City Commission - Regular Meeting - Oct 21, 2025

Good afternoon everyone. Welcome to the regular meeting of the City Commission this October 21st, 2025. If we could have the roll call please. Commissioner Marker. Here. Vice Mayor Long. Here. Commissioner Casale. Here. Deputy Vice Mayor Burns. Here. Mayor Carney. Here. We have a quorum. Thank you very much. If you could all rise please for the Pledge of Allegiance. Thank you all very much. Agenda approval. So you all have in front of you the agenda. Are there any additions, deletions, substitutions? I have none. Thank you. None. None. Seeing none. Then I need a motion to approve the agenda. Motion to approve the agenda. Second. All in favor. Aye. Thank you very much. It's unanimous. We have two presentations today. The first is going to be Excellence in Education. The Pace Center Awards. There you are. Ms. Bowens. If you could please take the lectern. Good afternoon Mayor and Commissioners. Janai Bowens, Education and External Opportunities Manager. Here to present this quarter's Excellence in Education Pacesetters Award. The Excellence in Education Pacesetters Award is a new initiative designed to recognize and celebrate exceptional students that display leadership and personal growth within the City of Delray Beach. This award acknowledges students who demonstrate excellence, serving as positive examples for their peers and community. The Pacesetters Award is a proud collaboration with the Delray Beach Police Department and our wonderful Chief of Police, Chief Hunter. Its foundation is firmly rooted in the department's core values of PACE. Professional, accountable, consistent, and engaged. By aligning the award with these principles, we aim to highlight the importance of character and civic responsibility in our youth. The Pacesetters Award aims to strengthen the bonds between the youth of Delray Beach and local government, fostering trust, a culture of engagement, and community leadership. This award will cultivate a sense of civic pride and motivate our students to actively contribute to a thriving community. Congratulations to this quarter's Pacesetters. From Atlantic High School, when I call your name, please come to the front. We have Naya Ahmed, Alessandro Barberi, and Aiden Marshall. From Vanyan Creek Elementary, we have Axel Durkee, Elizabeth Suarez, and Quentin Valdez. Carver Middle School, we have Davion Peterson, Gabriela Toussaint, and Anne Kathleen Altidore. From Richard View Elementary, we have Aviana Aruncelli, Kyle Hahn, and Dominic Ortega. From Green Grove Elementary, we have Leia Rodriguez, Carmen Coca-Giacobo, and Sean Brown. From Clemosa School of the Arts, we have James Reamer, Charissa Caesar, and Clarence Ellington. From SD Spady Elementary, we have Tessa Cassini, RB Dorsilis, and Olivia Gonzalez. And last but not least, from Village Academy, we have Joanna Jaboin, Wallen Solomon, and Naika Vanell. Congratulations to our excellent students. We are so proud of you from the city of Delray Beach, and it is an honor to honor you on this grand stage. So I want Chief Hunter to come to the lectern so that he can give some statements as well, because this could not have been done without him. Good evening, Mayor, Commissioners, City Attorney, City Manager. Again, this is truly a heartfelt moment for me. Coming in as Chief of Police, something that I talk about that's near and dear to me, that Mr. Moore and I, we talk about all the time, is in engaging with our community. And this gives me another opportunity in our department, an opportunity to engage with our communities, so we can actually show appreciation to you all. And I like to make sure that our students get highlighted, because we have some talented students in our school system here in Palm Beach County, and particularly Delray Beach, that I don't think gets talked about enough. And I make sure that I'm very intentional about that. We just had a ceremony today where we had some students from St. Vincent's, that came in and did the Pledge of Allegiance, and also they sung the National Anthem. And if you guys were a part of the Swearing In, we also had the Spady Choir came in, and they sung as well, and we had Mr. Marshall from Atlantic High School do the Pledge of Allegiance. So, again, we're intentional about doing that and making sure that we reach back, you know, to our youth, because this is where it starts. And I truly have always had a passion in my executive team as we continue to go throughout the city is what I call connecting with all four corners of Delray and making sure that our residents and our community know that the Delray Beach Police Department is here for you all, and we're working together to make sure that we continue to have a close-knit community in what we do and to highlight our young people when you see these individuals here and the outstanding leadership that they exemplify on their campuses. So, again, I thank you all, and I thank the parents that brought you all out when we were out. I want to thank our educational coordinator, Janiah Bowens, when I came up with the idea, and we talked about how can we work together. Because I truly believe that, and one of our goals at the Delray Beach Police Department is making our city one of the safest cities in America. And this is what it takes. It's not going to be just a police department. It's going to be all of us collectively working together to make that happen, and it starts with breaking down those barriers and acknowledging our youth for what they do. So, again, thank you guys so much. I truly appreciate it, and you guys are awesome. You're awesome. The commission are so very proud of all of you. And, you know, we have our agreements and disagreements up here, but one thing we can agree on, this kind of a ceremony for us is one of the most important things we can do. And you all are the future of Delray Beach. So, everybody in this room, pay attention to these kids because you will be seeing them again down the road, maybe 20 years down the road, but you will be seeing them again because what they are doing is so important for the city, for themselves, and for education that I'm just so thrilled to be part of this as a city commission. And I want to thank the chief. I want to thank Janiah. I want to thank everyone who were a part of this, but especially I want to thank the students whose hard work got you here. So, really congratulations to all of you. Now we have our photo op. Thank you all so very much for all the hard work you do. Thank you all again, and congratulations. Keep up the good work. You're making us all proud. You heard it correctly. I did it. 20 mistakes. I've got to get them done. But mostly it was typos. It wasn't for me. It was typos. They did, but they missed. And then there wasn't too many mistakes that I made with his numbers. There was a couple of things that we've ever used. There was a couple of things that we've ever used to do. Thank you all very much. We have the second item, second presentation today is the all-hazardous, all-hazardous incident management presentation, the AHIMT. That will be Assistant Fire Chief Garcia and Fire Chief Martin. Are you both here? There you are. Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor, honorable commissioners, Madam City Attorney, Mr. Moore, City Manager. It's my distinct honor and privilege to be sitting here with Assistant Fire Rescue Chief David Garcia, who is the head of our newly formed Emergency Management and Homeland Security branch in the Fire Rescue Department. David leads a team of very competent and accomplished emergency management professionals and dedicated servants to the city of Delray Beach. At its core, emergency management is about collaboration, planning, coordination, and communications. A critical cornerstone to all of that is partnerships, partnerships regionally in Palm Beach County, partnerships regionally, and partnerships throughout the state and the nation. Tonight, David is going to give you a little bit of information about those partnerships through the all-hazard incident management team. David? Thank you, Chief. Good evening, Mayor, Commissioner, City Attorney, City Manager, and community members that have joined us tonight. So, like Fire Chief said, I just want to give you guys a brief presentation on our members that are actually part of our Southeast Region incident management team and how that brings a lot of benefits to not only our city but the community members themselves. All right. So, what is our all-hazard incident management team? So, all-hazard incident management team is specifically trained groups of individuals that are joined together across each region. So, we have multiple teams throughout the state of Florida, and they're composed of multiple individuals from public safety, public works, IT, GIS specialists. So, they have an extensive background in different areas that they specialize in. What do they do? They manage these incidents that are caused whether natural disasters but also man-made disasters, and they've also been utilized for special events. As I mentioned, they're composed of multiple different disciplines. So, Florida teams are broken down into regions. There are seven regions. And pretty much the way it works is these teams are deployable through the state emergency response plan. And pretty much what happens is if one of the regions is affected by a hurricane or whatever type of disaster it may be, another region will come in and help. So, if we were affected down here in Region 7, we would be utilizing teams from other regions coming down to assist us. This also applies to any type of resources, whether it's public safety, law enforcement, fire rescue services, even public works. They're all trained to the national standard and they're deployable under the state mutual aid agreement. They usually fill the roles of your incident commander, operations section, planning, logistics, and your finance and admin sections. And all these are very important rules that are needed to ensure that operations are providing a unified approach. Planning is planning for that next operational period where the objective is needed. Our logistics are ordering those resources that we need to ensure that the community gets back to upright where it needs to be. And obviously financing to ensure we're tracking all those financial resources that we need to submit for reimbursement. So, as I got to discuss, they manage large-scale emergencies, hurricanes, wildfires, floods. They support planned events, also unplanned events, festivals, sporting events, parades. They've been utilized for those. One of the major functions they do is they coordinate the resources. They coordinate the information and they coordinate the communication. So, this ensures that we're providing a unified approach when we're disseminating the information to the public, but also we're coordinating the resources that are needed for the community during that emergency, right? We're making sure that the resources that we need that we may not have are coming from our local partners, county partners, or state, even federal. They develop incident action plans and ensure responder safety. So, what's the benefits for Delray Beach for having members of this incident management team? Your staff will be trained to enhance leadership in local responses, right? So, they're trained to handle large, complex incidents. So, when smaller incidents happen, you're getting that benefit of enhanced, trained staff members. But we're also building a stronger relationship with our local, county, state, and federal partners, like Chief Martin mentioned earlier. We know who to call when we need any specific resources right off the bat versus whenever that chaos is happening during those emergencies and not sure where to get those resources from. We know how to allocate those resources accordingly. So, some of the involvements that the staff has been involved over the last two years. Last year in 2024, we had staff deployed over to Hurricane Helene. If you guys don't recall, Hurricane Helene is a Cat 4 hurricane that made landfall in the Big Bend area, affected with major storm surge. It also went up into the North Carolinas with significant catastrophic damage up there. So, we actually had teams from the state of Florida actually deploy to North Carolina to assist during these times. In Florida, obviously, our Southeast region team coordinated with local authorities. In Carolina, they pretty much deployed up there and assisted in the same capacity. And when we deployed to other states, they were deployed under the EMAC, which is an Emergency Management Assistance Compact, which is the agreement with state to state. This year, we actually had individuals deployed to New Mexico. Now, New Mexico is usually known for wildfires. They have a lot of wildfires out there. We've been there in 2022, 2023 for that. I mean, excuse me, 2023 and 2024 for that. This year, they had a catastrophic monsoon season due to burn scars from those wildfires. So, whenever those – just a little background. Whenever there's a wildfire and it burns out, the ground itself cannot absorb the water like it normally does. So, it pretty much just flushes off the side of the mountains and down into the village. So, the village of Rio Dosa was heavily impacted. And just to kind of give you a perspective, one inch of rain would give you anywhere between five to eight foot of flooding. And this is flash flooding. So, it's not just rising up. It's coming down the mountain. And if you – we didn't want to put any pictures up there, but you can research this and see how houses were pretty much carried away through these times. So, some of the lessons learned. What's the benefits for Delray Beach? So, pre-incident readiness. Public outreach is one of the initiatives we've been heavily – between law enforcement and fire department, we've been ensuring that we reach out to the community. They understand how to be ready, what to do at home, have a family plan, an emergency plan, a communication plan. But also, identifying the city needs. What are the resources that the city has versus what they don't have? So, whenever there is an incident or a hurricane or any type of disaster, we know this is what we have and we're ready to go and this is what we need. So, we need to order early and order often to make sure that we have those resources coming here to the city, Delray, to make sure that we have everything we need. First 24-hour priorities, situation reports, providing all information to elected officials, ensuring that you understand what is the damage, what happened, what needs to get done. Identifying those objectives, what do we need to do to ensure the city gets back upright and 100% functional. Coordinating operations logistics. So, the big lesson learned here is communication. Anywhere you look in an after-actions review, communication is usually a big issue. So, ensuring that we have a smooth communication between all departments and all responders, and not just responders, but public works, utilities, all the departments within the city. And coordinating those resources accordingly. And flexibility and planning. So, a lot of events with hurricanes, sometimes we'll have a few days' notice, but we also have those unforeseen threats, whether they be man-made or whatever that could be with our special events, large gatherings. In the background, our emergency management division delivers incident action plans, ensuring that we know what resources we have during these special events. In the event that there is an unplanned man-made threat that happens, we know who do we have there from the city, and then how many, approximately how many people from the community we have there. So, we have the resources ready to respond to that. And documentation. Ensuring we have the proper documentation that aligns with state, federal guidelines for proper reimbursement for our city. So, that was a brief presentation on our incident management team. It's a great program. I've been very thankful to be a part of. We have a lot of members in our public safety that are a part of it, so I'd like to open up for any questions or discussion you have on the presentation. Thank you very much. Are there any questions from anyone from the commission, comments for anyone? None for me. I think preparedness is, like, one of the most, you know, I'm sorry, go ahead. If I may, just thank you so much. I was curious, though, when you talk about coordinating resources and deployed, sorry, I have to read my notes, the deployment compact, we have, our expenses in that particular department went up about 300% in our budget this year. $226,000 for individuals for the personnel and $266,000 or so for the operational expenses. Do we get reimbursed in a scenario like that? There's no estimated coordinating revenue, but obviously you can't predict what's happening. How does this work? Because we've incurred a substantial expense to be part of this program. Okay, so two answers to the question that was posed. First, as far as the budgetary growth in the program, to enhance our granularity and transparency, some of that growth was taking existing resources from other program areas that were already funded, from program areas where they were being carried over to emergency management, where it's more appropriately should be expensed and budgeted in our budget. So that gave the partial uptick. And then a few other things like, you know, planning for additional supplies like bottled water for other departments. Right. So that was some of the uptick you see in the emergency management program as it's reported in the budget. We took existing funding positions, funded positions, moved it to emergency management, along with other programs from other program areas in the budget over to emergency management. So that represents the uptick in that particular program area, a substantial portion of the uptick. Secondly, as far as deployments, we do not release any of our resources until we get an actual FDEM mission number, which we are submitting all of our documentation, our labor policies, our union contracts, our emergency compensation policy to FDEM. Once they review those and they estimate a cost, they provide us a mission number that says, yes, we are absorbing this cost. Did I miss anything, Chief? Chief, I just want to highlight on that. There is a what's called an RSA, a resource service agreement between the city and the state. So whether it's a statewide deployment or another state deployment, the state commits to that reimbursement at that point. Perfect. I appreciate the presentation and thank you for the answer to those questions. Thank you, ma'am. Thank you very much. As I was saying, I mean, I think preparedness is one of the most important things, and I think you've done a very thorough job in anticipating. You can't ever anticipate 100%, but you're certainly getting very close to 100% with all the work you've done, and I want to thank you very much, Assistant Chief and Chief, for all the work you've done. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner. All right. Our next item, the agenda. I want to mention one thing, though, before we get into the next item. I'm looking at my back up here, and I've seen it, so I know what it is. But in the item J that I have with respect to the local rules, I don't see that in this book in front of me. My item J, they've slipped over, is really your item K. So I'm going to ask you to please, before we get into the approving of the consent agenda, we don't have to do it now, we'll do these other items first, but I'd like you to explain what that item J is for the changes that we're doing in the rules and regs. Okay? That's just alerting you that that's going to come. Anyway, we are now at comments and inquiries on agenda and non-agenda items from the public. First will be the City Manager in responses to inquiries and highlights. I yield at this time. Thank you. Great. Okay. This is a portion of the meeting, which is a public portion for people to come up and comment on various agenda and non-agenda items. I will say that if you are here for a quasi-judicial hearing, which I think some of you are by looking in the audience, those are treated separately, so you'll have a separate opportunity to comment on those things while that item is being presented. But otherwise, if you have any comment to make, please come to the lectern, give your name and address for the record, and you will have three minutes each to make your comment. I feel like I should comment. There's nobody out there. We have people coming. There we go. And just, Mayor, so everyone's clear, the quasi-judicial item is the old Palm Grove item? It's the old Palm Grove item. I'm sorry. I should identify it. It's item 7C or whatever it is. 7C. Kelly Roach, 33483. Hi, everyone. I am a wife, mother, and business owner here in Delray. This is my first time being here in person for one of these meetings, but I have been watching online. So what I've observed over the last couple months watching these meetings online is small business owners on Atlantic Ave begging for reprieve with parking being passed for everyone having to pay to park downtown. I observed homeowners and concerned residents talking about safety, talking about cars being stolen out of their driveway multiple times over and over again. I observed people sharing about extended wait time with 911, and I observed a lot of conversation with no solutions around a $25 million deficit in Delray Beach. I am a business owner, and so I understand how budgets work. I also understand I would be out of business if I had a $25 million deficit. Why I'm here today is that I want to propose a solution because I don't see solutions being brought to this meeting. And so what I would like to talk about today is the tens of millions of dollars of funds that are being pushed currently to Fort Lauderdale, Miami, and the Palm Beaches for leadership, entrepreneurial, innovation events, because Delray Beach has no downtown areas that are welcoming places for leaders, entrepreneurs, investors, and innovators. Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale, Miami, tens of millions of dollars are flowing into these cities. Now, one event alone in downtown Delray would facilitate $250,000 being pushed to small businesses on the Ave that are barely staying in business. We see them going out of business every day, to the hotels, to the restaurants, to the boutiques that make our city special. I would like to see a minimum of one building that is currently underutilized. We have dozens of them, unfortunately. Underutilized buildings that could be designated as an entrepreneurial space for events at low or no charge to business leaders to make Delray a home of innovation. This is a place and a way that in a single year, with just 100 entrepreneurial events, a $25 million deficit could be covered. We need to see from this commission that you are up here solving problems that matter to the people who pay taxes in Delray and that the solutions to the problems we are facing, where are the police, we are so grateful and so thankful to our police. They need to be paid. We need more of them. We need to speed up the clean drinking water projects. And we need to see investments in things that matter to the people. And first and foremost, I watch the business owners come up here practically in tears. Their businesses are already hurting. Their costs are through the roof. They can barely afford to keep their doors open. And now they have to have people pay for parking, losing even more business. We would like to see a space dedicated in downtown Delray to use for entrepreneurial events to pump the money back into the city to close the deficit. Thank you very much. Hi, I'm Tracy Litt, 200 Northeast 2nd Avenue. And I am here alongside Kelly Roach as an entrepreneur of my own company in support of everything she's saying. I don't need to reinstate it. But what I want to explain to you is there is $126 billion currently being spent in travel in the U.S. that is derived exclusively from events, conventions, trade shows, team meetings. And that is only 82% of pre-pandemic levels. What is going to come in next year and the year after is $2.14 billion, not million, billion dollars, and then $3.3 projected billion dollars. We are sitting on money that all we need as entrepreneurs with massive, massive reach and networks is a space that we can utilize to drive all of these events and conferences to. When we look at what the U.S. Travel Research Association is declaring is on top of the event itself, when an attendee comes into a city like Fort Lauderdale, Miami, Palm Beaches, minimum they're spending $1,000, which is very light considering the costs of hotel and restaurants in our city. So imagine a world where we're doing one event, we are getting 200 attendees. That's $200,000, as Kelly was saying. You have 10 events like that in one year. That's $2 million. We could do 40 events with our eyes closed. That's $4 million, and that's only on one facility. And as residents of this downtown area, we are walking past empty parcel after empty building after empty building. So what I'm advocating for is give us a shot, give us a building, we will turn a profit, and we will help solve the deficit of our city. Thank you very much. Can I ask Mr. Moore, what do we charge to rent out the field house? Just off the top of your head, do you know? It's actually a function of the interlocal agreement between the city and the downtown development authorities. So, Ms. Simon, if you would be kind enough to answer that question when you come before the lectern, please, that would be great. So they make the charge, it's not the city directly. Sorry, thank you. Billy Roach, 33483. I just wanted to follow up on the last time I mentioned I was talking about Old School Square. And a neighbor of mine, her name is Patty, and she ran the organization that it was before there was the vote. And I had spoken to her. I'm a musician. I have a business background as well. And I'd be personally, I know I come up here sometimes with complaints, but I personally would be interested in helping bridge the gap between what it once was and what it could be, again, for trying to put a solution forward to raising this revenue for the city. So it would put some relief on the taxpayers, bring in more business for the city as well. So I know there was relationships that were burnt from the last deal, whatever went down a couple years ago. There was bands that had to be canceled and a lot of events that had to be canceled. And we're at, you know, where we're at right now. But I'd say I personally have my information. I'd be definitely willing to sit down with other business-minded people to figure out how to bridge the relationships that were there with the promoters, with the bands, to try to bring that back. Whether it's not to have nothing to do with the people there before, but maybe whether the city takes it back over and you can turn a profit for it, personally, I'd be interested in helping with that. Another thing is I just wanted to mention if you could possibly look at it from a resident's perspective because you're up here, elected leaders. I really wish that you guys would govern the way that you campaign, govern the way you campaign. You campaign to be for everybody. You said to me that I think we can serve everybody. Then you come in, and then you have a partisan agenda. And that's just not cool. Say what you mean. Tell the people where you stand. Then we can vote on, you know, on where we align. So govern the way you campaign because it's smoke and mirrors until you get in, and then you get in your agenda, a partisan agenda, and then it pisses people off because that's why we don't trust politicians these days. So another thing is I read this Coastal Star comes in my mailbox, and it's always something with Delray Beach. Screw up, blamed for pavilion's early demise. So I thought that this was very symbolic with what's been going on in Delray. Thirteen years ago, the iconic pavilion is now being rebuilt at a cost of $817,000 because someone decided to put in the wrong fasteners. So it's almost a million dollars charged to Delray Beach residents were footing the bill for some bonehead decision of putting the wrong screws in. And how symbolic is that is decisions that are being made today that you guys will be long on your politician in your political careers down the line, and then the residents are footing the bill every time. And I just think that please take that perspective from a resident's perspective when we see just dumb decisions being made, dysfunction and denials in Delray Beach Pro. We see constant corruption. We deserve better. So just please just look at it from our perspective. Thank you very much. Hi, my name is Mary Ellen Wazorko. I live at 2320 Delray Boulevard. I'm actually back again over two issues that we were here two years ago as well, or now it is about two years ago. And while most of the names and faces have changed, I believe that your competent city manager and corp counsel were here and perhaps remember. About two years ago, Public Works came in and started to repave streets in our Pines of Delray. We are a non-gated community with city streets. They started the project, for some reason stopped it, assured our board that they were going to be back to finish the project, and for whatever reason never came back. We have three really bad streets in the community. One, in fact, Public Works was there last week to fill a really bad pothole, but to the ones that were around it and contended it was because they were not authorized to do so. So number one is we are an over-55 community, a lot of walkers, a lot of bicyclists, a lot of people used because it's city streets. We have a lot of pedestrian traffic in there because it is a nice, even one-mile route to take. So we'd like to know, and I'd like to know, are they ever coming back? Because they assured us they were. And like I said, we've got four streets, and I think what I want on the record is that those streets are bad, and there's a liability to the city that's going to cost you somewhere down the road. Somebody's going to fall and break something, and it's going to come back. So A, I want this as part of the record of the meeting. But B, I was wondering if anybody can tell us, are they ever coming back? Yes, sir? Let's just continue. I'll touch base in a second once you're done. Okay. My second thing is I back up to Lowson. When you did the Lowson rebuild and the sidewalks, we had gone to Public Works meetings, and some of the meetings about that project and asked if there wasn't police some way they could do some traffic calming on the east end of Lowson, similar to what they do in the west end in the Sherwood home development there. At the time, they had, there's probably five speed bumps within three-quarters of a mile on that west end. We were told that they were just testing some of those to see if they worked. They laid out the lines, and I don't know what the proper word is for the black tubing they put across the street to measure speed and volume, I assume, and then nothing. So people are using Congress to Homewood like it's Daytona. We've got a lot of kids, two bus stops, a lot of congestion there, and we called Public Works, and they said, no, it's not us. Call the mayor's office. And this was a different, to the mayor, this was a different regime. Called the mayor's office, no. Called the police department. Called the police department. Nobody knew anything about it. Now, somebody measured that traffic. Somebody did, and some way there's stats on it. Again, what we're requesting, if they could just put a couple of speed bumps in there, calm that traffic, because with the e-bikes and everything, I'm waiting for the fatality. I'm waiting for it. Thank you so much. Thank you very much, ma'am. Good evening, mayor, commissioners. I'm Mavis Benson, 800 Greenswood Court. I come to you again tonight. I spoke with you last week regarding the parking issues in downtown. And before you make any final decisions tonight, I ask that you do give it a little more consideration once again. Again, at our last merchant meeting, we did find out that we do have around, I think, over 700 merchants that have signed up for the employee parking permit. And I think the resident parking permit has also increased in numbers. But there's still concern for some of the employees, those who work on the avenue that may be working for lower wages and get little to no tips, that a $10 a month parking permit could be a bit much for them. There are also people that have been renting salon suites or maybe having small studios in some of the offices downtown that have been here for a long time and would love to continue to stay. But they're concerned what the parking, especially in the long-term lots, may do to their customers. I've said it before, and people will always say, well, with these changes, did it kill your business? And no, it's never killed our business. But we have to look at it from the perspective of, is it helping our businesses? And I think what we're looking at now by having the metered lot, the garages metered, if we could take that away and have those free as they were until 4 o'clock. And the surface lots, ideally, it would be nice to have them not metered. But if they are going to be metered, not to have time limits on it. So that four-hour limit, trust me, if you come shop, get your hair done, eat, it's a lot to do and a little bit of time. This is going to be a busy week. We have art and jazz tomorrow night, for those who weren't aware. I hope you can come down. We also have Saturday, the Witch's Ride, the Green Market, the Trick or Treat, the Kids Fest. This is when people are going to be coming, and some people are going to discover that these lots are metered. So we need to think about what we're doing. Let's look after our businesses. Let's look after our residents. Let's look after our businesses and hit that balance that makes you happy and us happy, our residents, our citizens, and our merchants and businesses. Thank you. Thank you very much. Good evening. Laura Simon with the Downtown Development Authority. I just have a few things to share. So I'm just going to keep it brief. As it relates to parking, Ava said at all, and I also sent an email to you all earlier, but I do have what I sent via paper. Thank you. That was really discussion, again, at our Downtown Development Authority board meeting yesterday as it relates to what our recommendations were, continue to be for the downtown as we look at really how it affects the economic impact, which is really what our main organization's goal is, is really driving that economic impact. We're going into our season, as Mavis Benson said, we do have a very busy week and weekend, followed by many more. Old School Square will be packed with activities this weekend, as well as tomorrow we do have Art and Jazz on the Avenue, which is from Swinton to Federal Highway. So it'll be a very fun evening, but again, as people are coming back downtown, discovering a few new challenges and navigating downtown. I also, our board did have a very strong discussion around beautification and the vision of the downtown, so we'll be really having a lot more robust conversation as how we are, we're hitting a lot of milestones these years, 100th anniversary at Old School Square, 27th, well, Delray Beach will be 100 years for the actual Delray Beach as we celebrate as a city. Our downtown streetscapes are turning 50, in a couple years, there's a lot of things changing and we need to keep up, so our organizations really want to really focus on that and bring that forward in collaboration with the city. And as also, we did have a strong discussion around Old School Square campus and the management of that, and especially as it relates to the storage unit, which I won't go into detail again on that, unless you all need me to do that. As it relates to fees, we did also talk about our fees with the venue itself and renting the venue, because it is available as a public space for the public to rent for events, lectures, meetings, weddings, festivals, and we do have a great structure for that, but the gym itself is $2,800 a day. So, and it does have a capacity around, nicely around 180 people, so, but I do also want to just share, this Friday we'll celebrate my father's birthday, Roy Simon. He was an established architect, and I just share this binder with you because he has opened his business in the late 1950s here in downtown Dowery Beach, was practicing until 94, and the records are immaculate, they're going to be archived, but it's really, I'm really inspired and encouraged, and I want to motivate the city to really cherish those stories. The buildings tell a story, plans tell a story, so some way we need to really share that. Thank you very much, Ms. Simon. It's important, so thank you. Hi everybody, Marjorie Waldo from Arts Garage. I have two new series that I want to slow down and invite you to, so I hope you'll be able to stop by, and I'll send an email tomorrow morning that gives you the dates and times. All of these are free to the attendees, and they are grant funded. First, the Kimmel Family Series, funded by the Virginia and Harvey Kimmel Family Fund. Three of our local schools are involved, Plumosa School of the Arts, Village Academy, and Spady Elementary. Tomorrow, there will be 600 kids at Arts Garage, 300 at a time, which is probably a scary idea. It is Steve Trash, the Science Guy. I invite you to come at either 11.30 or 12.30. There will be no seats available. It will be row seating, and you can just get a feel for how much the kids love these. On January 8th, we have Todd Oliver and Irving the Talking Dog. Bindlestiff Circus on February 25th, and The Journey to Oz on March 11th. We also have our Artist in Residence Series, which is funded by the Cultural Council for the Palm Beaches Arts and Cultural Education Program. Where we invite seniors from our community, including the Pompeii Park Seniors Club and the Boynton Beach Seniors Club, and several others. Where 100 participants for each one of these get a by-invitation-only pre-show rehearsal experience and talk back with the artists. That will include Boomer Legacy on November 7th, theater about boomers. Should I explain? Tough crowd. Ann Hampton Calloway on November 14th, jazz Broadway vocalist, Delray Stories, written by veterans in our own community and acted by professional actors on December 4th. Cece Tennille, some of the most amazing soul vocals you've ever seen. The Motowners, probably don't need to explain that either, on January 30th. Monique Marvez, who is a hysterical comedian, professional comedian, on March 6th. And then our Out of the Black Box series with Recchio Ensemble will do a rehearsal of their original play on March 10th for this same group of people. There are three performers I want to tell you about that are going to be on the main stage, and then I will leave you be. March 14th is Veronica Swift. She's an international vocal jazz singer, sings in French, Portuguese, and English. April 19th is Bria Skonberg, a jazz vocalist and a Juno winner for a vocal jazz album. And our coup for this year is Christian McBride on April 25th. He's a nine-time Grammy Award-winning jazz influenced by many other genres performer. He's amazing. So I hope you'll come check something out, especially the freebies. Come stop by. Thank you very much. Thank you. Seeing no more public comment, public comment is closed. We are now going to approval of the consent agenda. But as I said, my book, I don't know if the others don't have it, but I do not have item J, which reference. Huh? Well, I'm not online. The agenda had to be modified because I put it on the agenda after our last meeting and there was shortness. So you might have an old version. I'm sorry? You might have an old version. Well, I've got my book. It depends on when it was printed. Okay. Okay. So 6J is the amendment to the local rules pursuant to the discussion that we had at the last meeting and the meeting before. Based on your direction, the local rules now no longer require individuals who come up before the commission for public comment or public hearings to give their name and address. You only need to give your name and zip code. However, the rules did not change as they pertain to quasi-judicial items. So, for example, for today's purposes, anybody who's wishing to speak on item 7C will have to give their name and address for the record. Great. Now that we all know what I need a motion to approve, unless there's any objection, I need a motion to approve the consent agenda. Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. It is approved. Thank you very much. We are now moving on to item 7A of the regular agenda. I'm going to ask Mr. Moore to do the introduction to this one because I know we have our bond person, finance person here. I saw. There we go. I know I saw you somewhere. So thank you, Mr. Mayor. Before I offer the overview and path forward, I'd like to ask the attorney, of course, to read the resolution because we have a two-step transaction process in this regard. We're talking about 7A and 7A1, followed by the overview as to why we are where we are and an introduction of our external financial advisor, Mr. J. Glover. Madam City Attorney, if you would, please. Resolution number 257-25, a resolution of the City Commission of the City of Delray Beach, Florida, authorizing the issuance of a series of bonds in the initial aggregate principal amount of not exceeding $33 million in designated City of Delray Beach, Florida, public improvements revenue bonds, series 2025, golf course project, the bonds, to finance certain capital improvements to the City of Delray Beach, Florida's municipal golf course, clubhouse, and related facilities, as further described in this resolution, authorizing the public sale of the bonds by competitive bids subject to certain parameters set forth in this resolution, approving the forms of an official notice of sale and summary notice of sale, and authorizing the publication of a summary thereof, approving the form of an electronic distribution of a preliminary official statement, authorizing the execution of an electronic distribution of an official statement, authorizing the chief financial officer, the city manager, or other city officials, or their designees, to make certain determinations with respect to the bonds subject to the parameters set forth in this resolution, appointing a paying agent, a registrar, appointing the form, approving the form, and authorizing the execution and delivery of a paying agent, and a registrar agreement, authorizing the registration of the bonds under a book entry-only system, providing for the undertaking by the City required by Rule 15C-2-12 of the Securities and Exchange Commission, providing for the terms and payment of such bonds, providing for the rights, security, and remedies of the owners thereof, making certain covenants and agreements in connection therewith, providing for certain other matters in connection therewith, providing for severability, and providing for an effective date. Resolution 231-25, a resolution of the City Commission of the City of Delvery Beach, Florida, approving the maximum rate structure for the Delvery Beach Municipal Golf Course, authorizing the city manager to take any and all actions necessary to effectuate the intent of this resolution, providing an effective date and further purposes. And Mayor Steve Sanford is also on the line. He's the City's Bond Council in the event. I'm pointing, but you can't see him. He's like there. But the City's Bond Council is also on the line in the event that anybody has any questions. Very good. Any other remarks? Yes, sir. So, comprehensively speaking, So, of course, the City Commission authorized the contractual services necessary to implement the golf course, Dairy Beach Municipal Golf Course Renovation Program one week ago today, and the final steps involves the authorization of the resolutions that haven't just been outlined, all of which is consistent with guidance and direction previously offered over the past couple months. I explicitly asked the City's External Financial Advisor, Jay Glover, of Public Financial Management, Inc., to be here this afternoon to highlight the process, as well as to briefly touch upon the fact that we were rather busy today, you, myself, Chief Financial Officer Henry Dakwis, Director of Public Works Missy Barletto, and Director of Parks and Recreation Sam Metat, in rating discussions with Standard & Poor's and Moody's Investor Service. So, if you can highlight that, as well, for the Commission's benefit, what's anticipated in that regard, based on the analysis and the work having been achieved to date, I think that will be helpful and provides a level of comfort for the City Commission to proceed as recommended. So, with that, ladies and gentlemen, External Financial Advisor, representing Public Financial Management, Mr. Jay Glover. Actually, Steve, can you mute yourself? I think we're getting feedback from you. I can't see myself. Good up. Mayor, Commissioner, City Manager, City Attorney Jay Glover from PFM Financial Advisors. We are the City's external financial advisor, so when there's a need to access the capital markets to fund capital projects, we assist with the most cost-effective way to do that. And as the City Manager mentioned, you'll recall several months ago, one of my colleagues came before you to present information about adjusting the greens fees at the golf course to be able to meet the debt service and ongoing obligations associated with the capital project that you all are undertaking there. And we are here today really with two resolutions before you to consider, the first of which will be the bond resolution authorizing up to $33 million worth of debt to fund the capital project, one year of capitalized interest while the golf course is down for construction, and then also the various cost of issuance, which I'll talk about a little bit more in detail. And then I think Sam will talk to you about a separate resolution that will authorize not to exceed greens fees consistent with the presentation that was brought before you previously. The slides you have here on the screen here talks about the process that we have gone through up until this date. As with any financing, we've drafted, along with bond council and the city attorney, the various financing documents, the main one being the bond resolution that you'll consider today. There are several exhibits to that, being the preliminary official statement, notice of bond sale, paying agent agreement, continuous closure agreement. All are in substantially final form and exhibits to the resolution. So those have been presented to you for consideration. A major part of the financing process, as Mr. Moore discussed, was getting credit ratings assigned to the obligation. As you'll recall, we talked about the fact that this transaction would be secured by a covenant to budget and appropriate legally available non-advalorem revenues, one of which would be golf course revenues, which we think are going to be sufficient based on the pro forma to cover the debt service. In other words, the general fund will not subsidize golf course operations, and it's non-advalorem revenues, not advalorem. So based on that credit structure, we had calls with both S&P and Fitch today, or S&P and Moody's today, excuse me, to get ratings assigned to this financing. In my opinion, those calls went very well. You have a great story to tell about your economy, your financial status, your leadership, relatively low leverage metrics, even given this additional debt. And I see no reason why, when we hear back from them a week from today, that your current ratings will not be affirmed at their levels, which are AAA from S&P, which is the highest rating possible, and AA1 from Moody's, which is one notch below the highest level possible. So very strong credit ratings, and I don't see any reason why those will not change. On Tuesday, when we get the actual rating, there will be a full report providing the rationale for their rating, and that will be available publicly for you all to review and have a copy of. So we expect that to happen a week from today. Assuming approval today, that will position us to enter the market pretty quickly in the first part of November for a competitive sale. So we will be doing a competitive bond sale. So we're going to advertise to the marketplace that on the specific day, November the 10th, at a specific time, 10.30 a.m., we will accept bids, and the lowest true interest cost bid from an investment banking firm will be awarded the bonds within the parameters set forth in the resolution that you will consider here today. The final step would be a closing of the bonds the week of November the 24th. And that's essentially when, one, the documents are signed, and most importantly, you get the funds to start the project, which I think is pretty much already underway. So assuming all gets approved here today, we're well on our way to locking in what we think is an attractive interest rate. The market has cooperated. Rates have been trending down over the last month or so. So we think it's the perfect time to get in the market and lock in, you know, your capital cost and get this project completed. So that is sort of the introduction on the bond resolution component of that. I don't know if you want to hear from Sam on the actual golf course portion of it, or you want to consider these separately, or how you want to handle that. I've heard about the golf course one. Yeah, I just have a question about this. Are you done? I'm done with the formal presentation, yes. Okay, great, thanks. You said one of the sources of revenue. Did you intend to say that there's an additional source outside of the ad valorem besides the? So the security is all legally available non-ad valorem revenue. So that is essentially everything but ad valorem taxes. But the intention is to use only golf course revenues. Well, that's certainly our intention, to use only golf course revenue. But also existing permit holders are getting a substantially reduced rate for out until 2037. That's nuts. So you're saying if I have a permit right now, it grandfathers me into 2037 for a rate that is so substantially reduced to what everyone else is paying. 2037, a resident who's already getting a reduced rate is going to pay $138.84, but someone who's holding a current permit is only paying $91 and then go to non-residents? That's not fair. This is nuts. So we're giving – I love giving our residents a rate reduction, but giving people that are currently holding a permit a rate reduction seems excessive. Because we're already giving a rate reduction. Yeah, so if I could comment on that. And again – Who made that determination? Well, that was presented to you all, I think, several months ago as part of the analysis that we put together. But I would suggest to you, and correct me if I'm wrong, I think you're asking to approve not to exceed rates currently. That is a pro forma that goes out many years. So future rate adjustments aren't necessarily going to be in line with that. They could be, you know, lower if circumstances associate that, or they could be higher depending on sort of – Can I guess maybe I should clarify my question? These are the recommended rates required for us to cover these bonds. Well, if you look at the pro forma – But we can adjust them according to our own desires. Yes, ma'am. Because I think we need to have a conversation about this. There's a maximum rate. I don't – right. I don't like this – well, the maximum benefit we're giving current permit holders seems really not appropriate. If I may, Mayor Commissioner Sam Mita, Parks and Recreation Director, what we're looking at there is we already have a current membership group that does have a reduced rate and has historically had a reduced rate. And it's often because they play midweek, middle of the week, and very often. And so that offsets that play a little bit. What we're looking at here is honoring that group that's been longtime members with the reduced rate, but also locking that in with no additional new members. And then it's a very small number of people. And so kind of honoring the fact that they've always had that and reducing it and not allowing any more people to enter that group. And that kind of – We don't have that anywhere. It grandfathers out a little bit. That's not something you see at the tennis center or at any of our other facilities in terms of how we apply rates. I think this is a discussion we have to have. And you're right. We don't have that at other places. But it is something you do see much more often at golf clubs. It's more of an industry standard within your golf communities. It's substantial. It's not like if you said we do it for the first couple of years. You're doing this for people well out until 2037. That's kind of interesting. But that's my comment. Thank you, Sam. Of course. I'm excited we're moving forward. And I appreciate you and Ms. Barletto for negotiating that reduced rate through our RFP. That was quite amazing. And it makes us able to work within this $33 million. And I appreciate you. Great. I have a quick question. Certainly. So I understand green's fees will contribute to the payment on the bond. Will the revenues from the restaurant and banquets and weddings and other things that we're planning to do at the golf course? That stays inside the enterprise fund as well, yes. That contributes as well. Absolutely. Good. Thank you. That's great. Mr. Long. Thank you for the presentation. You know, I think anyone that's been willing to play on that course in the condition that it's been in for so long, I think deserves a bit of a thank you for your loyalty, something symbolic. And if the numbers work, I think they should get a substantial discount, frankly, if we're talking about just a handful of people that have stuck it out with us and humored us while we go through this process. But, no, I mean, I think this is great. I'm excited to move forward. Thanks, guys. Commissioner Burns. Yes, I just want to say thank you to Mr. Glover for your due diligence in getting and finding the most cost-effective way to handle this. And I understand that those are maximum rates, so I don't have an issue with it. So thank you. Thank you. I mean, I know it's a very small group. And as we move into the things, rates are always subject to adjustment if required based on really revenues we need and things such as that. So I'm just thrilled we're getting it moving. They won't let me play there anymore because I am not a good golfer. And after the renovations, they're not going to want me out there again to re-divit the entire place for them. So I think it's – I'm very happy with finally getting it done. Do we need to vote on each – are we going to vote on them both at the same time, or what are we doing? Separately. Separately. Okay. Then I need a motion to approve Resolution 257-25. So moved. Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Then we are unanimous. All right. A motion to approve Resolution 231-2. Do we have a second? Second. Sorry, Ange. Did you have – I was going to say, does Sam have a presentation, or were you finished? No, it is part and partial. That's why it's 1A. Okay. All right. But if I may, just before the vote, you're saying thank you to all the staff, and I think that's warranted. But thank you to the five of you as well. As you know, this has been well over 10 years, and it's taken many turns. Thank you for getting us here. Thank you. 10 is kind. Really? Just talk to the golfers. It's been a lot longer than that. It's a hundred. Anyway, so we have a motion to approve Resolution 231-25. I'll second it. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? We are approved. Thank you very much, golfers. You are on your way. On your way. Good job. Mr. Dokowitz, we are at Item 7B. This is a Resolution 258-25. All right. You want to read the? The Resolution of the City Commission of the City of Diary Beach, Florida, amending its budget for the fiscal year beginning October 1, 2025, by providing for supplemental appropriations in the amounts identified in Exhibit A, repealing all resolutions and consistent herewith, providing an effective date and further purposes. Thank you very much. Mr. Dokowitz. Yes. This budget amendment came about at the end of the negotiations with the police unions, and this was the last $200,000 which the city offered that sealed the deal and got the acceptance. What we're doing here, working with the chief and the police department financial staff, is they have moved $201,384 into the salaries and other payroll cost line items, and they moved it from other items so that there's no net effect, but that the $200,000 that was agreed upon is in the payroll account starting with the beginning of the budget year. We're optimistic that as we go through the year that we will find other savings that will make up for it, as we always do with such a large department like the police, but that's what this budget amendment is for. Thank you very much. Any questions from the commission? I meant to call you. I wanted to ask you a question about this one thing. The explorers, why that budget amendment? We have quite a bit of money in our current budget, which this is our current, for the explorers program. We have uniforms in there, I think $3,000 to $5,000. Why are we doing the explorers stuff now? The explorers program in the fire department was cut down. In the police department, we understood that there was no intent to cut the explorers program in the explorers program in the police department, and that's why the funding has remained. But this is an amendment from what we currently have in the current year's budgets. We just started in October, right? We started two weeks ago, yeah. Correct. So, but I guess my question is we knew two weeks ago that the explorers program was, we know what's going on in the fire. This is separate. This is police. We have budgeted in the current budget money for the explorers program. But the explorers program was for the police, not the fire. I understand. I'm not, but there's budgeted money in the current budget under the police explorers program. So why are we adding additional money two weeks into the budget to the explorers program? Because it was cut erroneously. Okay. That's what I needed to hear. Thank you very much. So it's not at all budgeted, and so we're bringing it back as a result. So you cut it to, for that department, and now we're throwing it back in. We dealt with the explorers program, and we cut both the fire department and the police department erroneously. Got it. So here we're putting it back into the police. Thank you. That's the, that makes, that explanation makes perfect sense. Great. Thank you very much. Is there anyone, any other comments from any member of the commission? Then I need a motion to approve. 258-25. Do I have a second? Second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Great. Unanimous. Thank you. This is item 7C. This is a quasi-judicial hearing. I am going to be turning the gavel over. You are recusing yourself? I also need to recuse myself on this one. Okay, so. So wait, can we just, for the record, Mayor, you are asserting a conflict, and you have a form. Pursuant to an opinion received from the Ethics Committee in Palm Beach County, because I live in the community, I am required to recuse myself from consideration, and included in this recusion is they make me leave the room, which I'm going to da-da's for a little bit of beer and a pizza, and I'll let everybody know how we do on that. No, I'm kidding. I'll meet you there. Yeah, we'll be there together. And then, would you? And then, Commissioner Long. I like beer, by the way. You're not an alcoholic. Commissioner Long, you are recusing yourself, pursuant to Florida statute. 286.012 to, quote, assure a fair proceeding free from potential bias or prejudice due to a conflict that I have. Perfect. So that leaves Commissioner Burns. I beg your pardon? Deputy Vice Mayor Burns is going. So I'm handing the gavel to, don't get excited here. I'll be back. Never get it back. I won't get it. Keep it. You can keep it. Really, you can keep it. These are the quagia judicial rules. You know how to do this. I'm off. I'll see you all later. See you tomorrow. I'm sure you come back. You need to come back. Oh, you want the little thing? With the quickness. You want the whole thing? It's over. We know how to find it. So, Deputy Vice Mayor, if you want to read the rules for the quasi-judicial proceeding, and then we'll go from there. Okay. So, as I said, we are on item 7C, which is a quasi-judicial hearing, and I will read the quasi-judicial rules. This hearing shall be conducted in accordance with the quasi-judicial rules. The applicant and the city shall be allowed 15 minutes each to present their cases. 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 or an appeal may not legally be made upon personal views as to whether a project is a good project or not, nor may a decision be based on the numbers of citizens who support or oppose 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. So, we swear in the witnesses at this time? Yes, and then I'll read the caption. Okay. So, if there are anyone who's going to be speaking on this item, please stand and raise your hand to be sworn in. If you might speak. If that's for me, as in 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? Thank you. Resolution number 01-25, a resolution of the city commission of the city of Dovery Beach, Florida, providing for the abandonment of the right of public access to Estuary Way, Old Palm Lane, Eastview Avenue, and open space tracks OS3, OS4, OS5, OS10, OS12, and OS13, as recorded on the plot of the Old Palm Grove in Plot Book 99, pages 63 through 67 of the public records of Palm Beach County, Florida, as more particularly described here in providing it for an effective date and further purposes. Okay. Thank you. At this time, we'll have any disclosure of ex parte communication. Mr. Market? No. Commissioner Cassell? I did speak to the representative. I'm trying to think, because this has been around a little. And whatever I believe is on the server is affixed. And I think that's it. Okay. And I did speak to Mrs. Kaiser and also Mrs. LaRue and whatever else is on the server. And we did collect all of the emails related to this as backup. And it's been put on Legistar for your disclosure purposes also. Okay. Thank you. Okay. We will have presentation of the case. Good evening. Anthea Geniotis, Development Services Director. I'd like to enter file 2023-168 into the record. And I believe Mrs. Kaiser is here with an overview of the request. Okay. So the applicant shall present their presentation first. Okay. Good evening. Andrea Kaiser here on behalf of the applicant. 55 Southeast 2nd Avenue, Suite 102, Delray Beach, Florida, 33445. So this is, you know, not an easy application and mildly contentious. But let's just take a moment to celebrate that we live in a country where we get to disagree. I know many of us disagree today. But we get to disagree and still have a forum to voice our concerns. So thank you very much for this opportunity to present on behalf of Old Palm Grove today. So just to give you an overview of the location of Old Palm Grove, it is located, some landmarks is between George Bush and Gunther Volvo. It's across from the Motel and the Goodwill and Mitsubishi Motors. It used to be one block south of Sandys and one north of Barkingham Palace. We often get confused with the estuary because we're connected, but we're not a part of the estuary. We are adjacent to the estuary. And the estuary does, you'll see, use Old Palm Grove's private roads for access to a back entrance. But their primary entrance is off George Bush Boulevard. Our community is comprised of 11 townhomes on Federal Highway and 33 single-family homes behind open gates. And more than three-quarters of Old Palm Grove residents are full-time. So here is a close-up of Old Palm Grove. It's highlighted in green. And I wanted to distinguish between Old Palm Grove and the estuary, which is highlighted in pink. We share the road, Estuary Way, that's the access from Federal Highway and take Estuary Way east to the estuary. In blue are the common areas in Old Palm Grove. All of these roads are privately owned and maintained by Old Palm Grove. And not only do our 33 homes and 11 townhomes use these private roads and private HOA common areas, but as I mentioned previously, the estuary, which is over 100 townhomes, also uses our roads through a private easement agreement. So in total, you have about over 100 and almost 150 residents using some of these roads. So in this slide, we wanted to demonstrate to you what exactly we're proposing to abandon the public's access to. So on Estuary Way, currently, the roads and the sidewalks are dedicated to the public. But when you get to Old Palm Lane, the sidewalks are not dedicated to the public, as well as Eastview. Only the roads are dedicated, which means if a walker or a biker is coming through our community, they can bike or walk on our sidewalks on estuary, but then everyone would have to shift to the roads when it comes to Old Palm Lane and Eastview. The other thing that I want to point out on the left side is you see the green arrows? There are dedicated bike paths on Federal Highway that you can see in green. There's about a mile of dedicated bike paths from Gulf Stream down to south of Lake Avenue. So today, what we want to demonstrate to you is the following. The dedication to the public for vehicular, bicycle, and pedestrian was in Old Palm Grove, was not originally intended to be in Old Palm Grove. If you take a look at the red line, the original bike and pedestrian path is outlined in red. And in red, it would have connected to a network that are in public right-of-ways. That dedicated pedestrian and bike path was sandwiched between Old Palm Grove and the estuary. No vehicles would have been able to access that. However, 20-plus years ago, the city decided to abandon that dedicated pedestrian and bike path and shift the burden into Old Palm Grove's private roads and common areas. So the line that you see in green is the existing bike and vehicular and bike and pedestrian path through Old Palm Grove, which then connects to the yellow line, which are public right-of-ways. Our proposal today, the abandonment of that public access, what would that mean for neighboring communities? That would mean that they would have to take the blue path. The blue path accesses, it actually provides direct access to Hacienda Park, as well as connection to the public right-of-ways that eventually lead to the beach. That blue line from the entrance to Old Palm Grove and then to Hibiscus Avenue is 570 feet. So to give you a reference, from City Hall to Atlantic Avenue is a little over 700 feet, so 570 feet would be about from here to the tennis courts. If you were to walk 570 feet from Old Palm Grove to Hibiscus and then down Hibiscus to Hacienda Park, that's 917 feet, which is shorter than walking through Old Palm Grove. If you walk through Old Palm Grove, it would actually be almost 300 feet more, about 1192 feet. So the important thing to note in this slide is that if you choose to approve the abandonment today of public access in Old Palm Grove, there is an alternative route available that is shorter, that still provides direct access to the park, and also still provides access to the public right-of-ways that then lead to the beach. So on this slide, there's a little bit of a disagreement about the historical interpretation of what happened and why the burden was shifted from the dedicated access into Old Palm Grove. These are excerpts from the Old Palm Grove approvals that talked about why some of the waivers were granted and really the impetus for approving this community. And basically, it was critical to the revitalization of the corridor. Single-family homes were extremely difficult to build during that time. There was blighted and unstable conditions, and the city really wanted to incentivize more residential development in this area. Here on this slide, it talks about the demographics of Old Palm Grove, who they were targeting at that time over 20-plus years ago. At that time, the development was geared towards an adult community, and given the price range of the units, they were appealing to an older clientele, empty nesters, and seasonal residents. Well, that's not necessarily the case today. The demographics of Old Palm Grove have changed from older clientele and empty nesters and seasonal residents to a majority of residents living in Old Palm Grove full-time, and they're all of mixed stages. Also mentioned in the historical reports for the approvals for Old Palm Grove was the developer cooperating with the CRA to develop a planned public bike path system. Unfortunately, that never happened, nor is it reflected in the current city's comp plan. So this is the current bicycle network. As you can see from the area circled in blue, that is the area where Old Palm Grove is located. And what I want you to take notice is of the fact that there is no bicycle or there's no bicycle, existing bike lanes mentioned in this area, nor are there any priority projects identified in this area. This is also the pedestrian network, also circled in blue, is the area where Old Palm Grove is located. Again, there are no existing, there's no existing pedestrian networks mentioned in this map as well, nor is it located in the regional Greenway and Trails maps. So I'm just going to scroll through that. So this is a snapshot of the North Federal Highway Redevelopment Plan. As you can see from the plan, there's a handful of private communities in this area. And what we want to mention is that the North Federal Highway Redevelopment Plan, it hasn't been amended since 1999, and the implementation of its principles have been inconsistent, inequitable, and at times abandoned over the course of 20 years. So the other private communities in this area and in this overlay, they are all private, and they do not have, they are not open to the public, and they don't have public amenities. And also during our planning and zoning board meeting, there was Mr. Brown, one of the board members, he claims to have authored the North Federal Highway Redevelopment Plan. He says the vision for that plan was really to widen the sidewalks. So this way, they could be more pedestrian friendly in conjunction with the bike paths that are already dedicated on Federal Highway. Here is the criteria for the findings of an abandonment of the right-of-way. And the criteria that we really want to focus on is, A, that there is not, nor will there be a need for the use of the right-of-way for any public purpose. In summation, the first point we want to make is that this public dedication was not part of the original plan. It was shifted, this burden was shifted onto this community. The Federal Highway sidewalks were supposed to be widened, the demographics have changed, and the surrounding community has changed. The second point we want to make is that it's inequitable. There is no other private community in the entire overlay, and perhaps even in the entire city, that's required to dedicate their private roads to the public. And the liability for a public amenity is put on the shoulders of these private residents in this private community who owns and maintains their private roads. And I don't think any resident in the city of Delray Beach would appreciate being liable for a public amenity. Third, we do not believe that this public access is consistent with the city's comprehensive plan. It's not listed in the bicycle map. It's not listed in the pedestrian maps. And the city has spent public funds creating dedicated bike paths on Federal Highway. When we talk about the criterion for an abandonment, there has to be a need for a public purpose. Our position here today is that there is no need. There is a strong preference to walk through Old Palm Grove. It's a beautiful community, but it's not a need. Because there's an alternate route that is shorter, and we have dedicated bike paths on Federal Highway. And most importantly, some of the arguments that are made is that it's not safe to walk the 570 feet on Federal Highway. We haven't seen any evidence in the record that there's a safety issue within that 570 feet. There's still access to the Hacienda Park. There's still access to the beaches, and there's still access to the network of the public right-of-way. In these last few minutes, I want to take a moment to address some of the opposition letters that have come before you and have sent to you regarding this application. Some of the opposition letters state that this, you know, they urge you to not abandon a public right-of-way. It's not a public right-of-way. We want to reiterate for the record that these are private roads that are shouldering the burden of having a public liability, a public amenity liability, on their shoulders in this private community. Second, certain opposition letters talk about accessibility to the park and the beach. We've already addressed the fact that that access is not obstructed. There's an alternative route, there's a shorter route, and there's no demonstration that it's not safe within those 570 feet. More importantly, it is much shorter. It's a 300-foot shorter distance. We want to talk about walkability in this area. If all the communities were open to the public, and if all the communities were walkable, then this would make sense. If that was the vision of the North Federal Highway overlay, then yes, you know, we would understand that this was the intent. But over the course of the 20-plus years, including recent community developments, those developments have been private and are not open to the public. And for all those reasons, we respectfully request that you approve our abandonment request, and I'm going to reserve time for a rebuttal. Thank you very much. Ms. Kaiser, you don't need to reserve any time, so if you want to continue, I think you have a little bit more than a minute. If you want to finish, you can. You don't have to reserve time for a rebuttal. Okay. Thank you. And to the city. Okay, let's get back to you a second. All right, I will try to go quickly. Okay, so the request before you is not a recommendation, actually, is the abandoning of public access to a series of open space tracks, as well as the roadways that are considered access tracks in the plat. The plat actually does record the right of the public to access and utilize said tracks for vehicular and pedestrian ingress and egress, and the right of public access to utilize the open space tracks. This is Old Palm Grove. It is a planned residential development. I'm sorry. I just, right at your, when you first started. I'm sorry. Did I hear you say that this is a public right-of-way? That's what I heard. It is a private. They are access tracks that on the plat are afforded the right of the public to access and utilize said tracks for vehicular and pedestrian ingress. That's the estuary way, Old Palm Grove, and Eastview Ave. And then the open space tracks on the plat have the right of the public to access and utilize open space tracks 3, 4, 5, 10, and for pedestrian ingress and egress to be owned and maintained by said organization. This was the plat that was recorded in 2002. It might have been amended in 2003. I'm not 100% sure. So that's what's on the plat now, and they are seeking to remove the right of public access. So this is a planned residential district. It is meant to foster and encourage developers to make neighborhoods like this to promote improved design, character, scenic open space. As Ms. Kaiser mentioned, there are 11 townhomes and 33 single families. It is a network of narrow brick tree-lined streets, parks, and interconnections. If you haven't seen it, it's absolutely beautiful. New urban communities did this, and we would love to have more of this. This is what it looks like on the inside. So the issue at hand is that really this development was done through very purposeful actions of several elected bodies and the developer as well to create and maintain a public bike and pedestrian access throughout the neighborhoods, which was part of the North Federal Highway Plan. So this street here that is now part of Estuary Way was abandoned. An easement was put on it in the interim until the plot could be finalized. That gave the right of public access. This was a pedestrian bicycle cut-through that the estuary had created. I'm sorry, I'm wiggling it all over. I need a mouse pad. That connected to another bike path here. As part of the Old Palm Grove, while it was characterized as shifting the burden, it was actually a very purposeful incorporation here that the developer actually promoted in his application, which I'll show you shortly. So the city abandoned these rights and then shifted that right, shifted the right of public access through the fronts of this neighborhood. There was a collaboration with the developer to purchase this lot here, which is part of Lhasa Hacienda Park. The CRA somehow got control of this property, and together they made the little neighborhood park at the end there. Thank you, Darcy. She thinks of everything. Okay, so these are the series of public decisions, and it also included the alleyway behind these houses here. So these are the pieces that were kind of put together to help facilitate the development of Old Palm Grove. This is the park. The park talks about how the Dara Beach CRA purchased the half lot, et cetera. So if you haven't seen it the way that this works, and it's sort of like a locals, I think this is a series of local routes you're about to see. So you can go in through Old Palm Grove, or you can go down Eastview Avenue. There is a cut-through on the edge that instead of being in the wall on the estuary side, it's on this side. That leads you to Lhasa Hacienda Park. You can also get there from North Lake Avenue. From there, this little park was put into place here, which then takes you through another cut-through that slips down Lake Trail. You can cross at the light with a crosswalk here to get over onto South Lake. And then from there, there's another cut-through that was provided, I believe, with the estuary that will pop you out onto Palm Trail. And there's, I think, this development had to provide something here, too. And I'm sorry I'm not recalling the names of them off the top of my head. So there's this little locals route. I mean, I don't know how many of us use it. Probably if you have tweens or teenagers, they all know about it. And the end result is that there's an interconnected bike route all the way through over there. Okay, so we do have the Bike Pad Master Plan, which was looking at different demands and things that happen. We have a series of comprehensive plan policies that talk about not closing or abandoning streets or alleys and providing links to all kinds of bicycle networks. Originally, this was applied for that there was a crime issue. I put this in for Commissioner Margaret, because I know he will ask me. So there were various studies done comparing the incident of different types of crime and property crime. Ultimately, Old Palm Grove, in some instances, fares better, in some instances, equal to the surrounding neighborhoods. And the perception of safety is not an abandonment finding. You do have to find out whether or not the application is consistent with land use, concurrency, which is really not applicable, and consistency with the comp plan. And the comprehensive plan says not to abandon streets or alleys and encourage connectivity of vehicular pedestrian routes. This is an image of the applicant's justification statement back in 2002 when he was bringing in the Old Palm Grove, which basically states that Old Palm Grove is bike and fares had not graded, has updated facilities the public may enjoy, is using these specialty bricks. Nate is, sorry, I'm losing my, I'm getting old, I can't see. Yeah, me too. That there is also land contributed to create the pocket park that enhances the bike path. So there's a clear reference to the bike path. And then it would be mindful that the surrounding neighborhood area is still a bit distressed. But in spite of this, they show the long-term vision for Delray Beach, identified North Federal Highway Plan, which is still on the record. The other information from the applicant as part of the 2002-2001 MDP are that it will not be gated, and it is integrating a proposed community bike path into the site plan and working with the CRA, et cetera. This was a cooperative, coordinated effort to realize this plan in this neighborhood, and decisions were made to move public access through this community. So the plan is still in place, as is the downtown master plan that was adopted in 2002. So this is 1999. It has plan principles about facilitating movement, and we have compared this to the request before you. There's a series of comprehensive plan items that relate to interconnectivity that are in the background. In 2020, these access gates were put in initially for traffic calming. I don't know, I guess estuary, you guys must be flying through there, but they needed them. So they have that, and now the next step has been to sever access. The findings that you do need to look at are that there is not, nor will there be, use of the public right-of-way. There is a need. Alternative routes were given up in exchange for this, and under the provision that Old Palm Grove would allow the access of perpetuity, that's why it's on the plat. This will force adjacent residents, who are your neighbors, on East View Avenue, to be invited to walk through Palm Beach, Old Palm Grove, to access La Hacienda Park, or they can walk west to North Federal Highway, go south, and then walk up Lake Avenue. And it's disconnecting a continuous route through. So to be clear, if this is legally severed, we're going to go this way. There's a bike path, but it's going in the wrong direction, so you're going to go along this sidewalk, I suppose, and then you can go down Lake Ave to get to the park, instead of walking the way that this has been done before. And there are and there were main issues that I raised at the gating issue that this does not have an adequate turnaround, so if the access of the public to drive up Old Palm Lane is taken out, I don't know that there's a fire. I mean, they're going to use these private people's lots driveways to turn around if they're not allowed to go through here through vehicular access. The circulation just doesn't work. And then there's queuing in front of the gate that's already possible that would impact the driveways and the neighbors there. And then also that there's not a detriment to utility easements or easements in place. There's no issue with public utilities. And, again, it's just disconnections and eliminating access to the park. So at this point, I'd like to ask Tim Hernandez from New Urban Communities to come forward. His credentials are on the screen. Mr. Hernandez, if you can indicate whether or not you've been sworn. I was sworn in when you swore everyone else in. Okay. Good evening, Deputy Vice Mayor, Commissioners, William Bennett, Assistant City Attorney. Mr. Hernandez, can you please introduce yourself to the commission? Tim Hernandez with New Urban Communities. He's done a number of developments within Delray Beach, Atlantic Grove, Old Palm Grove, Courtyards of Delray, and CODA, and developments all over South Florida. And this slide is an accurate copy of your resume, if you can see it. Wow. I will assume it's accurate. So, yeah. And under Innovative Projects, it includes the Old Palm Grove. It does. And so, can you just explain to the commission your involvement and everything that involved that Old Palm Grove project? Yeah. So, I was one of the general partners of that development, along with Kevin Rickard and Rick Castor, were the three of us that were the owners of this project. It was New Urban RFC developers, what we called the exact entity that developed it. And you were involved with drafting the site plan and the plat development? Yeah. I'm the designer, basically. I'm the planner. So, I worked closely with Victor Dover and Joe Cole, mostly Joe Cole from Dover Cole and partners down in South Miami. And prior to this project, other than the estuary, were there any residential developments in this area? Interesting enough, before I had started New Urban, I was with Pulte, and we did Kokomo Key. So, that was that. I was involved heavily in Kokomo Key. That was an old trailer park that was abandoned, and then we put the housing in there. So, up in North Federal Highway, it was basically that project and nothing else for a long time. And then the estuary came. Scott Porton did that. And then on the heels of the estuary, a couple years, two, three years later, they were largely built when we started Old Palm Grove. And when you designed this site and the plat, would it have been possible to build this development without the abandonment of the public rights-a-way? Not as you see it. I mean, there were, I can't remember exactly, 20 years ago, right? But, I mean, we had the abandonment of rights-aways for, I believe, certainly streets and maybe an alley. There was special exceptions, internal adjustments, waivers, variances. And the whole rationale for that was because we wanted, and the city wanted, and the CRA wanted, to see single-family homes built in that area. And other than really knockdowns, and it's really to this day, other than knockdowns, teardowns of custom homes that are going for millions of dollars, there really wasn't anything. And at the time, I think we sold these for, like, in the threes, fours, $500,000 range. Maybe you got up to $600,000 at the end. It was pretty popular. But, you know, there really wasn't anything like that that was being developed in that area. And, I mean, we did, with courtyards, we were, like, the first people, pretty much, to do the three-story townhomes right downtown. Us and Ironwood did the, Carrie Glickstein did the project right north of the colony. And then, same thing, out on West Atlantic with Atlantic Grove. We were the pioneers out there, building residential, and still, amazingly, 20-some years later, there hasn't been any more residential built out on West Atlantic. We figured it out. No one else has. But it's hard to do, go into these new areas where there's no comps and do something different. But that's been what we've done, is do something different. And, you know, that's, you know, Oak Palm Grove is a great result of that, or a great example of that. So you think it's fair to say, then, that this project could not have been developed without the privatization of the right-of-way? I think it wouldn't look like it does, that's for sure. I think it would be very difficult to say that it could have been developed without that abandonment or that vacation, as well as all the other things together with it. So did you say the abandonment, then, was an integral part of the original plan for the old Palm Grove? Oh, yeah. Yeah, no. We had to take a public, I can't remember if it was a 50 or 60-foot right-of-way. My time is up? No, I'm just kidding. Vice Chair, if you don't mind, if I can have some additional time, we have a second witness after this as well. Anybody have a problem with additional? Oh, sure. Go ahead. Thank you. Yeah. We created a really unique street system in there. I mean, we did all kinds of creative things to make it look the way it looks. I mean, we were able to narrow the right-of-ways and put the sidewalks in certain places, sometimes they're within the right-of-way, sometimes they weren't, to basically create the effect that we did. So those were all benefits received by the development through the privatization of that right-of-way? Yeah. I mean, we couldn't have. The goal was to be able to build single-family homes. If we had to comply with every single thing, we probably would have had to make the whole thing townhomes, to be honest with you. And we didn't really want to do that. We wanted to do something different. Are there any other purposes or benefits that providing these public access easements gave to the community at large and to the development specifically? Well, yeah. And I think in conversation with the CRA and the city back at the time, Paul Dorling was the planning director. Jeff Costello, I think, was his assistant at the time. Diane Colonna was at the CRA. Basically, everybody recognized that US-1 is not, it's a hostile environment, to be honest with you, for pedestrians. And so we were going to create something beautiful. We wanted to be team players, and we didn't gate the community initially. We wanted to be part of the community, not wall ourselves off. So we did create that, you know, pathway, if you will, for people that, you know, like Kokomo Key and like the swap shop. I can't remember if the swap shop site was developed at the time, but I know it was being talked about, okay? And so we knew there was going to be more residential coming. And it's just dangerous. How many feet you have to walk along US-1? It's one foot too many, in our opinion. We had to market it. And to be honest with you, again, as pioneers, we wanted to be able to market something. We wanted to say, we're obviously not on the beach, we're not even on the intercoastal like the estuary was, but we wanted a way for people to get there safely, not via US-1, but through an alternative route. So the alternative route was figuring out some way to tap into Hacienda and get to Lake Trail and Palm Trail, and this was the way. Thank you very much, Mr. Hayes. I have no further questions for you. Thank you. And Deputy Vice Mayor, the city would also like to call Michelle Hoyland. Michelle Hoyland. And Ms. Hoyland, you were sworn in. Yes, I was. Okay. Thank you for being here, Ms. Hoyland. Could you just briefly introduce yourself to the commission? Sure. I'm Michelle Hoyland, Principal Planner with the Development Services Department in the Historic Preservation Division. And on the slide we have a copy of your resume. Is that an accurate copy of your resume? Yes. Wow. And are you familiar with this development known as Old Palm Grove? I am. I worked for the city from 1998 to 2003. At the time, just following my maternity leave, came back from maternity leave and was assigned this project as a senior planner. And also, my family and I have used the bike paths through this neighborhood and the adjacent neighborhood to get from our home near Seacrest over safely to the beach. So, we're very familiar. I tell my daughter, continue to use this path when she rides her bike to the beach. And how would you describe her what is Old Palm Grove and where is it located? Old Palm Grove, North Federal Highway, north of George Bush Boulevard, east side of the road, just south of the city limits. And it's the city's first TND, Traditional Neighborhood Development. I was very excited to be working on a project like this at 27 years old, new type of work coming into the city. So, it was a really exciting time for Delray Beach. Can you just briefly explain what a traditional neighborhood development is? So, TND is a development that can have a mix of uses or different residential types, compact, it's a tight neighborhood, concentrated density, so density might be higher in these neighborhoods, homes closer to the road, oftentimes you would see garages in the rear. And this organization, this layout, allows for high-quality public spaces that encourage community gathering and reduce the dependence on vehicles because these neighborhoods tend to be close to other businesses that residents can walk to. So, as the project planner for Old Palm Grove, would you agree that the project was really a joint effort between the developers, city, and stakeholders to ensure that all needs and code requirements were met? Yes. So, I completed a technical review for compliance with the city's code on this project, and we worked with the developer, Tim Hernandez, who we continue to work with today on other projects. So, the community, the city, and the CRA, at the time, the CRA was actually providing written comments on projects, particularly because they were so involved in the development of this. But the project layout for this site was actually fleshed out prior, fully fleshed, prior to the submittal of a development application. That was done through the pre-application process. So, yeah, it was an effort that we all worked on together. Can you expand or explain some about that pre-application process or having things fleshed out before submission? Well, given the North Federal Highway Plan adopted in 1999 and then this project coming through in 2000, the redevelopment plan was, we were on the heels of that plan. So, this was really one of the first projects, because the estuary was coming through prior to the adoption. So, this was really the first time that we were seeing a development come through as a result of the community planning process that happened with the stakeholders. So, the CRA, the city, the developer worked together to really come up with the site layout before it was even submitted. In fact, the developer utilized Dover Coal to develop that site plan. Dover Coal was associated with the North Federal Highway Redevelopment Plan. So, the North Federal Redevelopment Plan engaged Treasure Coast that the city had engaged, Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council. And then Treasure Coast engaged Dover Coal to assist with the planning effort. So, the developer then worked with Dover Coal to develop the site plan, which is why when we saw it officially as an application, that was one of the easier parts of the project, because it had already been thought out pretty clearly. And do you recall why Estuary Way and the other old Palm Grove roads were abandoned for public and turned into private rights away? So, this was one of the topics of review, because there were multi, this application was multifaceted. There were reliefs, mechanisms that had to come through, waivers, internal adjustments. There is a hidden slide if anybody wants to see it. It was extensive, the amount of relief that had to happen to get this project squeezed in on this site, but particularly the tight lot sizes, hence those relief mechanisms that the boards approved, the use of paper brick roads, the size of the pavement, so the overall street width was substandard to the city requirement. There was a sidewalk on one side of the road, where the city requirement is typically sidewalks on both sides of the road, and then fire. So, fire was one of our most active TAC reviewers through this process, from my memory. This, and later, the estuary, because the estuary added a second phase. Fire was very instrumental in how the access would occur on this site, so that they could get their big aerial trucks, I think they call them, into the site without having to back those trucks out onto Federal Highway. So, they were allowed to be made private, but the access parts for the public, for the community, for fire, that's what was included in the plat, which, you know, you saw on the screen. The North Federal Highway Plan also was encouraging the open connectivity of neighborhoods from the north to south. Mr. Hernandez is right. Delray Swap Shop was on the cusp. It was still the swap shop at this time, Kokomo Key and Allen Avenue on the north, and the idea was to connect pedestrians and people safely through the neighborhoods without having to traverse federal highway to get east, and most people are getting east to go to the beach, right? So, the developer 100% bought into that idea, and like I said, they came in with a plan that was fully fleshed out, and it never included gates. The burden of pushing an access off of the estuary onto this site is not how it was during the planning process. I wrote that down. The city shifted the burden of the bike path. That's not what happened. This was a joint effort of the developer, the CRA, and the city to come together to work out a solution with the estuary. In fact, I even think there were agreements put in place to make that happen. And in your experience, this scenario with a private right-of-way but public access, is that a situation out of the ordinary? Not at all. So, here at the city of Delray, my experience seeing projects over the years, and granted, I started at the city in 98, but I left in 03, worked in the private sector for 13 years, and then came back. Sable Lakes, currently Parks of Delray, which is under construction. Rainberry are some of the examples in the city where that was the case. And then while, you know, my time in the private sector, working for home builders like Lennar, K-Hobnanian Homes, golf course conversions, infill. I mean, our county is, what did they say? Our city is 95-plus percent built out. The county is, too. There's all different scenarios. Sometimes the roads are public. Sometimes they're private. Most of the time, there's some level of access when it's in a more urban area. So, no, I wouldn't say that this is an anomaly. Thank you very much for your time, Ms. Whelan. Thank you. No further questions. Thank you. So, that's the time. I don't want to keep going. I think, ultimately, the considerations are, you know, whether it's appropriate to change an agreement that was made with the public to shift access through this community now. It's beautiful, and we're glad the residents like it there. But before they got there, there were exchanges made to move the public access through. The crime supports don't support the claim, which was part of the original application, that there was a safety issue. Changing this now would override multiple actions by publicly appointed elected bodies to preserve public access. It would also disregard the Always Delray Comprehensive Plan, the North Federal Highway Plan, which remains a guiding document. And then, the only thing I would add, as well, just to the question of publicly accessible private space, downtown is filled with civic open spaces that are a requirement. All of those are publicly accessible and privately maintained. They're not roads, but they are spaces, which is also a subject of this. So, the code requires a recommendation by the city engineer. That's in the backup. It's a recommendation of denial. And then, the Planning and Zoning Board considered the request. However, they failed to pass a motion because they resulted in a tie vote. So, a motion for approval failed on a 3-3 vote. Thank you. Is it time for public comment? Okay. So, at this time, we... No, no. Public comment first. Okay. Public comment. So, at this time, it is time for public comment. So, anyone wishing to speak on this item? Deputy Vice Mayor, if everyone could just simply state their name, address, and whether or not they've been sworn. Okay. All right, so... No, this is quasi-judicial, so they have to give their address. So, please state your name, address, and whether you've been sworn in. Thank you. Good evening, Commissioners. Anna Zukavsky, homeowner at 1631 Old Palm Lane, and a board member of the Old Palm Grove Homeowners Association. I have been sworn in. Thank you. I'm here to speak about my home, not an investment, not a rental unit, not a spec home. I'm here to talk about my home, my community, and my homeowners association. I raise serious concerns about the city's arrangement to grant public access to Old Palm Grove, private roads, and common areas. In my view, this access, forced upon the community years ago, was done in error. And it's time the city recognizes that it is not what residents or taxpayers want, nor is it consistent with how the communities are treated in the city. This public access has caused safety, security, welfare problems, including unauthorized use of private amenities. We are burdened with financial and legal liability, but most of all, treated unfairly. Unlike public streets maintained by city, we pay 100% of costs for repairs, resurfacing, drainage, lighting, to make this community look great. And we pay huge liability insurance. Yet the public uses these areas freely. I figured out that over the past 20 years, Old Palm Grove homeowners have paid over $10 million in property taxes, contributing about half a million dollars every year to the city and county budgets. And yet, we receive nothing in return from the city. No city maintenance, no lighting, no sidewalk repairs, no landscaping, and no police patrols. The city has effectively shifted all costs and liability onto private homeowners while maintaining public access rights. My neighbors are all here. There's a lot of you here. Because we are treated unfairly. And we want to be heard. We are not trying to block public movement. People can go anywhere they want. We are simply asking the city to remove the public access designation from our private streets and remove our liability. Old Palm Grove is not a public park, not a bicycle racetrack, and not a dog park. It's a private residential community. As a licensed real estate broker, I can tell you that public access through private roads devalues the property, increases HOA costs, and ultimately reduces the city tax-owned revenue. It's a loss-loss situation. If the city truly wants to revitalize the federal highway corridor, it should protect homeowners, not create conditions that deepens property value and diminish quality of life. Nearby residents of Cocomokeo, La Hacienda neighborhood, can still use the sidewalks and bike lanes built for you on federal highway. Your time is up, ma'am. Thank you. This is my home. Just give me 30 more seconds. Ma'am, I would have to give everybody. We have a line. We would have to give everybody. We hear you. Thank you so much, and I hope you exercise some fairness into this whole concept. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, my name is Dr. Charles Springfield. I live at 812 Eastview Avenue. I'm an original homeowner in Old Palm Grove. Were you sworn in, sir? I have been sworn in. Thank you. I just want to highlight three points. Obviously, one of our biggest is the question of liability. We have private sidewalks that, like all sidewalks, get damaged. If somebody falls on that sidewalk from the public, I'm sued. The homeowners association is sued. I should also mention that we have had quality of life issues because of this. Everybody walks their dog through our community, and most people are reasonable about what they do and pick up after their dogs, but it's not at all uncommon for people to just have the dogs defecate and walk away. We have had people who've taken our private little park on Eastview Avenue and bring family members in for a picnic on our private property because it's access of public road. Because there's no real necessity, you're already walking down Federal Highway to get to Eastview Avenue and to Estuary Park. All we're asking is go another block so that we can have safety. We've also had, in my experience, Delray Singles. It's a club that gets together every season and takes new singles through, and we've had 30 people at a time come marching through to see the community. There are security issues. You know, we have no right to, we have private sidewalks that everyone can use. It just doesn't seem fair, especially since every single community around us is gated. You might as well just ask all the criminals to come down our street. I would respectfully ask that you consider that what happened 25 years ago was poor planning and maybe the future changed on us. And now those developments are coming in. Windsor, the community of rentals, everybody walks through our neighborhood. It's not a small problem. It's a huge problem. And the first time we closed the gate in the back with a lock that would open in 24 hours, it was ripped off. Ripped off its hinges. So I would just ask that you consider we have a lot of professionals in that area. We're not making this up that there's a problem. We need remedies. And we're asking you to consider what is going on in the area around us and consider that our quality of life is just important as a bike path. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening, Deputy Vice Mayor, City Commissioners, City Staff, and fellow community members. My name is Todd Harvey. I am the president of Kokomo Key Homeowners Association, and I reside at 1071 Kokomo Key Lane. I'm here tonight on behalf of my community to urge you to preserve the existing public access through Old Palm Grove neighborhood. This access is a vital link that serves the broader community. For years, residents have relied on this pathway to provide essential pedestrian and bicycle access to La Cienda Park, as well as the beach. Closing or restricting this access would force residents and their families onto less safe and much longer routes, directly undermining the city's overall goal of walkability, sustainability, and traffic mitigation. And the feeling that preserving the access infringes on the neighborhood's privacy should not outweigh the overall good and public benefit of the community as a whole. We ask that you preserve this important and essential public access. By doing so, you are not only respecting the longstanding pattern of public use, but also making a forward-looking investment in our community's connectivity and quality of life. And as noted, I believe you all received our association's formal letter via email. And I'd like to thank you for your time and consideration of this very important issue. And on a personal note, I'd like to thank the city staff for their thorough explanation and overview of this item. It was very informative, and thank you, everyone, for your time and consideration. Thank you. Good evening. Good evening. My name is Robin Keller. I'm a resident of 717 South Lake Avenue in the La Hacienda neighborhood, just immediately adjacent to Old Palm Grove. Ms. Keller, were you sworn in? I was sworn in, yes. Thank you. I'm a retired partner of the international law firm of Hogan Levels, and I've previously submitted a written statement in opposition to the abandonment, which I'm told was delivered to the commission. I've met with dozens of neighbors in La Hacienda who also oppose the abandonment, and I've had numerous discussions with counsel for Old Palm Grove to express our disagreement and try to look for a resolution which would satisfy everyone, however, without success. My neighbors and I enjoy walking through the scenic Old Palm Grove to exercise and to take the air. My grandchildren play in the pocket park right off the access road, and they would like to ride their tricycles and little bikes with training wheels in Old Palm Grove rather than on Federal Highway. I would note that Old Palm Grove residents have and will continue to have free and open access to our neighborhood, including the pathway through to Palm Trail, which takes you down to Atlantic Avenue. But they want to preclude us from access to their neighborhood, even though open access was an express condition of the approval of their development and has been in place without incident for decades and is consistent with the mandate of numerous Delray Beach development plans. As you know, the Planning and Zoning Commission has opposed the abandonment, as has the city engineer. The applicant does not meet the criteria outlined for the abandonment on the ground cited in the city's papers. The applicant makes much of safety concerns and risks of lawsuits, but I haven't seen or heard anywhere where they cite an actual lawsuit arising out of an incident or any damages to the community, and the criminal activities report is minimal and far below that prevalent in other areas of Delray Beach. Old Palm Grove is already off the beaten path as it dead ends at the estuary and is adjacent to North and South Lake Avenues, which are also listed as dead-end streets. And so it's unlikely to attract many undesirable transients. They already have calming gates in place, which are a deterrent to traffic, and the fact that other communities have gates is not relevant. Thank you, Ms. Keller. We ask that the commission deny the request for abandonment. Thank you. Thank you. Hello. My name is Evan Woodlitz. I live at 1639 Old Palm Lane. A couple of observations. One, looking at this slide where the city relies on the city engineer recommending denial, but if you take a look at the city engineer's analysis, there is no current analysis. He simply references or she simply references the public purpose that we talked about 25 years ago and says it shouldn't be changed. The only current analysis that the city engineer makes is that there would be no detrimental impact on utility services. The staff relies on, and in fact, they state at the bottom of page two of their report that it is important to note that if OPG's request is granted, the houses on Eastview Avenue, and I'm quoting, would not have an acceptable turnaround and that they would have to turn around utilizing private driveways. The irony of that was not lost on me. I'm sure it's not lost on you. Without securing the gate on Eastview, it is OPG's private road that serves as the turnaround for anybody, where OPG has far more folks and far more children than Eastview. It's simply unfair. It can be rectified, that particular issue that the staff brought up, by putting a sign on federal saying that this is a dead end or no pass-through. Third, or second, staff relies on the Planning and Zoning Board staff report. I think it's attached. The linchpin of the Zoning Board staff report is found at page seven. Specifically, they talk about the right of access on the streets of OPG. Quote, it allows pedestrians, and this all sounds lovely, but in reality it's a fiction. It allows pedestrians and bicyclists to move from federal highways southward and that if OPG's request were granted, occupants and residents would be forced to walk on federal highway. Of course, the staff had to acknowledge that there is open access to Hacienda Park no matter what happens with this application. We are talking about, I think Andy said, 500 feet additional on federal. No one travels to OPG without being on federal. If you come from the north, you have to be on federal. If you come from the south, you have to be on federal. The only thing that this would affect is if you come from the north, I guess Andy said there's another 500 feet to walk on federal. But you are on federal for a majority of the time. This federal thing is simply a red herring, a distraction. It's unfair. As staff points out, the commission's charge, and forgive me if I say too much or too little here, is to weigh the beneficial aspects of OPG's request and determine whether they outweigh the negative aspects. Referencing 25-year-old discussions is not a current analysis. I would submit that OPG shouldn't be a public dog park on private roads. They shouldn't be exposed to legal jeopardy. Thank you for your comment, sir. Thank you. Good evening, commissioners. My name is Angela Chiara. I'm also a board member of Old Palm Grove. I have been sworn in. I live at 786 Estuary Way. I stand before you tonight just to say that this is a liability issue. It concerns all the homeowners here. And I think that to put the liability issue on the homeowners of Old Palm Grove over an agreement that was made over 20 years ago for a developing neighborhood is unjust. And a lot has changed in 20-plus years in the neighborhood. But I think we can all recognize that. I agree with the last speaker. There's a lot of references to Federal Road. And it hasn't really been brought up. But there's a very wide sidewalk on that side of the highway to get to Eastview to go to the park. So there is an alternate route, which from my research does say that that is a consideration when granting the dismissal of this. The second thing is we all pay a lot of money to upkeep the neighborhood. Anna mentioned it. It's over $7,000 a year for the homeowners. And the fact that we're doing that and we take all of the liability to offer public access I think is unfair and I think it should be looked at. One of the things that was brought up tonight that I don't think we paid a lot of attention to is that the original intent was to put a path, a pedestrian path and a bike path in between, nestled in between Estuary Way and, I'm sorry, nestled in between Old Palm Grove and the Estuary. That never got built. So technically the roads in our neighborhood are public access, but the sidewalks aren't, which just tells you that. It's nonsensical, okay, and it was abandoned for some purpose, the private pathway, and there was never another plan to create a pathway for the pedestrians and the bikers. And, you know, Mr. Hernandez came up as a witness for the city and his first remarks were, well, I don't remember, and he used words like, honestly, don't remember, I don't think, or the goal of it was. That isn't really, I don't think, relevant in this case, right? And the other testimony that I've heard, it just seemed like a lot of nothing, to be quite honest. And I respectfully ask that you reconsider this because it concerns us. And there's been some comments about safety and the fact that we brought that up the last time and that, you know, we have no right because, you know, the statistics aren't there, but they're comparing the statistics of a community that has 100-plus residents to one that has 30 homes. Okay, so, yeah, the reports that come from, or the statistics are going to show higher for those neighborhoods because there's more driveways, there's more cars, there's more incidents. So you can't, it's not apples to apples, okay? And there are people that wander into the neighborhood that, you know, are not the type of people that you want wandering in with your kids around, okay, laying on benches and doing other things. Thank you. I respect your time. Thank you. Hello, everyone. My name is Christine Jarjora. I live in Old Palm, 1604, Old Palm Grove, and I'm the original owner. I've seen the area and the neighborhood has grown and changed over the past two decades. I attended the planning and zoning, a board meeting, and heard what members of the public said regarding access to our neighborhood, as well as the city staff comments that the public safety issue is only perceived and not actual. Well, I beg to differ as I was broken into before I report, before, and I reported it to the police. I not only live here, and I'm out multiple times a day walking my two dogs. I disagree with the city staff that this is only a perception and not a reality. We are a close-knit neighborhood, and many of us know each other by names or at least our dogs' names. We often have people using our neighborhood that do not live here, and some have shared they prefer walking in our neighborhood over there. It does not seem fair that, while they have a guarded and secure, we cannot access, yet they can use ours. We pay highly for a small community with our landscaping, maintenance, and insurances, and it doesn't seem right that we should be the ones solely responsible for the cost, yet others get to benefit. If one of these non-invitees falls in our neighborhood and gets hurt, who's liable? They are able to sue us, and we would have the cost of defending the litigation as well as our insurance goes up. Again, this is a public safety issue. I walk as many of us as well as at night, and the streetlight across from my house has been down twice, and I've called in to request the repair, and it took months to finally address. It's quite dark and scary to know people that don't live in the neighborhood walking through. We also have a motel a few feet from our entrance that has had multiple police calls to it. Why haven't the staff provided those numbers, as it is directly across the street from us? Given the numbers of police calls juxtaposed against 33 numbers of homes, myself including, this is clearly not just a perception problem. Several access to the Hacienda Park, Eastview Avenue, Lakeview Avenue, and Lake Avenue is not the only exclusive access. I know the developer offered this, but he does not live here and has come and gone, and should someone get hurt while utilizing our neighborhood or our homes getting broken into, it will be us, the residents, that is affected. We pay a significant amount not only to our HOA, but also our taxes, and we are asking the city to represent us. Given its proximity off federal highway, some of the existing blight on federal, our neighborhood needs to be secure to be safe. Thank you. Ms. O'Johue, thank you. My name is Macy Voltaggio. I have been sworn in, and I live at 1045 Kokomo Key Lane. I am a new resident to Delray Beach. My husband and I were relocated here approximately two months ago, and I can only speak to my experience in now recently discovering that there was access from our location to, for me, mainly for St. Vincent Catholic Church. Church, I don't have a car, only my husband has a car, so I use my bicycle to get around, and so for me to get to church, to be able to go through the axis, is tremendously much safer than if I have to go out on federal way. Either I have to go the wrong way on the sidewalk to get to cross over, or I need to go all the way down to cross over to then be on the correct side of the road in order to go the correct direction with my bike to then go down on George Bush. I have taken both routes, and I can definitely assure you that going through the axis is much quicker, much safer. I feel much, much more safe going through the axis. The few times that I have gone through the neighborhood, I haven't even ever seen anybody else utilizing the kind of pathway through. I haven't encountered dog messes on the ground. I haven't encountered anything being vandalized. So, for me, I was thrilled when I found the axis, and then I just received the notice that this was now becoming an issue. So, I felt very strongly to come. I understand everybody's concerns. I certainly appreciate you spending time listening to us, but I can just reassure you that from a bicycle standpoint, this axis is much, much safer, especially for me to try and get to church because it's mass. So, we go several times a week. So, thank you very much. I just want to verify that you were sworn in, correct? I was, yes. Okay, thank you. Yeah, thank you. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Evelyn Katsouras, 837 Kokomo Key Lane, and I was sworn in. Thank you. I have been down in Florida since 1988, and I moved to Delray Beach to Kokomo Key in 1996. And during that time, I have seen a lot of changes. The swap shop was still there. A lot of the businesses south of us were still there. And what I want to say is I was happy to see more developments in our area. And looking at everybody tonight, I wouldn't mind running into any of these neighbors, either in Kokomo Key or anywhere else in Delray Beach. I think that the city should continue to allow Kokomo Key residents to have access, public access. We are neighbors. If people are worried about safety or lawsuits, they could put up cameras. They could have a police officer or security officers on duty. Other communities have found a way around it. I notice a lot of expensive neighborhoods in Delray have back alleys. They have cottages that are adjacent to their homes. And people, I have access to those roads. And, yeah, I'll take it and cut through if I have to and avoid traffic. But nobody's ever stopped me. I don't see any problems. So I think every community is exposed to security issues and crime and everything like that. But I do think local residents in that corridor should continue to have public access. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Cazares. Thank you. Hi. My name is Lane Carlay, and I live in La Hacienda Gardens on 734 South Lake. I was invited to be on the original committee with Diana Colonna with the CRA back in 2002 when these ideas about what we're talking about now began to percolate. In fact, the mayor was on the CRA at that time. Anyway, I just want to say that I would like you to vote the way the engineer recommends, a denial. There's so many things I could say, but the whole thing began to make a new urban community. And I would like it to stay that way. I know they feel they have a lot of problems, and I'm not making fun of it, but over the years, a lot of it has come down to people not being nice in their neighborhood with their dogs. And we have that everywhere. So please vote no. Thank you very much. Thank you. And I saw you being sworn in, so I remember. Hi. My name is Seth Gordon. I live at 932 Kokomo Key. I was sworn in as well. Thank you. I would like to say that when I leave my neighborhood, it takes me about 200 feet going down Federal, and it's horrendous. You can't make a cross to the other side because the nearest intersection is a mile north. And I can't make it down to the nearest intersection to the south because it's just about a mile south. So you have to go into oncoming traffic. The speed limit's 30. They're going 50 on Federal. You're coming into it. If any biker or any walker comes in the way, you're not legally allowed to ride your bike on the sidewalk. So you have to be in the bike lane. You're coming face-on to head traffic. They're saying that it's only a 500, 600 foot difference. You're going to turn my 200 trip to a 500, 600 foot. That's a quarter mile. That's a half a mile. That's significantly longer. That's double, triple what my normal bike ride is. And I think that this decision is you can't fix the biking issue on Federal. It's a significant issue, but you can prevent the issue from getting worse by stopping this community from forcing us to go bike on Federal. The decision to remove sidewalk access will be based off of a handful of community members, realistically, probably the only ones that are living by the actual sidewalk itself. And their decision will remove access for all of the rest of the surrounding communities to be able to bike and walk to the beach. In my opinion, I don't think that you should be able to move into an open community and then request for it to be gated. If you want to live in a gated community, you have to go and live in a gated community to begin with. I don't think it's fair that you can move in and say that you don't want your neighbors to walk down your sidewalk because that's what this is. They don't want to share their sidewalks with their neighbors. It's not a bad crowd. It's a very friendly, nice, respectful area. I'm sure that board members and mayors are not going to live in a horrendous, crime-filled neighborhood. It's nice. There's no issue there. I think that something else you need to consider is that when you privatize this area, and that's what you're going to do, you're going to give them the land. First of all, you're going to do it for free. You're going to sell Delray for free to the mayor's neighborhood. You'll never get that land back. So when you look at going to the beach and you can't go anywhere north of George Bush because it's all bought out, you look at the beach accessibility for Delray residents, it's getting smaller and smaller and smaller. And if you're not ever making a decision to increase accessibility, which never happens, then you're just going to remove all this access and you'll never get it back. That land will never be public again. And the area for us to be able to just walk and go to the beach is shrinking into nothing. Thank you, Mr. Gordon. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Sharon LaRue, and I'm a resident at 830 Kokomo Key Lane. I appreciate your time so much. I want to thank you commissioners and city staff for all your work on this issue and your time in letting us speak. You've already heard so much. I'm going to be brief. We are urging you to protect our long-time access. As you've heard, it's important to us, and it's utilized by many, many people. I have heard this evening that, well, first of all, let me just say we don't want to make, I don't want to make light of our neighbors' concerns. I appreciate those concerns. At the same time, I did buy into a community, and I do currently have lovely access. We all do, and we want to preserve that. So we have looked at the crime data. I'm not saying that there is none, but it doesn't support eliminating public access. Further, as several people have said, once you give away that public access, that's going to be forever. I would urge you to support this city engineer's recommendation, which is denial, that it does not fit with the comprehensive plan. I would also just add that although some people have suggested that we've heard a lot of ancient history that's not relevant, it is relevant because promises were made. Promises were made that allowed the development to be built. Without those promises, it wouldn't be here. And so I'm asking for those promises to be kept. So with that, we urge you to vote no to the abandonment request. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you, Ms. LaRue. Good evening. Good evening. My name is John McAvoy. I live at 1018 Kokomo Key Lane, and I have been sworn in. Thank you. Like the young man just pointed out over there, I ride bike. I jog through that community all the time. I think you guys are great neighbors, personally. I've never had any problems. I always say hello. And I thought it was reciprocal. Perhaps not. It is very dangerous for me to get on my bike, go north, go across Federal Highway, get onto the bike lane going south, come back, and then access the neighborhood they want us to access at this point. It is such an, I think it's an extra 515 feet, someone said, for us to go. But we're not supposed to use the sidewalk on bicycles. We can't use the bike lane to go south unless we go across Federal Highway and then use the proper bike lane to go south. So the easiest and safest way to do this is to go through your neighborhood. I don't understand why there's such a friction because every time I go through, I've never seen any problems. And I've been doing it for 14 years. 14 years I've been doing it, as well as running. I walk through there. I run through there. And I do it four or five times a week. No problems. Everything's cool. So I don't really see why. And I forgot all about this, by the way, because I was out running and biking. So I said, well, I wanted to get here as quickly as possible just to voice my opinion, to say, I thought we had a good neighborly thing going, but apparently we don't. I've never seen a problem. And I'm sorry that you guys do see a problem. But I hope we can rectify this, and I really think you should vote with us to continue to have access to their community. So thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. McElwee. Hi, my name is Deborah Sanciotta. I live at 820 Eastview Avenue. And yes, I just wanted to quickly say that I'm really sorry it's come down to people thinking it's neighbor against neighbor, because honestly, this has nothing to do with anyone personally here. I think the people that walk through, the people that are riding their bikes through, I don't have an issue with them. What I have an issue with is if they fall on a crack on my sidewalk, I'm liable. If the city wants to give access to these people, I don't even have a problem with that, and I'm sure my neighbors are going to kill me for saying it. But then let the city be liable, if they fall, for fixing the plantings, for replacing the lights, and for taking care of our streets like every other thing that the city does for the rest of the neighborhoods around here. I think really everything that we're asking for is just treat us the same way you treat other neighborhoods. All these other people that want to come through our property, Kokomo, they love it. Yes, I don't blame them. It's beautiful. Can we all, 80 of us, go walking through their neighborhoods and drive into there and ride our bicycles and bring 30 people and go into their neighborhoods? Are they all welcoming us? I haven't gotten an invitation. And they keep saying, we will, oh, come, any time. Nobody's ever invited me that's walked through and said, come into my neighborhood with your kids and sit in my fountain and let your dogs. And people actually have bathed in our fountain. People have actually washed their dogs in our fountain. So I get it. I understand why all these people want to come through. I don't blame them. It is. It's very pretty. I think we're just trying to say, just try to treat us fairly. Figure out a solution that works. If we're going to be private, then allow us to be private. If we're going to be part of the city and you want it open to the public, then the city needs to take some responsibility for paying for the things that we have to pay for. I don't think that's fair. Thank you for your time. Thank you. My name is John Maluli, and I live at 1636 Old Palm Lane. I just have a few things to say here, but if I've heard the various people in the audience, you need to put a new agenda item on next month's meeting, and that is how hellacious North Federal Highway is and how dangerous. But, you know, people can say what they want to say, but I don't think anybody's been murdered or severe bodily injury in any of these places they're describing. And for some of the people in Kokomo Key, including the young gentleman who spoke, our sidewalks and streets are private. There is no land that the city would be giving up to us if we had the privacy that we should have, given the fact that we have to take care of the streets and the sidewalks. So the city's not giving up anything. If the city wants to accept something, accept the liability if someone gets hurt in our neighborhood. You know, I mean, you've got deeper pockets than we do, so you can change that. So the small pocket park in La Hacienda, I would like to reiterate, it's really a wide walkway between Old Palm Grove and La Hacienda. It's not a park in any way, shape, or form. So, and the access has already been established. You can get there 14 different ways. We do have vandalism in our neighborhood, and since the zoning and planning meeting last month, someone came through the neighborhood and tore my American flag off the front of my house, including the mount that's screwed into the concrete wall. Also, I've lately been finding, and I actually have one in my car that I, of course, forgot to bring in, small bottles of Captain Morgan rum thrown about in people's yards in our neighborhood. And I don't know this, but I'm going to guess it's not my neighbors who's drinking those. Let's see. So, you know, to go back to the number one issue, it is our liability, and so you need to solve that problem. We have private streets and sidewalks, and you need to do something about that. Thank you. And I appreciate that. I just want to say one more thing. The folks that were from the city here and interviewed various people, please tell me why they got more than three minutes. Thank you. Good evening. I'm Claire Wheatley, and I live at 829 Eastview Avenue, Delray Beach, in a community known as Old Palm Grove, and I have been sworn in. I respectfully request that this commission abandon public access to Old Palm Grove because it puts a legal liability upon everyone in my community. For example, anyone who comes through this community, we are liable for them. Why is it fair for us to be a public amenity? And the city has no obligation to anything, and yet we're liable. This precedent is unfair and unreasonable. We are not taking away public access to a walking path to get to Old Palm Trail or Hacienda Gardens. All anyone has to do, if they are already walking south from Gulf Stream on Federal Highway, is to continue one more block south and one block east from Eastview Avenue. There is still connectivity. We have an amazing, beautiful area. So, of course, people want to go there. I mean, if I didn't live there, I would too. But, because it is so beautiful, we spend our hard-earned money to make it that way. Yet, we are still liable. The way things stand now affects our quality of life. We must continually pick up after others that don't respect our property. Dog poop and litter. We would like to be in a position to put up a coded security gate, as do other private communities, so as to protect our property and association amenities. Again, why is it fair for us to be a public amenity? And the city has no obligation to pay for anything, yet we are liable. It is unfair, unreasonable, and unprecedented. I request respectfully that this commission abandon public access. Thank you. Claire Wheatley. Thank you, Ms. Wheatley. I have not been sworn in. Sorry. I need to be sworn in. I need to swear Mr. Katz in, please. Is there anyone else that needs to be sworn in that would like to speak? Okay. Thank you. Mitch Katz, 1618 West Classical Boulevard, Delray Beach, Florida. I was watching the presentation and I decided to come down. I'm on the Planning and Zoning Board. I'm not speaking on behalf of the Planning and Zoning Board, but I was one of the votes in favor of this. But I want to give a different perspective. I was president of Bexley Park Homeowners Association for 10 years from 2005 to 2015 in a very similar aspect. We are a private – I say we, I still feel like part of that community after being there for so long. But we are a private community with public access. When I took over as president from the builder, we had signs that had no trespassing. The city said – was going to fine us and say, you have to take those signs down. Those streets have public access because the streets were given to – or whatever they call that – to the city. And so we had to take the signs down. And we did. So we had people coming in. We could not stop. We could not even sign an agreement with the police department from keeping people from coming in because of public access. Which is okay because here's the thing. I remember about a year or two later, my wife was walking my son at the time to elementary school and tripped over sidewalk. And guess what? Guess who I called? Did I call the HOA or did I call the city? I called the city because they owned and maintained the streets to give that access. And next day, the city came out and they fixed the sidewalk. If you're going – if anybody up here is going to make a motion to deny this today, you have the right to do that as commission. But then I think you need to make a motion with a subsequent motion saying that the city is going to take over these streets. I heard somebody say the city is losing something. The city isn't losing something because they don't own it. These poor people have to pay and maintain these streets, have all the liability. If I walk in there and trip, I can't sue the city. I'm suing them. But you're giving me access. It makes no sense whatsoever. And when I was on the board, on the planning board, before we voted on this, I did a little research to see if there's anywhere else in the city that this is like this and there is nowhere. Because any places like Bexley Park where they built it, they said, hey, we're going to – we want to give public access. And Bexley Park, we all moved in there knowing we can never put a gate up. We can never deny access. But we also know if somebody tripped or got a crash on the street, it's the city's responsibility and not ours. So you've got to weigh the one or the other. I'm not saying you have to deny or you have to approve this. This is up to you. You're the commissioners. When I went on commission, I never want anybody to tell me how to vote. But it's up to you how to vote. But if you're going to vote to deny this, then you've got to take the responsibility off of these poor residents. The easiest way is to not put another expenditure on us because guess what? These residents, like me and you, most likely in about a year from now, are going to stop paying property taxes as the government gets its way. And we're going to have to figure out how to pay for all these votes. Right now they're paying for it. Why would you want to take that over? It's real easy. Let them have a gate. Let them control access. And then they pay for it and you take on no more liability than you need to. I know that you brought up a city planner from a time ago. And by the way, I haven't seen an attorney present for the city in anything since we had opiate litigation to change our land development regulations in 2016. I mean, is this so horrendous to the residents of that community that we have to bring an attorney in to testify on behalf of the city? This literally, the only other time in 20 years involved in the city to see an attorney sitting there was the opiate litigation. Thank you, Mr. Fox. I'm happy to answer that, Deputy Vice Mayor. If you would. Sure. So the rules of procedure, Ashley, do not allow me to ask questions of witnesses. And the proper way to handle these types of hearings when you are going to present testimony from other witnesses other than the planner, planning and zoning director, is to have an attorney who represents the city sitting at the table. So that's why that was done today. There's nothing special about this. It's just typically we don't introduce witnesses from the past to give a historical perspective to the city commission. And that's what was being done. So I couldn't ask the questions because I'm the board counsel. I'm your attorney. Mr. Bennett is here as the city staff's attorney to present that testimony to you. Thank you for clarifying that. Thank you. Excuse me. Could you have a line? No, you. She works for us, actually. Yes. Yes. Sir. Thank you, Attorney General. Thank you, sir. Go ahead. Okay. My name is Brad Wheatley. I live at 829 Eastview Avenue. And I have been sworn in. Our attorney and neighbor, Andrea Kaiser, has given a great presentation of our case regarding the abandonment with many strong arguments. Many of our neighbors have and will get up here tonight to echo those same compelling points. I won't take your valuable time reiterating all these arguments, but want to strongly stress what is, in my view, the most important point. As the situation exists now, with the public having free access to our private property, property that we pay significant amounts to maintain, unjustly exposes us to potential financial liabilities from every member of the public coming onto our property. As it stands now, any of the many bicyclists who zip down our street or sidewalks, who are unnecessarily cutting through from Federal Highway to get to Old Palm Trail, because as we pointed out, there is a very ready alternative for access, could crash and sue our private association for damages. We view our situation of having a private association exposed to public liability as totally unfair, unjust, and un-American, and unprecedented in any other Delray Beach community. Unless the city wants to assume the public liability, we are currently unfairly exposed to, and we are unfairly exposed to, please agree to our request for the abandonment and right this wrong. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. that the people that are coming from Kokomo Key, there's a certain irony from the fact that they are a private community. And it is also worth noting that when they're leaving from their community, they do have to go south on Federal before they're coming to enter Old Palm anyway. So to suggest that you are, in a unique way, heading south if you're biking is incorrect. You're basically, whether you make the turn a little bit sooner or not, and the most direct access to the park that's there is actually not through Old Palm. It's actually a shorter path and a more direct path by not going through Old Palm. So there's, and as far as the crime statistics too, it's completely kind of misleading in the way that it's presented. It was presented in that chart as a total count. Well, if you're going to compare a total count, then it should be based on a per capita or a percentage of incidence. And that means that the much larger communities that are adjacent to it should have a much higher, if they're going to have an equal level of crime or an equal level of representation in the data. And so that means that our respective crime is actually quite a bit higher. And I think that's worth taking note of. I know everyone's getting tired, and I'll just say thank you. Thank you. So we are coming to the end of our public comment time, approaching the hour. So these last two people, you will be the last two. Thank you. Thank you. Hey, good evening. My name is Jeff Casey. I was sworn in. I live at 1623 Old Palm Lane, and I asked the city a couple of questions. One, I'm a home builder also. I spent my career with a huge company and did a lot of deals also. I will tell you the reason the original bike path was abandoned. It was because of the rear setback line. It allowed new era development, new urban development, to build bigger product. And they threw the liability on to people at that time that they didn't know, because that was done before the development was done. Two, will the city take over our streets? I pay $7,000 a year in homeowners association fees for the city, for me to take care of my own streets, my own front yard, whatever else is done out there. If you're going to push a liability on me, take the streets over. Third thing I'll ask, I'm not an attorney, but if I get hurt in the community, I know my attorney is going to attach everybody he can get, and he's going to sue the city along with Old Palm Grove. Is the city going to try to get dismissed off the lawsuit? So I ask you guys, before you make a decision tonight, will you take the streets over? Two, answer the question that if there's a lawsuit that comes in, will your solicitor say, we want to get dismissed? If that opens up another can of worms. And also, I want you to know that the reason Old Palm Grove looks the way it is, is there is a give and take. The rear setback line would have affected a lot of the units that have back up to the estuary. Thank you very much. Thank you. I'll be brief. Yes, I've been sworn in. My name is Stacey Dowdle. I live at 801 Del Mar Way. And yes, I was sworn in. And I just want to say good evening, everyone. And it's nice to see you. I do, I would like to weigh in very briefly as everyone is exhausted. I have a unique perspective. I have two homes. I, my daughter and I, we are Windsor, Del Rey, and we also are at Kokomo Key. I will tell you for the last 15, 16 years of what I've enjoyed. And also, we had a little place down at 1030 Langer Way. So I love our city. And I do feel for what's happening in Old Palm Grove, although I do agree with the original engineer and the city engineer's decision, or at least their, their consideration to deny because this is an interconnectivity, in my opinion, lovely use of our land and our community together as one unit. We live in a time and space where interconnectivity and a spiritual walk with your, you know, seeing your neighbor by name and their dogs as we're losing some of that. I love the fact that this lane exists and the access to the beach is for its safety mechanism. Most importantly, because my child and I are St. Vincent Ferrer, um, enjoy the parish, uh, for the last 25 years, my daughter went to school there. So we walked there. Um, I will tell you the safety to me is paramount for our children and our community. And I know for, I'm not alone in the St. Vincent Ferrer community that a lot of us enjoy that little trail there and, uh, walk to mass. So, um, I speak, I guess, um, on a few different fronts, but, and I also want to say I'm so sorry about this liability issue. Um, the original intent, I don't think, uh, that was there for the land to have this be a part of what's going on with them. Um, but they did know that when they bought it. So, I appreciate your time and God bless and thanks. Thank you. Public comment is concluded. Uh, so now we will go to cross-examination or, and rebuttal. Yes. Uh, Annie, thank you very much. Um, we would first like to cross-examine staff, please. Um, can you clarify that Estuary Way is not a public right-of-way? Estuary Way is a privately maintained road with the right of both pedestrian and vehicular access and then it transitions at the edge here into a community. Perfect. Thank you. So, it is a privately owned and maintained road, but on the plat, public access was dedicated on that private road, correct? The right of public access for vehicular and pedestrian ingress and egress. Okay, great. Just wanted to make sure I clarified that. Can you please confirm that there was a dedicated bike, bicycle, and pedestrian pathway sandwiched between the Estuary and Old Palm Grove that was abandoned? You're talking about? The green and pink. The green and the pink that were abandoned and replaced with the right of public access on Old Palm Lane. Yes. Eastview. This way. Okay. So, that pedestrian and bicycle path that was abandoned, was there any vehicular access on that? No. And is, in your professional opinion, is it good planning to have bicycles and pedestrians have their own dedicated path or share a road with vehicles? Well, there's something called context sensitive planning. So, when you're in a small narrow neighborhood, you don't usually have a dedicated bike path. People are, you know, your kids are riding in your neighborhood streets. If you're on a road like Federal Highway, there's a defined bike lane. Typically, we would like to see it buffered so that there was some separation. There's an entire transect of how that happens. So, it's related to how fast cars are moving. If you're under 25 miles an hour, it's perfectly safe to walk and bike casually. That's part of why I think you hear the barrier island doesn't always want sidewalks. They just walk in the streets a little. So, it's context and it depends, is the answer. Okay. Is it, would you say, at least, it's more advantageous to not have vehicles share a road with bicycles and pedestrians? Yeah. I mean, definitely. I mean, I think it would be good. Bikes, it depends. Pedestrians, you definitely, you know, want to have a different route. Okay. Specifically in this North Federal Highway Overlay District. Are there any other private communities that are open to the public? I don't know the answer to that. Is Kokomo Key open to the public? It's gated. Is Windsor open to the public? I don't know. I know that they face the sidewalk with their little things. Are they gated? I don't know. Is it St. George? Is St. George open to the public? I'm trying to remember last time I had to go over there to check a landscape maintenance easement. I mean, I drove in. I don't remember. Astuary is definitely not. Are there bike paths on Federal Highway? Ms. Kaiser, we do have time limits, so you do need to wrap it up. Yes. Okay. Would I be able to extend the same courtesy for cross-examination that the witnesses got? Sure. Okay. Thank you kindly. Are there bike paths on Federal Highway? Yes. Okay. I had a picture. Do you have bike paths on your bicycle maps in the comp plan on Federal Highway? It would be good to see your map. We have priority ones for where we want them to go. We have a bike pad master plan as well where we're trying to organize where new infrastructure needs to take place moving forward with the capital plan. Okay. Can, other than through Old Palm Grove, can the public walk or bike to Hacienda Park? Yes. They can access it from North Lake Ave. And other than through Old Palm Grove, can the public bike or walk to the public right-of-ways along Palm Trail? They, yes, because they can come down to North Lake Ave and cut through here. And other than through Old Palm Grove, can the public walk or bike to the beach? Yes. Okay. There's a whole network. Those are all my questions for staff. Can I cross-examine Mr. Hernandez, please? Do I rebut now? Let her finish and then? Yes. So, Mr. Hernandez, can you come up and sit at the table? You can sit at the table. You can sit next to the wall. There's a microphone. Thank you, Mr. Hernandez. You said you were involved in the Kokomo Key project, correct? I was. Did you contemplate allowing the public to have rights of access in Kokomo Key? Yeah, that was a discussion, actually. Okay. And what was the result of that discussion? It was gated. And I'm trying to remember if we gated it at Pulte or if we did not. We were the first thing that was ever built up in that area. Okay. I mean, there was nothing else. So, I mean, we were really going out of a limb. And I still remember, you may not care, but I remember they didn't want to do that deal. They did not want to do that. I remember meeting with Dick Siemens out on the property. He says, Tim, you should do this deal. It's really interesting. And they didn't want to do it. Like, the corporate marketing person came down from Pulte. No, no, no. So, I took them to, I can't remember what it was called. It was right in the railroad tracks. Bought them a couple drinks. And like, at 9 o'clock, they said, okay, we'll do this deal. Okay. Thank you for that. So, when you were, you know, designing this innovative Old Palm Grove project and thinking about its interconnectivity and taking into consideration other communities like Kokomo Key, were you aware that Kokomo Key would have to walk on Federal Highway to Old Palm Grove? At what point in time? When you were developing this innovative Old Palm Grove project that had this interconnectivity, walkable and bicycle interconnectivity. And you were contemplating other communities in the surrounding area. Did you take into account the fact that people from Kokomo Key or Windsor would have to go down Federal Highway to get to Old Palm Grove? There was no Windsor, but certainly, yeah. I mean, we knew it was a terrible situation. Did you know that that distance is about 570 feet? It was a long way. Okay. Like I said, one foot on Federal Highway. And you said the goal to develop Old Palm Grove was that the city really wanted single-family homes in our community, right? Well, I wanted to do single-family homes because I had to sign the loan, and I wanted to do something that was different from everybody else. And I felt that was going to be the most marketable thing. If I could figure out a way to do single-family detached homes, I'd have no competition. I mean, we're not big. We're not a huge company like Lennar or Pulte, so we try to be innovative and creative. And you said the abandonment was necessary to secure these approvals? The abandonment of the bicycle and pedestrian path sandwiched between estuary and Old Palm Grove? That question doesn't make sense. The abandonment was not necessary to secure approvals. The abandonment was necessary to make my project work. Oh, so you were able to develop bigger lots on the parcels along that bicycle and pedestrian? Not necessarily. I mean, you know, there's always different ways to do it. But yeah, I mean, I remember talking to Scott Horton, actually. He'll probably remember this. He didn't want that there, either. Okay. And we all agreed that it didn't make sense to have a walkway behind homes on both sides. It would be weird. Okay. So what we did is we moved the the pedestrian's access to this street, which made more sense. So, Vice Mayor, can he be permitted to finish the question? Oh, sorry. The answer? Yes. Thank you. My apologies. Too excited. Sorry. Go ahead and finish your answer, please. I think I did. Okay. Thank you. So if it's too weird to walk behind homes in Old Palm Grove, why didn't you dedicate the sidewalks on Old Palm Lane and Eastview? Okay. It had to do with setbacks, probably. Think about it. Okay. So if you dedicate it, okay, as part of a right-of-way or something like that, it depends on where you're drawing the property lines from. That's one possible explanation as to why we didn't make them publicly dedicated. We made a public access even. We felt that was enough. So it's okay for the public to walk on the sidewalks on Estuary Way, but then they should only walk on the roads on Old Palm Lane and Eastview. Is that part of your plan? Estuary Way, it's still the same. It's still a private, private tract. Okay. It's no different. Did you envision, when you created this innovative project, did you envision that other communities would be interconnected in this area? I always hope. I'm a new urbanist. I always hope for more interconnectivity. That's why I did not gate this community originally. Okay. Someone came after us and gated it. I remember, I used to drive through, I used to use, let me tell you something. I drove so many lenders through this project. See what we did. See what we created. Look at how beautiful this place is. I mean, one thing I've heard today, everybody seems to agree it's beautiful. It is. And so they may not agree anything else. But, but, so, so, I mean, that's what we always shoot for. Okay. And I'm not, I'm proud of it. And I'm, and I hope that everyone else, either who lives here, who walks through, you know, appreciates the time and effort. I mean, I think we got 99% of it right. It is beautiful. So, so I feel, I feel like, you know, I didn't want to wall it off. I never want to wall anything off. Sometimes you do. Okay. Because of the context, because of the neighborhood, because of conditions, you know, that surround you that you don't have complete control of. So, and so, so you don't want to wall anything off. So you intended for neighboring communities to be able to access Old Palm Grove, correct? That was a collaborative decision as we went through the process. That's what we ended up with. Okay. So, I mean, I, you know, again, you, you said, or someone set up, well, Mr. Hernandez says he can't remember, you know, what he did in 2002, 23 years ago. I mean, I remember pretty good. I think my detail is, is pretty on target on this project. I mean, and most projects, but I would say that, you know, the intent was always for people to be able to walk through because it wasn't just about us. Like I, Bill Pulte told me this one time, a long time ago. Okay. He said, when you're selling something, you're not selling a home, you're selling the house on the lot and the community. You're making the community better in some way. And to me, to wall ourselves off, that's not what I believe in. I believe in making it, you know, so that we are enhancing the surrounding community. And if enhancing the surrounding community, to me, it, it absolutely includes, you know, letting people walk through, giving people access, giving people a safer route to where they want to go. And when you intended to enhance the community by being interconnected, did you also intend for someone from Boynton, West Palm, or Georgia to come and access your beautiful community as well? I don't really think of it like that. I think of it like, okay, I mean, look, there's bad people with, with malintentions everywhere. Okay. I don't believe if I, if I, I'm a developer, I'm optimistic. I think the best of human nature, and I don't think that people are intentionally out there to trash other people's neighborhoods. Does it happen? It happens in, in Bell Harbor. It happens in Manalapan. It happens in Palm Beach Gardens, in Jupiter. It happens everywhere. Yeah. But I mean, I can't, I don't go into it thinking about that. I think about trying to create a great place that healthy people appreciate and respect and don't, and don't want to do damage. And two more questions. And, and was ever the discussion about the liability, did that ever come up, the liability on residents to be responsible for public use and a public amenity in a private community? Did that, was that ever discussed at that time? You know, it's, it's an interesting question. I heard the, the dialogue on that today, and I do appreciate that. That's probably something you can blame on me. Okay. Don't blame it on the city. Don't blame it on anybody else. I probably didn't think about that. Okay. Okay. Particular aspect. However, I do it all the time. We do this all the time because of a couple things. One is that municipalities, better for worse, don't want to maintain anything that they don't have to. Okay. Typically. But on the other hand, you know, there are utilities and pedestrian accesses and public accesses that we provide all the time, you know, in commercial developments, in residential developments, just because it's part of being a good neighbor. And I don't really think that the liability aspect of it really comes into play. I mean, that much in my, in my thought process. Maybe it should. And last question. Um, it, and it is a beautiful community. No one disagrees with that. Um, so thank you very much. I've enjoyed it for 12 years myself. Um, but now that you see that the residents in the community are really unhappy with this public access that you dedicated, would you do it differently? No, I don't think so. Because here's the thing. I mean, there's always a question of the greater good, right? And is it, is it more important to protect the, you know, the interests of the few versus the interests of the many? I would say that, you know, as a planner, before I was a developer, I always err on the side of protecting the interests of the many. Those are all my questions for Mr. Hernandez. I, I only have two questions for Ms. Hoyland, please. Ms. Hoyland? So my first question is, when these private roads were dedicated to the public and the public has the rights of access, um, that includes the surrounding communities, correct? Public access. I'm asking, I'm asking if public access includes the surrounding communities. Public access is for the public. For the public. So me and Boynton. Yes. To the neighbors on Eastview Allen Avenue. Okay. Right. So when the public accesses this, when the public has this right of access, it could be Delray, it could be Boynton, it could be Lake Worth. Georgia. Georgia. Yes. Okay. And then the second question is, you know, especially about this interconnectivity and the importance of this interconnectivity, why wasn't it applied to other private communities, especially the more, more recently developed communities? Uh, so you'd have to ask the planning and zoning director of that era, right? At this time, and when I was working in Delray at 98-03, Diane Colonna, she was known as Diane Dominguez, was the planning and zoning director. And then she became the CRA director. Paul Dorling became the planning and zoning director. And I think that that institutional knowledge can continue when the links in the chain are continuing. But when the, the links in the chain break, and even with Anthea, Anthea needed some background from staff who had been here, um, to even know that this happened. Right. So we're researching and saying, well, how did some of these other neighborhoods get developed that way? I don't know the answer to the question. It's up to that director. But I do know at the time, the connected grid of the street network, the connected grid of the pedestrian network, and I heard all of the residents' concerns, and I too am empathetic to what I'm hearing. I understand that. I don't know what type of insurance can cover liability for an HOA. I don't know what type of security guard gets hired. I don't know the answers to those questions. But what I do know is that this was the vision for the entire North Federal Highway area. I think the estuary came first, and then Kokomo, and those were in construction before the North Federal Highway redevelopment plan. The George, I think, is not gated. So while it might have a sign that says it's a private road, I've still driven in the George. It didn't stop me. So I don't, there's a golf cart path on the other side of the George. So I think it was really intended to still continue the connectivity. I don't know who the director was under the George. If that was Tim, Paul, I have no idea. So that was the vision for this. I can't speak to the others. I wasn't here then. Thank you very much. Those are all my questions. And thank you so much for giving me the thank you equal opportunity. Thank you. Deputy Vice Mayor, Ms. Kaiser, do you have three minutes for rebuttal if you want to use it now? Okay. Thank you. Wow. A lot to unpack here. I don't envy you. And thank you for your patience. And, you know, I think we need to talk about high level overview of some issues because I think my neighbors are correct in stating that there are a lot of smoke and mirrors here for really what the heart of this application requires. So let's talk about, you know, Anthea said it best. She said, perception of safety is not a criteria for abandonment. I would say the same thing about the perception of unsafety on Federal Highway. That also is not a criteria of abandonment. Those two things should cancel each other out. Otherwise, it's a double standard. To the neighbors, one of my neighbors said it best. This is not personal. I think what our neighbors don't understand that the rights of public access are beyond them. It extends to Boynton, Lake Worth, West Palm Beach, and Georgia. And this community not only is liable for all those people, including all of our surrounding neighbors and everyone in Georgia, theoretically, not only are they liable and not indemnified, they're responsible for the maintenance for repair. And it's a real nuisance and disruption to the quiet enjoyment of their life in their community. So that's really who it's about. They don't have, for instance, trespass rights. If someone, we can't distinguish in Old Palm Grove who's from Kokomo Key, who's from Hacienda Gardens, and who's from Georgia. How are we supposed to make that distinction? And if we call the police for help, well, there's no one they can prosecute for criminal trespass because it's open to the public. It extends beyond our neighbors. And you heard from the developer, well, his real intention was interconnectivity with our community, not with those beyond our community. And I think that's the flaw here, is that the right of public access extends way bigger than just Kokomo Key or Hacienda Gardens. So it's, it's not personal. It's not about not trying to be neighborly. It's trying to protect ourselves. The other thing you would, the other kind of big theme here is, you know, the developer intention. I mean, you heard that there were many other items that weren't contemplated. It's okay to abandon the dedicated pedestrian bike path that was contemplated then, but it's not okay to abandon it now. Circumstances have changed. There's a distinction here. The demographics are different. Things didn't pan out the way we envisioned. We're a private community. We're outside of the downtown area. And, and most importantly, we're the only community that's participating in this interconnectivity. There's an inequity here and it's punitive. If this is so meaningful and significant, why isn't it incorporated into our current comp plan maps? Why do we have dedicated bike paths and sidewalks on federal highway? And then last but not least, if I may, that the real criteria here is demonstrating a need. And I think staff makes a really valiant effort and our neighbor and our surrounding neighbors to try and demonstrate to you there's a need. But the truth is there is no need. You've heard concessions that there is a shorter alternate route that does not obstruct access to the park, access to the beach, or other access to public right away. There is no need. Is it nicer? Yes. Is it more beautiful? Yes. Is it more comfortable? Yes. Is it more enjoyable? Yes. But it's not necessary. And to my neighbors, the welfare, your welfare, and for those that experience criminal activity, no matter who tries to minimize that, I just want you to know you matter. You matter. You do. Even if it's just one of us. One of us matters to all of us. So thank you very much. Thank you. Okay. I have the opportunity to make a couple rebuttal points too. I just want to be really quick. I know you've gotten a full view of this. The first thing is is that this isn't just a park. This actually has play equipment in it and a tot lot and it's all interconnected. Second off, just because it was wrong, there is a difference between being able to drive down here and stop and turn around in your driveway than having fire be, you know, just a vehicle be able to use the right of public vehicular access to make a loop around here to get out if they make a wrong turn. That's different than somebody pulling into your personal driveway off of one of these streets to turn around. And that is exactly what the result will be. If there is, I think, a coded security lockbox here as what was, I didn't realize we've been focusing on bike pad, but by disconnecting old Palm lane from the vehicular through, actually, I think you may be surprised to know that when this development was coming through, Eastview didn't want the road to go through and I think it was a fire requirement that it did. So I'm concerned about the vehicular loop and access. So the idea that there is no need for that part is different than all of the focus that we've been doing on bike pad. So there was a concerted effort to no one just abandoned this, they replaced it with this. And if that isn't working anymore, that's something for you to decide. But it was not like, Oh, we're not going to do this, we are replacing it. And we are replacing it with this language. So that's the problem is that there that was the replacement. I think the larger concern with the bike pad issue, you know, I think we've beaten that to death. But my my bigger concern is that, you know, the right of vehicular access to loop here, if this gate never goes up, or you can't get through it is there is not a fire turnaround. Dead end roads that are built in the city now are required to have a cul-de-sac, a turnaround, something like that. So there is a need for the road. And then I do think just while we're at it, as we're in future development, if I can do this as a PSA, we have a lot of developers that want to come in and do private roads, either because they have an artistic vision like Mr. Hernandez did, or they simply only want to put a sidewalk on one side. Inevitably, we find ourselves here with private roads that are not built to city standards that the residents don't want to maintain. So just I think moving forward, this is also a good lesson for other developers. And I'm here if you have any questions. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, okay, we are here on the discussion by the commission. Commissioner Cassel? This is a tough issue, because it seems easy coming in that it feels like it's the individual's neighborhoods and the liability question. Could you speak to that for me, city attorney? I'm trying to get a handle on this. And there are other neighborhoods that are, I know, my neighborhood is exactly the same. I was trying to get a list of all the neighborhoods and figure out how many are in this same predicament. Are you alone? Or is this not that unusual? Could you speak to the liability for me? So an HOA is like a mini municipality. So when we have HOA communities, you know, the city doesn't go in there and do code enforcement and things like that, because that's what the HOA does. So they have their own rules, their own regulations, they're a legal entity, they have the right to lien, and they are ultimately the property owner. So they are responsible for their property. So they have maintenance responsibilities, they have liability, and that's in the same fashion that the way that the city has it with our public roads. So there's nothing, you know, another neighborhood that comes to mind is Rainberry, because we've recently had an issue over there with their HOA. The HOA acts in the shoes of the city, in the shoes of the city commission. And they have a board, and they have council, and it's the exact same process, except on a more micro level, because it's specifically for that community. So there's nothing out of the ordinary about this. This is a very normal process for communities, that when they are developed, they establish an HOA community, and it's it separates it from the city, they govern themselves, and their liability issues are the same as HOAs around the city. Correct. And that's, thank you. I, you know, the thing is, again, when I met with Ms. Kaiser, and she's lovely, this seemed kind of cut and dry, and it didn't seem like it was such a challenging decision. But then, you know, and listen, the gentleman who left in the blue tennis shirt, I cannot stand, I live in a neighborhood just like yours. It's our neighborhood, and we pay for it. We pay for the streets. If a tree falls, we pay for it. We're all responsible. But anyone can walk in it. And when someone's dog poops in my yard, I do not appreciate it at all. So I understand. And the idea of strangers leaving garbage and what have you, it's so disrespectful. And I agree with you. But I also have to say, there's some of the things that concern me. Well, one, the fire safety issue, it just right there alone, that to me is a problem with in terms of access. And I also would say, I understand what the gentleman said about the city engineer. And I don't disagree with him. But the one thing that always concerns me is, and we're seeing this time and time again, where people come back. And yes, this is a very long time since this agreement was made. But we get people coming back here months after an agreement, wanting exceptions, years after an agreement, weeks after an agreement. And the biggest problem I have, I try to be consistent in my determinations. And even though this is a very long period of time, I know we're going to see some things in front of us in the near future that are going to look to come back for exceptions. And when you make one, you can be open to making others. And you have to be very careful in these determinations. So if this project is approved in this way, and that was the determination, there was meaning to that arrangement and that agreement with the city. And I take that seriously. I do like to follow the comp plan, the plat specific access notations, also important. And I disagree with Mitch Katz, who I call a friend, about this because I think there are so many neighborhoods in the city that will be coming here and asking, including my own, for the city to take over the cost of our streets. And I don't, well, I would appreciate that from my perspective. From my neighborhood, the city cannot be, should not be inclined to do that. And so as I sit here today, I appreciate everybody that would like to see this abandonment. And what I would ask the adjoining HOAs is that you go back and have a meeting with your residents, paper flyer the doors, and ask your neighbors and in your community to be polite and be respectful, because you are walking through someone else's neighborhood. And if, and you know, that's all I can say this evening. I'm sorry. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Walker. Thank you. I just have a couple of really quick comments. First of all, I agree with Commissioner Casale. One of my concerns is the fire issue. Always, always an issue. And the second thing I would say is, you know, this is, this is a classic argument right now. We've got private streets in our city. We know that we have HOAs in our city. HOAs are not in the flavor of the month right now. There are a lot of costs with those. But I agree with earlier comments. I'm not sure what the city can do about that in every single case. I mean, obviously, we would look at that. But the city could not be in a position to be able to absorb, you know, thousands and thousands of miles of streets that are currently controlled by HOAs. So this is a tough one for me. I mean, I empathize with all the residents that got up. I, you know, I've lived in gated HOA communities. You know, I now do not live in an HOA. We have people pooping in our yard, too, just to be clear. People? I should have known people. Well, perhaps, maybe, I don't, I don't know. I mean, it was maybe a dog, but it looked, it was, it was, it was late at night. We needed a little humor. Sorry. So I, you know, the pooping in the yard stuff, I get it. And, and, you know, I, there is, there just isn't much you can do about that. We've got two dogs. I'm picking up poop all the time. And, but I don't mind doing it. They're little dogs. Thank God. As opposed to the big dog that I thought I saw in my yard. But look, I appreciate the residents coming out tonight. I get, I get that this is kind of a split decision. I, I hear, I hear the remarks on both sides. So thank, thank you for your honesty. And I appreciate that. Thank you. And so, you know, as my colleagues, I appreciate all 21 of the residents that came out to speak. Your voice does matter. And I empathize with the concerns of your community. However, I don't believe that the findings have been met. I am concerned with the safety issue. And there is evidence that there is a need for the road in terms of the safety. So, you know, I, I cannot support taking this, this making this a positive on that. It's going to be against blocking off the road. So purposes of the record, remember, it's access. We're talking about access. Yes, access. Right. I want the record to be clear. Right. Blocking the assets. Yes. Thank you. So where are we now? We need a motion. We need a motion. Yes. Thank you. I'm sorry. Motion to deny resolution number 01-25. Can I get a second? Second. Do we call the roll or? Yes. Okay. Call the roll, please. Commissioner Marker. No. Commissioner Casale. Yes. Oh, wait a minute. It's, I made a motion to deny. To deny. Apologies. I'd like to, I, I, my, my answer is yes. Commissioner Casale. Yes. Deputy Vice Mayor Burns. Yes. Motion passed. Thank you. All set. Okay. Good job. Are we going to take a five minute break? Okay. We're going to take a five minute break. Oh, I love that. Thank you. Five minute break. Let everybody clear them. Clerk, are we ready? Good evening, everyone. We are going to continue the meeting now with item 7D, which is resolution 212-25. If the city attorney would read the resolution into the record. A resolution of the city commissioner of the city of Diary Beach, Florida, authorizing the city manager to accept a one-time payment of $160,000 in lieu of providing one on-site workforce housing unit for the project known as, known as Atlantic Grove, releasing the workforce housing covenant from 63 Northwest 4th Avenue, as more particularly described herein, providing for an effective date and further purposes. Thank you very much. Anthea. Hi. So, uh, Mr. Hearn and Des is back. Um, never left. We, uh. This is both, both item 7C and 7D? No, this is just about 7D. Okay. You are good. Um, yes. This is Atlantic Grove. Atlantic Grove. So, okay. I mean, I hope you're all. Okay. You're presenting both. I just wanted to know if you wanted to conflate them and get us out here early. Go ahead. Yeah, we're going to hopefully. Um, so I'm going to let, uh, Mr. Hernandez speak to the challenges that he's having. He is the developer of Atlantic Grove, um, which was one of the first developments that moved west of Swinton, um, so many years ago. Uh, there was a small piece that was, uh, the subject of some litigation and he came back through fairly recently to build 14 townhomes to infill the sort of missing piece that was there. In that time, the way that we do workforce housing had changed. It was actually a fairly informal arrangement when he came through and he'll speak to that. Um, and when he came back for the 14, we said, you have to do one and you have to tell us how you're doing it. Now the code in this area, because it depends, it's different in different places in this area allows it to either be a onsite unit or you can pay the fee to build it offsite or no to, you can pay the trust fund fee or you can build it offsite. So he could have used any of those three for this development. And I think because the earlier phases, he had embedded them. He just assumed he was going to do that again. He's having some challenges. I'll let him speak to that. And, and the request is to shift to a one-time payment. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor and Commissioner. So, uh, Tim Hernandez with, uh, this time Atlantic Grove Partners. So, you know, we're the, New Urban is the 50% partner in the, the, the Ted Center and the Delray Beach CDC are other 25, 25% partners on this deal. So when we, yeah, well, Anthea said is correct. And it's reflected in the staff report that in the first phase of Atlantic Grove, which was 55 townhomes, 20 lofts, and, uh, the, the two mixed use buildings at 301 and 401 West Atlantic, we were able to, um, we, you hadn't passed section 4.7 of the code yet. And so I got a call from Diane Dominguez Colonna and said, would you be willing to set aside after the project was fully approved? We were under construction. Actually, would you be willing to not selling yet? We were doing site development. She says, would you be willing to set aside some units, um, for the, the neighborhood for, for local people and sell them at a low price? And I said, okay, I was scared at that point in time, we're going to, we're going to sell anything out there because it was, you know, it was a little scary of an area at the time. Um, and so we, uh, did, we voluntarily set aside 10 units, um, and sold them below market. You can look it up like $130,000 or something really inexpensive, even at the time, it was like $100,000 less than all the rest of the units. So we did that. If you look it up on the tax records, when we filed the application to come in, I think seven of the 10 families were still living there in those units. So that was really successful because for the average middle-class family, that's like the primary means of building any kind of equity in their lives is, is through home ownership. So we were able to allow those people to do that. So we come back 20 years later almost and do this next phase. And well, when we started, you know, the interest rates were lower when we started trying to get it approved. We finally got it approved and built it. The interest rates were high. So mortgage rates were, were expensive. Construction costs have skyrocketed. And so it ends up to try to get somebody in at 120%. There's two challenges and it's hard. It's like threading a needle. They can't make too much because if they make too much, well, they can qualify for the mortgage, right? But they don't qualify for the 120%. Okay. The second problem is they can't make too little because if they make too little, they can't qualify for the mortgage. That's the problem with, with the way it's set up. So we, you know, we've done it every way. We've, we've, CODA, we built units on site, sold some to the CDC, some sold to the CLT, and not to the CDC, the CRA and some to the CLT. And then they rented them out or sold them actually to, to other, to other buyers. And then, you know, we built some offsite units at fifth and MLK and we made a cash contribution for CODA as well. So in this case, we have tried for three years to sell that. We've written, you know, we've, you know, you could talk to, um, uh, Ellen DeLima and Ferlene. They know this, you know, please send us somebody. And if they can't through, we can't have not been able to thread that needle just based on mostly economic conditions. Also, the fact is back in the day, when we first did Atlantic Grove, our HOA fee was like $300 a month. Now the HOA is like $730 a month. They do it. It does include your homeowner's insurance, include your windstorm and your casualty insurance and your GL. That's great, but it's still expensive. Okay. For somebody. So that's why we're here. We're just basically saying, you know, please let us sell the unit at market rate and we'll make the contribution. So we appreciate your consideration for that. And keep in mind that 50% of the proceeds of that go to the, uh, the two not for profits. So I think that the part that we wanted to bring forward is that the covenant was already executed on a specific lot. And so to release it, you know, we just thought it was approved in public. We should bring it back. The code allows this option in this area. But I also think that it was, it was, I think, somewhat educational for all of us that everyone, every one of you is concerned about affordable housing and the HOA and the insurance issue, which, um, is interesting. I think it's part of why Live Local and all of that went to rental only. If it's not a single family house, like we're doing, you know, just a freestanding that is, doesn't have an HOA, um, or rental, I think the affordability issues are starting to be a challenge. I know we talked about raising the 160, which is the buyout about that money goes into that trust fund and is used to help with down payment assistance or other projects that are in the housing plan. Um, but this is, this is sort of the challenge as we're trying to just generally, a microcosm, I think of generally what we're trying to figure out how to embed it with something of an education to me as well. So bringing it to you. I have a question. You may ask a question? So what is the You want the gavel back? No, I do not. No, I do not. Thank you. That was enough for one evening. What, what is the selling price of this? So it's one unit that you can't sell. Yeah, we sold, we built 14 in the second phase. Okay. And we sold 13 and we sold all 13, like within six months fast. Okay. But then this one has been sitting there now since the start of the project. Yeah. And so the price, the price, Angie, to answer your question is going to be, it was, it was, what we were trying to get is like 500,000 more or less. Okay. For it. And we were even, in addition to the 500,000, we were going to throw like another $35,000 towards it to buy down their interest rate to get somebody to qualify. And even with that, we couldn't get anybody to qualify because their front end and back end ratios are too high to qualify them for the mortgage. It's, it is, it is hard out there right now. And this is down south where, a Northwest 4th Avenue? Northwest 4th. Atlantic Grove, right? Yeah, it's like 65 Northwest 4th, I think is the, is the address actually. And so, so we get, you're offering. Instead, you get 160,000 and I'll be able to sell them the unit at market rate. So you can $160,000, you get into your pool. Look, I've still tried. Even yesterday, we had somebody who wanted to buy it as a workforce housing unit and they just got rejected by the mortgage people. And that wasn't even close actually. It wasn't even like, oh, we could just like, if I threw 10 or $20,000, I would do it. You know, I was willing to throw money in to buy it down. It's, it's hard to work. I mean, get the interest rates, they've come down a little bit, right? They're like still 6.3. And you know, it's like, it's not like it was when it was three and a half. And just as a point of clarification, it's the LDR that sets forward the 160,000. It wasn't Mr. Hernandez's suggestion. It was, it was what? So in our land development regulations, it sets the price for the buyout amount. Commissioner Long, any comments? Commissioner Markford? Yeah, I'll, um, sure. Thank you for explaining this. And I appreciate your efforts to try and sell this. It seems like a good faith effort was made here. And I'm going to be in favor of this. I'll be, I'll just put it out there. But I'm, I'm more concerned about this threading the needle issue where someone who, you know, actually qualifies for workforce housing can't actually get a mortgage. That, that's extremely problematic. It effectively makes our incentives worthless. Um, is that, is there anyone who can actually address that at this point? Like, is there any? So, I mean, that division is not in development services. Um, but I mean, and I think honestly, the windstorm reality of windstorm insurance that every one of us I think is, is dealing with is, is probably a factor with why the HOA fee has jumped so high. Yeah. Um, we have heard this issue of the HOA fee, I think with, um, with perks of Delray and some of that and some of the large, we don't have a whole lot of those big developments anymore, but that, that undermines the affordability. Yeah. And that it, it has been a challenge. And I think that's part of why you saw the state move to a rental option for live local, but we want housing for everything. And I, and I, I'm not trying to speak for Mr. Hernandez, but I think he'd done it so many times at the Atlantic Grove, like he wasn't concerned about one unit. Yeah. But I can, it's a good, it's a good question, commissioner. So let me give you an example. Okay. So we're getting ready to do a development in sunrise. Okay. So they did an RFP. They did, um, a, uh, you know, it was competitive situation and we won and they, it was like three years ago. Okay. And they, they said, we're going to sell you this, this piece of land for like way below market. It was like appraised at like $2 million. And so they sold it to us. They bought it. It was like an old church and they bought it. We bought it for like 500. We're buying it for half a million dollars. Okay. And, but there were strings attached and the strings were that you had to make this affordable and they started out saying you have to make, it was only 29 homes, but you have to make seven of them affordable to people making between 80 and a hundred percent of the median income, the MSA median for Broward County. And you have to make, I think three were unrestricted and the rest like 16 units or something were, um, going to be restricted to a hundred to 140% of the median income. We couldn't make, we still couldn't make that work. We couldn't make it work because of that threading the needle issue. So here's what happened. Then Broward County actually came out with a program and they're giving us a $1.3 million zero interest forgivable loan. And so with that, and then, but then they said to do that, I had to agree to make all the units, all 29 of them affordable to people making 120% of the median household income for that MSA or less. So I think it's going to work, but that's what it takes. Unfortunately, it's probably not the right answer. They're the answer you want to hear, but it is probably the honest answer that you can't make it. You have to subsidize it. Yeah. Because otherwise I can't go out to the market and get a loan to build it because the bank says, well, you're not going to be able to sell it. It's a, it's a practical problem. That's why you don't see, think about what you see being built right now. You see condos, you see high-end custom homes being built and you see like out west, maybe you see, you know, production housing being built, but the production housing is selling for $700,000. It's not selling for three or $400,000 anymore. Yeah, sure. And this is going to sound funny and forgive me, but if you're willing to pay us to get out of it, why not help subsidize somebody to be in it? And it probably could be less expensive than giving us the $160,000. I tried. No, that's what I was telling you. I was trying to do that because here's the, here's the math. I mean, what about a promise of like, I mean, there's, I would, I just was thinking if you're going to give us $160,000, you could probably figure out a way. Here's the, here's the difference. Okay. To, to meet the program guidelines, I can sell the, the unit for like $560,000. Okay. Then there, that would be 120% for household or whatever. That's why these, these programs stink because they don't. And the, but the difference is now I can give you $160,000 and I can sell it for, I'd probably sell it for $750,000 or something. Okay. Something like that. Yeah. Because I have a bunch of homes in there that sold for the same amount already. Right. So I think I probably can. So I'm actually ahead of the game a little bit by doing that. Right. But here's the problem. It's not even so much about being ahead of the game. It's just being able to sell it. Yeah. I don't want to sit there and pay taxes, you know, on it for, for, and the CDCs want their money. I want my money. You know, that's the reality of it. This is, this decision stinks for us because, you know, but I, but I, but I understand your predicament and I'm. I try. I try. I honestly sincerely try for the last three years to sell this unit. No, I believe you 100%. I get it. Commissioner Mark. Yeah. Look, the math doesn't work. I mean, she went through it. I mean, I'm an English major, but the math doesn't work here. I mean, when you, when you look at the interest rate of six plus percent and then you throw in the insurance cost and then you layer in the need for someone in affordable housing to come up with the down payment. Right. Right. Which is a big amount of money on a house like this. Um, you know, it doesn't work. So I, I'm empathetic to this. I, I understand where you're at and I'm, I'm in favor of helping you. Thank you. Um, you know, I, I, I have been represented developers in the past and things I've, I've always been opposed to, you know, the, the, they go ahead and they build a project and then just buy it out because then they can sell it. You have a different situation because you kind of got caught in a time warp, so to speak, in terms of the rule change. So I, I feel differently about your project than I do about someone just building with the hope that down the road, they're just going to buy it out and somehow not give us the, the housing that we're, that we anticipated approval. But yours, as I said, is a different situation. So I'm going to support this. Thank you. Because you are in a different situation as articulated by staff. So, so I need a motion. Second. All in favor. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you guys. Appreciate it. Thank you. We now have seven D. E. E, excuse me, seven E. Thank you very much. I, I, I, I, that's what I meant. The other day. Oh gosh. It's been a long night for you all. I, you know, it's good. I, but I, I did have three cups of coffee while you're all doing it. So if I'm a little buzzy. All right. Seven E. Let's go. We know why. Don't worry. I'm fine. I'm, I'm, I'm fine. Anyway, uh, seven E. Nomination for appointment to the police advisory board based on the rotation system. We're going to be having three. First will be commission. Uh, will be mayor Carney seat five. Second will be commissioner Margaret seat one. Third will be vice mayor long seat two. I am going to choose Robert Lewis. Who's a 30 year involved in federal law enforcement. He's expressed this to me for over a year. Second. Okay. All in favor. Aye. I'm only, I'm only, I got a whole speech. I got a whole resume to go through here. That's exactly why I did that. Okay. So all in favor. Aye. Any opposed? Unanimous. Now, Commissioner Markert. Yeah. I'm going to recommend Michelle Gitu, who I had a long conversation with. Seems really interested, excited about doing this. Second. Second. Oh, go ahead. All in favor. Aye. Any opposed? Unanimous. Commissioner, uh, Long. I nominate the infamous Nancy Shannon. Second. All in favor. Aye. Any opposed? Good. Passed unanimously. I'm sorry, Rabbi Moss. Thank you for staying all evening for this. Public hearings. We have none. Do any members of the public want to speak? We can go back to that part of the agenda and do that again. I am the chair. I can probably do that. Anyway, no, uh, first readings either. Comments on inquiries and non-agenda items. I yield at this time. Fortunately, I have something. If it's good news, you're going to be happy and it's correct. The noise ordinance is done. So finally, funny. So I am asking to be placed on the November 18th workshop I've spoken to. Do you want the item placed or do you want to be placed? Both. I'm just curious. You can do both. You're a pleasure, Mayor. Um, so I would like the item placed on the November 18th workshop so that I can put it on the December agenda and hopefully we can start rolling this out in the new year. Um, I will go to the DDA and present it to them because it does affect a large portion of the entertainment district. Um, but we're really pleased with it. I think you're going to be very happy with it. Um, it's all decibels. Um, and we have different decibels for different parts of the city and I'm really proud of it. So I really look forward to reading it. Great. So November 18th, is that okay with everyone? Yes. And then I'll, and then after that, based on your comments, we'll put it on for first reading. And like I said, I will go to the DDA with it so that, um, they can provide your feedback as well. That's awesome. The workshop is November 18th? Yes. Okay. We currently have a workshop scheduled as we discussed last week. So we will simply update the schedule to begin at 3 30 as opposed to four o'clock to accommodate this direction. Thank you. Good job. That's a good one. I wanted one more workshop before I have to recuse ourselves from that. So Angela is going to be handling it. Perfect. She did amazing tonight. She did. Uh, she did. I was, well, I was watching coffee, but I was going to say you were drinking coffee. All right. You're finished. Okay. Um, commissioner comments, commissioner Gasol, are you taking that home with you or? Yeah, no, it's mine. This one I can't take home stealing city property. Um, okay. A couple of things less. Let's talk mortgage. Small business on Atlantic is having a family fun day, uh, nine o'clock on Sunday fitness and fun for the family. I'm sorry. 900 East Atlantic 830 to one on Sunday. It should be great fun. So if anybody's available to check it out, I'll be there. Do good Delray. There are plenty more fun events to go do. I've been attending and it's fabulous. Mitch can tell, tell you that we had a great time at the karaoke night. Um, run with the chief. I'm giving another reminder. Woo hoo. Saturday morning, Catherine strong tour of South tech is at one o'clock on Friday and it has been, um, noticed. I, I talked to our executive assistant about that. Um, so if, if people up here can go, that would be great. What is it? South tech school. I remember we had talked about that. It's this Friday at one o'clock. This Friday, one. Correct. I'll be there. Yeah. Good. Um, Laura Simon brought up her dad's, uh, birthday. And I think we need to talk about, we had talked about honoring him a long time ago, well over a, he's been gone for a well over a year. And I would like Mr. Moore that we could get something on the table to figure out how we're doing that. Um, cause I've been waiting and, and we, nothing, we haven't done anything. So we'll arrange a workshop meeting dialogue. Uh, we, we talked, didn't we decide we wanted to do maybe the road by the, um, historical society in his name. That was one of the major options that was discussed amongst all. So what I'd like to do, if it's okay with the commission, with y'all's consent, is maybe make it a regular meeting agenda item. Yeah. Like within the next few weeks. That would be amazing. Thank you. All right. Um, that gentleman spoke about the 9-11 response time, and I'm fairly certain that was not accurate what he said. It is not accurate at all. Right. And I, so maybe at pub, at your comments in the next beginning of the meeting, could you address that? Yes. Because I don't like when people say things like that to our public. We're doing a great job. I'll accomplish that via the November 4th meeting. I was intending on doing something at the next meeting 5A section. I think that would be great. Thank you. That would be nice. Also, um, you know, got everybody up here. I was not in favor of the parking program. I'm sorry, Missy. You know that because I voiced it during the meeting. We are getting email after email after email. The chamber is concerned. Uh, the DDA is concerned. I got invited to go have breakfast with a gentleman whose tenant is having trouble because of this. I'm getting a lot of emails. I was maybe thinking, we could get an update on how this program is going and see. I do fear that if you're having the program start at the time of year people are coming back, we're not going to really know what the value of the revenue is. I also fear that giving those $10 passes to people who can park anywhere but Atlantic, it, it, it's also going to affect revenue. So I don't know that, that how this program is working is going to work the way that we think. And I'd like to know, I think we need to talk about it. I think we've gotten, we always talk about community input, community input, community input. We've gotten a ton of it. And you know, I think, uh, we need to address that. And I'd like, um, an update, Mr. Moore also on the pottery studio. I haven't spoken to Mr. Knight since he had his surgery, but, um, I think there's still issues with that and just, we need to know where we stand with that. And there's one other thing that I want to bring up at this, the last meeting at the end, and I, we used to have a rule in, excuse me, Attorney Jelen, where if you're going to bring up something that was really important for a vote, you had to apprise everybody, get an agreement for it, and then it went on the following agenda with supporting documents. At the end of that last meeting, a long meeting, I'd even argue slightly contentious. Um, you all had talked about a super majority to terminate the city manager. And I think the record needs to be straight because some of the information that came out in that was not accurate. And that decision to proceed with this and have, uh, two readings on it, it was based on some things that were not accurate. Uh, Mr. Long, you stated our neighbors in Boynton and many other cities do this. That's not accurate. You said, and many other cities. No, not around here at all. Mayor Carney, you said this, I'm speaking, it's my time, please. It was deliberately, you know, that it was purposeful to imply that surrounding cities are doing it. Mayor Carney, you said they put it on a ballot and got rid of the then city manager. And you also said, this is what's always been. And most other cities have it. And that's cities around us don't have this. They just don't. And they didn't put it on a ballot and then get rid of him. There was a, uh, an article came out from the Delray Exet over the weekend. I read it along with two supporting, uh, articles from both, uh, from the Palm Beach Post and the Coastal Star. And what happened is they could not get rid of the gentleman, even though he had lied under oath to the internal auditor, office of inspector general in an interview. And even though there were other indiscretions, they could not terminate him because two people refuse. So eventually the city had to pay the gentleman out, even though he had all these issues. And then the voters decided that they didn't want to have a super majority. The voters decided they didn't want a super majority. And it was on the ballot and the taxpayers decided, you know, when we give out information, we have to have it be accurate. All these are all charters, pages from charters. Palm Beach Gardens doesn't have a super majority. Riviera does not have a super majority. Lake Worth Beach does not have a super majority. Palm Beach does not have a super majority. Boca Raton does not have a super majority. Wellington does not have a super majority. Can I just jump in here? And I can prove it. We're going to be having a workshop. It's my time. It's my time. It's my time. I think we should reconsider having our taxpayers. Why are you preventing us from moving forward with the process we already agreed to? Because taxpayers shouldn't pay for something like this. Because you, first of all. We're not paying for anything. We have several more discussions already slated on this issue. We're having taxpayers are paying for staff to work on it. And then taxpayers will get to decide on it. Taxpayers are going to spend time on two meetings. I don't think we should even put it on a ballot. Why are you trying to block the process we already agreed to? Because you don't like the way it's going. No, it's not because I don't like it. It's just so inappropriate. It's because taxpayers have already decided. There's already a consensus to move forward. You're trying to re-litigate a process we already decided on. It's my time to speak. Please stop interrupting me. I don't appreciate it. This is a pointless conversation. It's my time to speak. It's a pointless waste of time. That's your opinion. And I think it's a pointless waste of time for someone who's leaving the city and didn't even participate in the hiring of the auditor to be trying to protect a city manager. What does that have to do with it? It has to do with everything. We have three hires and you didn't even participate in hiring one of them. What does that have to do with anything? And now you're trying to protect the one who's not exactly doing a supreme job. According to you. Well, according to his evaluations over the course of the last two years. No, it's not because of mine. Mayor Carney's went down, as did Mr. Markers. I don't think this is, I think this is about, I think this is about, if this is about stability and accountability, I have the floor. Thank you. I have the floor. I have the floor. I'm talking and you're interrupting me and so is he. And I don't appreciate it. You do it every week. Keep it up. Oh, I will. The record should be straight that you both gave inaccurate information to make this consideration pass through. You know what, you can't just be saying that. Like, no one gave an accurate information because you don't like it. I don't support a super majority to terminate the city manager and I want it on the record. I like it on the record. You made it clear. And I don't think the taxpayers should pay for it. I don't think we should put it forth and I don't think the taxpayers should pay for it. That's your opinion, but there were three up here that moved it forward. That's my opinion. I know you can do that. I'm just saying that's my opinion. I know we can and we did. Thank you. So are you finished? Yes, I'm done. Okay, good. Thank you so much. Your turn. I'll be quick. I just have two quick things. One, I echo what Julie said about the parking issue. I've had a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of feedback on that. And I don't think we got it 100% right. So I do think we owe it to the community to get a look at the data as it's come in. It was a pilot program. Let's see what the data is telling us. And I think we need to just review it. I don't know where we're going to come out, but there's enough feedback that I think we owe it to the community to do that. I don't think we need to make a big deal about it. But if we got to make some adjustments, let's consider that. So I don't think we should get in a big fight about that. And then just my second thing is a giant shout out to the fire department. I had the great opportunity to go out on Saturday to, I think it's station 113 on Lake Ida. There were literally hundreds of people there. I had to park like a mile away. Like I needed a ballet service, Mitch. You could have parked in my yard. I should have done that. But the event, I just want to tell you, for those of you that were there, the smiles on the kids' faces just made my year. They had little helmets on. They got to sit on the motorcycles. There was a demonstration where a couple of firemen and firewomen came out a second story window. It was just a great event. And I would encourage all of you and your kids and grandkids to the next time we do an event like that to go out. It is really, I planned on staying an hour. I was there for three hours. It was fantastic. So tip of the hat to the, and there were fire and police there as well. But it was just, it was a bang up event. Another great day for our community. So just wanted to throw that out. What, what'd I do? So did you have to pay for parking for three? No, it's a mile away. It's free. Did you ask me that? Well, now that I got a parking ticket, I guess. Yeah. Just pay it. Pay it and then complain. Ann's ticketed me. Have you gone yet? No, I didn't. So I'm echoing my colleagues with the, um, the, um, parking issue. I've gotten lots of phone calls and I was at an event, um, just the last night and the young man that was the, um, employee said that he, there's something wrong. He could, he said that the, the passes were given out or I don't know if there's a certain number on them or whatever, but I do know that we said that we were having a pilot program and I wanted to know how long was it pilot program supposed to be for? And then, you know, six months until April, from October until April. And so, you know, with my colleagues, like if we can get an update on what that is and, um, are you getting in position? Maybe to recon, uh, reconsider some of, because it's, it's a real issue. It's all over the place. And then, um, I've been asked, um, by St. Paul African Episcopal Methodist Episcopal Church to sponsor a special recognition for them. Um, they will be celebrating, uh, their 128 years. Their church, uh, was established in 1897, uh, next month. And so, I would like to get consensus to, um, have a, have a special recognition for St. Paul AME Church consensus. That's fine. If we, we all agree on that. So we have consensus on that. Good. Go forward. And I just wanted to say, uh, again, um, the, the pay setters, uh, program that, that was excellent. That, that is more like what we want to see. And, um, you know, I'm so glad. I'm looking forward to the addition to our, um, commission meeting for the spotlight on education, because we want to see things like that. There's so many great things going on in our schools. And so we want to celebrate our students and our, um, teachers and the schools themselves. So that kudos to you for that. That was, that was excellent. Um, and, uh, they felt good and I did too. That was great. That's it. Have you gone yet? I have not. I have not. Man, I feel like I need to get to talk enough tonight. I need to like, you know, just make up some stuff. So listen, I wasn't going to talk about the super majority thing tonight, but now I feel like I have to. Um, we, nothing about that process wasn't by the book. We, I brought it up during commission comment and we got a unanimous consensus to start. Yeah, it was, it was unanimous. No, you didn't. You didn't say no. I remember it. Okay, fine. You said no. Got it. We noticed how I've changed it today to say, I'm saying it's unanimous and things like that, because there's been a lot of confusion because the reality is if you don't object, it's deemed to be under the rules consensus. So, uh, we are going to make sure that this is, I'm saying this as chair now. Certainly seem like everyone was on board at the time. Right. I want to make sure that we are clear now going forward when we have consensus and when we don't. Sure. Right. So, because I think that it's better for everybody. Sure. Because I've not had consensus and Julie, I mean. Well, regardless. But we've been quiet. I think that we're going to not do that anymore. Right. We're going to require to determine whether we have consensus and who is in the, in the, in the consensus block. That's my understanding. That's what I do. As you notice, it's two times today. I've asked everybody and I've said unanimous. So, that being said, it seemed like we, it was clear we had consensus, which is how this process works. In that case, you had at least three. Right. I don't know about the other two. So, that's fine. But if we bring, how else would we bring this up? Like, this, this made up procedural issue is, is made up. We're, we, we had consensus to move forward, to draft this, then have another conversation before it even moves forward to a first reading, which would then move forward to a second reading, which would then go to the voters. At no point are we trying to rush this process or do anything that was in any way not transparent or somehow spending taxpayer money to have, to discuss this during a meeting that's already scheduled. I don't know how that costs taxpayers more money if we have an additional item on an agenda. That doesn't really make sense to me. So, to, to then use this to relitigate an issue that you already had ample time to talk about and you're going to have three more opportunities to talk about. To then like, I guess, make it sound like some of your colleagues were deliberately disingenuous and then attack our city manager here was just like wildly unprofessional and, and frankly, pathetic a little bit. It's just clear you, you read the Gazette and needed to, you know, come back and make this into a political thing. I just don't understand why we can't just move forward with the process. You would have ample opportunities. You still do to make all of those points instead of trying to jam up the process and prevent us from even having the conversation. That's not how it works. That's the great irony. And you bring up procedure. We use procedure. I'd like to limit the personal things back and forth. So, I'm done with this issue. I had no intention of talking about this again tonight. So, the only things I actually wanted to talk about, two really quick ones. So, our freebie contract comes up, I believe in December. So, and I have no issue with freebie by the way, but I've seen there's been several other vendors out there that do similar things, but they have kind of in a, a broader scope of services that include more multimodal options. Some of them even allow you to see open parking spaces. Some of them give you information on the tri-wheel. And so, I just was wondering if maybe we could open it up to an RFP before, you know, before the deadline. Because if we wait until the deadline, they might have to extend their contract while we go through it. I'd love to just see kind of what other options are out there, maybe. See if there's something that offers more benefit, more bang for our buck, so to speak. So, I just wanted to throw that out there and see if anyone was on board with, is that possible? Do we have money in the budget for that? RFPs take a while. And if there's a piggyback that we could locate, that could be a possibility. But an RFP, I mean, we're already almost into November. I don't think it would be done. So, we have a termination clause. But we should. I mean, if there is a method, I mean, I don't know which the better, I mean. I don't know what the method is. I'm just throwing it out there. But I do know that this, I get calls a lot for freebie that say, you know, why isn't it doing Palm Trail, for example? Or why isn't it, you know, in the neighborhood that you discussed today, you know, freebie won't go there, but it will go to the estuary on the other street. And, but it won't go to South North Lake, but it'll go to Bond Way. I'm just saying it's very fractured if you look at the map. You can be one block over and it won't go there, but it will go here. So, there's a lot of reasons. So, if we're going to continue freebie, I think we need to look at servicing, create a service area that's kind of including everybody, not leave out one block that's contiguous to the next block, number one. Number two, maybe, I'm not opposed to kind of see if there's a better. I've just been advised we just renewed it. We've just been who? We did renew the freebie. I thought I was about to mention it. I thought it was scheduled for December. Oh, well, there you go. Well, there, it was just renewed. Well, that was definitely. I like to do things efficiently, so that was quick. Okay. I guess I'm confused by the timeline. There you go. There's that. I didn't realize that. We, we typically have termination clauses. So, what I'll do is I'll look at the contract at our next meeting. We can update you and we can let you know what the termination provision is, what the renewal extension is. And if you're interested in potentially doing an RFP, at least that'll give you some time because RFPs for something like that, it takes a while. It'll be months. Listen, there's no rush. And I obviously won't be here then. And I have no issue with freebie. I'll just put that on the record. It's just, I know the technology has changed quite a bit lately. And I just want to make sure that, you know, we're looking at all options down the road. I'll send an email and update everybody. One of the ones we took, I took recently up north when we, I was traveling last week. There, they showed you parking places too. Yes. They had all different kinds of stuff in their freebie box. And it was amazing, all the stuff that they showed you on the screen. And I thought it was like, wow. Right. Why do they show you parking spaces if you're in a freebie? That was, I don't know. I have no answer. No, that's no answer. I'm just saying they had this stuff. That was, that was Missy's idea. It was to make you feel bad about not getting the spot or to make sure you tip the guy well, because you don't have a spot. I don't know. I'm just saying they had all these things up there on the screen. And I thought that was really, you know, interesting. The ones I saw had, they showed you parking spots, they would align it with the tri-rail schedule and the bus schedule. It's because it's supposed to offer, it's supposed to offer different options, supposed to be a whole multimodal sort of system. And we have that. We now have all our stuff online with respect to parking. But that could easily be integrated into, into whatever we're doing. And maybe freebie's moving that route. I don't know. I don't know. I'm just throwing it out there. But anyway, so that's that. It's renewed for now, but we'll look at it for later. I'll be long gone anyway. So the last question had to do with one of the folks who spoke at the beginning of the meeting regarding Pines of Delray. Pines of Delray, that community, someone spoke about the roads needed repaid. I wanted to ask about just in general that, but also just, I assume we're ramping up resurfacing projects. I know that had been on pause. We're not ramping them back up. So we'll update everybody in terms of what that looks like. So that is to be resumed. Then I'll be working with Missy to revolve that. So no. So we're not resurfacing this year? It's a bumpy road ahead road. Nice. I'll do. Not at the moment. Ladies and gentlemen. That was good. I'll be working with Missy Barletto and her team to come back with an update in terms of what that will look like. But that will take some time to get there. So we will be evaluating what's been accomplished thus far, what needs to be addressed in terms of priorities. Updates need to be made available. So there's nothing specific at this particular point in time tonight, but we'll be providing some updates as we go along. So I need to spend time with her team. Could we do like an update at the next meeting on just resurfacing in general? I don't think it will be that quick. I don't got many left, man. Well, given some of the consensus offered on a couple of items, I was hoping to summarize that at the end of Mr. Mayor's commentary. So I'll be right back before you in a moment. Cool. Well, you don't know how long I'm going to be. I'll pass the buck here. Okay. A couple of things. First of all, I've got a lot of emails on the parking as well. And I have to be honest, I was reminded, it was like seven years ago or eight years ago when I was involved with the same kind of issue in Boca representing a client at the time. And everyone had the exact same arguments, exact same arguments. And I would just let everyone be mindful that when you go down to Boca, everyone's paying for parking, restaurants are paying for the employees to park, and nobody's starving. Nobody is starving. They're all packed. So when you are going from a free system to a not free system, we are getting this is a normal part of the growing pains. I think that we will find that it is not as dire as they are making it out. But that's why it's a pilot program. And the city does need to monetize its assets in order to help all the residents, not just those who, because I think we're going to find that some of these businesses that are insisting on it are going to find that all the employees are there and none of their customers are going to park. That may be a conclusion that we come to back in March. I don't know, but that's why it's a pilot program. So I'm just saying we need to be mindful of saving all the taxpayers money and parking revenue is not a unique thing. And we're the only ones with having free parking that had free parking for all these years. So that's fine. I had a couple of things and I wanted to bring this up so that to get agreement that I can at least get some people to come back with a proposal about trying to bring Croquet into the lawn bowling, current lawn bowling facility. Well, it's not just lawn bowling, it's also the shuffleboard. That space back there. Croquet seems to be a growing thing. The little club has it. All these places have it. Everyone says it would be great for us. I don't know whether it's going to be great for us. But what I would like to do is to at least be able to, with everyone's agreement, to have somebody come out there and come back with some kind of a proposal about what we can do. Because right now we keep saying, I say, well, we'd like to do this. I want someone to come to be able to have somebody come back with a concrete kind of saying, this is what we can do, this is how much it's going to take, and this is what you'll get if you have it. That's kind of, and I don't know what it's going to look like. I just, I truly don't know what it's going to look like. Is that, is everyone kind of agreeing? I mean, wait, what are we doing? Just having someone look at whether or not we can do Croquet. Everyone keeps talking about stuff, but we don't even know what we can do there. And there, I went to the Croquet Center, and they said, you do have room for it. You got to do this. You got to do this. And I said, look, I'm not an expert. We have people that are. And they said, you can be part of a league and be part of the circuit that plays. As I said, there's 100 players at Little Club, and they're packed every weekend. And I just think it's a way to utilize the space which is currently not really being utilized. Can we take, before we say yes, I have a thought, and this is what I feel like we should be doing for the, for the future, for all of us. Let's all take a moment before the next meeting and talk to Mr. Mitot about limitations, possibilities, et cetera. Just a 10 minute conversation each. Because you know, and I'm not bringing up specifics, but we have someone come up in front of us at the CRA who wanted something. Then we're all like, yeah, let's figure out how to do it. We didn't even consult staff. We end up sometimes making more work for our staff, ourselves. In this particular case, I had Mr. Mitot out there. He did the measurements for me. He provided me the measurements, which I gave to the croquet people. So, you know, he happened to be there. Just quick, have a quick conversation. Well, I mean, I don't think of what I'm asking. I think if, let's not, we keep dancing around stuff. I'm trying to get something to be done there because we have 10 lawn bowlers that play. We're not doing lawn bowling. Huh? We're not doing lawn bowling anymore. They may be able to do both, but what I'm saying is lawn bowling is, I mean, there were 12 players last year. There are 10 this year. Mayor, I'm not opposed to it. I'm just saying sometimes we end up making our staff go do a lot worse. Can I just get consensus to at least have someone come back with some kind of a proposal so we know if it's even possible? We'll be making a proposal. Okay, we have consensus. We got four. Yeah, let's do it. I'm moving. I'm just what I'm doing. I don't even know who's making the proposal. I made the proposal. Well, the guy for the head of the International Croquet Center is the guy I met with, and he came down and did the measurements with CM Meat Top. And he's going to be making a proposal? He's got someone that's going to do it, but I've got to give them, I've got to send them the stuff. I just don't want to do things without someone, without everyone knowing. So anyway, we've got four. I appreciate you too. We've got to go. And as for the comments back and forth about the supermajority, a lot of things were said at that meeting without a lot of basis in fact, and some of what you pointed out is correct. Thank you. But I will also say that nobody's decided anything, that what we have decided to do is to study it, bring it back. We will have a very lively conversation, no doubt, and I don't know that it'll get passed to go to the voters or not. We're just bringing it as a discussion point to be discussed, and maybe it goes forward. Can I ask a question? So on November, because I had put it on for first reading November 4th, do you want that just a discussion item about? Yes. Yeah, because we don't, we could. We have time. Because let's do a discussion item on the 4th, because the first reading can take place on the next week, if it has to, because we have until the 2nd or 3rd of December, whatever the day of the meeting is, if we were going to have a second reading, to still get it on about, if it's going to happen. But I do think a discussion should probably occur. All right, so I'll just change it. I want to say thank you, Mayor, for that. We didn't want to edit the language, because we weren't, we hadn't really agreed on that. Okay, but here's the point. I want to say thank you to you for recognizing that. I don't want us making determinations based on inaccurate information, and I want to say thank you. No, I will just tell you, there was no decision that was made. Well, we had it on an agenda to, no, it wasn't a discussion, it was an ordinance. Now it's a discussion, and I want to say thank you. We are going to, we are going to have that discussion. November 4th, we're going to have that as a discussion item, and we'll. I thought we were always having a discussion item, because we hadn't even decided yet if it was going to be for just the city manager or for all three. Right. So I'd assume this was going into a discussion before. I agreed. I think there was a misunderstanding. Well, that may have been, again, I should have made it clearer. Again, Commissioner, had you maybe led the conversation without an attack? Maybe we could have just figured this out, like civilly. Thank you very much, Mr. Law. Thank you very much, Commissioner. Mr. Mayor, I have one item. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Would Mr. Mayor, would you. Given the various items that discussed, I'd like to provide some organization, as I should in my capacity as city manager. So given the fact that several of you all, I'll count at least three. You can't leave yet. I'll count at least three regarding parking issues, data analytics and that. I'd like to have consensus for the November 18th regular meeting, that we have a dialogue to that effect. Again, we have to be organized in that regard. That's that day. Your thoughts regarding the croquet on the long bowling vicinity? We would like to maybe have an opportunity for the December 1st regular meeting, Mr. Mayor. That's fine. If that's feasible. That's fine. I'm sure they can come to that, at least conceptually come back with something, yeah. Very well. The St. Paul special recognition that will take place November 4th. I think we can go ahead and accommodate that so we'll get the details and the background information. And finally, the Roy Simon consideration of recognition, I would like to propose maybe a November 18th regular meeting as well. So if I can have consensus to proceed along most lands, we'll be organized to that effect. Thank you. Everybody's okay? It has been a year. I mean, I thought we would get it done before that. The first one had to do with the parking issue data analytics. I suggested November 18th regular meeting. So we can have them up there. We can croquet, long ball in consideration, December 1st, Roy Simon matter, November 18th, St. Paul special recognition, November 4th. Can I add one more thing, Mayor? This discussion this evening on and on was on the Federal Highway. I think, look, we all know there's projects in the works there. We need to look at the future and talk about updating that plan, North Federal Highway. It doesn't affect any of the pending applications. It doesn't. But the problem is that in consideration of what they wanted tonight, the reference to the fact that we haven't updated that plan in a very long time was made repeatedly and it's accurate. Well, we've had, yeah, I mean, that's one of many plans that need to be updated. I know, but that is the oldest if you go through the list. If you go through the list of plans, and not only is it the oldest, but it's also the area that is going to see the most development in the near future. There's all parcels for sale in that area. So deciding what it, having a professional decide what it should look like before the things happen is the best way to go. I mean, there's no other area like that in the city. Plus, you've got over 300 units in that area. Since that plan, there's probably over 500 units. Oh yeah, do Atlantic crossing into it. It's from Atlantic to the border on Federal Highway. It's over 500 units since that plan. Well, we can pick it up with staff and see whether or not it's, you know. Well, can we, why not just right now get a consensus to look into doing that plan, updating that? Do you have a view back there? I mean, I see you, I see you, you know. And can I just say something too? Sure. Because, well, I mean, we are working on, I know the staff is diligently working on the Frog Alley plan. I don't want things to take, I don't want that to get pushed back. We have to pay a consultant, so it would take a while for them to do their work. The staff is doing the work. No, I mean, for Federal, we couldn't do that. Oh, okay, okay. I just want to make sure. We would just be agreeing to get a consultant going. So that, it's just the fee of the consultant. Right. That, you know, the budget can accommodate one study, and I would strongly recommend that it be a mobility plan so we can adopt an impact fee based on what's happening with the county and our locals. And that's the funding that at least is in the budget this year. Right, because we still haven't done that impact fee thing. No, but there's a, you have to take a mobility plan to, you have to take the We have money in our reserves, so we're looking at $70,000. Can you come back with the proposal on that with us? On the mobility plan? Yeah, what it's going to cost us and what it's going to cost us and the timeline and things such as that. We tried to start it over COVID, and then we broke it down into three pieces, but we need to bring it home so that we can assess a fee for the city. Could you also find out what the fee would be for the federal? Because I do think we should get it all going at one time. I can tell you I don't have enough, but you may have more. How much do you think you need, $70,000? Well, I have $100,000. If there's consensus, that needs to be determined, ladies and gentlemen. We do not have a number as of yet, but what the consensus that will give us the opportunity to evaluate what that will be, and we'll work together and advise as we get to that place. The consensus, and I'll examine what capabilities there exists financially, and I'll advise accordingly. I would like you to look into the cost of the North Federal Highway, because I think the longer you wait, the longer the study takes, before you know it, that whole area has changed. But we haven't had any professional tell us, is this appropriate or is this not? Maybe all housing is appropriate there. I don't know. I think we have to preserve commercial, and I keep saying that. I just want to know. Sure. Thank you, Ms. Burns. I appreciate that. Okay. So we'll look into getting an effort similar to the one that was done before. Thank you. Like the vision with the drawings. Yes. And we'll work together on the financial piece in terms of how we address that. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Moore, for that. Not a blank check, for the record, but we'll work responsibly. My nose is a cleanser, but it doesn't stink. We are adjourned. Thank you. Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo!