has, the whole process has lent itself to this happening. I mean, I understand we've now changed the rule. You know, when you do an application to do a special event, we're taking a deposit, not just an application fee. So we have a sum of money. Whatever that deposit is, it could depend, I guess, on what you think it's going to be. You know, I'm using as an example the Rotary Club, for example, who does their Kentucky Derby event. They don't really know the cost before they go in. They get the bill afterwards and they pay it. They've got a general idea of what it's going to cost, but they don't really have a bill and they're told you're going to get billed. They get billed, they paid. Some of these people, when they would speak about this, said, well, we didn't know we were going to have to pay anything or we didn't expect to pay this much. I feel sorry for that, but that's, I can't believe that within the applications that I've seen that they filed, that they weren't aware that a fee would be due. The fact that they didn't know how much it was going to be, maybe it's partially the city's fault, but it's certainly partially their fault, too, because, you know, they knew that they were going to be, I mean, we had police departments. We provided infrastructure capabilities for them to do their events, so they knew that there was a cost. You know, I always use my little old lady in Lake Ida example, but she's not paying for some festival for some event that she's unrelated to. So that's got to be paid by the event people themselves. So, I mean, some of these people, I agree, you're never going to collect from. Mayor, if I may, there is a mechanism for writing off organizations where someone passed on or they aren't in place. You currently have that mechanism. This presentation, I frankly, Jeff, think it's baloney. First and foremost, any one of these old outstanding, you could have already written off. This is all in order to write off a couple things that you, frankly, in my opinion, should not be writing off. We had someone appear at the lectern and say all those OSS bills were paid. Mr. Moore has since told me there's no cash checks and none of them more. So not only are we talking about, before you even get to the writing off part, the residents have already incurred expenses, the soft expenses, correct? So each one of these events, you're giving the person at the outset 50% off, correct, of the costs because you're not charging them all the costs of the services. If they're non-profit. That's correct. So right out of the gate, you've already given them something. You've given them 50% off. Now they haven't paid, even though there is a policy that says if you don't pay, you don't get an event. They've not paid. They're allowed to continue on and have event after event after event incurring over $30,000 worth of expenses to the taxpayers and presumably an additional $30,000 worth of non-charged expenses to the taxpayers. And the reason why we're, the only reason why we're having this conversation is because our city manager went to burning conversations and made a promise that he would write off the expenses during one of Mrs. Burns' events and now he's trying to figure out how to. No disrespect, Mr. Moore, I've already said this and I, well, you know what, that's what happened. And the whole bottom line is the reason why you don't have the authority to write off these expenses is because you've already written off for one of the parties that is now looking for an additional write-off. So let's tell the residents what it is because the taxpayers are going to pay for this. I am not in favor of this. You can go online. If an LLC has not been in business for five years, write it off. If the person is dead, write it off. If they're out of business, write it off. But if they are currently active in this city, they do not deserve a write-off or amnesty. And let's just follow the rules we have in place, which are if you don't pay, you get no other events. Because what I see in this list is event after event after event, even though there are non-payments. And I don't – I find this upsetting. Thank you. Commissioner Malika. Sure. You're raising your voice there. Well, I know that a number of the – at least I can speak for OSS because I saw the paid invoices. And it was requested that checks be picked up from the bank. These are over seven years old. The banks don't have those checks any longer. It shows in the accounting that they're checked off. But if that's not good enough – and none of the invoices on here can even be produced by the city. So I think there was some problem in invoicing and collection and accommodating the right payment for a time. So with respect to that and also some of the people putting on these events, and I'm not including OSS because they knew the deal, but some of these other people were told there's no expense, then there was an expense. They get a $7,000 bill. I do agree with the amnesty program. Our system was messed up. And we got to do something to fix it or just keep this sheet and keep letting us bug us forever. But there were invoices not sent out. There were payments not recorded. So there's a problem, and we're trying to fix it. And I don't think it's a certain promise made to one individual as much as these are all pretty much old – for the most part, they're very old invoices. What's the latest? Twenty-three. Well, no. I'm not talking about – look, some of them are – no, here's some 2024. November 2024. I mean, 418, 2024, 327, 24. There are some. I mean, I'm agreeing that the ones really before 2020 would be hard to figure out what those are. And we have a couple here, like 2005, my guess is – The city has a write-off ability, Mr. Mayor. Say that again, please. So I – Oh, I'm sorry. Again, but I mean – so you've had your – Mr. Marker? Yeah. Are you finished? I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah. I was just trying to hear what everyone else was saying. Okay. Mr. Marker, you've got to do one at a time. You're right. Go ahead. I just have a couple questions, Jeff. Have we contemplated sending these overdue invoices out to a collection agency? I know you pay a fee for it, but I've used them in business in the past, and if we could get half the money from them, that would be good. And unfortunately, when we reached out to the city's collection agency, they basically said they can't collect on anything more than five years old. That's probably true. So that's a large number of those items. I fear that our records would be such – I do too. But I would say – I mean, I really think that records were terrible. Yeah. I mean, if that's the response we got, for me, the five-year-old invoices, we probably ought to consider writing off. He has the option to write off. We do have a write-off policy in place at the present moment. And then just the other simple question, why do we not charge people before the event? Or why are we not collecting money before the event? We are now collecting a 50% deposit. Why wouldn't we collect the whole thing? I mean, if we're having all these problems – We don't really know what the cost will be. Some of these things are – they're waiting to get their revenue through the event. Yeah, that makes sense. It would be difficult if we did. It does make sense, but at the same time, our taxpayers are footing the bill for people that aren't paying their bills. So – Ladies and gentlemen, 50% – We're really not having a problem at this time. It's 50% up front, if I may. I just like to help respond to the question. 50% up front, based on estimates for charges associated there, and it's a best practice. And not only municipalities, but any and all special event venues and activities, et cetera. So by virtue of benchmarking, as well as updating our policies over the last two years, really, we've gotten to a place in which this is no longer an issue, thankfully. So once the final estimate is closed out and squared away, we do tweak it such that we cover our expenses and secure the payments up front without any delay. And as Mr. Horace put a little while ago, we haven't had any issues and challenges since implementing these policies. So I like what we're doing prospectively. We've done well in terms of updating the policy. And quite frankly, myself, along with Mr. Horace and others, we've experienced a little bit of static because we have this policy in place where about 50% is now required up front. But we insist upon it because it is a good best practice, number one. Number two, it does resolve a lot of issues and challenges that have been experienced prior. So our interest is to move forward prospectively given the history of transactions and misunderstanding, miscommunications you heard going back to the early part of the year. Nevertheless, I think we should give the process we currently have in place an opportunity to continue to be successful because this has been working well. So I have no concerns about that. The Office of the City Manager, other departments, we all are in alignment in this regard. Nevertheless, this is the remaining outcome so that we can receive appropriate direction. And please. Could you just clarify for the residents that you produced a document and sent it to us yesterday, I think you sent it to me, or I don't recall, maybe the day before, regarding the outstanding balances, that those numbers that you gave in your original document of over 31,000 are still the number that stand? You are specifically referring to the Old School Square Center for the Arts. You specifically asked me for updated information in terms of what that looks like. Correct. It was just discussed here as well that there is some continued discrepancy, but our calculation is $31,000 and change to your point. Because you don't have any identifying cash checks or any identifying movement through our system of those amounts. And that's a continuous process. I've asked everybody to work amicably with one another to continue to try to get to the bottom of it. But at this particular juncture, without finalizing that process, that's where it stands. Thank you. All of the older OSS ones are now more than five years old. So, you know, I'm kind of following what they do. And at some point, and as I preface my remarks, I don't like write-offs. I mean, I don't like it. But at some point, are we better off to write off portions and move forward or spend our time trying to collect? Which we can't. Well, I don't know if we can. I don't know. Roots Cultural Festival is $23,000. I don't know. Do they have any money? Do they still in business? I don't know. You know, some of these groups are certainly still operating. You know, and a token payment back of 10% is a, you know, I don't know their other fundraising capabilities. I just don't know. So, but, I mean, it kind of begs the question for all the other special events you did pay. Right. So do we go. Well, I mean, most people who do special events pay. Right. And so are we now saying, well, you know, because of what, you know, agreed. Look, I can. As I said, I mean, you know, I've done them with Kiwanis. I've done them with Rotary. I've done them. They all pay. I mean, they all do. I know. And everyone else's perspective of fall 2024 is paying via the policy applications we talked about. So I would like to ask the commission to be mindful of the fact that we've updated our policies fairly productively to get to a place in which the previous issues and concerns are no longer continuing to be issues and concerns. So we have a good process in place. We're doing quite well in that regard, 99%, quite frankly. And quite frankly, I want to tell you, it's not even the policies that made the big difference. It was that the commission created a position of the special events manager, and that person has the ability to go and chase these things down and has a relationship with all these producers. And right now, the person in that job right now, Allie Behrman, is really doing a good job of following up and making sure these things get paid. It's part of the process going well. And then all the invoices are going out. Could I ask Mr. Dokowitz to hop up because I think he probably has additional information for us. Thank you. I'm sorry, Mr. Dokowitz, so we can get this situation resolved and move on to the next item. So I mean, just while he's walking up here, are we talking about applying this amnesty for the ones that are still outstanding five years and thereafter? Or are you just looking at it for certain? I mean, if they're still within a period where a collection agency would do it, are we talking about that's the period? We're talking about a five-year look back? I think the intent was to look at everything. Okay. Before I... All right, I'm just asking what your focus is. Okay. Mr. Dokowitz, you want to chime in? What's the question? Do you have any more information on this? I mean, you produced that spreadsheet. I'm in a very awkward position because I report to the city manager. Now, Mr. Moore, can you ask him to please answer that question honestly for us? I'm sorry. He said, I report to the city manager. I'm in an awkward position. I can ask him questions now. What question next is? He said, I'm in an awkward position because I report to the city manager. I'm asking him to answer. What is awkward about your answer? This process currently is coordinated between the person who is administering special projects, Treasury analyst, Sherry Dungy, who reports to me. They're working very well. They have implemented changes. And moving forward, I have high confidence that this will be resolved. Thank you. I do as well. Okay. Historically, Sherry and I were asked to work on this starting a year ago. Okay. Sherry has, remember, she has all the financial records. She sends out invoices. Apparently, and again, I wasn't here, the person who was handling special projects in the past before Allie was here, inconsistent. Some may have been good. Some weren't good. Some may, maybe the position was vacant. Okay. So what Sherry and I did is we triaged the list of all the open amounts that were owed to the city. Right. And we put them into three categories. We said those that are current, the most recent projects, we're not going to worry about. Right. Everyone seems to be complying. As we went through this process, people started paying, seems to be working going forward. We did talk to our collection agency, who told us that Florida state law says if it's more than five years old, we can't pursue it. So that was one bucket. And then in between was everything which I call politically sensitive. Politically sensitive. And we've had lots of discussions about how to handle those. And my feeling was, as the mayor has mentioned, I've been doing accounting for 50 years. Write-offs are a very sensitive point. We want to send a message that you must pay the city. Right. And that if you don't, there are penalties. Okay. So we talked about that. And my idea was that if someone doesn't pay us back, whether it's old because legally they are not required to pay us back, or whether they just don't pay, that there should be penalties. I agree. And I think when we talk about they didn't expect to pay, I think that changed two years ago when the commission changed the rules, that instead of the city manager being able to write off amounts at their own pen, and now it had to go before commission, there was a dilemma. So many of the people who signed up for projects before then, the city manager, and again, some of this goes obviously before Mr. Moore's history with the city, could just say, no, you don't have to pay. And maybe that's what their expectations were. Maybe that's why there were problems. Okay. So my idea, there's an old accounting trick. When you write off receivables, you keep it on the books for a penny. That way you have the name of the account so that you know there was a debt there that was not paid. So financially, we write it off. We take the expense. But we know who these people are. We then tried to look at them, and the penalties I had were that they shall not be allowed to book a new special project. They should not be allowed to get a grant from the commission for nonprofits because we're mostly dealing with nonprofits. And I found out from Jerry that Neighborhood and Community Services gives grants to nonprofits. Right. And she said, show me the list. I'll put them on some restricted list. So it's sort of we don't like customers of ours arbitraging. Well, we'll screw the city in one area, and they're so stupid. They don't talk to each other, and they don't coordinate, and there's no penalty. And we worked with Allie and Sherry to say if someone's on that bad list, that they shouldn't be allowed for a new project. You've heard that with phishing emails. Yes. The bad guys sometimes just change a letter or a number. We found people applying for special projects that were on the bad list who tried to change a letter or a number because we're so stupid and we don't catch anything. They caught them. Okay, so there's obviously intent to defraud the city and everything else. Let me talk about OSS. When someone says to me, here are my records. You see, we paid and we credited our payable. We debited our payable. We paid. When I have a dispute with a vendor and I say to the credit card company, I already paid, I have to show them a cancel check or a wire transfer. My internal accounting records are meaningless. Sherry worked long and hard with OSS and they gave us internal accounting records, which proves nothing. A payment voucher doesn't mean it was paid. They didn't have to go to the bank to try to get those canceled checks, but they were too old. I'm sorry. Excuse me. I know that if I'm disputing an expense, I keep those records. The IRS has five years, seven years. I'm not blaming anyone. But the point is if someone, a customer of mine, can't prove that they paid. I understand the city's perspective exactly. They're just too late. No, no, that's my perspective. Right. Okay? Right. Or your perspective. So going forward, that was what I proposed. And then this went on for months and months and months. And Mr. Moore and Mr. Orris were working on how to handle this. And they came up with this final package of temporary amnesty. I don't see anything temporary about it. It's permanent forever. Maybe it's one time. And that's what your intent was, was one time only. You get an amnesty now, never to be done in the future. Ridiculous. That's fine. But it was their proposal as chief financial officer, steward of our funds, looking at budgets where we're trying to balance the many more demands for funding sources than we have money. And it's a juggling act, right? Like a good contract. If everybody's just a little upset, we're doing good. And just tonight, I've heard about five different things that need resources and is under-resourced. Because I have stated that I feel before we even go to cost reductions, which might affect the level of service, we should be looking at collecting all of the monies that are owed to the city and aggressively setting up policies and procedures to implement them. Thank you. I agree with you. So that's my perspective. Which we have successfully and productively implemented policies and procedures, which have served the city quite well over the last couple years. Much of this goes back previous years. And as you stated, we're working to get our handle, get our arms around it to the extent possible. So some suggestions in response. I'm really worried about the city's record. I'm really worried about before you all got here. Some of these are very recent. 24, 25. Well, the 24, 25, I don't know. We're all set for 20, 25. Well, the Roots Cultural Arts Fed is $23,000. I don't know anything about that. I think I probably actually went to it. I know I went to it. It was on the thing. My recommendation, just to be more complete, was that we shouldn't just look at the name of the institution. We should look at the key individuals who are involved with that institution. Which is part of the process. Oh, I'm agreeing. That's a future thing. So that they can't just change the names or set up a new nonprofit so that, again, I don't want to look stupid that one side of the house is not getting paid, and yet we're not enforcing any pain or discipline on that non-performance. Look, notwithstanding what we decide with respect to the amnesty or not, that has to be the rule. And ladies and gentlemen, we have to be able to know that the managers, the Thundercie of an LLC, because I changed the name to TFC LLC 1, and I come back next year with TFC LLC 2. It's been going on the whole time. Mr. Mayor, we've implemented that. That's actually part of the process to incorporate that. That's all a part of the mix as well. So all those points, all those practices have been implemented. We should put this to a vote. Go ahead. What's the other issue? Well, there's another issue. Lynn Jelen said that we cannot do a group approval. This is at one point during this process. We have to go name by name and ask each commissioner if they have any conflict of interest with the entity. Well, that's a good idea. We all know one entity where there was a conflict, and Ms. Burns has excused herself. But I've been involved in securities offerings where people have to attest that they are qualified investors. And I have to go name by name. And if they don't qualify, I have to say, sorry, I'm not selling stock to you. But if you don't ask the question, you never get the answer. And I was very disappointed to hear that that process wasn't being followed because we don't know who else might have a conflict of interest, which affects everything. I'll just say for the record, I don't have any conflict of interest. Yeah, I don't think I, well. But I thank you and appreciate that consideration. I think in the last five years, I don't have a conflict. But it's the right question. I go back to my comment about collection agencies, at least for the current debts. Why don't we give this to a collection agency to go after these people? Because I know the game. They change LLC. They change the name of the company. But the collection agencies have kind of been around the block on this stuff. Well, the current ones we're collecting, so we don't have a problem. The old ones we can't. So we're talking about the middle ones. This is the proposal that has been presented. Yeah. If I may just add a couple things. One, finance has a seat on CTAC, and they are to review that. That's one of the reasons why we're catching them. Along with risk management, they're also now there for various reasons. I don't understand what you're talking about. Is this still the conspiracy where not-for-profits are changing their name? I didn't hear you properly. Yeah. So the intent is there is a seat for the finance department. Wait a minute. CTAC has finance? Yes. Okay. Special Events Technical Advisory Committee. Got it. Okay. I'm sorry. Sherry gets the agenda. She reviews, and that's how she's caught some of this. Who invited her? She's been on the list for quite a while. I haven't had an opportunity. Oh, gentlemen. We'll deal with that as we engage in terms of operations. But that's why those have been caught here is she gets the agenda. She reviews them. Gentlemen, I like to keep the focus for the City Commission. We've had many discussions, many gyrations in this regard. Much clarity has been achieved. Policies have been working quite well since simplifying them in the fall of 2024. Are you giving amnesty and then allowing people to have other events? Is that how this is going to work? If they participate, yes, they would be reinstated. Although, as I mentioned, if they're over and over and over and over, throw them out. I'm out of favor. Sorry. Yeah. I think if you haven't paid your bills, we aren't going to do any more business with you. Why would we suddenly trust you? You wouldn't do that in your personal life. Like, no, I think if they're on this list, they refuse to pay the bill or they've changed their LLC. We don't. No, you can't do an event here. Sorry. Do you want me to make a motion to deny approval of resolution number? We're not finished yet, but when we get there. There's no resolution. Let me ask. Oh, sorry. Does it make a difference if we're saying that the amnesty amount is in 10 percent, but if they pay 50 percent? No. Is there a number out there that is acceptable? Well, the thing is, you guys, we're talking about not-for-profits. Like, everybody here did something for the community. It's fraud. It's fraud. Is it fraud? It's fraud. Is it fraud, Commissioner? No, it is fraud. If they didn't know that they had to pay $1,400 to put trunk or treat out in the back of the funeral home? If they didn't know, I get over it. Well, how can you attest to whether they do or not? Well, how can you attest that they don't know? Because that's the narrative. They're not paying their bills. We knew that they weren't being told. And some of them weren't even invoiced. They're not paying their bills. If they weren't invoiced, how would they know they had a bill? Ladies and gentlemen. They got an invoice at some point. Ladies and gentlemen. They did. Everybody on there got an invoice. Yes, yes. Mr. Moore. Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to move forward. My interest is to not create static or discord in any way. That's never been the intent. Concerns have been brought to the attention. They've been presented to the commission early 2026. And we made a commitment to try to evaluate different opportunities to be responsive and attentive in this regard. We work closely with the Department of Finance, the Office of the City Manager. Everybody worked collaboratively to try to attempt to come up with some approaches that may make sense in this regard. Commissioner Cossel, you talked about the five-year-older ability to write off. I think that's true. And now we'll see if that is defunct, you can write it off. If the person has passed on, as someone discussed, you can write it off. You have write-off ability. So this is just a way to excuse people, and I'm going to say no disrespect, and everyone's going to say it's disrespectful, who should know enough that they owe the money, who have had many, many, many events. It's not one event. It's numerous events. And know the process. And who have come accustomed to getting things written off, know that is what was going on. Does the city have a write-off policy that they've done in the past? Yes, they do, Judy. I'm not familiar with it. Well, ask Mr. Moore. He probably is. The write-off policy is simply what we just talked about, five years or older, write-off of the party. This is making a special event. Or is that because it's uncollectible? Because if I may, if I may. The problem you're going to wind up with what you're suggesting is that nobody's ever going to pay their bills anymore because we go to this goofy little process and everything gets written off. Well, I don't think that, first of all. That's what's going to happen. First of all, I don't think we're establishing a rule now where that wouldn't happen. Are we a not-for-profit? Because we're going to be getting deposits. Secondly, my issue is that I think these people who were on the list got used to not having to pay, whether it was the city's fault or their fault or something. Right. And, you know, maybe they were led to believe they wouldn't have to pay. Maybe they thought that it was going to be something else. I think the city should have been, I guess what I'm saying is I think the city should have been trying much earlier in time to affect these collections, okay? Now we're going back to people of four or five years ago, and I always say, well, you know, at some point, you know, that's the dilemma I'm having because, I mean, the recent ones I really have no issues with. But when you have, I mean, I don't know what was said to any one of these entities that applied to these permits to do their event. I have no idea. I don't know when they got their bills. I don't know if they got their bills. Some said they never got bills. That would not terribly surprise me at the way the city used to be run. That would not surprise me. I mean, my God, we had the water problem. We learned a lot about, you know, those people not getting bills. There was a time when people were stealing checks out of our mailbox. All right, no, I'm saying that could be a number of really modified-y reasons. I mean, I'm not saying that any of these was delicious or. . . Ladies and gentlemen, to cut to the quick, I'm not sensing any interest in proceeding in this regard, so I'd like to simply leave it at that. On the shelf again? No, and I won't be on the shelf again. So five years over, we proceed administratively with the Red Ops based on the application of law, or if there's deceased leadership involved in any particular organization, we would follow that logic. I'm not. . . Again, my interest. . . My only other . . . if I may, Commissioner, please. The only other thought. . . The question came up with respect to the amnesty consideration, if somebody would have, or an organization would have the ability to come back and do business with the city, the initial thinking was, yes. So the answer would that be no. So one other potential consideration, if there is some sense of an amnesty just to close out the balance in that regard, then they will no longer have the ability as an additional criteria to participate with the city of Derry Beach in this regard. I think the ones within the last five years, it becomes a collectability. I think we should try to attempt to collect. If they truly can't collect, then they can come back and we can deal with the write-off or we can deal with something like that. I don't know whether any of these entities actually have the ability. I mean, I'm sure the Palm Beach County Sports Commission. . . . Well, that was 2017. I'm sure they would have had $177. But, you know, whether any one of these others from 23, 23, which is some of them is $150 or $1,800 or $539. $7,000. We don't know. Some of them are high. Look at that. I mean, I said some of them are high. So, Mayor. Mayor. And then review them on a case-by-case basis as opposed to just a blanket amnesty. So why don't we do this? Why don't. . . And everything older than five years is going to be written off. And they will not have the ability to. . . We can't collect them anyway. We can't collect and they're not going to have the ability to come forward. I think anyone we write off has to go on a no. . . I mean, if the entity no longer exists or someone passed away. . . Right. But some of those five-year write-offs are for entities that are still currently. And if you look at. . . Excuse me. When we talk about someone passing away. . . My experience is that. . . The policy shouldn't be in place retroactively. Wait. Let's just. . . The policy of if we write it off, if it's older than five years. . . . Oh, I understand. You'll never be able to do business with the city again. I mean, these are people trying to do good things. What if they have to come before the city commission before they can submit an application. And you'll consider it on a case-by-case basis. So if we write you off because it's uncollectible or for whatever reason it's written off. . . If they want to submit an application to the city for an event. . . They have to come before the city commission and seek permission before they can submit their application. That's fair. That's fair. And that's a case-by-case analysis. That's fine. That's what I said. On a case-by-case basis, I think any one of these entities may have a good reason. I mean, maybe we're wrong. And then if they're within the five years, we'll send it to the collections agency. If they can't collect it, we'll bring it back. Maybe try voicing them first, yeah. We've done that already. The five-year ones, I think, are a little bit under a new administration. Okay. So if it's within the five years, we'll send it to the collections agency. If they're unable to collect it, we'll bring it back to the city commission with a resolution asking to write it off. And we'll explain the reasons why. Same thing. They'll be on that list. And if they want to do an event, they have to come before the city commission. And then. . . Okay. They can offer to settle with the collection agency, which they'll deal with. Right. Exactly. Exactly. So, you know, I mean. . . So is that a fair resolution? Because I don't want us to be involved in every one of these. . . Understood. I know it's a little special. Well, and we'll memorialize this so that everyone's clear. I would just point out that when you talk about a deceased, normally that's an individual debt. Right. That you don't burden the heirs. These are institutions with unlimited life. Just because a senior person died, it doesn't absolve the requirement that the institution. . . I recognize some of the older ones. A lot of these entities were one person. They might have been. That's fine. Okay. Do we have your direction? Wait. Can we move on? Do you have your direction? Okay. So we have a consensus to do. . . We're writing off the rules for five years. If they want to come back, even if they've been written off, they have to come back to the commission to get, you know, to be put back into whatever it is. And meanwhile, the other ones are going to be sending to try and perfect collections, which we can deal with on a case-by-case basis as to whether or not they're collectible or not. And it's the same thing. If they're in collections, then they're not. . . And if they owe us money and they can't come back until they satisfy their debt. I understand. Correct. The five-year is right. Mayor, if I may real quick, just to clarify, in the backup is a copy of the city's receivables policy. The policy simply states staff can write off, without any other approvals, up to $10. Beyond $10, it must be the commission that approves it. I'll give you the $10. Just wanted to let you know. You want to write off a. . . It would not bother me for the half an hour. I just wanted to clarify that point so you're aware of it. Okay. Well, yeah. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you. We'll proceed with the direction having been outlined. Appreciate everybody. Finance, Office of the City Manager, Office of the City Attorney. We take it from there. Thank you, Mr. Martin. So thank you. Thank you, ma'am. Thank you very much. Okay. Item 7C, Review of the Fire Rescue Department Educational Incentives. And this will be Elena Georgiev. Yeah. Or Elena. Great. Good evening, Mayor, Commissioners. Elena Georgiev, City Auditor. The report before you presents the results of the review of educational incentive compensation payments to fire department command staff. This review was initiated at the request of the city manager to determine why certain members of fire command staff were receiving these payments and what supported their continuation. The review examined records related to the five current members of fire command staff. The records showed that three of the five employees did, in fact, receive these payments and two did not. Although the three employees had different compensation histories, the common issue was that those payments continued after those employees were promoted into command positions, not covered by the supervisory collective bargaining agreement. So the review identified the weakness in how city educational incentive payments were administered when employees changed positions. She's already been back and left. Although the supervisory agreements established eligibility criteria for covered employees, the process did not consistently ensure that eligibility was reassessed and documented when an employee is promoted into a position not covered by the supervisory collective bargaining agreement. There are several departments that touched this process, and management has been made aware of the issue, and they are already taking proactive measures to implement changes, and internal audit will evaluate the corrective actions as part of the future follow-up process. No commission action is requested at this time. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. To the commission. Commissioner Markert? Commissioner Monica? Thank you very much for your presentation. I heard it earlier, but thank you very much. Commissioner Casale? Sure. So you said it only affected a small group of people, but are we clear that that's the case across the board, or we're not sure? Because there was that talk about incentives, and were they pensionable, or were they not pensionable? And are we clear on that, or are you continuing to work on that to figure out if we're... This particular review focused on a small group of employees, the current command staff. Right. Trying to determine, well, reviewing the current documents was not sufficient to ascertain the history and how these payments came to be. Right. So as part of my process, I went back a certain number of years, and I know that there were others who received these benefits. Right. But again, this review focused particularly on current command staff. This is the thing that worries me, and I want to thank you, Mr. Martin, because I know you participated in this as well. When I, 2021, right, or around the time that you came on board, I had asked my colleagues for a consensus to review the payroll process for two departments, the fire and the police. Not because there was a question of, is there a problem that someone's doing something, but because of things like this, slip-ups where you're attributing things to pension, and there's a component, a financial component, a loss to the taxpayers, that shouldn't be there. And then we found out about the Highland Beach. You know, I wished that we had, I had gotten a consensus and we had done a thorough review of that department at the time. Unfortunately, I didn't. But here we are today. I appreciate you, Mr. Martin, for looking. And, you know, I think we just have to be really diligent when we're involved in these contracts that are extensive with so many components that we're properly safeguarding the residents and that we are not, you know, paying for things we don't need to be. Because once you create that over a long period of time, now we can't get that money back. We don't know actually how many people over years and years and years. And now the question going forward is people are accustomed to that benefit and they want it. So now that's another item we'll be negotiating in the future. But thank you for the report. I appreciate it. Thank you, Mr. Moore, and thank you, Chief Martin, for your diligence. Thank you. That's great. Thank you very much. Can we take a five – I've been asked if we can take a five – I hate to ask people who are all yawning in the front seat already. Can we take a – we're going to take a five-minute break. So it's 8.05. We're going to recommence at 8.10. Good evening. We are re-adjourning. I mean, we are restarting at 8.12, having stopped at 8.05. So here we go. Next item on the agenda is the 7E. Is it 7D? 7 who? D as in dog. 7D as in dog. Okay, Resolution 117-26, if the City Attorney could kindly read the resolution into the record. A resolution of the City Commission of the City of Delray Beach, Florida, approving a conditional use to allow outdoor dining at night associated with restaurants within the five existing historic structures along South Swinton Avenue, Block 61, for the project known as Sunny Village, as more particularly described herein, pursuant to land development and regulations of the Code of Ordinances and the comprehensive plan of the City of Delray Beach, providing an effective date and further purposes. This is a quasi-judicial hearing. Anyone here wishing to speak on this item, if you could please rise and be sworn to by the clerk. In fact, I shouldn't. In fact, hold on one second. Hold on, because we have several quasi-judiciales. I'm going to get you all sworn in at the same time. 7D, 7E, which is the two lots at 14 George Bush. 7F, which is 46 Marine Way. Oh, no, that's not. Excuse me. Oh, yeah, it is. Yes, yes, yes, correct. And? 7G. 7G. Conditional use with waivers. And that's it. So anyone who wants you to speak on those four items, please stand and get sworn to by the clerk. By the authority vested in me as a notary of the state of Florida, do you swear or affirm that the testimony you're about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? I do. Thank you all very much. We are ready to... Let me just explain how the quasi-judicial works. The hearing will be conducted in accordance with the quasi-judicial rules. The applicant in the city shall be allowed 15 minutes each to present their case The public shall be allowed to speak for three minutes each or a maximum of six minutes If the person represents an organization or a group of people who are present but agree not to speak The city commission and staff and the applicant may be allowed to cross-examine a witness The city or the applicant will be allowed to offer rebuttal testimony The decision to approve or deny an application may not be legally made upon personal views as to whether the project is a good project or not Nor may a decision be based on the numbers of citizens who support or pose a particular project The law requires that all decisions must be made on the basis of whether the project meets the requirements of law The comprehensive plan and the land development regulations if the city could please enter the file project file into the record And the ingenious development services director for the record and I'm entering file PZ 492 dash 2026 Thank you very much Disclosure of ex parte communications to the to the Commission any x on we're on item 7d None for me brief conversation with staff None for me None None Great okay Now the presentation of the case to these to the there we go to the applicant Good evening Mike Covelli 1209 South Swinton 9133444 tonight you have an item before you for a conditional use this is within the sunday village project for evening dining This is in the OSHA district and in the OSHA district if you want to have dining after After hours you have to have a conditional use and our intent is to go from dusk to midnight This is the area that the conditional use would be covering is for the historical homes that were restored This is a copy out of the certified plan You see the areas in yellow that were part of the approval of the site plan and during the reconstruction Those yellow areas are decks porches and Patios that were built as part of the construction, so we're not adding anything more to it Also understand that outdoor dining is allowed in these areas during the daytime hours We're only asking to get this will use to extend that to midnight I'm going to show you some images of what these areas look like starting with building a on the left and going to the south to G Here's building a we're going to basically be using the front porch and the back porches for the outdoor dining This is building C which Is using the northern side of the building and it wraps a little around to the set of the rear of the building Building E is Cathcart House. There is a large patio in the front a A patio in the rear off of the pedestrian Paseo and some of the porches will be used for outdoor dining on the on this building And then buildings B and F Were combined with a breezeway and this is on a raised deck that is in the front Goes through the breezeway to a small deck in the back as you can see in the lower right hand image And then finally at the very south end There's a patio in the front of building G and a small raised Deck in the rear so these are the areas that would be utilized for the evening dining with a restriction till midnight when looking at Conditional use there are some findings that need to be made The first one is section 3.1.1 and for the sake of it's sake of expediency I'm not going to go through all these there's four items One is the land use map the others concurrency The others consistently the comp plan and the others compliance with LDRs Through the the and I'm not gonna go through these because through the site plan process all of these were vetted and they were found to be in compliance Then the other section for conditional use is section 2.4.1.1 which basically has two criteria One is that the approval of the conditional use won't detrimentally have an effect on the stability of the neighborhood I think quite the contrary everyone has seen the the evolution of of the project and bringing Some night dining into the area will actually bring more people in it would create natural surveillance It also is an economic boost so it will definitely help the stability of the neighborhood and Then it won't hinder development or redevelopment in nearby area And I think this is all in turn of the project so you're not going to have any hindrance if anything It will it will be a catalyst for other redevelopment in the area so Positives can findings can be made for all of these items and I would appreciate if you would give us an approval if you have any questions I'm happy to answer right thank you very much great. I don't I don't have a lot to add, but I am going to Just give you a little bit more. I think you've gotten a good overview of the application The reason that outdoor dining at night is a conditional use is because OSHA is a mix of homes And also, I'm not sure where my presentation is Thank you So you've gotten a good overview of where it is and the houses and if you haven't seen the renovations You know, this is the part of Sunday Village. I think that everyone can universally be proud of and it's taken a lot of work so on both staff and thankfully peps with Mike's help and Gensler I believe was the architect Outdoor dining at night is conditional The there is nothing changing in terms of maybe more parking because they are already parked for daytime use the issue is that ultimately you have to make sure that That that activity into the evening up until midnight is not going to bother nearby residents So I just wanted to give you a slide that shows that sort of the closest residents To be open later than midnight. They they are within 250 feet of coda, but it depends on if they're residentially so I think there are So any later than midnight it would come back to you so this approval is to allow this conditional uses in the end and I think we don't expect it to be a problem that if there is an acoustical problem sound does move around as We know from some of our other outdoor uses if there is a problem Conditional uses can be revoked or adjusted if there's an impact that can't be Rectified so I think that you know approving this comes with that safeguard So this is the only thing I wanted to add to mr. Covelli's analysis Ultimately, I agree that the catalyst of Sunday Village could help the properties that are on the east side of Swinton perhaps move towards a similar renovation, so we're here if you have any questions also The process for this it goes through HPB first and they recommended the planning board and the planning board makes a recommendation of this board And both boards were unanimous and that we're in recommending approval of the request great. Thank you very much This is a public hearing any members of the public wishing to speak on this application Please come to the lectern give your name and address and you will have three minutes George long 46 North Swinton I am the closest neighbor who has been to the meetings where they discussed the Nighttime dining it was at the historic preservation board and I'm all for it. What the hell? I mean really There's a commercial property across the street that role nice historic houses that have to stay there Whatever and then behind that you have to store buildings the office buildings, so you have a lot of blockage You know as you're not gonna have a problem with it and normally Having a little nighttime dining out there is a good thing Although it's gonna be way past my bedtime. Thank you. Thank you very much. Are there any other members of the public wishing to speak? Seeing none public comment is closed. Is there any rebuttal from the applicant to the city of the city to the applicant any questions? Okay, well seeing none Then it's to the Commission Commissioner Malika no comment very excited for this to open Commissioner marker ready to vote Commissioner ready to support I was gonna say I am also ready but can I'm gonna take one moment and say happy birthday to mr. Long. Mr. Long is so dedicated He's here with us on his birthday. Thank you very much. How old mr. Long is it 85? Yeah, okay He forgot. There you go. So happy happy birthday I Too but it's what I think this was a great reuse of this. I mean we all I don't know Most of you remember what these were like before it got in to get done and I mean it's been it's been a great Such a positive development for that part of swimming in this in part of the city. So I just think it's great. So Motion to approve resolution number 117-26. Oh, I thought you said something else you wanted to say. No, she's just ready to go. So ready Do we have a second? Do we have a second? Would you please call the roll? Deputy Vice Mayor Markert. Yes. Deputy Vice Mayor Markert. Yes. Commissioner Mollica. Yes. Commissioner Cassel. Yes. Vice Mayor Burns. Yes. Mayor Kearney. Yes. Motion passed. Well done. Thank you very much. Look forward to look forward to I'd like that one to the one called the drinking pig and what was the other one called? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what they're gonna be but drinking pig. Taco place. Looking forward to the tacos. It's a barbecue place. It's a barbecue. Looking forward to it. Item 7F. Resolution number 126-26. The resolution of the City Commission of the City of Delray Beach, Florida. Approving waivers to the minimum lot size requirement for two lots located at 14 George Bush Boulevard. As more particularly described herein. Providing an effective date and further purposes. Okay. Reminding anyone who's speaking on this. If you've not been sworn in. Everyone been sworn in. Yes. Okay. If you could please enter this project file into the record. Okay. I would like to enter three files into the record. File number PZ 00795-2026 and then HP 293-2025 and HP 298-2025. Thank you. Perfect. Thank you very much. Any ex parte communications? None. I actually did speak to one of the neighbors who was very in favor of it and they actually wrote us a letter which I didn't realize it was the same one when they sent the letter. And there are some stuff that I received on the server about this. I'm sorry. Same. Those items. I think I did get an email about it. Yes. I think we got a paper document handed to us as well on the dais. Okay. Great. To the applicant. Hi. I'm Kim Dwyer. I live at 109 Dixie Boulevard in the Delida Park Historic District. I've been a resident of Delray Beach for over 35 years. I didn't move here as a baby but will pretend I did. My husband has lived here for over 40 years just so everybody knows he's older than me because everyone thinks he's younger. Thank you for identifying yourself certs. And we live, like I said, we live in the Delida Park Historic District and we've lived there for over, well, for just about 20 years. I was on a small task force that was in front of the CRA back in 2010, a team of residents who spearheaded the Second Avenue beautification project. My husband and I have divided property before in Delida. It has had a really great effect on the community. We're very sensitive to what goes on there. It's our home. And we were actually asked to take on this project. We started this project over a year ago working with staff and with architects. And things got turned around a little bit as far as the process just recently. And staff has been great at hustling to get us on the right meetings at the right time. So I will say that we only took ownership of the property in June. And the only reason that's important is when you see in the comments about the overgrown trees and the overgrown this and that, we've only actually been the owners since June. So we're already addressing that with landscapers, et cetera. So that will be addressed. Okay. So what's in front of you tonight? This is for two waivers to allow a 5% reduction from 9,500 square feet for the lot size to 9,000. The width that's required for R1AA is 75. That will be met. The depth is 100. Ours is 120. And all other set packs with our designs are going to be met. There are no other setbacks or variances asked for or waivers. Just this one. We are not requesting to go back to the three original 50-foot lots. We tried that once back in 2006, and it didn't work very well when we got to commission. They prefer 75 by 100 or more. And with your approval tonight, the designs are ready and will return to HPB. You will not see them tonight. We will not be talking about COAs or the current structure. Just the division of the property. Okay. So then we'll go back to HPB for all the appropriate votes, and they'll have their time with that. So we did go to HPB two weeks ago. Again, thank you for staff for hustling this through. It was unanimously voted yes by all of the members of the HPB board that night, and they found the top four things. And then now tonight it's necessary. We're asking you to find it necessary and appropriate to create this nonconformity. Okay. So I'm going to go back in history for just a second. Staff may go back a little bit more than me. This is Delita Park. It was originally laid out in 50- and 60-foot lots for the most part. I want to point out the top little square up here. Those are the three lots that we're talking about, which are unified, and they're now one parcel. And I consider this the northeast section. All of these lots were platted the same, 50-foot north and south, 60-feet west and east. This section down here on Dixie Boulevard, which is where we live, is called, staff will refer to it as the estate section, much deeper lots. Same width, but they just are much deeper. So when this was platted, we didn't have the current zoning, which is R1AA in this part of the neighborhood. There is other platting, other zoning in other parts of the neighborhood where they can actually have smaller lots. But in this part, it's R1AA. And so it's when you take two lots, three lots, and, like I said, the way we're dividing it, it's impossible to get to the 9,500 with the way that just to draw a line down the middle. So I'll take you through that. This is the original. As it was platted, there is a structure on it now. We'll address that at HPB. It sits all the way at the back of the property, four feet from the back. If you drove by, you'll know this property. It sits so far back from the road. The front door, which is right down here, is actually 85 feet from the property line. The garage, which is up here, sits 65 feet from the property line. This was something that there were at least seven people that spoke from, and I have some of their comments because I took them off the recording. But there were seven people who spoke, and that's the biggest thing they talked about is it's just missing. It's just empty. It's vacant. And so we'll talk about that. But what's most appropriate right now is the next slide, which I think a picture paints, you know, is worth a thousand words. So this is the current streetscape. All right. Up at the top, what's unique about George Bush, you may not have known, is that the north section of George Bush up here is not historic. That is – those are not kept to the historic guidelines, just R-1-AA. This is the side of the street we're talking about. This big blue block is the parcel that we're talking about. And now I'm going to take you through. These are the two blocks that I mentioned are so similar to each other. And if you'll notice, the 50-foot lots are denoted by the yellow lines. Those are the traditional lots. Some have been combined to make a 100-foot lot. So it's exactly the trash can you're taking out for this block. And there's just – these, again, took these directly. They were recorded from the quotes. These are all of the neighbors that came out to speak, including our own George Long, in favor of this dividing of these two lots. And one of those neighbors is also here tonight, Scott, who doesn't want to speak. Again, he raised his hand, but he supports the division and has taken the time to come. The other neighbors sent letters, et cetera. And you also got letters from neighbors on Dixie Boulevard who know what we've done in the past. So that's it. Thank you. All right. Thank you very much to the city. Sorry, I hit it. Comma's going to kill me. Okay. Okay. So I do want to be clear because there was a typo on the agenda cover memo. You are being asked to approve two lots that are 9,000 square feet, where the current requirement is 9,500 square feet. So this is the lot in question. I think you got a pretty good overview of the blocks. You can see there's a pretty wide variety of blocks, and this is one of the remaining estate lots in the area. We're on a little bit of a chicken and an egg issue because to subdivide the lots as requested, the existing house is going to be in the middle. So at the same time, you're going to bring in two houses, spend a lot of time and money and effort designing the two infill houses, and you don't know whether you can split the lots and to know where staff should be looking at the setbacks. And so ultimately, we wanted to just start with, is the commission going to find it necessary and appropriate to split the property into lots that are this size? If that was off the table, then the demolition and other things would be, and certainly two infill houses, would not be what we would be discussing. So we're trying to figure out how to help them move forward with some level of confidence with the two applications that they want to make. So the original plat was divided into 50-foot wide lots. Most people bought a couple, maybe two, maybe three. Some people didn't buy it, you know, worked off of one. And the difference is, is that the only zoning district that you can revert back to that original 50-foot wide plat is R1A, not R1AA, not R1AA, none of the other ones. We have a regulation that says that, you know, any lot that's created after October 1, 1990, has to comply with the minimum lot area, which is why you're seeing waivers and you're being asked to make a decision whether you think it is necessary and appropriate to subdivide this lot in this request. So the surrounding areas, like I said, they are a mix. There are two that exceed the minimum. There are some that are only 50 feet wide and 6,000 square feet that are well below. So the neighborhood is a mix. It's characterized by a mix. The mix of lot sizes is representative of the historic pattern. The waivers don't create a condition that is contrary to that, that are requested. However, it does require demolition of the existing historic building. That will come to you as part of the COA applications for the new lots. At the very least, you will see them on the appealable report. And then from there, you would have purview over the historic preservation board's decision regarding the demolition and any new construction. So, again, there are several standards. You have a staff report that is very thorough to look to regarding massing and scale and all of those things. Generally, we don't recommend tearing down a contributing structure to do something else. But, again, the demolition itself will be purviewed for that structure and its integrity and its changes and its condition by the board as part of the other applications. We have a performance measure not to reduce the number of contributing structures. And, ultimately, the findings you need to make are the standard waiver findings that you're not going to adversely affect the neighbor, that it's not a special privilege, and then, ultimately, that dividing the lots is necessary and appropriate. In this situation, you're creating a nonconformity. There are only 9,000 instead of 9,500, and if it's appropriate in this area. On August 5th, the Historic Preservation Board recommended approval unanimously. We're here if you have any questions. Thank you very much. This is a public hearing. Any members of the public wishing to address the commission on this application, please come to the lectern. Give your name and address for the record, and you will each have three minutes. Question 1, 9. No, 46 North Swinton. There should be no question about this, but just in case, I'd like to say you should prove this. There's no question about it. All you have to do is stand there, look at that, and you'll see a big lot, 150 feet, and you can also think in terms of 75-foot lots, and it makes sense. But I also understand there are some historic preservation things that you look at. Like, at one time, there was big lots there and little houses and stuff like that, but this is a go, and I just want to verify that, just in case. Thank you. Thank you very much. Are there any other members of the public wishing to address the commission? Seeing none, public comment is closed. Is there any cross-examination from the city to the applicant or the applicant to the city? Any questions? No? Is anyone moving there? No? Okay, that's fine. Then to the commission, Commissioner Burns. I don't have any questions. I looked over the information, and it was adequately presented. I'm ready to support it. Commissioner Casale. Me too. Commissioner Markert. Ready to vote. Commissioner Malika. I'm good. I think the applicant should, like, represent all builders because you presented so beautifully, so thank you. I'll make a motion to approve Resolution No. 126-26. I'll second. For the record, I approve it, too, before I make my comments. I'm sorry. I'm trying to move this along. If the clerk could please call the roll? Commissioner Malika. Yes. Commissioner Casale. Yes. Vice Mayor Burns. Yes. Mayor Carney. Yes. Deputy Vice Mayor Markert. Yes. Motion passed. Great. Well done. That position he's talking about is not a paid position. I just want to warn you ahead of time. Neither is this. Neither is this. Okay. Thank you very much. Okay. Item 7G. If the city attorney could read. Resolution No. 127-26, a resolution of the City Commission of the City of Dowery Beach, Florida. I think we're on F. We're on F, not G. It's former. Oh, it was renumbered. I apologize. It's former. I apologize. Yes. I'm sorry. It was renumbered. That's correct. Approving a Certificate of Appropriateness pursuant to Section 2412A5 of the Land Development Regulations, LDR. Approving a demolition pursuant to LDR Section 451F6. Approving a vertical relocation pursuant to LDR Section 451E6B1. Approving variances to Section 434K to reduce the front and side interior setbacks for the structure. And approving waivers to the visual compatibility standards in the LDR Sections 451E7A1 and 451E7M6 for the property located at 46 Marine Way, as more particularly described herein, providing an effective date, and for other purposes. Great. I'm reminding everyone this is a quasi-judicial hearing. If you intend to speak on this, is there anyone who speaks on this and who has not been sworn in by the clerk? Okay. Oh, you wish to speak? Okay. Please be sworn in by the clerk. If you're investing in me, as a mother of the state of Florida, do you swear or affirm that the testimony you're about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing? Thank you very much. Any ex parte communications? No. None for me. Yes. I spoke to the applicant. I spoke to staff. I mean, across the board from the beginning of this, I've spoken to a lot of residents. Yes. This is one we've had before us before. So, yeah. Not this time, but I've spoken to someone in reference to this before. Similar to Angela and I do. There's some stuff, letters that came in on the server. Yep. I spoke to the applicant and visited the property some time ago and spoke to Kristen Finn and Jim Chard. I think we all visited the property together. I have not spoken to anybody on this particular item since the last time we had this particular item in which there were numerous calls, except I do think there are some items on the server. So, with that disclosure, if the applicant ready to present the case. I am. Would you like me to enter the file? Oh, yes. Would you please enter the file into the record? Anthea Geniotis, Development Services Director, and I'd like to enter file 544-2026 into the record. Thank you very much. To the applicant. My name is Dan Edwards. I'm the owner of the property. I'm here substituting for my daughter, who is home pregnant this evening. So, with my second grandchild. Good reason. So, I moved to Delray Beach in 2003. My kids went to St. Vincent School. My son, David, who's here. My daughter, Kay. So, I've been a resident for about 23 years. Preservation and progress do not have to be at odds, as we saw the beautiful project of Sunday Village. Responsible change allows us to protect the character of historic homes while making thoughtful updates to ensure continued life, longevity, with 2026 living expectations. And that's the subject of this. I'm looking for universal or unilateral approval by all of you tonight. I'd like everybody in agreement on this project, because it's the right thing to do. This is the view of what I feel Marine Way could look like in the next several years. Everybody to the north of me and the south of me has the rights to lift their homes with FEMA, which is currently 8 plus 1, which is 9. So, this actual picture here, which is beautiful, by the way, is what could be on Marine Way versus the dilapidated homes that are there now. I happen to be the one direct center to the left of me. Unfortunately, through the process, AJ and the owner through Roger Cope is going through a complete demolition, and equally to the home south of that. So, of these three or five homes, two are in for demo process. I am choosing preservation over demolition, and I have for three years that I've owned a home now, and I've chose preservation. If we go to the next. This was original submittal back March 5th of 2025 to the HPB on the top. With their input, we went to the lower level, and we were approved by the HPB back in 2025. Since then, it came here to commission, and it was denied, and commission had several valid concerns. The most crucial of that was the third story, which we've totally removed. There is no third story now. The second of that was the front balcony, which we've removed. The third was the side setbacks, which we've removed. The fourth was the pool being elevated. Our representative of our neighbor's grandson is here tonight, and Jeannie is our neighbor to the north. We've got all of the neighbors in favor of the new plan, which I'll show you, which is this. It's a two-story. That's the historic home that you're looking at right there. The raising of it, with staff's help and recommendations, and Michelle, thank you for your time, that is a carport now to get in behind to the garage to get the cars off the street, which was a concern when the city goes to do their seawall. So now we have a carport that comes under. We meet FEMA requirements. You're seeing 90% of the existing structure from the front. And then as we walk through, this is now compatible with 2026, and I'm the developer, and I've got well over $3 million invested, and I'll have well over $7 million in the project when it's done to bring it to market. But it's a very small kitchen in the back, as you can see. It's a five-person living room. It's an eight-person dining table, if you can fit that. I mean, that would be small, eight people. It's really a six-person table, but let's say it's eight. And that's the first floor. With the existing home, and in between the two homes, with staff's help, is what's called a hyphen. And so if somebody should want to tear down the addition that I put on in the back someday, if they did, you can leave the existing structure, the 1928 home up front. It would be remodeled and lifted to meet FEMA requirements. But if someone chose to tear down that back addition, they could, and you'd have complete separation without hyphen. Michelle, thank you for that. That was part of Michelle's architectural design. If we go to the second floor, it's a three-bedroom on the second floor. Primary bedroom is overlooking the lower pool, Julia, which I showed you. We're also not looking for a pool of variance anymore. We've shortened it up and made it smaller. It's three bedrooms at this level with a little area. I don't know how to, well, I don't know how to use this stuff. It's my daughter's department, but it's a three-bedroom. And this is the final look of what I would like. If we go into standards, oops, that was, thank you. Okay, these are the standards. We meet 1, 2, 3, 5, 9, and 10. 4, 6, 7, and 8 are not applicable to our project. We're not asking for any variances. 9 becomes the crucial one, and that's where the decision is, is to massing. If you're standing at this project, I cannot invest the money on 1,200 square feet to raise this and raise the back building. And you guys are going to see a picture from staff. You're going to see colors blue, and you're going to see colors red. You're going to see colors red that are the new additions, but you need to understand, I have the right at about 75% of those to do them anyway under FEMA. So if I wanted to take the two existing structures on the property and raise them, all the colors that are going to be in red, and you could ask staff, would really be blue. I have the rights to make them blue. But when you look at the picture, you're going to see, wow, there's a ton of red. Yeah, there is, because I'm raising it under FEMA requirements, both the front building and the back building, if I wanted to. My goal has always been preservation, not demolition. I've chosen not to join my neighbors to the south with demolition. I could have. I could have proposed that like it's been proposed on other projects this evening. There's going to be demolitions involved, but I'm not. I'm spending a lot of extra money to preserve the structure that's there. Just like I walk every day by the Sunday house to the homes that somebody made the correct decision to save those homes. They moved them. They moved them back. They're not in the front visibility anymore, but they did the right thing. And I don't know if that was you, this commission, former commission, or HPB. But whoever it was should be applauded for making a difficult decision and doing the right thing. So that's what I would like. There's the things that we meet. Also, I can go up 35 feet if we wanted to in that district. We didn't. We chose to go to 24 feet. Not only did I lower, not only did I remove the third floor completely with staff's help, I also lowered the two floors inside by a foot each to keep this under 25 feet. I'm at 24 feet total top. When I could go, if it went through a demo and my neighbors to the south, they can go 35 feet in this district. And legally pursue that. That's the codes. And I'm not. I'm requesting 24 feet. I'm requesting a two-story. I'm requesting a much smaller home than I started out three years ago. I'm trying to get the access and the cars off the street. In investing the amount of money I'm investing, I still have to worry about the flooding on the street and the tides. And for any of those that have been in Delray, and again, I've been 23 years. Some of you guys have been longer than that. It's horrible. And if you see the pictures, and Judy, thank you for seeing the house. And Julie, thank you. So this home, with nothing done, will just be rot. And we have water damage. We have termite damage. But I'm going to fix all that. So this is the hyphen. It's in between the two properties, bringing the car into the back garage. And there's the visually competitive standards. And, oh, did I have to back up? Sorry. There. And that's what I believe, hopefully, this is what I believe that Marine Village will look like when you hop on the Atlantic Lady in four years from today, which is beautiful, versus what you're looking at there now, which is terrible. So I would like a 100% yes vote from everybody up here this evening. Dan, did you miss the blue and red slide? Say it again? Did I miss the blue and red slide? You're going to see that from staff. I didn't put it in mine. But you're going to see it. And we can explain it. I didn't have that. Sorry, I was late notice when my daughter called me and said, Dad, can you fill in? I said, I'll sit right over. Thank you very much. You completed your presentation. That's my presentation. Okay, fine. To the city. Just making sure. To the city. Okay, so there actually are quite a number of actions that this application requires. So I'm going to just run through them so you're clear on what you're voting on. This is a certificate of appropriateness. It includes a demolition, which has its own findings. You have a very thorough staff report. I hope you did your homework. We're going to go quickly. A relocation, which is to elevate the existing house in its current location and construct a carport under it. And then there are two variances in waivers. So this is the property. I think you're all familiar with it. So here's, again, what we're doing. The demolition is a rear-contributing accessory structure. Vertical relocation. Two waivers, which are also related to the standard that was referenced, that then go into 451, our visual compatibility standards, specifically secondary and subordinate and the building height plane calculations. And then two variances, one to the front setback and one to the side. And I'll show you those really quickly. This is the property and kind of what it looks like today in the street with what it looks like today. So behind this hedge is this hardscape and this patio right here. This is the house. Just a couple quick images. This is the accessory structure that is proposed for demolition. Just so you have an idea on that one. And this is the current site plan. So if it's in blue, it's existing, except for the pool. The pool is in a cyan, let's say. So the proposal is to remove the hardscape here and remove the accessory structure. This is the house in its current location. It's proposed to stay there but go up and have a new carport constructed under it. So it will elevate. This structure goes away and then the new addition comes in here and a new pool beside the structure and in front of the addition. There are no waivers requested to the pool. If you were watching this progress through the board, that was no longer needed. So very quickly, here's the house. The house is required to elevate to meet flood requirements but also to save the house. It needs to go up. And while I think some of you might be surprised about the carport entry in the front, the elevation that's required is so significant that there is an opportunity to use that space to have parking off the street. And the design includes an arched entryway and those things. We can go over that if you have any questions. So, you know, again, the existing house is in blue. It goes up. And then the addition in the back is, again, on that same sort of plenum space that is not considered habitable space just to pick it up. But then it is also elevated a little bit more than what's under the original house. And the addition comes around. So I'm trying to find out if I had a better picture of that. You have a full analysis of the Secretary of the Standards, Secretary of the Interior Standards, and the staff report. We will focus just mainly on nine, again, which is the one that was referenced by the applicant. And that specifically that the new work is differentiated, which the hyphen, we agree, does achieve that. The issue, I think, to pay the most attention to is whether it is compatible in massing size and scale. There's, you know, concern about the proposed size of the rear addition, even though it is properly located behind the main house and to the side of it, it is not coming forward. When you are looking at demolition, because you are looking at demolition, these are your findings, whether or not the structure is of such interest or quality, if it's the last one of its kind, those types of things. This is a very small structure. It's less than 300 square feet. We think it was constructed prior to 1949 based on sandboard maps. However, it's not considered one of the last remaining types of its kind. It's located in the rear. It's not visible from the street. So it will not have a substantial impact if it's removed. For relocation, because lifting the original structure up is considered a relocation, there are findings that are analyzed for you as well in your staff report. Specifically, if the proposed relocation is the only practicable means of saving the structure is certainly at issue as the flooding that is ongoing is affecting the integrity of the structure. So, the contributing structure has to shift up. The property is required to go at least six and a half feet up between FEMA and the Florida building code. Our code encourages people in flood zones to add another foot, so you need to freeboard. Anything above that, that is the new zero for where we now measure building height. Basically, you can't build a habitable space lower under current flood law, so you're going to have to start here. So, the issue then is that why lose the opportunity of actually having parking on what is otherwise a very small lot? So, there's no issue with that. I believe that the base goes up a little bit higher underneath the addition. I don't know why that extra elevation needed to happen, but it's very close. I mean, you'd be dickering over a foot and a half, two feet, so it's not a lot, but we are dealing, again, with secondary subordinates, so that comes into play. There are a number of visual compatibility studies that all historic properties are held to, so we're going to pay attention to the two that are specifically requesting waivers now. Okay? So, again, this is the structure. It needs to be elevated. I think it is fair to say what – I'm sorry. Dan. I'm blanking on his last name. Edwards. I'm going to say Dan. Yes. Mr. Edwards presented that every property at some point on this site is going to have to elevate. So, our streetscape does not show that, but I think it's a valid point that that applicant has made. The issue is whether – it's basically that the addition is significantly larger and wider than the historic house, and whether or not all of this could somehow be achieved while maintaining the main house as the focal point. So, for the waivers that you have to look at – I think I'm missing slides, but that's okay. It's the usual standards that you have, whether it's going to adversely affect, if it's a special privilege, et cetera. So, these are the findings you need to do for these. This is building high plane. So, the history – if you're not familiar with the historic regulations, there are several things that are mathematical that apply. Building high plane basically strikes a line that says, this is a no-build zone. This is where it's okay to build. So, that it's a way – it's a technique of keeping the height and the scale of new projects in keeping with the street. In this case, there is no way for – excuse me, Mr. Edwards to lift this house up without going into the building high plane. It cannot be avoided. However, I think you should evaluate whether or not the addition built behind the house needs to come forward into the building high plane. We understand the main house, the back house. However, it is set back behind the house. It's further away from the street. So, this is what you need to look at for that. I think I've said all that to keep that. The second waiver is to secondary and subordinate. Addition shall be secondary and subordinate to the mousing of the historic building and shall not overwhelm the original building. You have to make a determination that this waiver is acceptable based on the findings. It is taller and wider. You've seen this before. Variances. There are two variances. Historic Preservation Board has the ability typically to grant variances. You don't have to go to a separate path to BOA. The board views it all together. However, there are different standards. So, I'm just pointing out that it's necessary to maintain the historic character, that there's a special condition or circumstance, that a literal interpretation will alter the character, that it will diminish, will not significantly diminish the character, and that it's ultimately necessary to accommodate adaptive reuse. The use is not at issue. They are keeping it as a single-family home. So, where the house is now is not within the 25-foot setback because they're picking it up and they are building a carport underneath it. The variance to maintain the building in the same position is required in the front and also on the side. The current house is only two feet, three inches from this side. I know this application stands on its own. I don't know where it went. I lost it. However, I do want to point out that the last time you saw this, the new structure was requesting the same variance as well. It has the new structure meets all of the required setbacks on the property. So, these two variances that you are considering are only for the historic house and its elevation in the carport underneath it. Front setback is 25 feet. The existing setback is the same as what is proposed to maintain the building in its current location. And that's the same thing for the side, 7-6. It kind of varies. You know, the world is not straight. So, I'm going quickly as I can. So, in summary, the application before you requests two setback variances for the original structure and the carport that will be constructed under it. Demolition of a rear contributing accessory structure. Approval of the relocation, because that comes with its own standards and requirements as well. And two waivers to visual compatibility standards, which I think are directly related to standard not at the Secretary of the Interior. That is it in a nutshell. You have a very thorough backup. And so, I think we're just here to answer questions if you have any. Great. Thank you very much. This is a public hearing. Any members of the public wishing to address the commission on this item? Please come to the lectern. You will give your name and address for the record. And you will each have three minutes. Have all of you been sworn? Yes? Yes. Okay. Thank you. My name is Julian Ray. I live at 24 Marine Way. I'm the applicant's neighbor, zip code 33483. I asked the board, the commissioners here, to approve the project. I went to the historic preservation board meeting. They discussed at length all the potential issues. The applicant has been working with the board in order to address each and every one of the issues. As far as the massing is concerned, the board said that, you know, they didn't like how big it was. It was sort of overtaking it. But in my opinion, it fits perfectly. The architectural plans place the original building at the forefront of everything. So that's what you see when you walk across the street. You see the original historic building. That extra addition is only 2,300 square feet. That's there so that way people can live in the house. It's not there to overwhelm the original historic building. And that's part of the problem with this whole lot is that it's such a small space. You kind of have to change things so that way a realistic living space can be created. And that's what the applicant has done here. He's gone before the historic preservation board before. He's gotten an approval. It's gotten denied by the commission. He's gone back to the historic preservation board, and they didn't approve of it fully that last meeting two months ago. But despite that, you all should still approve of it. The applicant's been working with the commission, with the board, to satisfy all these regulations. I'm no expert in any of this building code stuff. But at the end of the day, people want to live in Delray. And the people who really want to live in Delray and want to make sure that historic preservation is maintained should be invited. The commissioners, the historic preservation board should work with these people like this applicant in order to make this happen. And as somebody who lives on the street, I just see how dilapidated the rest of the houses are. You know, there's a real issue with the seawall. You know, I asked earlier today about that. You know, I would like some sort of semblance of that because it will impact this applicant's construction. You know, what he's asking for and what he needs to do. And so really what it boils down to is, you know, let's not push him back to the drawing board. You know, let's not push this applicant to reopen Schrodinger's box and see a dead cat again. This needs to be done. Thank you. Thank you very much. Good evening, district commissioners, councilors, city managers, staff. I'm Jim Charg. I actually live about four blocks away from this street. And I love to take visitors to Del Rey, to this street, because it really represents, I think, in many, many ways what the history of Del Rey is about. And I think if what Mr. Edwards does, and hopefully followed by the other people on that street, we'll have another site that's very much like Banker's Row, in a way, except with a better view. And the 800-pound gorilla is this issue of scale and massing. And I want to make an argument that that is necessary economically. Now, I know my friends in the historic preservation area do not totally agree with me on this, but I'm going to make the point anyway. This building is somewhere in the neighborhood of 900 or 1,000 square feet. They are adding an additional 1,200 square feet. So, in the grand scheme of things in historic preservation, this is a fairly small addition. But because the original house is so small, it gets into this question of secondary and subordinate. And one of the ways I see this is there's an economic element to it. And Mr. Edwards is a great guy, but he is not a philanthropist. He's not doing this out of going to make it a museum. He wants it to be a viable economic proposition. And if we take a look at the Comprehensive Plan, and I'll be glad to circulate these to you, the historic preservation element will reinforce the value of cultural, economic, and environmental resources. And goal HPE 1, preserve, protect, enhance, and support, says, Secure for future generations the opportunity to share in the unique heritage of Delray Beach and promote preservation through the purposeful identification, protection, and continued use of. It's not a museum. It's going to be used as a home. And if you go to the gold standard of historic preservation, which is the Secretary of Interior's guidelines, it says, a property's significance through the preservation of historic materials and features, which is what this is doing. And it says, in a reasonable manner, taking into consideration economic and technical feasibility. This building has to do both of those because of the flooding. Lastly, because I'm running out of time, the determination that a project meets the standards is based on a cumulative effect, not just one thing, but all of the factors taken into account in order to make this a viable proposition. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Evening, Kirk Arnie, Commissioners, Attorney General and staff. Greg Snyder, 3324 Lakeview Drive, Delray. I was going to say, I think you've all seen the email that I sent, but listen to the commission. I'm not sure anybody's looked at it. But I did send an email against this, and I think it's important enough that I stand up as well and reinforce my position that I just think this application is not appropriate. It's been around. This is about the sixth attempt, modified and modified, but the changes are not sufficient to make this acceptable. It does not meet the Secretary of Interior standard number nine to be compatible with massing, size, and scale. And it's too large and it's too visible. Mr. Edwards has some really nice pictures taken from the right angle and proposed streetscapes that make it look nice. If you look at the red and blue pictures, the addition stands out. It's the visual focus. It dominates the historic house. In fact, to me, it doesn't look like an addition. It looks like a large building with a much smaller historic house put on the front of it. So not only is it wrong as a structure on its own, but it's incompatible with the marine way streetscape. And again, Mr. Edwards has a really nice conjecture of what the marine way streetscape might look like in the future. That's not what it looks like. And this is not compatible with the marine way. So in my opinion, you must agree with the Historic Preservation Board and deny this application. Thank you very much. You left your stuff. Is this yours? Greg, did you leave something up there? This yours? Oh, okay. Sorry. My name is Queen, and I just want to... Address for the record, please. Oh, my name is Queen. I'm sorry? Your name and address for the record, please. My name is Queen. My zip code is 33... No, address. We need an address. At a public hearing, we need an address. Oh, 918 Southwest 11th Terrace. Thank you. Delray. I just wanted to say with this particular project, why I'm in support of it is I appreciate him using the extensive, as we can say, I like the fact that he's harping on historical. Historical in the city of Delray, to me, actually means a lot. And when I hear him stress more so on historical and him coming back and forth, trying to get you guys to understand what it is that he's trying to do, or he's trying to make sure that the historical side of it stays so that we can see different things. Because historical can be historical, but still have a bit of modern added to it, too. It doesn't have to be historical, and that means the wood is so old and tacky that you can't do anything to it, or that means that the pavement is so decomposed that you could barely put a car on it without having lawsuits. So I feel as though the fact that he is coming in and he's utilizing historical and he's doing everything that the city is asking for, I feel like that should be taken into consideration. And I feel like that because when I think about my graveyard, the historical of my graveyard makes me feel as though we have a lot that we need to consider when there's work that needs to be done. The work that needs to be done doesn't have to always be the brick and mortar that we need to see from 1977 Deuce Deuce. Well, it's not the brick and mortar that we need to see from 2030. So him harping on historical and he's doing everything that needs to be done. And I would like to know, why would he be denied? I mean, he's coming back. What more is it that he needs to do? What more is it that needs to be required? And if he's doing everything, why, once he presents everything that needs to be done, why is there always second guessing? If he's doing what you're asking to do the first time, but you have to keep coming back and keep coming back, it seems like it needs to be a change of something. Because it's too many times that we come and present things here and there's always stagnation, either a dollar or someone don't agree with it. But then we're going in circles. See, I'm not a going in circle person. I'm a Capricorn. And let's get it done. If we cannot get it done, then we need to either change the board or we need to change the board. And that's it. So I'm in agreement. Thank you very much. George Long, 46 North Swinton. Interesting, most of my remarks have already been covered up here. I had a remark about the main problem is visual compatibility, massing, that anything's going to look too big when you have a 900-square-foot house there. But let's take a look at this for a minute. The house is too low and it's too small. Something's got to happen. It's got to go up. It's got to get bigger. So I think the only thing that would concern me is the massing, but it doesn't concern me that much. Because when I look forward at the house, it looks pretty good. When I get a little bit over to the side, as one of the board members mentioned, wow, it looks kind of big. It's highly weighted over to the right. The question is, why is that? That's because there's no damn room on the left to build a big house. You're already – there's nothing there. You have to build it over to the right and weigh it to that side. So that takes care of that. That's about all I have to say. There's an explanation. It looks big because the house is small. It looks like a lot there because everything's on the right. That's the only place you can put it unless you impose on the setback rules. Thank you. Thank you very much. Are there any other members of the public wishing to address the commission on this application? Seeing none, public comment is closed. Is there any rebuttal testimony from the applicant to the city and city to the applicant? Just would like to correct some of the public comment or clarify the numbers. The house is currently 987 square feet. The addition is 2,333. I believe one of the comments said it was – he was only adding 1,300, which results in an under air amount of 3,321 under air. There's still the garages in there. Got you. Including the under air portion you're talking about. Okay. Got you. Is there any questions to the city? No, no, no. I have a rebuttal, though, for the gentleman that spoke. You didn't take the time to walk a lot with me. For those of you that have walked a lot with me and seen what I've invested there and the time and the changes I've made, and thank you for speaking. We've never meant to eliminate a full story and to make this a livable home. And that was one of the things that Mr. Chard talked about. This design – and, Julie, you were kind enough to walk it this week – it's a four-bedroom home. I'm not building a 14-bedroom. It's a four-bedroom home that somebody that moves into Delray with a family probably requires. That's it. And it's not a huge home. It depends if you take the angle, as somebody said, the angle I'm taking from is the accurate angle. You're going to stand in front of the house and look at it. If you want to go, as you said, to the director, you're never going to please everybody. That's life. I grew up in a small town in Cortland, New York, and my mom was on the Historical Society there. You can't please everybody. What you have to do is what you believe is the right thing to do. And I believe this is the right thing, and I believe the gentleman here with zero investment in the project is completely wrong. So that's where I stand. And I would like 100 percent a unanimous approval. Thank you very much. And also rebut. No. I don't believe that you're allowed to rebut. No. No. We're allowed to rebut you, but you cannot but us. Sorry to say. I'm sorry, Mr. Chard. We'll consider that the next organization. But anyway, so to the commission, who would like to go first? Commissioner Casale. I spoke to Dan on the phone today, and I told him I'm struggling. And the city directed me to go look at another property on Nassau Street that shows you how you can have the subordinating secondary property not be such a visual component. And as I said to you, that's sort of my biggest problem. And the thing is, and here's where I'm vacillating, because I do appreciate your desire to save this historic house. But then I say, but then I say, what you're preparing is setting the standard for the next houses. And we're never going to have, at the current environment that we're in, we're not going to have any more historic districts. The government has precluded us from being able to do it. And so what we have, I feel we really need to protect. And I'm concerned because I don't know. It's beautiful. I know you worked tirelessly. You've done this for years. And I, but I concern myself with the domino effect. But the home to the north is already bigger and already two stories directly north. There's gentlemen's. And the two homes to the south are both going to be demoed. I know, and that concerns me. And the house even further to the south, unfortunately, is a complete dump. So this is a way to preserve the structure. And again, if you walk it, it is a, it's not a normal size home. It's a small home. It's a four-bedroom livable home that we're inviting people to move to Delray, to be in a, in a place that you want to live. And when you get on the Atlantic Lady and you drive down the road, it's an embarrassment. I'm sorry. That was my fault because you're not used to being here. And I started having an exchange. Commissioner, if I'll ask you a question, you're allowed to address this. I apologize. Let's just let the others speak and hear what others have to say. Thank you, Dan. You're welcome, Julie. Commissioner Malika. I think it's a miracle what the department and you have done together. And I know there's been struggles and creativity like crazy to make this happen. I think it's beautiful. I think there's no way we can only preserve 987-square-foot homes on expensive lots like that that is waterfront. And I think what you've done is beautiful, and I understand all of the variances that you need and all of the waivers. And I'm in favor of everything to make this project happen because this is the way we have to preserve historic. We have to make it economically viable. And I know that Mr. Long said, well, sure, it all looks like it's all one side because there's nowhere else to put it, you know. But I would be in favor of this. I think it's beautiful, and I think you guys have struck an amazing compromise and chord. So thank you all. Commissioner Burke, you finished? Yeah, for now. Commissioner Burke, well, you can always come back. You're allowed to come back any time you read, but not those guys. I just wanted to say that I appreciate all of the work, Ms. Edwards, that you've done working with staff and the Historic Preservation Board because this is a tremendous change from the last time that I saw this project. And I didn't come to see it this year, but I did go over to the site the first time this came to us. And, you know, I'm hearing, even with the blue and the red, I'm hearing that it has to be done, that FEMA requires this, and that you can still build in the blue and the red. I heard that there was not an issue with the waiver. You're trying to preserve it. I, too, do not believe that you can preserve a 987-square-foot and not make some significant changes to it. So I would be in favor of approving it as well. Thank you. Great. Mr. Markert. Yeah, I want to say I like the design, and I appreciate you eliminating me of the third story. And this came before us the last time. That bothered me a lot. That made it kind of stick out. I also am cognizant of the problems that we have down there with the water and the need to raise this. I mean, I totally get that. So I'm in favor of this now. Thank you. I want to talk about demolition by neglect. You know, somebody said earlier tonight how it was a great job that was done along Swinton Avenue, preserving all the houses and looking at the houses across the street, saying that they want to preserve all those houses. And we were very good. And this is before most of you were here, not Mr. Long, of course. And you remember very much when those houses, they were talking about tearing those houses down, before you two were even here in the city. They were talking about tearing those houses down. This was mid-'80s. And, you know, finally they came along. Somebody preserved them, and it was great. And I'm glad they did it as part of an overall project. When you go to Nassau Street and look at the problems that Nassau Street has, which they've also had problems, they've never had the water intrusion problems, you will admit, that they have along the marine way. And that is not an irrelevant fact because the houses which they are tearing down have been so destroyed by water intrusion that it's just cheaper. Because what everyone wants to say is let's raise the house by X amount of feet, and that's an expensive process to do. And, oh, by the way, we're only going to let you build this little bit, so go ahead and take that 900-square-foot house, spend a million dollars, and end up with a garage underneath a 900-square-foot house. I really worry about demolition by neglect. I am a, I mean, I think when people have gone to the effort back and forth with you all, and by the way, I think the suggestions that you did to bring the house size down were great. I'm glad you agreed because it was a little, you know, aggressive. That's the word I'll use. But, I mean, I think that I really worry about it, and I do worry about what they're going to build in those two houses next door because the streetscape is going to change. We all know streetscape, as Ms. Giannotta said, you know, that's what it looks like now, but she recognizes, you know, it's going to, the streetscape is going to change. So I am in favor of this new design. I'm glad you worked very hard to get it. And you're correct about the size of the house that people want to build. They really are not going to spend that kind of money to have a little house. I mean, just, I mean, and one thing you're not, a great question was asked by one of the speakers about, you know, what more is being required. Well, I'm not going to require you to be a philanthropist. Thank you. You know, I want you to build a house that looks good, suitable to the Delray, that they drive by on the boat and they see and say, isn't that a nice house? Yeah, I happen to agree with Mr. Long and Commissioner Malika that there really was no place to go because you're really right, that house is really right on the property line. And so I'd like to then, you know, it's right on the property. So I'm going to support it as well. You spent two years trying to get this done. I'm glad you came up with a design that's acceptable to most of us. And I wish you speedy and good luck to get it complete because it really, before the water does take the whole house down and you can't do anything. Anyway, I need a motion. I'm sorry, do you need to, we have to go point by point? What do we need to do? I just motion to approve the resolution. That's all we need. So I don't have to go motion for each one of the waivers or each one of the things? Okay. So I need a motion to approve Resolution 127-26. Second. Clerk, please call the roll. Commissioner Cassano. I'm sorry, Dan, but you've got your vote, so you did get it. So congratulations. That's correct. That would be a no. We need a yes or a no just for the record. That's why we do your roll call. Okay. Vice Mayor Burns. Yes. Mayor Carney. Yes. Deputy Vice Mayor Markert. Yes. Commissioner Mulligan. Yes. Motion passes. Congratulations. Great. Congratulations, and, you know. A long run. We are on item number. Oh, I have to recuse myself now. Thank you very much to staff as well. Right? I have to leave now? Yes, sir. Do I have to come back? It's up to you. No, you don't have to come back. It's a forever. Hold this, Caval, baby. You're really going to wield the power. So, Mayor, you're, Mayor, Mayor, you have a conflict of interest, which is why you're stepping off the dais. Yes, I'm stepping off the dais because I have a conflict of interest. I have filed the appropriate form with the city attorney who will be filing it with the Division of Ethics. Palm Beach Commission on Ethics. I'm standing on the Commission on Ethics. Thank you, Mayor. Do I have some, oh, yeah, well, no, they're all, just make sure everybody's been sworn in, and it's a quaint-side judicial hearing, and I'll give you this if you do this. You don't have to read the rules. You want them to, she reads the resolution, swear on the witnesses. She's a pro. She knows. She's just out. You have to do it. All right, we'll wait for the mayor to step off. Read this. It's a community hours sheet. Okay, next item on the agenda is, item, is this 7F? Resolution number 9626, a resolution of the City Commission of the City of Debris. I'm sorry, is that 7G? It's 7G. It's 7G now, correct. Yes, 7G. We're at 7G. Okay. A resolution of the City Commission of the City of Debris Beach, Florida, approving a conditional use to allow freestanding multiple family housing in the general commercial zoning district, approving a waiver request to Section 43304A of the Land Development Regulations to allow an offset of zero feet between townhomes, approving a waiver request to Section 434H6B of the Land Development Regulations to allow decorative fencing and a special landscape setback, approving a waiver request to Section 469D6D of the Land Development Regulations to allow a 22-foot wide drive aisle, approving a waiver request to Section 4616H3D of the Land Development Regulations to allow a three-foot buffer between driveways, approving an internal adjustment request to section 462b of the land development regulations to allow a minimum separation distance of 25 feet and 12 feet 4 inches between residential buildings approving the adequacy of the proposed off-street loading accommodations pursuant to section 4610c of the land development regulations and approving a level four site plan landscape plan and architectural elevations for the project located at 2419 2507 2515 2519 2601 2605 and 2613 north federal highway as more particularly described herein providing for an effective date and further purposes vice mayor um based on the magnitude of requests that are associated with this i've spoken to mr schiller and um he's asking and we'll agree to 20 minutes to present this this is a reconsideration so the commission has seen this before um nothing has changed between between who's counting between yes between the original so is that fair mr schiller yes thank you so much so this is a reconsideration so rita so anthea juniotis development services director and i'm going to enter file 2025-213 and 2025-214 into the record thank you thank you and this is a quasi judicial hearing and is it everyone gets sworn in that we'll be speaking on this we have one person we have one there are several people that weren't sworn in yet okay you've already invested in me as a military state of florida swear or affirm that the testimony you're about to give is the truth the whole truth and not the others thank you thank you uh i'm gonna read the do i read the rules again no i don't need to um any ex parte on this um um i um spoke i don't know who all is involved with this anymore but i spoke to mr schiller i spoke to mr costello i spoke to um peter carney and i think that's all i spoke to commissioner oh and i'm sorry emails received on the server in favor of this okay thank you i also have emails on the server uh but i met with uh mr schiller and i've met with mr costello several times okay um i have emails on the um on the server and also um mr schiller contacted me to find out if i had any questions i had none so we didn't have to have a conversation i'm sorry um vice mayor can i interrupt yes um we do have a court reporter here and so we need to make sure we speak into the microphone because she is taking everything down okay thank you uh mr schiller mr costello mr mcphillin um a bunch of residents reached out to me um specifically and um emails and we had a letter i believe as well and i think that's it oh and staff obviously all right so are we ready to proceed oh and i drove by the property as well did you enter the record okay perfect okay okay thank you madam chair good evening it's been a long night uh if you don't remember me my name is neil schiller from government law group 137 northwest first avenue in delray beach right across the street with me tonight is a planner extraordinaire jeff costello and my client mr joe white is in the audience so as this is a reconsideration there was new presented new information presented previously i just want to address some of this new information first off the commercial viability of the situs or the or the property there was an economic development presentation that identified north federal highway as a location for talent oriented housing this occurred on july 21st a week after you heard this item additionally we have information in our presentation which uncovered related to the commercial use of the situs property and walmart the second new bit of information is related to sidewalk safety another issue that was raised at the previous hearing after meeting with staff we have decided to curb the sidewalk around the interior loop as well as make some changes to the existing sidewalks or or the proposed sidewalks excuse me for color and material so that the sidewalks are a different color material than the driveways and the street so there's a visual separation and we will get into that further related to keeping the situs commercial again there is uh this presentation from july 14th that basically said uh north federal provides the opportunity for um i'll just read it here um smaller high touch firms and talent oriented residential infill we believe we are providing that talent oriented residential infill they also said that housing is not the barrier uh as part of that presentation additionally um there are numerous studies that show that walmart's present which is less than three-tenths of a mile away has thwarted and will thwart meaningful retail and commercial development additionally uh there was an email that i received through a public records request from uh mr crowder who was your economic development consultant that says the for the walmart we identify it as a primary obstacle to retail development on north federal and a key reason for repositioning the road as we described um we did not redesign the site plan we improved it uh we improved it by creating a curb sidewalk around the interior interior loop which makes the project safer we changed the sidewalks again to a different material from the driveways and street to create a visual separation between sidewalk and street and driveway we increased the separation distance from the townhomes to the clubhouse originally it was 12 and a half feet now it's 25 feet and we have uh will provide speed bumps at stop signs throughout the internal loop to prevent speeding and improve safety this is a graphic that we have put together our designer put together you can see the different variations of the street to the sidewalk to the driveways um if it is not completely clear here it will be completely clear clear if built um we suggest a condition of approval that requires this and we are completely in agreement with that condition of approval that requires that requires the different um that requires the different colors and textures and materials for each of those three things so our request tonight is a conditional use to allow freestanding multifamily development in general commercial a level four site plan which includes landscape plan elevations and internal adjustment loading determination off street spaces and then four additional waivers we have five waivers here because um as mr costello will tell you one of them was approved by the city engineer so minimum townhouse offset we are providing zero but we do have some some reasoning for that as you've heard previously decorated fencing and the special landscape setback and drive aisle width minimum sacking distance and which was approved by your city engineer and fdot and the landscape buffer between driveways i just want to point out several things the applicant here is immaterial if you may not like the applicant mr white's a great guy but at the end of the day that's not part of the criteria for approval you must be a hundred percent objective in your review and application of that criteria our application contains conditional uses waivers internal adjustments which you and site plan approval which you may prescribe conditions of approval as i just uh suggested uh now for the quick project description we are proposing uh 47 uh townhome units 39 two-story units that are highlighted in yellow on your on the site plan and three i'm sorry eight three-story townhomes that are uh adjacent to commercial on the south side of the lot in blue uh there's amenity area with a two-story clubhouse etc you've heard this a private internal access drive pedestrian walkways guest parking site lighting and landscaping and a 10-foot right-of-way dedication along north federal highway this is the property at issue you've seen this before none of this has changed uh this is the site plan with the air the site plan laid into the aerial which you can see the residential to the east in the town of gulf stream the commercial to the south the commercial to the north um and how this site plan fits into that uh existing environment we've rendered the townhomes into um an aerial that we found and just you can see the uh what it would look like when it gets fully developed and here's a brief history of the situs um remember back in 2022 a rezoning application from general commercial to automotive commercial uh was denied by the city commission uh and then previously our uh several months ago on may 18th the planning and zoning board unanimously recommended approval for all of the uh things that we were asking for tonight this is just a current site photo and these are your required findings in terms of the land use map concurrency consistency and consistency with the comprehensive plan um i'm going to turn it over to jeff who is our planner to go through some of these planning slides very briefly thank you mr sherwin commissioners uh as we continue through as you know the uh i stated in your staff report there are a number of different comp plan policies and positive findings can be made with respect to every one of those policies in the comp plan including the north federal highway redevelopment plan with regard to the landscape plan this site current primarily vacant there will be extensive landscaping 167 new trees includes new palms and positive findings can be made with regard to the landscape plan other items with regard to the development standards uh the put the project does comply with the gc zone district regulations uh it is a conditional use freestanding multi-family uh must be as a conditional use and it must comply with the urm district except for setback and height requirements uh and this project does comply this is located on north federal across from the approved recently approved tropics delray residential project another freestanding multi-family development and to the east we have low density single family in the town of gulf stream and the townhomes are very sensitive in the design with primarily two-story especially abutting the uh the uh town of gulf stream residents uh this again is multi-family housing and with regard to conditional use findings will not have a significantly detrimental effect on the neighborhood in fact that it will have a positive effect on the neighborhood and it will encourage the redevelopment of nearby properties it will not hinder it at all uh the regulation and uses there's are just you see the code provision on the screen again this is adjacent to blighted and underutilized underutilized commercial properties within the north federal highway redevelopment redevelopment area it's very significant we've been trying to redevelop this area for many years over 30 years and and so this is we're fairly getting some investment redevelopment assistant revitalization again two-story set uh townhomes with increased setbacks especially adjacent to the single-family residential it doesn't max out the density we're at 10.7 units to the acre uh and not to 12 to max it out the floor area ratio which three is allowed we're at 0.79 significantly uh uh limited and then the buildings again oriented for their presence along federal highway which is required by the federal highway plan and a proposal is consistent with the applicable gc and rm regulations these are standards uh again on your on your screen you can provide conditions of approval uh uh to mitigate any circumstances and as as mr schiller uh indicated in our presentation those can all be conditions uh the standards for site plan actions the positive findings can be made that this project does comply with the standards um a through l no identified areas of major concern respect to impacts on the overall site configuration um and then again it does it does comply with the gc the development standards of 434 lighting that with regard to off street parking there are one items that again we we address the stacking distance that has been approved but the proposal complies with the applicable development standards uh the townhouse regulations uh the townhouse regulations we are requesting a waiver to one of those regulations and that relates to the four foot offset uh when and and we'll we'll discuss that a little bit further um with regard to the performance standards that are outlined in the ldrs uh 433 double b the proposal substantially complies with the performance standards for multi-family development thus you know the the approving of the density and the design is as is uh is is acceptable uh proposal again substantially complies with regard to the waiver request uh this particular request for the four foot offset in 4330 this meets the intent of the design standards we fill uh with regard to the architecture you can see the offsets on the planes the four foot articulation within rows cantilever balconies introduction of color we've proposed to these buildings to further differentiate the townhomes one another uh from one another and again these these are primary internal to the site where this with the effects of residents and guests the other waiver is along federal highway it's it's in the provision where if you provide a decorative fence within a landscape setback you have to get a waiver this particular uh type of scenario has been approved in in many instances there's a photo of one at the st georgetown homes uh further south across from the uh the miniature golf course again it's a six foot aluminum decorative fence uh with substantial landscaping on each side provides the security for the community enhances the the streetscape on federal highway uh and as you said it were previously approved in other developments uh the there's is a requirement um one of the waivers regarding the the aisle width from 24 feet to 22 feet this has been approved in another uh townhome type of developments the 22 feet is typical of a city street um in this particular case here the vehicular maneuver maneuvering around the interior is greater than 24 feet we uh have a minimum uh you have at least 26 feet and in some cases 30 feet so substantial and as mr schiller stated we we are providing the differentiation which provides the traffic calming by even the different colors similar what is on northeast third avenue in pineapple grove you see the sidewalks are at flush with grade but they're a different color um and again it provides pedestrian safety and we provide many traffic calming uh within the development to support it uh stacking we've we've already been through that before uh and then as as uh with regard to the landscaping uh waiver uh it's in the again this is all internal to the site where this request is and it's really where you have to have five feet between between the uh between these right in this location here but yet we reduce the three feet to provide that differentiation between the dryways but exceed up to 16 and a half nine and a half feet and other areas really provides for more mature trees to be to be uh planted and improves the streetscape internal to the site um and then last but not least is the distance between buildings that filled this is really an antiquated provision of the code especially when doing urban infill redevelopment uh however it still applies and so we've applied for the waiver and this is an internal adjustment and we fill it the proposed operation meets the intent of the code it provides the adequate area uh adequate light area etc it does comply if you think of mostly with the fourth with the townhouse regulations they have lesser setbacks but this is a different provision the relief does not diminish the practical application uh of the affected regulation and the build and they do comply there will be compliance with the fire code and building code with the separation and as mr schiller stated that one area will be increased from 12 and a half to 25 feet uh with regard to loading there are no specific guideline they are guidelines in the in the code and there are no specific provision dealing with loading bursts for townhouse developments uh again we we went through this is similar if you go to a single family development there's the ability to have there is some the ability to park on the street with adequate maneuvering for vehicles to go around but yet we have adequately that uh that's the the driveways for it so uh in that case it's all acceptable uh this is not an unusual circumstance either and has been graded in the past the architectural elevations are modern uh style and uh they do meet the criteria for board action as outlined in the in the on the screen they're in the back up of your staff report as we go through it these these will be a significant enhancement to the community thank you jeff that was a lot i want to focus on the tropics because the tropics is a very similar project to what we're proposing here tonight and that was recently approved by this commission so you on the left you see what they're what they propose 34 residential units uh we're proposing 47 um their lot size is smaller than our four and a quarter acres both gc uh they have a higher floor area ratio than we're proposing higher density than we're proposing they required five waivers uh some of which are very similar in terms of the drive aisle width um and stacking distance we are proposing uh similar uh in addition to the relief from the four foot townhouse offset which we think has been demonstrated that we are providing enough articulation and distinction between the units uh relief to allow the decorative fencing which has been approved in other projects and um relief from the five foot required landscape buffer uh to allow the driveways to uh for three feet they are the same internal or similar internal adjustment for that was approved for the tropics is what we are seeking i want to talk about keeping the site as commercial we are consistent with the north federal highway redevelopment plan from 1999 and there is the requisite language we are consistent with the 2014 north federal highway market study that identified uh transitional land uses suggest opportunities for moderate density infill housing and mixed use uh reconsider current zoning densities that allow for additional residential if more retail is desired um you know that's what we are uh consistent with and we are again consistent with the 2026 economic development plan that was presented on july 14th one of the things to consider is if you really want commercial here to be successful you need foot traffic and there is none the only other residential development that's close to this site is the tropics and i think that's important here is a series of aerials of the site as property from 2008 to 2024 these are all the aerials that the property appraiser's office had you can see that this property has struggled for development and now we are bringing forth uh a reasonable development that will be tax positive uh and business positive uh walmart being a quarter of or less than three tenths of a mile away is impactful there are so many different studies that have been produced some in chicago some in iowa um some in other places which say having a walmart so close prevents real commercial development and retail development to occur why because those businesses failed that is why there hasn't been any retail or commercial proposals for this site other than the one that was denied by this board uh several years ago um again these are the project changes and conditions uh we ask that if you see something that you like condition it we are will agree to do these things uh they're not currently in our site plan that we've submitted to the city but if you are so inclined please offer them as conditions of approval i can't do that but that's something that this board can do uh again the same same thing with the sidewalk the different color and materials in conclusion uh the planning zoning board recommended approval the project is consistent with all the plans that you have on the books and the project is so similar to the tropics something that you literally just approved uh maybe 18 months ago um we know we have some people from the community here to speak in support of the project and we hope that you'll give us this opportunity to develop this site once and for all and prevent those uh vacant residential lots or vacant lots throughout the city that are really dragging the city down so thank you so much we're here to answer any questions thank you and to the city so i apologize um can we take like a three minute break um there's an issue with the resolution that i just need to correct and then i need to re-read it into the record i just need to um get with the clerk and get with miss gianotis to fix this and then okay so you need three minutes i just need three minutes three minutes okay we'll take a three minute uh recess it is 9 53 we'll come back at 9 56 9 57 and are we um a city attorney will be re-reading something into the yes i'm going to reread the caption into the record i had to obtain a new resolution number resolution number 9626 was already executed as a denial of the application we can't reuse the number okay so i'm gonna i'm going to reread or read resolution number 139-26 a resolution of the city commission of the city of dalry beach florida repealing resolution number 9626 in its entirety approving a conditional use to allow freestanding multiple family housing in the general commercial zoning district approving a waiver request of section 43304a of the land development regulations to allow an offset of zero fee between townhomes approving a waiver request of section 434h6b of the land development regulations to allow decorative fencing in the special landscape setback approving a waiver request of section 469d6d of the land development regulations to allow 22-foot wide drive aisle approving a waiver request of section 4616h3d of the land development regulations to allow three foot buffer between driveways approving an internal adjustment request of section 462b of the land development regulations to allow minimum separation distance of 25 feet and 12 feet 4 inches between residential buildings approving the adequacy of the proposed off street loading accommodations pursuant to section 4610c of the land development regulations and approving a level four site plan landscape plan and architectural elevations for the project located at 2419 2507 2515 2519 2601 2605 and 2613 north federal highway as more particularly described herein providing an effective date and for further purposes thank you and so now we move to the city okay and i will be quick um i would like to enter the presentation that uh staff provided on july 14 2026 for the item which was 7i i believe um again this is a residential use in the general commercial district um freestanding multiple dwellings are allowed as a principal use in the same structure if it is a free-standing multi-family housing development is subject to rm we accept for setback and height we go to rm rm has special regulations those are the ones that send us to the performance standards the proposed density is high enough that section 433 bb3e applies which requires and there was some i think concern that um perhaps um the entire performance standard wasn't shown to you at the last one so i'm putting the entire language up on the screen which says a number of different unit types sizes and floor plants are available within the development in order to accommodate households of various ages and sizes if it is considered multi-family it's a mix of bedroom units with varying floor plans if you consider it's single family housing attached or detached then it's a mix of three and four bedroom units with varying floor plans if you have any questions about the presentation you've already seen for me both ms rodriguez and i are here to answer your questions thank you okay this is for the public public's next is there anyone wishing to speak um on this item um resolution number 139-26 come to the electorate your name and address please yes my name is david toll i live at 915 orchid lane um 33483 no matter what i say the post office will always call it delray were you sworn in sir i'm sorry were you sworn in yes okay thank you i do have a delray pedigree however because our family bought a little house on sea spray avenue in 1952 it is passed by devise once it uh my mom died my sister and i decided that i would move to gulf string so but i'm still only 500 feet from delray so i i i i'm considering myself a historical delrayer uh i am a um zoning lawyer for the last 48 years prior to that i was a housing manager for the city of pittsburgh um i'm admitted in florida i'm admitted in pennsylvania so my testimony tonight is based on my experience from uh 50 years 52 years of uh dealing with housing and things of that nature i'm here as a neighbor however because looking at the plans that we have seen we've had some bad experiences with our border previously and and at one point you uh helped us with that but we still have the light and air the nighttime light and things like that this is a perfect project for us it meets all the requirements it does not harm our neighborhood in fact it will help us mitigate noise uh there will not be lights at night um it it is uh we are very supportive of this project and we also with the experience i have traveled up and down federal highway a lot and the the impact of walmart is absolutely true there's nothing happening so and i've watched this vacant lot and this will finish that section of federal highway and it's a good development it's needed and it does not harm the property owners in gulf stream i mean we are here we don't have any control over your approvals but we are certainly pleased and feel that they have done everything possible that they can do to make the impact to us uh as little as possible so we are very supportive of it thank you thank you jim chart again good to see you again 401 southeast fourth avenue delray beach um i sat in on the the first discussion of this uh and of course uh heard it also on historic preservation uh sorry pnz and the whole issue of the importance of commercial kind of came up and i hadn't really thought about that yet so i did some research and what has happened is that the demand for commercial use is way down and it's unlikely to come back for some very structural reasons uh and i'm hoping anthea agrees with me on this um that the big box uh uh companies like walmart's the e-commerce and the gig economy has really wiped out the demand in this across the country and other cities and states are dealing with this and certainly delray is um the evidence in in recent zoning revisions around the country shows that they are allowing more housing especially in underused commercial corridors uh and this comes from a national housing authority uh the benefits and the risks of allowing residential uh on land previously zoned as commercial are it addresses housing shortages which we talk about here it revitalizes those commercial corridors as was mentioned earlier you get foot traffic and it can support affordability with the right conditions and incentives the best approach is one that talks about a targeted rule-based flexibility rather than wholesale rezoning and our zoning is set up exactly to do this with the ability to have a conditional use in gc that is residential so we have what is thought of as the best practices of having the the right flexibility but without wiping out uh commercial zoning for cities such as delray a blanket conversion of commercial zoning would not really be advisable the downtown commercial district is a major economic engine and tourist destination however selective redevelopment of aging shopping centers of which we have a few near downtown commercial parcels obsolete park uh office parks or empty commercial parcels like this one which i believe has been empty for 20 25 years um into mixed use communities helps address housing needs while preserving the city's economic viability thank you thank you good evening commissioners my name is sam perlman i along with my wife and two-year-old daughter live directly behind the property in question on 800 tangerine way 33483 i'm speaking as both a neighbor and on behalf of the place of soleil homeowners association board i want to be clear from the onset we are here in strong support of the proposed townhome development my wife and i moved into place of soleil in 2021 and while it was our and our neighbors choice to purchase lots that abutted a vacant gc zone property that choice doesn't limit how the development of that land directly affects us the delray city commission thankfully understood this in 2022 when a car dealership shot to rezone the property the commission of which commissioner cassell was a part of the majority denied the request after sympathetically heating our concerns i'm here once again pleading for your understanding not to stop progress and development but to provide support this project seems to be a perfect fit the current layout on the site plan demonstrates a genuine effort to minimize intrusion on its neighboring properties serving as a textbook case of city planning it creates a gradual step down from commercial to multi-family townhomes and then to single-family townhomes creating a natural buffer from commercial operations directly against our backyards we understand there are concerns about preserving the city's commercial tax base however this lot has sat vacant for roughly 20 years and outside of the car dealership no other request has been made to change that as commissioner malica noted at our last hearing at your at the last hearing 20 years of inactivity and in in and of itself as a market signal commercial capacity only helps the city if there's sustainable demand behind it unfortunately the high turnover and instability of businesses along this stretch of federal highway tell a similar story this site may not be the best place to protect that gc capacity holding it commercial and name only while it sits vacant doesn't preserve the tax base it just preserves the empty lot we'd also note that commissioner marquette's concerns about the loading configuration and curb heights don't have to be a reason to deny this project outright the commission can approve the waiver with conditions requiring applicant to address those specific design issues before final site plan sign off obviously they've already made the efforts to do so that gives you a path to adjust legitimate safety concerns while still moving forward with the project in closing i'd like to emphasize this isn't a choice between a strong commercial project and a residential one there's no commercial site planning on the table no commercial developer and no approved commercial proposal what you have in front of you tonight is a residential project that the planning and zoning aboard unanimously recommended for approval and one that fits the character of what's already been developed around it we respectfully ask the commission to approve this waiver thank you thank you good evening commissioners my name is trey nazaro i am the town manager for the town of gulfstream happy to be here closer to the mic please i'm sorry i can also speak louder happy to do so all right um so again i'm trey nazaro i'm the town manager of the town of gulfstream here on behalf of the town commission who unanimously uh voted during their august meeting to uh send me here to support this development project so these parcels are zone general commercial but as has been stated on the record before several by several different individuals they've been vacant for several years right i found the potential impact of the nearby walmart particularly interesting which has been cited several times and i think that that should not be ignored that that probably impacts the development opportunity for this as a commercial site now of course development isn't bad we've seen a lot of really quality development projects come through not just tonight but through delray over the years now the city has regulations that that you know that you need to follow with that development so long as tallahassee doesn't intervene and tell you what to do right so if we follow the regulations adopted by you and your predecessor sitting in those chairs before you we have something the city code really intends and wants is compatible with neighboring uses and consistent with development in the area right so the city code regulates development but in the end it's really the landowner and some economic considerations that shape what within the guidelines and with your approval is eventually built of course unless tallahassee tells your staff what to do and then you have administrative approval of something you never get to see so with this you get an actual quality product staff report says you need to make a finding among several other things that this application will not have a significantly detrimental impact on the surrounding area and i would argue that it would not be detrimental at all i think something someone stated before that it would actually be very beneficial for the area during an earlier public comment a resident said people want to live in delray so this is an opportunity to get those people into delray and a really high quality product so on behalf of the town commission of the town and gulf stream and myself we just advocate that you vote in support of this project thank you so much thank you are there any commissioners city manager and staff my name is ann bennett i live at 2522 avenue au soleil in gulf stream i've been there for about 23 years and watched this land sit idle i think we have a very very attractive presentation um of town homes that really uh would be an improvement uh and um would like to support it i think it's also um a mutually beneficial to delray as this is one of the first things people will say and see as they come down us one from the north and in an introduction to delray um so i i think that everybody has um reason to support this um and has been mentioned several times before there hasn't been anything other than the car dealership presented in 20 years so i think this is the best and most appropriate use of property thank you thank you any other public comment yes ma'am good morning vice mayor good morning good that feels like it almost good evening vice mayor let's try to get out of vice mayor commissioners madam city attorney madam city clerk and city manager neil de jesus 33444 my address is protected under florida state statute 11709 um i'm the bad guy i'm the owner's rep for the former um auto dealership that came before you several years ago asking uh to develop that property and i'm here this evening um on a matter of principle um while we were extremely disappointed that we were denied uh the rezoning to develop that we made some business decisions moved across the street to a more appropriate um lot and we are in the process of of developing that at this time but as i uh as i uh as i watched this issue unfold um it reminded me of a discussion i had with the owner as the owner's rep um after denial we considered developing that property uh as a commercial strip mall with a fast food chain and um and i put myself in those residents of golf stream um who i disagreed with by the way in our denial and your proposal to that but i put myself in there in their shoes and i said if we develop a strip mall there we estimated 15 to 18 units with 15 to 18 dumpsters behind that strip mall and knowing that the city code allows dumpsters to be picked up at 6 a.m what i want to hear those dumpsters rattling at 6 a.m uh every morning seven days a week um and that was just the wrong thing to do so in consultation with the owner we discussed you know what's the best thing we can make money we could develop that as as um as approved um but it wouldn't be right for those residents whether they were delray residents or not so we chose to sell that property to the current owners um i strongly believe as a former public servant that a residential community is the best use for that facility in retrospect i have a job to do as as the chief operating officer for that corporation and i'm here to encourage you to support that because commercial doesn't fit it doesn't fit for a multitude of reasons we've heard it because of walmart which puts all small businesses out of business and we've heard it because of the conflict of interest where the residential community backed up to a commercial um development again think about that if you lived there or you lived anywhere close to that and you had i apologize if i could finish vice mayor if if you had 10 units there and you had 10 dumpsters at 6 a.m being emptied how would that impact your lifestyle thank you for your time i appreciate your consideration thank you any others for public comment seeing none public comment close we have is it rebuttal time rebuttal yes thank you so much madam vice mayor i know the hour is late so i will be short first off it is very rare to have two kneels in the same room and i just want you to appreciate that especially at 10 17 p.m um i also want to thank your city staff uh even though i've been on this project a very short time they made time to meet with me and mr costello to talk about how we could improve the project improve the safety uh and address those potential conditions of approval that we discussed a little bit tonight um i want to also point out that the residential use and general commercial has been around and i quote since at least 1998 when jeff costello started at the city that's a very long time um i want to talk briefly about the mix of three four or two and three if you uh are having a problem with just three bedroom units we are open to including several i'm sorry excuse me a couple of four bedroom units or several two bedroom units and we will accept that as a condition of approval okay let's say no but um i i we will disagree with that but that being said that being said i just want to point out that that mix is a performance standard and whether and the standard isn't complete uh adherence it's substantial compliance and so when you look at all the performance standards combined we more than substantially comply um we'd ask you again you heard all the residents from gulfstream you heard some business owners in delray beach you received a letter from mr ladowney the developer of the tropics they're all in support of this project no one has spoken out in opposition and i think that says a lot thank you for your time and your attention uh again thank you to staff and we're here to answer any questions thank you so i do want to just circling back on last the last presentation just to be sure if you're inclined to approve it with conditions that we had talked about a more resilient species on the street on changing the species from crepe moto to tahoon holly it was very specific adjustment to have more shade on the sidewalk i just didn't want that to get lost since i we weren't didn't give the whole presentation again i just didn't want that detail if you're inclined to improve this with a laundry list of conditions i didn't want the better tree to get lost in the discussion um a tree space as tree species for the north federal sidewalk um at the last presentation we talked about a more robust species and they had agreed um i think to that look at issue i think the only thing that i will add is that you are trying to transition from single family to the commercial corridor right and you do need to have a good neighbor to the i mean obviously they're there are neighbors so we want to give a good transition and that's part of what this um project does accomplish um i do however think that the performance standard that we're dickering over quite honestly has been brought up for a year and mr uh schiller hasn't been on the project but some of this is a these are small tweaks that you know just didn't happen that probably could have avoided a lot of hearings had they been more amenable to making some adjustments the we're talking about the sidewalks and making the crosswalks and all of the things that we're seeing some of these were left as technical items that needed to be addressed so i think what you've seen today moves the project towards those sort of outstanding lists of issues that were identified in the staff report so everything we saw is much more positive um in terms of that distinction between where people are walking and cars are driving it's a small urban loop it isn't going to have people racing down the sidewalk right but um so we're happy to see the adjustments and um that's it i hear if you have any questions okay i just want to say one thing so you know i did write this down mr schiller because i thought it was an interesting way to characterize we didn't redesign the sidewalk we improved it um and i somewhat agree with that however you know changing the configuration from three bedrooms to four bedrooms that's a redesign and so if that's what you're inclined to you know potentially accept they're going to have to either resubmit or bring you know i i don't we've done this in the past where we've sent it back to the lower board for their reconsideration and that doesn't work so they would have to submit a new application so i just want to put that out there you know if you feel that they're substantially complied with the performance standards that's one thing but if you're inclined to say you know there's not a mix and there needs to be a mix of those of those bedrooms then that's that's it that's a redesign so i just wanted to put that on the record okay thank you to the commission i'll start okay i mean honestly and look i don't just don't really see what the new information that you provided here is i mean the walmart has been there and i don't think anybody thinks that any retail is competing with walmart but there's other uh commercial is broader than just retail and the whole reason why we hired an economic development firm and a marketing firm is for this very reason to bring in businesses to our city and on that slide where you said that the there was a comment um that housing is not a barrier and and then it like you have a little thing there's enough housing what he was saying is it's not a barrier to bringing in businesses you know um but the the idea of protecting commercial and and i'm i'm speaking to the comments made not to my position on this my position on this is nothing has changed in this presentation but i do want to speak to some of the comments made mr chard talked about commercial we had i believe it was um the economic development director from palm beach county miss smallridge here telling us that we should be protecting our commercial property and we shouldn't be quick to just convert commercial into residential our economic development director prior to the one we currently had said it was disappointing how much had converted and when we talk about um mr crowder talking about what should be on uh federal he talked also about commercial property not just that high touch uh residential that you talked about and when people say that um that those parcels have sat there undeveloped they weren't agglomerated until 2022 they were there were different owners there was an estate that owned lot 30 the other owners were owned by um residential developers for years and they didn't develop it but 2021 and 2022 is when those parcels became agglomerated 2022 and when you want to talk about the tropics across this the way the the biggest problem we have is that that federal highway plan has not been updated and i've brought it up so many times and the chair of this board would wave his hands and say we'll get to it we'll get to it we haven't we are going to but we haven't so as we sit here we are left with the unfortunate position of trying to figure out what to do here without guidance from professionals so i took a risk on tropics and that was a risk for me and i was a little hesitant and as it sits here today it's not developed and there is no residential development on that property coming anytime soon um as my understanding and i do think that um i appreciate the applicants i appreciate you i gave you the opportunity to bring this back but i don't see anything new in this um in this presentation thank you commissioner i'm sorry thank you very much so i um hadn't even considered what um mr dejesus brought up and that is that if that was developed into a strip mall how all of those trash cans emptying in the middle of the day would affect those residents however i'm not making my opinion up based on the residents even though we love you gulf stream and um yeah whatever soleil that is um but i think it's a good project on a neglected unused parcel for 20 years and um i i like some of the um suggestions for conditions that we could use that could help appease some of the other concerns i personally didn't necessarily have any concerns in the beginning i just thought it was a beautiful project that we needed it there in the gateway from um boynton to um to delray so i'm still in favor of it okay thank you oh i'm sorry i just felt and i think i repeated myself from last time the market has spoken about developing that parcel commercial commercially thank you okay commissioner market i guess it's my turn the the six foot seven guy did go walk the property so if there are any reports chief that was that was not bigfoot that was me sorry about that um i spent a lot of time with anthea on this today and first of all i want to thank you gentlemen um you did address some of my concerns that i raised the last time particularly around backing out and separation and the curbs and i i love the addition of the stop sign and and the speed bump i think that that's going to make that internal corridor a whole lot safer um when i went through this with anthea today and anthea correct me if i'm wrong i try to take good notes but um some of the concerns that that we have and you started talking about it neil a few minutes ago was they are all three bedroom units every all the units are three bedrooms so it doesn't meet the multi-family requirements and you know usually there's a one two three bedroom sort of option we don't we don't have those here um one of the concerns anthea raised in the meeting with me is we are kind of bumping up against the some border issues we're going a little wide in some areas and we have to make some concessions on that you you could articulate that way better than me and one of the the theories was if we if we could change from all three to maybe a few ones and twos it would shrink it up a little bit and you'd get back into conformity that was one of the things that we we talked about um i looked into the um the railing issue in the front of the property on federal and took a really good look at that i think it's a really good idea candidly it's from a security standpoint i think it's a i think it's good and frankly i think from a landscaping standpoint from automobiles going down federal i think it i think it looks um i think it looks looks really good um so the only thing i'd i'd throw out and i'd ask anthea to comment is you know if we could get the the boundary issues kind of squared up and if there is any consideration of of being able to look at something other than three bedrooms you get a lot closer to conformity for us so anthea i'll give you a chance to right i think i think you're referring to page 13 of the staff report which basically says that the board should consider whether the absence of the smaller units affects the project's ability to substantially comply with that one performance standard however i do also want to point out that at the beginning let me see i'm sorry i did have to have the code filled up for me so in terms of um you know is great standing in the way of good maybe i think for you to consider um those performance criteria which we talked about that if it's if you looked at it as townhouse which it's townhouse like but it's all on one lot there's no face simple things like that it would want to mix a three or four and if it was multi-family it would want a mix of units of one two and three these standards have been applied to all of the similar tropics and the others tropics went with larger units and um etc but it does there are a couple of differences with this site as well there's only public access from north federal on one side then it backs up to single family that's not the same condition tropics have where they have you know old dixie behind them so the performance standard for multi-family for applicability also says that some performance standards may not be entirely applicable to small infill residential sites in such cases the ultimate density should be based upon the attainment of applicable performance standards and the developer's ability to meet or exceed the other code requirements so i think you just have to decide on this particular site you've gotten the laundry list of performance standards um and the proposed density and whether or not the transition to single family through the corridor is uh is worth the other sort of adjustments that the that the applicant is making and the findings of that i think i'm going to zip through this because i think you also have to go to the findings to maybe help with the decision um i'm trying to find the slide that has them all so there the waivers which we've gone over you you understand the front you understand all of those those i'm going to get to them we should know them by heart all of us right um so this is the findings ultimately whether or not the request um adversely affects the area is it diminishing the public uh facilities um and does it create an unsafe situation i do want to point out also in the same staff report that's attached as backup one of the technical items is exactly what they're addressing where we're saying that they indicated that the inclusion of stop bars stop signs speed limit signs to address the staff's concerns about say of the safety of pedestrians utilizing the sidewalks level with the drive aisles is something that was a technical point to to um respond to and rather than you know kick it to certification they're showing you how they fully intend to respond to it so it's not that that's new that was actually already pointed out as a technical item for compliance with the performance standard so i think you still have to go back to the waiver requests and then all of the standards and whether in this case in this situation they should all apply and that is up to you did you get your questions okay all right so um for me i i think that you know it's been said many times that commercial zoning does not guarantee commercial development and that because land is commercially designated does not mean business will relocate there and i think you know over the 20 years or 30 years whatever it's been you know that has been proven and you know an under uh performing commercial parcel certainly doesn't generate um less economic activity than a well-designed residential development which i think this is and according to the findings here um i don't think that it adversely uh affects the neighboring area we've heard that it does not with our own staff uh it doesn't significantly you just moved it from me significantly significantly diminish uh the provisions of the public facility it does not create an unsafe situation and it's not given a special privilege and i've heard that you know the the mr crowder mr crowder's presentation was just that it was a presentation the city commission was not presented or nor did we accept or adopt a plan for north federal highway corridor and um you know property owners have the right to come before the commission and apply for relief and i want to ask the uh city attorney uh for this conditional use uh do we have to grant this uh according to law the first one the the conditional use my my legal opinion is that i don't think that there's been competent substantial evidence presented that there would be a significantly detrimental effect upon the stability of the neighborhood it's a vacant lot so i mean one can only imagine that it would improve the stability and i don't you know i don't think there's competent substantial evidence that it would hinder development or redevelopment of nearby properties so as far as the conditional use i think legally you have to approve that just a reminder though this is a package so you know we can't pick and choose if the only thing that was before you today was a conditional use i would tell each and every one of you that legally there's no basis to deny the conditional use well i am in favor of the whole project i think that um i was in favor of it before and i haven't changed my mind i think the project is a great project for that location and so i would be in favor of it so are we ready for a vote motion just a reminder it's that's 139 26 i'm yeah got that and if there are conditions that you want to attach to it those need to be articulated i have to read the whole thing no you can just say motion to approve 139 26 motion to approve um resolution 139 26 with these conditions to create a curved sidewalk around the whole interior island to make the project safer change the sidewalk to different material from the driveways and street to create visual separation increase the separation distance from the townhomes and clubhouse from 12.5 to 25 feet provide speed bumps at stop signs throughout the interval loop to prevent speeding do i have a second so if you want to make the second you have to i'll second it okay thank you i have a first it's been motion and i have a second uh we'll take the vote vice mayor burns yes deputy vice mayor margaret yes commissioner malica yes commissioner cassone motion passed thank congratulations thank you thank you so much and so mayor somebody tell the mayor he can come back and get this last one do you want me to read the caption just to move it along for the next one yes ordinance number 34-26 an ordinance of the city commission of the city of delray beach florida amending the land development regulations of the code of ordinances of the city of delray beach chapter 5 subdivision regulations article 5.3 dedication impact require yeah i have a nomination first it's seven days would be the yeah no it was a leftover from last meeting you weren't here and i pushed off yeah so the next next item is 7h we're at yeah right so the nomination for appointment to the site plan review talbot reddick talbot reddick we get a second i don't even i don't need a second we just all right good thank you now you can do 8a sorry okay let's try again ordinance 34-26 an ordinance of the city commission of the city of delray beach florida amending the land development regulations of the code of ordinances of the city of delray beach chapter 5 subdivision regulations article 5.3 dedication impact requirements section 532 parkland dedication removing subsection c impact fee required to move the parks impact fee to a new article 8.1 impact fees by amending chapter 8 special implementation programs to enact a new article 8.1 impact fees increasing the parks impact fee and establishing impact fees for municipal police fire rescue water wastewater and stormwater facilities adopting the city of delray beach impact fee justification study and establishing the impact fee schedule providing a complex cause a severability clause and authority to codify providing an effective date and for other purposes thank you mr orris is is handing out um a revision to the ordinance the only change that you're going to notice is if you look at um the effective date of the ordinance the effective date will be if this is adopted today will be january 1st 2027 the reason being is that florida statute requires us to provide 90 days written notice to affect it you know to the community and so that would allow staff time to publish in the newspaper and um provide the adequate notice pursuant to florida statute the original one said 90 days but that would be 90 days from today assuming that the notice was done today so that just gives us a little bit of a buffer to provide the adequate notice that's a substantial buffer though that's like six week buffer it is you can change that that's just it's it seems like a lot if you're just doing to me it just seemed like just an easy day january 1st 2027 i think it's it's up to you but i mean it it that poses potential loss of of weeks of getting impact fees well assuming that projects if it's approved that right yeah i would want to postpone it all together until after the election in november but you know that's up to the commission i'm turning this back over to um our chair and mayor does anybody want to have that conversation no but commissioner or vice mayor burns just indicated i'm just i'm still trying to figure out who got appointed this scrap i have no idea oh child reddick so thank you i just wanted he was he served before um my apologies vice mayor burns um i indicated i don't know if you were listening there the effective date of the ordinance i changed it to january 1st 2027 florida statute requires the city to provide a minimum of 90 days notice um of the uh implementation of impact fees the way that this is written the 90 days we would have had to have already provided notice which we did not do so that just gives us a little bit of buffer in response to what i just indicated vice mayor burns said she would be inclined to postpone this till after the um november election so i didn't know i'm only asking because it's late and so if that's the if that's the desire of the commission we can just postpone this but that's obviously 100 i've had a ton of calls on i have a ton of calls about the timing of this to start with i mean i think there's there is concern about the election coming up there is these concerns um i would say that and and i think they i've had heard from enough of the people that say that they would like to weigh in on the the effect of these impact fees so i mean we all know we need we all know the impact fees are coming we all know they're going to come uh we all know that we're the only one in the neighborhood that doesn't charge them but whether or not these are the right numbers or this is the right time i don't know i would say that of all the impact fees one that i would not prefer to delay would be the parks and rec fee we already have a parks fee huh we have a parks fee already it's no but i'm saying but i'm saying the the increase to the parks because we because it it needs money we all talk about enhancing our parks and and we haven't touched it since i just i can't believe that when we're sitting here every day talking about how we need money we need money we need money this is 2.9 million dollars to taxpayers annually estimated by our study you know when i've been asking for this since 2020 and when it came up on our agenda last time you said i asked for this you put out an email to the taxpayers your email talking about how this was going to provide them financial relief and then we get a couple calls from developers and we know who yeah yeah yeah i know that's really that's kind of and they want us in your usual unfair fashion it's not unfair but let me just let me just say i said i had a few calls and that they are coming and i would like to have some stakeholders weigh in on it we've had a meeting a workshop we've had meeting after meeting we've had three or four meetings i don't recall having one meeting with stakeholders but whose obligation is that i called the stakeholders and told them it's your obligation to do that i mean so you do this is very typical waiting till the last second when it's going to go through and then acting like it's convenient to get public input when you didn't do it for the last year mr mayor if i may be recognized the date in which the study was adopted was actually back in january january 2026 january 20 2026 that's a that's a principal caveat it needed to be done this by january then we have to start all over at the beginning that's the point of my bringing up the point of january 2026 i appreciate that so we've accomplished a lot in this realm quite frankly and therefore we need direction well i just want i don't know what what are the other i mean i have a voice you get and commissioner gusala's voice but i haven't heard any of the other well i my concern is about the the tax uh bill that's coming out i would be comfortable with people finding out if it's going to pass if it's not going to pass and then seeing how this would affect i haven't received a phone call from anybody this is coming from me and i that was that's my preference i'm understanding that we can approve all of these some of these and none of these but my my desire would be just to postpone it if we postpone it to after the election do we have time to get it done because i'm in favor you'll have to start the whole process all over again because if we don't get it done the study is we have to dispose of it and start the whole process all over again if we don't get it done by january you have to vote this in you can't plan for two scenarios you have to listen more if we wait until the election will we have time to get this done by january 20th or whatever date so the november election for which you are referring is tuesday november 3rd right and given the 90-day caveat and requirement that may potentially pose an issue i would think not okay no i think you would be adopted or not to say that but it would be you don't need to do the the you're saying that adoption or effective because the the adoption date would be prior to the pursuant to the report that was done would be done prior to the january thing it doesn't say that you have to um that the adoption date has to be before um the january 6th thing which i talked about you you can only base your adoption of based on a report that has been done within the previous 12 months yeah but what kind of game are we playing i mean if we we know we want these right we know we're the only city without them right but we're going to wait till after november right and then if the tax thing happens then we say yeah we want them when we already a new commission could completely eliminate this if they wanted to vote it down after we do it they could say we we're a new commission and we don't want this and get rid of it so let's do our job for the taxpayers and start getting them the money they rightfully deserve for the development that that they've been paying for all along i mean i'm reluctant to look at millage rate and then look at taking some of the money out of the reserves and that's doing this i mean i feel like and you know have we improved their services when we're doing all this are you saying you want to delay i don't know i'm deciding this is what we do here we discuss you refer to it as a game it's not a game it's serious it's money that the taxpayers are are not going to get if we don't implement it so we either if we in and the and the problem with looking at how do we do this piecemeal the state has set up criteria that make it very difficult for us we are behind all the other cities and we haven't implemented and by not implementing we are there's capping and there's phasing in that is required by the state we are our residents are never going to catch up financially with where they should be all of the taxpayers that we want to unburden are paying the fees for the luxury development the development that you guys just voted in should have paid over five hundred thousand dollars to our to our tax base and it's it is it's not because we don't have impact fees so that to me is unacceptable and i think we should move forward with the study suggested fees immediately and and save our taxpayers money i'm in agreement i'm in agreement i'm in agreement with that in saving taxpayers money i'm in agreement there's three so can we just vote on it then well no we can't vote on it i mean we can have the presentation but maybe we should make a motion to extend past 11 since it's 10 48 and then mr we can start the presentation now we can fly through these next couple so let's try to be quick we are adopting this tonight we're moving forward with the ordinance yes i thought there's three people that we want us to move forward with it tonight yes and this is the second hearing so i will require a vote after mr orris concludes this presentation okay then i need a motion to approve ordinance i'm sorry we need to do a public because it's to do oh it's a public hearing i'm sorry do we do it to extend the time okay i need a motion to extend the time 11 o'clock second all in favor aye any opposed okay how fast can you talk jeff we have people from the audience are opposed we got people that are opposed here missy's opposed yeah i would be get her done george is george is not opposed missy needs her stormwater resolution approved so she's not tyler knight's falling asleep in his chair so he doesn't care he's already in bed we got 11 minutes let's do it mr barrett commissioners i we've done this presentation before so i can move through it fairly would you please make the presentation this is the second hearing of this uh ordinance as you recall we had a study done by dta uh that talked about uh it follows the florida impact fee act which are of course impact fees are one time charges on new development they help from public facilities and infrastructure they are not to cure existing deficiencies important to note that the impact fees will only be applied to new development and expansions over 1 000 square feet uh impact fees based on the study that was uh localized data available within four years of the current impact thing that's irrelevant because we don't have current impact fee except for parks the new study must be adopted by the local government within 12 months of the initiation of the new impact fee study impact fees collected may only be used for capital expenditures equipment and facilities can't be used for ongoing operations and only for those things that are identified in the study there are a lot of things identified in the study but those are the only thing we can't decide to spend it on something else only those things identified in the study study recommendations are that we um we implement certain fees on a square footage basis if you look this is the chart of those fees as recommended in the study on the square footage basis i'm not going to go through the one by one we'll come up to the fee schedule that's at the end of the presentation study recommendations are also on water sewer if you recall correctly water utilities uh mr hajimiri was uncomfortable with the level recommended in the study we have gone 50 percent on those right uh similar on on stormwater management there's a uh impervious lot per square footage fee so it would depend on how many square foot of impervious surface you have in your lawn nothing related to the building other than it takes up some of that space it's an ldr amendment so it establishes a new section adopts a required study moves the parks fee from chapter five uh it includes how to calculate including credits if you had an existing structure there'll be credits that are offered to you for that structure it outlines how to appeal some of these decisions and also has in it a required annual review and a report that will be presented to the commission on how much was collected and what it was spent on we did update the table it doesn't all show in here but it should have been updated to include at the last meeting you talked about um discounts we put in this 50 discount for historic properties and 50 for affordable housing you can change those that's up to you we just put that in we didn't really talk about a number during that meeting i just want to make sure that oh may i second please the affordable housing is not like live local or something like that where you're already getting bonuses for providing that we're talking about if someone does a single family home i don't know that you can discriminate i don't know that you can if you're defining it and it falls within the definition i thought we were going to identify our groups like the ctl the whatever the whatever that's what we talked about i want to make sure it's right because i just want to make sure it's not going to large developments that get a density bonus and then a discount uh affordability control shall mean restrictions placed on dwelling units by which the price of such units and or the income of the purchaser or lessee will be restricted in order to ensure that the units remain affordable to very low low or moderate income house okay that's not workforce that should that should be fine thank you not workforce you said low to low to moderate very low low or moderate right very low low or moderate okay so workforce housing would still pay yeah it's just they really the the logo okay that's fine go ahead yeah what page is that mr or that is on page six okay yeah that's fine right in the middle of the page meets the objective again the city cannot apply impact fees any greater than the study recommends although you can reduce hence the discounts and the 50 reduction in uh water fees if the city wishes to increase we can only do that once every four years must do it according to a plan we'd have to redo a study of this type to justify any increases those increases cannot be more than 50 of what was currently charged and those have to be spread out over a number of years and any increases in the future can't be retroactively applied i'm sorry this is the updated uh fee schedule it shows the 50 and 50 percent there again just a quick example we showed the same example last time of a 267 unit building with some other conditions they would have a total impact fee due after some credits for an existing building of a little over two million dollars uh any approval city commissioner must make the finding that the text amendment is consistent with the comp plan and the amendment furthers the implementation of an adopted neighborhood plan if applicable we show you the goals objectives and policies that are relevant to this discussion some additional more on parks and rec and open spaces that applies to the parks and recreation impact fee and increase there uh if you recall the planning and zoning board found it all in in conformance with the comp plan and the ldrs and recommended by a 6-0 uh vote to approve however did they did request uh discounts for workforce housing historic preservation and infill construction the commission did not wish to move forward with infill construction but did wish to on uh affordable housing as we put in and so we we've done that again uh following with the housing policy implement incentives and land development regulations so this could justify the discount to every lot is infill why would we want to do that that means everybody can get it we're not the mayor asked me why wouldn't we this hasn't been updated since the last time you saw it we're not that was not included no i have a question am i allowed to recognize you gave me a look i didn't know if that was it so um thank you i know these impact fees are going to affect people but at what point do they do it there's projects already in the process those will not receive impact fees anything any applications that are made after whatever we decide the effective date is going to be those will be subject to the impact fees i see thank you so after january 2027 if that's what you decide yes well that's what you decided because the 90 days you can you can change it i just i thought that was a cleaner number i think we should do it i say january 1st 2027 but we're losing a month why not just do it in december you're losing whatever the pleasure of the commission you need at least 90 days yeah the way that it's written right now that means we would have done the notice today no i i think so i think we need a buffer it has to go in the newspaper january wants a good clean day it gives a whole month we've got holidays and everything like that where staff's gone everybody's gone you know just trying to get stuff done it's whatever we're not meeting that i say december it gives you 90 days plus two weeks there's that's more than enough well i'm just saying you know we have to be there to to approve projects in order for them to qualify right now well remember this is after this i think it starts at building permit right right so so it's when you go for building permit that then we do these assessments candidly we have to program our software for this so this little bit of time isn't really going to hurt us because we need that opportunity to program our system so i always think in terms of tax years so i mean yeah that's why january one's always a good i mean i would have done october first for the new fiscal year but we're not then i would have done yeah right but that's with it we're within if we could have done fiscal that would have been different so whatever your pleasure but it has to be after calendar things it has to be after november 16th i think is what the date was that i called so we're leaving the space from november 16th or 18th to uh january 1st instead of just making it to suffer no we need to open it up for public hearing oh okay second reading get up here greg schneider yes we are this is a this is a public hearing any members of the public wishing to address the commission on this i on this item 8a impact fees please come to the lectern give your name and address for the record you will each have three minutes other night uh three three four three five i guess that's the new way of doing here not just the address um the only thing i will say is i mean we see how quickly 2.9 million goes versus think about all the young smaller builders that are trying to do things in town in the northwest the southwest and the other neighborhoods and it could be a real big impact on them not saying we don't need them but we should get everyone together and discuss this a little bit more in my personal opinion that's all thank you any other members of the public wishing to address the commission seeing none public comment is closed um back to us i'm ready to vote well i i mean i i would i would i would like to do january one only because i i think all right but when you see the number of permits that our our city is processing it's a lot of it's a loss but i look at i'm glad we're doing it we know your opinion so is there can we i just see a show of hands i mean i'd like to do it as you've written it and just approve this resolution okay so there's consensus for january first yeah um the only i'm going to ask you to approve this as amended and the only amendment i'm going to make is that i want to have section one state that you're adopting formally the dta uh justification study right and i'll give it to you jeff because it's not really in here formally and then everything else if the commission is is satisfied with the numbers presented by staff yes remember you can approve all none some combination um that would be the only change i would suggest okay um want me to try a motion motion to approve ordinance number 34-26 as amended to include the language the city attorney stated and we're we're uh accepting all of the recommendations including the effective date of january 1 2027 do we have do we have a second second the clerk please call the roll mayor carney yes deputy vice mayor margaret yes commissioner mollica yes commissioner cassell yes vice mayor burns yes motion passed thank you i think this is we last one could i ask you a favor could we do the leadership report at the beginning of the next meeting because i think it's more important for the public anyway i mean the public probably wants the leadership report more than i've read it we have one more though we have the storm water no i know but i'm just asking that now looking ahead would you be upset by that are you talking about 10c yeah because no one's here no one's going to hear this report of yours maybe you do it as a presentation in the next meeting let's let's do it i'm happy to move it to the next meeting that's fine so that would be september 8th and we'll make it early in the meeting right away i will four so we get it done resolution number 125-26 the resolution of the city commission of the city of delvary beach florida establishing a budget for the stormwater canary utility system establishing rates for stormwater management assessments for each parcel within the benefited area other than non-assessed property providing for a public hearing providing for the certification and adoption of the stormwater assessment rule in accordance with chapter 56 of the code of ordinances of the city of delvary beach florida and providing an effective date uh good evening mayor and commissioners missy barletto public works director um i am going to give you the same presentation that you had back on july 24th can we forgo the 590 slides pardon can we forego the presentation oh let's forego it the only thing we have to do tonight is open it up for a public mayor we've seen this presentation we had didn't recommend i think that i was only going to show the one slide okay there you go you did it we saw the numbers that's great thank you thank you very much this is open to the public any member of the public wishing to address the stormwater utility assessment please come to the lectern give your name and full address for the record you will each have three minutes seeing none public comment is closed george looked like he was about to get up no i think he was fine he was nodding off the only one to speak in favor public comment is closed to the commission motion to approve second please call the roll yes yes deputy vice mayor marker yes yes commissioner mollica yes commissioner cassow yes vice mayor burns yes mayor carney yes motion so we know at 10 o'clock is the time to get something moving right well it's after 11 yeah no it's 11 it's 11.02 11.03 i'm wide awake okay let's do this mayor um are we uh should we officially table 10c where we officially did it okay okay okay comments inquiries or non-agenda items to the city manager quickly senior time at pompey park direction is eminent to resume as normal it was a function of the youth during a summer program in response to an individual patron who brought up concerns to that effect so that will be squared away and direction is eminent that's all i have at this time thank you to the city attorney welcome back commissioner mollica i'll be quick um at a past meeting we had a consensus for an uh miss you don't leave an rfp for our transit freebie has that rfp been issued to our knowledge well you might be honest so that is actually forthcoming i did provide an update about that happening during the fall so direction is underway to to continue for one more year with the existing provider however in the fall pardon me i'm sorry direction was to continue one more year with them with the existing provider yes and so from there we will be proceeding with a natural selection process to begin in the fall or less um also um i want to report an overwhelming delight from all the businesses that we provided this commission provided a free wednesday parking for the summer and it does end in august and i've heard a beg out there we could extend it through september which we know is slow it's our september restaurant month we can extend that wednesday parking perhaps for one more month if i could get a consensus for that it is 11 o'clock i'm not sure i i i weren't we going to do a presentation on you know the monetary impact of all this parking changes because of wednesdays well just in general i know like the monetary impact from the businesses too which um miss simon says is amazing yeah so we need both of those it probably is um i just need to think about it i i uh i want to confer with missy just on the cost i just uh i think because we're in the current fiscal year it's probably not an issue but i want to make sure i don't know where we are with our budget and uh i'd like to see that so can we can we discuss it next time timing for next week because when is august end like i don't know when our next meeting is the next meeting is the next regular meeting is september 8th and of course we'll have a couple other sessions based on direction this evening why don't we just extend it through the next meeting september 8th and you guys can have a discussion that would be wednesday september 9th so september 8th we can have a discussion yeah and i'll catch up in the meantime though because there are signs downtown that say august oh yeah there are signs oh it says this yeah it does and they're cool looking but now how do we get the word out if we're going to be extending it it's a tape i was i was a you know my goal is we need the revenues and so i and i've been i would i mean i was dragged into it i was happy to do it but you know dragged into it august for a reason and you know i mean as much as i would like to help laura and all the businesses downtown i still got that little old lady in lake idaho i always worry about that you know she shouldn't be paying as much so i i that's my view and we don't have to change the signs because we will have to change the signs they have to come down well or modified but i don't think you got that i don't think we got a consensus on that one and that's all i have since you guys aren't cooperating sorry it's a little late for cooperation i'll be quick uh i give a shout out to my friend chief hunter that video that you did on e-bikes is fantastic i've heard nothing but good things about that um i will say as part of my duties with the metropolitan planning organization i am gathering e-bike information from around florida there's really only one community that's ahead of us which is wellington they've adopted something already and we're getting copies of that we're going to take a look at that and i definitely would like to come knock on your door when i get the information to see what we might look like our policy to um to look like it's a growing concern there's accidents all the time um and we have to we have to come up with a policy so i'm happy to be the author and bring it back to the commission to the city manager for uh approval but i and this is sad i got approval i already got approval for the e-bike stuff we just have to get it together yeah and and the one bad thing that came out of the mpo meeting was there was statewide funding that was available uh where the state was going to come up with a policy which would have been an ideal situation but uh the funding was recently cut so there there is no state effort happening on this so we are kind of left to our own devices and as much as we can coordinate with our our sister communities around us because people do go between communities that i think that would be best but i'll do the legwork and then i'd love to knock on your door and see if you go through it with me thank you commissioner burns um i just want to that's your name remember yes i think so uh concerning the senior the senior club what did you say is happening as a result of that direction is imminent to resume normal timing that was the stakeholder who expressed an interest in that regard and i thought i'd respond thank you and then um i also wanted to say that i think that a good path forward in reference to some of the comments made in regards to the cemetery is that we do uh develop or create an advisory board and that this cemetery uh operates as a division of the city manager's office i like those two ideas and i wanted to make sure that we talk about this another time i'm sorry i wasn't copying your notes took it off my notes and if i may vice mayor and then one okay go ahead so the time to offer direction and guidance to that effect is the completion of the review process that will be initiated soon so once that's all squared away the opportunity to connect and offer direction to that effect would be productive i may forget so i'll put it we won't we'll make it part of the mix make sure it's in the minutes so i can refer to the minutes that i brought this up so on the record you got it okay and then lastly i wanted to congratulate the uh the delray beach parks and recreation special events division that won um oh and the fire rescue that won uh three no four four first place award for website category for the saint patrick's day parade uh second place award for the promotional video uh for the hundred foot christmas tree they won second place award for the billboard signage uh category for the pride fest and then they won third place for the street banners for saint patty's day i mean all of these accolades coming for the city and i just wanted to say congratulations to the parks and rec division of the special events thank you yeah that's nice commissioner cassell thank you um super quick gene is not here she was here briefly and then took off but i love the um new thing she's doing where she's highlighting an employee raymond de leon i love that was so amazing he lives in the city and works for the city he has the most pleasing smile and he's clearly enthusiastic about his job i like that and uh thank you gina wherever you are i would like to follow up we got a consensus to get a plaque from mr hashemiri on the water treatment but i would like kind of to start working on that uh and also mr mccray we talked about and got a consensus for a small plaque on at the park on the chess tables and i would like to know when we're going to have that so that i can let his family know um you know the comments made about subculture there are still things outstanding with subculture i understand the logistics of it the agenda item was very specific the things outstanding were not part of that consideration but nonetheless for the average individual who doesn't understand that it does look like somebody in the city is once again not being held accountable and it in the the the the social media posts were really like a finger to us in in in spite of all of the help that the individual has gotten in the process and it's very disappointing and i'm just saying i don't i don't like it um thank you for your comments about the senior program i was asked to note that when we were discussing oss before it's not the current operator of the facility so i am noting that when we're stepping into our budget meetings mr moore one of the things and i'm saying this for my colleagues as well when you take all those zero-based budgeting sheets and you take the columns and you do all the math you're you've taken and removed stuff and it's not exactly clear how you got to your final department number when you meet with me i want to be able to see what of those categories because even if you take the three category totals right the lesser service the current service and the great service you're i need to see how what you're get what the residents are getting for that number in the budget and um so when when you and i are having the meetings if you can prepare that that would be good broadly and probably my colleagues would appreciate it as well and you know i had asked a while ago and we've been doing it miss burns and i um regularly recognizing people and organizations in the city we did some of the um religious organizations but you know and the beach keepers and you know they're interesting guys they're everywhere cleaning up all the time they couldn't be happier we're not paying them they're just you know they're doing their thing and i would like uh to bring them in to the next meeting and thank them i'll work on some write something up but i think it's in keeping with our recognizing people who are doing great things in the city and i'd like a consensus i think so thank you oh and one other thing thank you for speaking out you had asked us i want to say uh queen when you came last time i appreciated something that you did you asked a lot of questions instead of making statements because it's easier for us to process your thoughts when you're asking these questions one question you asked is what is the procedure for complaints and the procedure is you submitted it not via email but on paper and it goes to the group and if there's a majority to consider it's considered i was going to email you but i didn't have your email and there was a phone number but i didn't feel comfortable necessarily having the conversation what i would say to you is you have presented here with some very valid concerns about the cemetery and and i share your concerns having said that however some of the things that you wrote in your note maybe were things that we wouldn't necessarily want to have a public discussion about some maybe personally you know comments and i make mistakes up here when i say things sometimes but what i would say to you is a complaint that is solid about function of the city and refrains from speaking specifically or personally about people will be considered more seriously than one that makes those kind of statements and so and i'll review it but i just wanted you to i wanted to answer your question because i thought it was a valid question thank you um there were some very good points made about the cemetery today and you by the way made some very good points last week and i addressed those with the city manager the following day those are these are questions that do need to get answered because there this has been a long going thing as you know i've been kind of very happy that we're finally doing something i think one of the reasons that i said that i want that i wanted all of the um commissioners have the opportunity to have a meeting with the person going to be doing the analysis is for example i happen to think that the having an advisory board is a great idea we can figure out who it should report to but the idea of having a citizen advisory board a stakeholder advisory board is really important and you know because it's the people on the ground that really you know understand how the place is going to be operated uh and there were a lot of good things about having an audit and things such as that all which i'm really looking forward to having that discussion with that guy i have others i do but i can wait till next week because it's quarter after 11 and it's quarter after 11 and unless there's anything else bring us home