City Commission Conference Meeting and CRA Board Meeting on 2025-11-18 1:30 PM - Nov 18, 2025

Okay, folks. Good afternoon and welcome to the City Commission meeting this 18th day of November, 2025. Wow, where has the month gone? Let me get to the right agenda. Okay, so it's a beautiful day. I wish we could have had this party outside. City Manager, next time, could you please arrange to sit on the lawn? Okay, thank you. All right, so we're getting close to holiday time, so I hope everyone is excited about the holidays coming up. But tonight, or this afternoon, we're going to talk about our agenda items. And the first is the communications, one from planning and zoning. And I see where Patrick and Jackie, you're both here, and I think that's permissible, right? They can both speak, do you, Wayne? Yes, it was such a right. Oh, they can, you can sing in harmony? Okay. All right, so why don't you come up and tell us a little bit about what this communication is to the City Commission. Good afternoon, Mayor, Commissioners. So I can read the communication if you like to clarify it, or Ms. Scott also has some, she made the motion, so we can just jump right into the thoughts on it. This has to do with the townhouses, right? Yes, sir. So it was a rezoning application for a good-sized piece of property, about five acres. And going throughout the process, towards the end of it, as we were approving it, it was made clear that we would not see this project in the future, that they could possibly put as many as 67 townhomes on the property. And it's also a heavily landscaped property with native vegetation and mature trees. And so the board was a little taken aback that, albeit to support the application to rezone, but that it would not come before us again for future review, not only for the board, for the citizens as well, that we felt would most likely like a voice on an application of this magnitude. Ms. Scott? Thank you. Thank you. Mayor, Vice Mayor, Commissioners, this is not the first time we've had to vote on an item for a rezoning where we had no input other than rezoning. And a lot of times it's very frustrating, not only to us, but to the neighborhoods and to the people that are there that want to talk about it, which we really can't because it's only a rezoning. So I'm hoping that we have the opportunity to look at the ULDR and see if there's something we can do to provide an opportunity for the neighborhoods and for the board to see what's coming before us other than just the rezoning. Well, how does this complicate your responsibility as the Planning and Zoning Board? I mean, you're saying it only comes to you just to do rezoning. I mean, is this something that you are obligated to rezone or not? Don't you have criteria? Well, we have criteria to whether or not, but if they meet the criteria, Mayor, for the rezoning, we really have very little, it's very difficult not to support it. However, you have an audience full of neighborhood and people that are very concerned as to what's going to go there, and people get up and try to speak about it, and staff tells us, well, this is only for the rezoning. So we find it very frustrating. Well, we're going to have that time and again with Live Local and, you know, a lot of these processes that, you know, a developer has the right, I guess, to say, why do I have to go through the headache of getting neighborhood buy-in to a project when the law already allows me to do it? How do we respond to that? I think that there's, it's the ULDR. This is, townhouse projects do not go to planning and zoning when many other projects have to come before us. So we were just thinking that it would be good to provide the opportunity for the board and especially the neighborhoods and the residents to have a place to come and speak about it and learn about the project and get input. So at your meetings, when it comes to the question of a petition or an application to rezone, the neighbors do not have a right to speak at those meetings with regard to rezoning? They can only talk about the rezoning. They can't talk about, we're going to rezone this? Yeah, none of that stuff comes up. Do they come back for that? No, that's the problem. I mean, they can go to DRC, but DRC is just a technical review. So this isn't the first time this has come up, Mayor, but through the years I've seen this before and I think it's, I'm hoping that you'll agree it's time to look at this and see if it makes sense. Patrick, you want to say anything else? Again, the threshold that was suggested at the meeting was 10 units or more, so it wasn't trying to stop developers or handcuff them in any way, but when it's of a significant magnitude and so forth that both the board and the public may desire the right to speak and weigh in on it, as we do in general, to maybe improve a project or get a project to be curtailed in a way that's beneficial to the community rather than just put in there. Live local definitely changes a lot of things. So it supersedes everything in many ways, but if it can be controlled and be reviewed by us, that's the thought that we put before you all. Okay. Chris, did you want to add to this? Chris Cooper, Assistant City Manager. So, Mayor Commission, you know, I think if you give us the direction based on the PZB communication, staff will go back and evaluate what this could look like in terms of a higher-level review for a townhome development project of a certain size. I think there could be some merit as you scale up in size with a townhome development. If you're at a four- or five-unit townhome development, you know, the impact or potential impact to the surrounding neighborhoods may be a little bit different than a larger development. Maybe ten units isn't the right amount, but we could look at what that right amount might be to understand when there might need to be a little more attention paid to certain criteria within our ULDR that could benefit from a more fuller conversation with public input through a higher-level review process. Well, it would seem to me that we need to have a wholesale review of much of our ULDR throughout the city. I mean, the issue that we had at the last meeting concerning conditional use, sorry, the conditional use approval for the height and yard modifications in particular. Right. What was the building that we were dealing with in the Dolphin Isles area? Amalfi. Amalfi, thank you. It's in the Central Beach Alliance area. Central, sorry. Thank you. You know, that building, you know, it met all the requirements that we have. Now, the question is, does it really conform to the neighborhood compatibility? And since that wasn't an aspect of review, perhaps we need to start honing in on what neighborhood compatibility can be with regard to future development projects because I think that when a developer goes in, they buy a piece of property and they see what the law is, they have every right to rely on that law. But if we feel that, you know, the cities, the people in the community are hoping to see that the future of their community shaped in a way different than what we thought of 30 years ago, now's the time to start rethinking some of these zoning and setback and height entitlements because we are a different city now than we were 20 years ago or even 10 years ago. So I think that maybe we need to sit down with neighbors and staff and kind of reshape what I think is an opportunity here going forward. Right. So I think the last wholesale review of our ULDR was back in the mid-90s. Yeah. Mid-90s. So, you know, it's been. I'm not saying the whole city all at once. Right. And we've done some incremental things in our master planned areas and things like that. But I think, you know, there could be some merit to looking at our code more broadly because we do kind of take this incremental approach from time to time through communications and other efforts to kind of chip away at areas where we think there could be improvement. Well, yeah. And keep in mind that, you know, 30 years ago, we were begging for people to come to, you know, invest in our city. And, you know, and I know, Patrick, you were probably in high school, but the thing is that, you know, it's a whole different city now. And we have an opportunity here to perhaps be a little bit more responsible as we try to shape the future of the city. And I'm not saying that what we did in the 90s was bad. And I think what we did was try to incentivize investment dollars to come to our city. We've been super successful at that. And but now, you know, are we a victim of our own success? You know, I don't want to see Las Olas Boulevard, for example, become another Brickell Avenue. You know, when I moved here in the 80s, Brickell Avenue was a sleepy little winding street with some nice architecturally enriched churches and some small buildings. And it was just really nice to go down there. Now it's completely compacted with supersized high-rise developments. And there's no more Brickell Avenue. I don't want to see Las Olas becoming that. So and that's just my opinion. But I think that the community needs to weigh in on this and see what we feel the future of our city should look like. Mayor Ben. Yeah, definitely agree. We have to be, you know, sensitive. And this will do just that. So this is and the project we're going to talk about tonight that this is kind of I think I'll initiate this is in Edgewood neighborhood. And and so both the developer and the neighbors are have been having some really good positive conversations that I'm sure they'll talk about tonight. But this level of kind of engagement, I think, will help going forward. And that I'm hearing from both city staff and developers in this area about this. They think it's a positive contemplation. So, yeah. So if we could because and also, Chris, what's the if it wasn't townhomes, for example, if it was cluster homes, tell us that differentiation on this. Yeah, Ella, if you're willing. Thanks. Good afternoon, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Commissioners. I'm Ella Parker, Deputy Director of Development Services. So cluster homes require a conditional use. And that level of review is under planning and zoning board review. Right. So that's thanks. So that's just one difference, Mayor, that I see why this is a helpful piece is cluster homes would require that townhomes when. But I think they both should have that. Lots of cluster home. A cluster home is as is a compact almost looks like a townhouse, but it's a compact of like three units clustered together or a grouping of townhouses. Well, not townhouses, but they look like townhouses. Doesn't it also have to have a shared amenity? And they have shared amenities and a bunch of criteria. Very good. Very good. I remember. What is a cluster home? I just told you. She's right. And then I added about. There are. I did want to serve on planning and zoning. Yes, absolutely. I gotcha. It's all good. All right. I agree with my colleagues. I think we should have that higher level of review. It doesn't make sense that for cluster homes, it would go to P and Z and townhomes not. And I understand. I understand why we do this the way we do this now, because rezoning doesn't really just lock you into one site plan. It really just opens it up to a variety of possible uses, you know, based on the comp plan, based on, you know, a lot of different things. So I think that it's really important, you know, as long as it's complying with the land use, I think that it makes sense for us to have that higher level of review, because it is kind of like a catch-22, chicken and the egg, when you can only, you know what's coming, but you can't talk about it. And it's kind of strange. Do you have any sense, Ella, as to the number of units, like what you would, what you're thinking, or Chris, in terms of the number of townhomes to require the higher level? Yeah, I think we'd have to analyze that. We've already done some preliminary research, just asking other jurisdictions throughout Broward County to see, like, what thresholds do you guys have? And while they don't have distinct, like, number of units, a lot of municipalities do have a higher level review, such as the Planning and Zoning Board. But we would do that analysis and maybe, you know, kind of spread it out a little bit broader than just the Broward County and kind of just see what best practices are. All right. Thanks. You're welcome. Thank you. Before you leave the podium, Ella, with that higher review, I understand we know that would introduce planning and zoning, but what else? What does that tier of review actually look like, what it might include? That's a great question. So with whatever we would come back and sort of propose as options would include criteria, because obviously whatever we bring in front of the board now would require some level of understanding what are you reviewing it against. So, yes, that would be part of the analysis that we would do. Thank you. Any other questions, Vice Mayor? Mayor? Okay. All right. Very good. Thank you. Mayor, just to remind the Commission that Senate Bill 180 still restricts the city's ability to adopt more restrictive or burdensome regulations until October 1st of 2027. So all those staff can move forward with their efforts to look at revising the code, your hands are tied in terms of actually adopting the regulations until either this bill is overruled or we get to that date, October 1st of 2027. 2027. Okay. All right. City Manager, do you have any other thoughts on this? We're good? All right. The other communication we have is from the Sustainability Advisory Board. Is there anybody here from the Sustainability? Oh, hi. How are you? Hello. Good afternoon, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Commissioners. My name is Sarah Romanka. I'm here to represent the Sustainability Advisory Board, or SAB, to speak to the city's Urban Forestry Master Planner, UFMP. Thanks for having me. Thank you, Commissioner Sorensen, for appointing me to the board. Later in this meeting, you'll receive a presentation of the Urban Forestry Master Plan. The SAB did receive a presentation on September 30th, and the goal of the Urban Forestry Master Plan is to achieve an overall tree canopy coverage of 33% by the year 2040 in the city of Fort Lauderdale. All right. Let's talk about that. Okay. We got an email from one of your members. I believe it's one of your members, Mr. McCoon. Is he on your board? Anyway. No? Okay. Well, we got an email from him, and he pointed out some interesting statistics, which I would like to know if we can verify at some point. To try to secure a 33% canopy by any time, within any time frame, would require the planting of over 160,000 trees. Now, there isn't enough public space to accommodate 160,000 trees. I mean, it sounds like a lot of trees, and yet it still would only cover a third. So tell us, what kind of pie-in-the-sky goal do we have here that's totally unachievable, and why are we being asked to approve something that we know will be a failure from the start? Mr. Mayor, Glenn Hadwin, Sustainability Manager. Yes, Glenn. Yes. Okay. I would ask that you defer that question until you get the presentation from our consultant, which was later on the agenda today. So I'll hold that thought. Any questions? Do you want to continue with your presentation? Is there more presentation? No. That's it? That's it. We're asking you to approve the resolution. Well, we're going to do that. We're going to discuss it tonight. Great. Thank you. Mayor, can I ask questions? Yes, go ahead. Thank you. Thank you for your service. Appreciate it. Tell me a little bit about what, in your discussion, I haven't read everything, your minutes, but what do you all like about the master plan? What's the compelling part about it? I like where we're heading with it, but I'd love to hear from you. So there are 14 action areas that were highlighted in the plan that are direct, like, achievable goals that we can use to implement this plan. So it does include private land as well, like private land engagement, better code enforcement on removal of trees. Like, that's a big component of discussion that we had. A database of trees so that we know, you know, which trees are getting sick or at risk of being removed or, you know, other areas where we can track the canopy. So those are some of the components of the 14 action areas that we really liked. Great. Have you, has it come up for discussion, the updated landscape tree ordinance that we passed a couple months ago? Is that, have you all talked about that at all, which kind of better protects the trees and the requires? I don't remember. It's okay if you haven't. It's one of the conversations. Okay. Do you remember that? That's fine. Yeah. Glenn Hadron again. The board has discussed it. Sarah's joined us recently, so we, they've had presentations on the ordinance in the past. I think it may have preceded Sarah's membership. Great. Thanks, Glenn. Glenn, was the, was overall feedback positive from the board? Any feedback in terms of the ordinance? I mean, if anything, they want, in terms of the ordinance? Yeah. Yeah, I think the board was very pleased to see that passed and see, see us taking steps towards increasing, tree protection, and, and, which the UFMP does, provides more recommendations to take us even further in protecting our city's trees. Great. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thanks, Mayor. Any other questions? Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you. We appreciate it. Appreciate all the work you do for us. Thank you, Glenn. Okay. Okay. CF1 discussed the proposal to rename Burrard County to Lauderdale County. I had asked the city manager to put this on the agenda tonight, not because I have a particular opinion one way or the other, but I've been, I've been asked, and I'm sure many of you have been asked on this, on this day, is what your opinion is. And if I give an opinion, it may sound like it's the opinion of the city, and I don't want it to sound that way. And that's why I wanted to bring it to the commission to have a discussion regarding the issue. I see in the newspaper there was a poll taken, and I also see that attached to the agenda item, Exhibit 2, Dr. Hanbury and Tim Petrillo and Walter Duke prepared this white paper to discuss the advantages of having Broward County being renamed to Lauderdale County or some other name, I guess. So I opened it up to the commission to see what your thoughts are, because, again, I continue to be asked the same question despite what's going or not going on at the state legislature. So I'll start with you, Vice Mayor. Do you have any thoughts on this? Well, Mayor, the last thing I read said that the county commission declined to move it forward, and I think the quote I read from Representative Lamarca was, I can count. So I think this is moot at this point, isn't it? Well, it may be moot at this point, but I still think that we're going to – it's not going to die. This question keeps coming up again and again, and I – I think the last time was 2011, so I think we'll all be long gone before it comes back around again. I'd rather not have a divisive conversation if it's going to be another 10 years before it resurfaces, but that's just my opinion. I agree, Mayor. From everything that everyone is saying, this is a dead issue right now. Lamarca is not – the Broward legislative delegation said no, absolutely not. Okay. The city – the county commission said no, absolutely not. So I don't even know why we're actually talking about it. Okay, because I don't believe that we should be intimidated by the decisions of others. We are a governing body, and we do have an opinion. So if we have an opinion, let's express it. If we don't say, well, we don't have an opinion, but don't say, well, because everybody else said no, so we have to say no. I don't feel intimidated at all by what the other government bodies are saying. I'm just saying that this is not within our purview. This is not our decision. This is not something that we're not going to accomplish, even if the five of us today said, yeah, let's change it to Lauderdale County. I'm just trying to figure out why we're having the discussion. If the decision-makers involved in this process have all said, I'm pulling it off the table. That's all. Okay. All right. Any other comments? Yes. Ben? Yeah, I agree with what's been said. I think we need to continue to focus on infrastructure, stormwater, traffic, housing affordability, and I think that this is not the appropriate time to be looking at something like this. And I think what we should be doing and which I'm interested in and working on is how can we better position Fort Lauderdale as a city to attract businesses, to grow our economy, to bring employers here, to strengthen our education, to increase housing affordability. And so that's just in my part of the city. That's something I'm working with business owners and leaders on. And so that's going to be my focus, Mayor. And I think that's a really important point that Commissioner Sorensen just made. We need to take it upon ourselves. If what the country and the world recognizes is the word Lauderdale or the words Fort Lauderdale, then let us take the lead in marketing ourselves and, as the commissioner said, attracting business. And let's make sure that our story is out there so that folks don't need to worry what county we're in, actually. Let's just take it upon ourselves. You travel to a lot of major cities, ask people what county it's in. They're not going to know what county it's in anyway. I agree with that. They're not going to know. They're going to know the city. So let's get aggressive and let's take care of ourselves. And to add to the conversation, I agree. I believe that this is time to move away from this. I agree. I don't understand why we're taking up the conversation. When I read about it and conversations when individuals have asked me about it, my comment is what Commissioner Glassman has basically said. I know when I travel, I don't usually look for the county name. I look for the city that I'm going into. So with that part of the conversation, I don't see the connection. And I believe that Broward County sounds good to me. Okay. Well, I think the fact that there's even a conversation about changing it to Lauderdale is a testament to the aggressiveness that we have marketed and branded our city over the last 20 years. And I think that that success is what others are trying to adopt for themselves. And I think that my hat's off to everybody on city staff and all the folks that have served on this commission for their collective efforts in promoting our city, our name, and our brand. And I think that we need to continue with that. I agree. One of the things that when I first interviewed Raquel when she was applying for the job as city manager was the question of, you know, what focus can we deliver on economic development? And knowing she had a background there and hearing some of her goals that she liked to achieve during her tenure, it made me feel good that we're finally going to focus more aggressively on it and be able to bring more and more opportunities for those who want to locate their businesses, their homes, their families to our city. If you just look out the window, I'd say we've been doing a pretty good job at it. And I think that, you know, whether or not Broward wants to adopt our name, you know, is certainly a conversation for the 31 cities to, you know, figure amongst themselves. But you are correct. I think Commissioner, I mean, State Representative Lamarca has withdrawn his bill. And I believe the county has also indicated they're not taking a position on this now. So, and there's no reason why we have to take a position. But I do think that it speaks well of us as Fort Lauderdale. That others would like to adopt our name because they feel that there are benefits that flow from it. And, yes, when you go in different places, when, like, Pam's going to the National League of Cities tomorrow, they're not going to know Broward. They're going to know Fort Lauderdale. I know I'm traveling to Salt Lake City, but I have to admit I do not know what county Salt Lake City is in. Okay, right. All right, very good. We'll move on. Mayor, along those lines, and this is something Raquel, you know, I've talked with briefly is, Mayor, there are some cities that dedicate, you know, resources towards city branding, city marketing, encouraging businesses, visitors to come to it. Some cities in Broward County do that. And I think that could be worth us thinking about, talking about maybe as a commission at some point. There's, for example, some cities have a director of tourism, for example. And so we have a lot of great entities in our community that advocate for the broader county or the broader community. We don't have as many that advocate just for the city of Fort Lauderdale. I think that's an opportunity for us, Mayor. Well, I think you're right. You know, I certainly don't want to spend money on billboards in Times Square. I mean, to me, that's like begging for people to come to our city. You know, we've earned our reputation through all the things that you folks have said by investing in our infrastructure, our schools, our quality of life. People recognize Fort Lauderdale for a destination, whether it be to visit or to move here permanently. And we grow incrementally. We do not have to grow exponentially because that just stresses all of our infrastructure. And the cities that have grown exponentially suffer as a result. We at the beginning did suffer with many of our infrastructure problems that we had with sewer breaks and water issues throughout the city. And I'm hoping now we've turned the corner on that. We're sort of ahead of the effort to try to make sure that we're keeping up with the pace of development here in our city. But the thing is that, you know, marketing us is probably something we do lack in terms of direct marketing. And we usually, you know, all the years that I've been on this commission, it seems to me that the attitude has been, well, they'll come here and we'll just show them around once they get here. Well, to me, that's not the best approach. The better approach is to be proactive and to reach out to companies and so forth. I remember during COVID, there was a big push to try to bring financial investment companies here. A lot of some came here or they opened a branch here. Many went to Miami. Some went to West Palm Beach. So but my feeling is there's enough to go around for everybody. And we just have to make ourselves more visible and more attractive. And the way we do that is to show that when a person moves here, moves their family here, that they're going to find that all the things, all the resources that they would love to see their family enjoy and appreciate are found here in Fort Lauderdale. So I think your point is very well taken. Raquel, is that in terms of kind of thinking about this and targeted, is this something we can continue to develop or ideate on? I think there's a lot of opportunity here and room for growth in terms of branding and marketing the city. So, yes, I think we can continue the discussion. Great. Thanks. Thanks, Mayor. Isn't that really, though, duplicative of what the CVB is supposed to be doing for us? I mean, we generate the biggest percentage of the bid tax. You know, Mayor, you said on the on the board. What besides, you know, funding the debt service on the stadium out west? Where's that money going? Well, every year we're given a proposed budget. And first of all, they changed their name to us. I know they did that. So they recognize that they're in Fort Lauderdale. Well, they're also in the 101 building. So, I mean, that helps. So so there you see the direction in which it's going. They they've done their own market research and they're the ones that have said that, you know, if you ask, if you put the name Broward out to the world, it has very little response. You put the name Lauderdale out there and everybody knows Lauderdale, Fort Lauderdale. So the CVB looks to looks to fund events that bring tourists here. And so there's a whole list of things. There are dozens and dozens of events that the that the Convention Visitors Bureau, which is no longer called that, it's called Visit Lauderdale, tries to accommodate. Now, I always thought it was bizarre that so much of that money goes to fund the debt service of the arena, because I don't think the arena really draws that much in terms of heads and beds, as they call it. But they're stuck with that. Yeah. And, you know, that's just the nature of it. Now, unfortunately, now you take a city like Miami Beach, Miami Beach's bed tax, correct me if I'm wrong, goes right to the city. Does it not? Does it not recall? Yes. Yes. Yeah. They get the whole they get everything and we get nothing but through organizations applying for funds to support their event, whether it be whether it be the boat parade, whether it be the boat show, whether it be, you know, any number of events that take place here. It's not this is not the city doesn't have the direct benefit of that. We only get the benefit through the organizations that apply for it. So. But like I said, they've changed their name. Greater Fort Lauderdale Alliance used to be called Broward Alliance. They changed their name. I think that's the path that the county thought might be the best way to move by changing their name to us. Are you seeing I'm sorry, I apologize for interrupting. Are you seeing now with the with the new hotel and convention center that they're going to be shifting more of their focus to Fort Lauderdale? I mean, the county has just invested, what, a billion plus a lot. I mean, I can't help but think that they're going to concentrate a lot more of their dollars and efforts in the Fort Lauderdale area than they have up to this point. I mean, I think they're going to want to see a return on investment. So they're going to see a return on investment as they try to attract bigger conventions to come to Fort Lauderdale. I'm just thinking in terms, too, of just where they're spending their marketing dollars now, too. I think the county is going to want to see that payback on the money that they've invested in that facility over there. So I'm hopeful, and I think you'll probably see this when you're participating in that, that I think you're going to see more of the emphasis is going to be on attracting visitors to Fort Lauderdale to support the money that they spent on those facilities. Is that the conversation you're hearing around? It's very much the conversation, and as a corollary to that, we've just inaugurated three new cruise ships that Fort Lauderdale is their home. And these are not insignificant brands. These are very significant brands that have chosen not Port Everglades, not Broward, but in all the advertising is Fort Lauderdale. And Fort Lauderdale is the home base. The airport, our international airport, is FLL. You know, it's not B-R-O. Right. Right? So over time, we're seeing our name co-opted by all these entities. I think it's a wonderful thing. And the reason I'm bringing this up, and it's sort of to Commissioner Sorensen's thought. So, Commissioner, I would just hesitate for us to add any more staff on the city manager's side, where I think the county is going to be stepping into that role, probably leaning into it a little bit more because of the investment that they've already made in Fort Lauderdale. So I'd like to watch and see what they do over the next year or two as the convention center really gears up. You know, I've been over there, and I look at the hotel, and I look at the convention center, I look at these three new cruise ships, Mayor, and I think to myself, they're going to be really doing a hard, heavy push to put those, as you say, Mayor, heads in beds, because they have to. They've got to fill it up. They're going to be, there's a huge amount of investment, again, that they need to recoup. And I'd like to see what they do along those lines before we start thinking about staffing up any more heavily here locally in the city and duplicating the efforts that I'm hoping that they're going to be undertaking on their own. And a lot of that is actually happening organically without even a lot of their effort. This past Sunday, there were eight mega ships in our port and more than 50,000 people coming and going just on Sunday, all needing places to be in Fort Lauderdale, all needing a hotel room, but it was amazing. And anyone that traveled on 17th Street on Sunday knows what I'm talking about when I tell you it was quite congested. Thank God for the port bypass. Yeah, 50,000 people. What happened to the port bypass? No one's taken it. Well, actually, if you went on Waze on Sunday, it told you to avoid and bypass the bypass. Yes. So, yeah, so good luck with that bypass. It's already full. Yeah, so that's what Waze was telling you on Sunday. Really? Yeah, yeah, crazy. So, unfortunately, on Sunday, it was actually a light that was malfunctioning was the cause for the issue. So it wasn't solely cruise ships just to kind of track what happened. I don't think it was the light, but that's okay. No, okay, we can talk about it. Raquel, can we, no, no, no, we'll talk about it because it actually was, there was a malfunctioning light. There was a combination of things that occurred that day, and our police department has since met with BSO to see how we can combine resources, particularly on the weekend on Sundays when we know we're having that influx. We were made aware that there was a transatlantic ship that came in, and there were certain activities that delayed new passengers from being able to enter the port as well. And so what we're looking for is greater collaboration between our police department and BSO to make sure that traffic management and mitigation occurs and that we don't have the chaos that we saw that day. But I am told that it's a pretty frequent occurrence that we have congestion on those days, and so I want to make sure that we're planning for that. Our communications department is also going to be reaching out to Broward County to make sure that we're aware of all the activity that's happening at the port and we know the schedule so that we can coordinate more seamlessly. Just to add a little bit to the conversation, yes, we do feel that Visit Lauderdale provides us with a resource in terms of marketing. We do want to leverage that. The marketing that they do is primarily focused on transients or visitors to Fort Lauderdale. We also want to make sure we're marketing the city for permanent residents or semi-permanent residents, investors, those in the business community. So there are different audiences that we want to tap into. Visit Lauderdale is more so focused on visitors, and we're a full-service city with lots of needs, and so we want to make sure we're communicating to all the appropriate audiences that will help our city flourish. And with that, I'm thinking about our neighbors who are looking for employment. We are offering, you know, we're bringing the tourism in. We have the new hotels and the expansion with the port. Are we, as a city, speaking with these entities to let them know we need training opportunities for the neighbors that are here, hospitality, chefs, whatever the demand is. If we're Fort Lauderdale, we don't want it just to be addressed only on the tourism. Let's also make that availability for our neighbors to be employed through what's being offered here in the city. Exactly. Absolutely. I think you're spot on, Commissioner, and I think that's the opportunity. So, look, getting visitors and tourists to Fort Lauderdale is fantastic. Visit Fort Lauderdale. Visit Lauderdale, great job doing that. But there's this other deeper piece around economic strength, developing a talented workforce here, partnering with companies. That's what, just so we're clear, Visit Fort Lauderdale does not, that is not their focus. So, that's an opportunity for us in partnering with Alliance, the Chamber, all these other entities. But, again, great entities out there. None of them specifically focus just on Fort Lauderdale. So, I think that's the opportunity there to partner. And just to close the loop on the cruise, the traffic. So, Raquel, was a light malfunctioning at 17th and Eisenhower? So, that's what our police chief shared with me over the weekend when we were communicating. It was. Yeah, exactly. That light at Eisenhower. And I was in it. I was in the horrible traffic on 17th. And Milos, I'm sure you can kind of talk more about it. But, basically, what was happening, and Milos, correct me if I'm wrong on this, but the light at 17th and Federal going eastbound over the bridge was red and wasn't cycling to green for a long period of time. So, the backup on 17th basically going west was unbelievable. Milos, should I have that? Am I saying that right of what kind of the light was doing? You should have built a tunnel. So, yeah. Good afternoon. Milos, Mr. Dorviz, Director for City's Transportation and Mobility Department. So, the primary concern and the obstacle that we're facing was a lot of demand that was coming out from the port. There might be that there were lights that were malfunctioning, but there was simply demand that was exceeding our capacity. So, we are already meeting, or we scheduled meeting for Friday of this week with the port, with the convention center, with our police department, BSO, and we'll make sure that we use lessons learned from this incident and inform our future decisions. It does also include FDOT, Regional Transportation Management Centers, who want to make sure that we use any technology and any tools that are available for all the agencies to improve coordination, collaboration, and incident response, and timely responding and correcting these issues in the future. Great. Great. Thank you. Milos, I have a question. So, I actually was getting text messages from people that told me they were on the bridge for 50 minutes, and they said they felt that it was maybe the light was part of it, but definitely not the whole reason why we were having an issue. That being said, when that happens, what do we do in terms of getting PSAs out or something or just extra staff out there to do something to mitigate that kind of a need? How long do we have to wait for it to just build up and build up and get worse and worse? Because my concern is also that soon the hotel will be opening, that we'll even add more traffic to that area. So, what are our plans, and who do we work with to make sure that we are getting our police or anyone else out there to keep that traffic moving over that bridge and Eisenhower Boulevard? And that is a great question and feedback, and that's exactly the reason why we'll be meeting and coordinating with the others. So, it looks like there were some road closures that were placed in effect around Eisenhower and 20th Street, and once we implement the road closure, it doesn't help mobility in the area. There are some shared traffic management responsibilities around the area between the port and convention center. So, our police department and the city is not really primary lead on it, but we'll make sure that we sort out those roles and that we secure necessary resources between the city, the county, and the state to make sure that we have a proper response. Currently, in terms of how it's being tracked, for example, traffic conditions along South East 17th Street, FDOT has a project that is focused on implementing additional devices to be able to monitor travel times and also traffic conditions. So, we want to make sure that we have access to those devices as well. I think it's just so vital, especially because, you know, actually what's going to happen is it's going to get worse and worse. The cruise projections for the number of passengers coming here is through the roof for 2026, and also with regards to those road closures, I was wondering about them because when you were coming over the bridge, 17th Street Bridge heading west, if you needed to go to the port, you could not make a left and head south on Eisenhower Boulevard. That road was closed. That road was closed. You had to continue west on 17th Street and then somehow come back, make a U-turn, and then try to get to the port that way, which I think was actually compounding the problem at that time. I don't know why that was a road closure that was chosen, but we definitely have to have a plan. That's all. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you. Not to complicate the conversation, but my people told me that the county in which Salt Lake City is located is called Salt Lake County. Oh, thank you. In case you're asked at one of the cocktail parties. It would be a great trivia question that night, and I win. Or if you go on Jeopardy. Yeah, exactly. But never forget, Brooklyn is in Kings County. It's in Kings County, right? Yes. Okay, moving past CF1. Okay, Business 1, presentation. Oh, wait, we did have a couple people sign up to speak on CF1. Is Susan Peterson here, and Charlie, you want to speak? Okay, Charlie, you want to come up? Susan, why don't you come up first? Let's Susan come up first. I'm sorry? You're on CF1, right? The one we're not talking about. Hi. Just push the button at the bottom of the speaker. At the bottom of the speaker. Oh, I'm Susan Peterson. I'm a local history writer, and I agree with everything he said about not changing the name to the county. I just want to add a couple of history notes. No, the county not changing the name to our name. Right, right. Yeah, we're going to change the name. And one of the points I want to make is it's not like we should be ashamed of our history, but the actual history of Major William Fort Lauderdale, why he came here, was to displace and kill Seminole and Miccosukee Indians and try and chase them out of here. Unfortunately, he was not able to do that, so we have the wonderful Seminole Hard Rock Casino and all those things. And so I feel like all the nice community things that we have going on here in Fort Lauderdale is sort of an atonement for that. But Napoleon Bonaparte Broward wanted to drain the Everglades because they didn't have the knowledge in those days. And also he used to run guns to Cuba, so we have the choice between the Indian killer or the gun runner. Fort Lauderdale has a wonderful cachet, the name of it, Fort Lauderdale, the sound. It sounds sporty. It sounds sexy. It's a success image, and it's a wonderful image. And, you know, people think of Greater Fort Lauderdale as the whole county, but I agree with what you, you know, said about not supporting the name change. I think it's sort of like, it's a very appealing name, and people want to write on our coattails. And, you know, and I think the new convention center looks beautiful. But, you know, I drive to the beach there, and I saw a video of two women who got out of their car and were actually directing traffic to help people make turns. I guess it was on Sunday. It was on the news. It was amazing. So something needs to be done about that. Thank you. Thank you. Charlie? Hello? I don't see any papers with you. This is unscripted? Yeah, unscripted. Well, I was going to tell you that Salt Lake City was in Salt Lake County, but you figured it out. Yeah, I figured it out. Someone else figured it out for me. So it seems like it's a pretty big no-brainer. I mean, it's been going on for a while. I mean, no one takes a cruise to the Everglades, you know? It's like, you know, we're talking about stationary and signage, and all of you up there act like you got some sort of threatening call from a Broward Politico last night or something. Like, you can be in favor of this. I mean, this is a good idea. There was just a Democratic Socialist or whatever, you know, elected up in New York. I saw a stat that it was like, I think it's like 45,000 people pay half of the income taxes in New York City. So it's not going to take many of those people to leave. I mean, that's why I think this has come up again, is because there's an opportunity to get these people to move here and not to Palm Beach or to Miami. And that didn't come up amongst you guys at all there. I mean, that's the real issue here. Broward County just wants to get tourists down here. That's all they're really caring about. They have been taking our money and just frittering it away. I mean, we've got like a world-class cricket facility that no one goes to. I mean, you know, they're not like the best stewards of our tax dollars. When I think of Broward County, I don't think good things. I think of nine Democrats that have gerrymandered this county where there's no Republican representation, there's no Fort Lauderdale representation. We're the biggest city in the county. So if you're going to rely on them to do this for you, they're not going to. Just like that tunnel you want under the city, they're not going to build that. You know, so, I mean, I think you should start. Don't hurt my feelings. I think you guys can all vote to do a resolution. You do resolutions on all sorts of things and say, you know, we think that would be a good idea that it might attract people with money and businesses and employees and families to this city because when I think of Broward County, the Broward County schools, they just lose students every year. I mean, there's not a lot of things that I think of Broward County, I'm thinking of people that get removed by the governor for certain things. You know, so like, I think Lauderdale County would be a way to rebrand the whole thing, give them a chance to get on a better foot and compete with Palm Beach and Miami. I mean, it's kind of ridiculous that we're like the hammock beneath these two counties that are doing better than us. And you're saying it would be desperate to put a sign up in Times Square? That's what Boak is doing. But they have a Republican mayor. So, I mean, I don't know if that occurs to him or you guys just don't want to embarrass what's going on up in New York City there. But like, this is a huge opportunity to bring people to here and have Broward do it. They're just not going to do it. So, I mean, land fire under them a little bit. Thank you. You're welcome. Just to share an anecdote with the commission, at the mayor's reception for the boat show, right before the boat show that Wednesday night, a guy came up to me and he said, are you the mayor? And I said, yes. And he said, I just want you to know that I just moved my entire family and my 14 employees. I'm an investment banker and I love Fort Lauderdale so much. We also have our consultants joining us. Brad, how are you? Good afternoon, Mayor. Are you going to leave yet? How are you? Are you okay? You're not leaving us? I didn't leave yet. No. No. I haven't turned in any resignations. Okay, good. Not cleaning out any offices. We're all good. All right. Just want to make sure. I'm in it for the long run. Okay, good. So, today's presentation is just going to be kind of a follow-up to the last one made a couple of months ago on Fortify Lauderdale Phase 2. It will include some updates from Phase 1, which you'll see in the slides, and kind of give you the analysis of why we ended up where we did as it relates to just a slight movement in the projects. And we looked at 4 through 9. We're really the only ones that basically the middle group of them we focused on because the first three in the projects, their scores really aren't even very close to the rest of the group. So, there really wasn't going to be any movement there. So, really, it's just those ones we focused on to come to the conclusions we have today. So, we're just going to kind of go through this briefly. And if there are any questions, I'll be more than happy to answer them. So, if we can start, just Phase 1, kind of a status update for everybody, so you can all see where we are with some of these projects. You can go to the next slide, please. Yeah. So, just putting it up here. Obviously, all the way to the right, we have Dura's that's completed in February of 25. Edgewood was completed in March of 24. River Oaks was completed in December of 24. We obviously saw some stuff there with the Preserve remediation and permitting that's continuing on right now. What we have in construction right now, Dorsey Riverbend, they're going to be substantially completed by spring of 2026. Progresso is, construction is about at 65%. And Victoria Park, the good news is that should get underway sometime after the first of the year. So, a lot of good stuff. We're starting to wind down on the last phase of one of the projects. And in design, we have Melrose Manor Riverland Civic, and that should be going out sometime in the spring of 2026 to bid. Southeast Isles is at 50%, and we expect those plans to be finalized sometime in 2026. So, next slide, please. These are just some photos, just to kind of show everybody of the progress that's been made. This is a progressive village in Dorsey Riverbend. Next one, please. There's Dura's, Edgewood, River Oaks. Just kind of capsulating pictures to show you how the magnitude and the size of these projects are. And sometimes when we have issues, thank you. Sometimes when we have issues or complaints, I just have an understanding that it's just there's a lot of things going on, and these pipes that we're replacing are, in some places, really, really massive. So, just that's what we're putting is on there, just so everybody has an understanding of just the magnitude of what they are. So, the overview from phase two was what we presented last time. And again, as I mentioned before, we focused on projects four through nine to do the quantitative analysis. And if you can see here, this is what it looked like when we made the original presentation based on qualitative. And now, we're just going to talk a little bit about the qualitative approach that we took to it. This is kind of the difference between quantitative and qualitative in the two little boxes there you can see. And that's just kind of how they're measured and what we do to analyze them in terms of making these determinations. Phase two, you know, spattle distribution. And again, this is a little bit more into the science, engineering, technical part of it. We're just talking about, you know, how they're grouped, kind of evaluating that in each commission district has phase two projects. All of these things get taken into consideration. But an important thing to note about spattle distribution is it does not impact the current rankings. Functional interaction, again, it's just kind of determining if the drainage systems between projects have interdependencies that would impact project phasing. So we look at that and we evaluate it. It's important to note that the projects four through nine, they don't really depend on each other to function. So one can be done without the other. The project groupings are independent to other neighborhoods. And these groupings also don't require downstream projects to be completed. So functional interactions also, they do not count towards the current rankings either. You know, again, construction impacts. You know, when we look at these projects, it's important to know how much it's going to impact all of the communities when we do projects of this nature. So part of that is taken into consideration as well. And as you can see from the results, Project 6, 7, and 8 were identified as concerning given their geographic locations. As you can see on the maps in front of you, Project 7 and 8 are large areas that would include connecting roadways that would also be impacted. So after evaluating basically everything as part of all of this, the only determination we made at this point in time that we felt we could reasonably accommodate if we were going to make any changes based on what we looked at from a qualitative perspective was recommending that Shady Banks and Project 7, Tarpon River, Austin Park be reordered. That would be really the only change that we came out of it that, you know, we could do from the qualitative analysis. And what would be the necessity to reorder that? Is there a significant need there? I'm sorry? Is there a significant need? Why did you want to reorder that? You know, we just looked at that. And based on the qualitative facts and everything that was taken into consideration, that would really be the only area we felt that, you know, any reordering would would warrant it based on using that criteria. If we stick to just the qualitative, we wouldn't reorder at all. And we would just ask the commission to accept it the way it is. Well, the thing is, it would be displacing other neighborhoods by reordering them, correct? It would just the two and the six to seven. Right. So the other ones that were six and seven would now be eight. Right. They're both in District four. So it would just be, obviously, you know, one area over the other versus one over the other. So that's really the only, you know, change that it would be. We plan on doing this in groups of three. The first three, the next three, the third three, and the fourth three. Right. So what are you displacing? What's going to be bumped up to eight or nine? Mayor, just to clarify, two projects would be inverted. So the project that was originally proposed for number six would now be seven. The project originally proposed at number seven would now be number six. So it's just flipping those two. It shows it right up here on the screen. That's the only change. That's clear. Okay. So for us, basically, the next step would be accepting the rankings, either the original qualitative rankings, I mean, I'm sorry, the original quantitative rankings, or the ones that are qualitative now, and moving forward, providing a resolution at the upcoming city commission, and then going forward and getting to work. Mayor, if I could. Yes. Thanks, Brad. Thanks for your ongoing work on this very, very important work, and great work so far in the completed projects. Can you go back to the previous slide? Okay. That one? Yep. Yeah, thanks. Okay. So this is the, actually, so this is a suggested reorder. Now, if you could go back to the scoring, please. Let's see. Yeah. So the, give us a little bit about the scoring, what goes into the scoring formula. I'll, as we're getting into more little technical, I'll let Roberto kind of hang on, because you can see in the original scoring that it's just, they're minuscule things apart, so I'll let him take the engineering part of it. How you doing? Roberto Bencourt, Stormwater Engineering Division Manager. So our last meeting, we spoke about how we came about this. A lot of it had to do with actual elevation, so we have LIDAR. We are able to see where the low spots are. Then there was that neighborhood factor that factored in the FEMA losses. We remember that back then we had the neighborhood score, but we weighted more towards the FEMA loss, so we can kind of help with folks who aren't able to get online and do that. But essentially, a lot of the data is coming from, we know where the low-lying areas are based on the LIDAR, so very low-lying areas that flood often obviously have the higher score. Great. So the higher the score, the more... Impacted it is during storm events, yep. Absolutely. Okay, great. So this, so the six is Shady Banks, seven is Tarbin River, so if Shady Banks has a higher score, thus more impacted as a result of the topography and so forth? Yes, they're fairly close. I mean, we were asked to look at the qualitative rankings, so we felt somewhere in the middles where that could be applied, but they're very close together. Yep. The, so, and maybe this is more towards Brad, but in terms of the, so the reason for moving Shady Banks to six and Tarbin River, or sorry, Shady Banks to seven and Tarbin River up is due to the proximity and the kind of road impact, construction impact, is that, that's the main reason for that adjustment? Am I saying that right? So that's, that was one of the large criteria. I mean, you could see the, just the surface area of, of that Tarbin, Koisin Park area is number seven on that map is massive. Yep. So we would, if you go with the original ranking, seven and eight would be kind of constructed around the same time. Yep. Versus you swapping it in eight and six is now constructed at the same time. Um, so thank you. So Raquel, I'd like to stay with the original rankings on this because of the import of the severity of exposure to stormwater indicates that Shady Banks is six, Tarbin River seven. And, and I think, I mean, that we can navigate the construction, um, that impact that that would have if we stuck with those original rankings, unless I'm wrong on that. No, yeah, we certainly, if we have those 200 construction, I mean, we'll, we'll work together and make sure we can get where they're going. Okay. Yes. That's perfectly fine, Commissioner. Okay. For us to keep the original proposed ranking. Yep. Just because for me, the, if we can do that from a construction standpoint, I just, I want the neighborhoods most in need, starting with Melrose Park, which is top of the list, right? That's job one bar none. Um, and then just sequentially, I think as long as we can navigate the construction component, that's how I'd like to, like to do it. Mayor, if that, if that makes sense. Is there a consensus with that? Okay. Brad, we good? Is that? Yes. Okay. Absolutely. We're, we're good with that. Okay. All right. Can I, can I ask a question? I know we're, um, focusing on phase two, but in regards to phase one and, um, Riverland and, um, Merrill's Manors, could you give us a update as to, um, where we are in design and how we could get, keep this moving forward? It's been, um, a process. Sure. Mel, it is a very large project. Uh, there's, as you know, almost no infrastructure in that area currently. So we're about 90% design plans. Uh, we're just buttoning up some of the details on the actual lift stations themselves and working through our easement agreement with the Shipmunk facility and, because that's where we outfall from. But other than that, that's pretty much we're towards the end. Okay. Is there a challenge? Because I was under the impression that we had gotten beyond that conversation with Shipmunk. So that's still an issue? It's, it's still an issue. Yep. And so it has been brought to our attention recently that there may be some change in ownership going on with the Shipmunk site. And so that is a requirement for us to move forward with the project to have the easement in order for us to get the permit with Bower County. Um, we are at the 90% design level. Our intention is to expedite the procurement process for this project, uh, by doing a two-step pre-qualification process where we can go out and pre-qualify, uh, firms to be able to, uh, compete for projects within the entirety of the Fortify Lauderdale program, including so that the easement situation does. Funding page, just walk me through just very high level, like in terms of, uh, releasing and securing funding for, for all the, you know, all the components. Nice. And Raquel, while they're coming up, uh, Raquel, in terms of speed to delivery, as you know, like talking about, are we, are we exploring all forms of delivery, not just bid build, but I mean, all forms, we've talked about P3 that's been successful before, like how are we continuing to look at all? Yes. And I think this came up at a previous meeting. Right. Uh, we have been utilizing a design bid build procurement delivery process traditionally for Fortify Lauderdale. What I'm proposing to do and would like to begin doing is to, uh, tweak that design bid build process so that we can have contractors ready and available on an ITV basis per project so that we can, uh, have a pool that we can call on for the various projects within the Fortify Lauderdale program. This will help us expedite, uh, singular procurement processes per project and allow us to be more flexible and agile and thus speed up these projects. So it is, uh, deviation, a slight deviation from what we've been doing in the past, uh, as mentioned, I'm very cautious about wanting to do P3s for Fortify Lauderdale, especially if it's a very significant project, um, in terms of the dollar value. Uh, I, I do know that our team is working very hard on completing phase one and going into phase two. Uh, we've been meeting to discuss how we can expedite delivery. And so it's going to look a lot different than what we've done in the past, but yes, uh, we've been looking at multiple options. Have we, I mean, historically we've done some big P3 infrastructure projects in the city, right? Like I think in my neighborhood, we did one, right? Is that right? We have. We have done some P3 projects related to infrastructure. Right. And how, what's your view? I mean, I don't know if you've looked at those historically, how they, have they done? I mean, my view is it's, it's worked well, but. For Fortify Lauderdale, given the magnitude of the project, I want to make sure that we have enough competition and that we're promoting that so that we can get the best value for our dollars, as well as looking at how we can streamline our procurement process so that that's not a bottleneck for getting these projects delivered. Okay. Okay. Great. Thank you. Mayor, it's Raquel's birthday today too. So I just want to call that out to celebrate while we're asking our questions. I was going to, I was going to bring it up tonight. Were you going to bring it up tonight? Well. I was going to bring it up. Yeah. So, so the person who brings it up has to bring the cakes. Bring the cakes. Okay. It's coming. And the gifts. And the gifts. It's not out of the oven yet. So it'll be here. But happy birthday, Raquel. Thank you. Thank you for where you're going. Yeah. Funding. So, Yvette Matthews, assistant city manager. I guess underground infrastructure reminded him of your birthday. Yes. It's the gift that keeps on giving. It's better than wastewater. That's right. Right. Storm water is definitely better than wastewater. So as we were developing the fiscal year 2020 budget, we had Stantec come and speak to you all about our game plan for how we were going to fund Fortify Lauderdale. In that game plan, in 2026, we will be taking out $330 million in debt. This will cover completing phase one of this initiative and begin the design and planning for phase two. And then in 2029, 2032, and 2035, we'll be taking out approximately $350 million to fund the next phases of the initiative. This is supported by our rate increases. This year, it was a 15% rate increase. In 2027, we're planning for a 20% rate increase. And so all of these initiatives, as we advance the funding, is supported by rate increases. So you see on that bottom bar the rate increases that are planned over the next few years. It steps up to 20% and then back down to 15% and 10% to allow us to really support the debt issuances that are planned. Great. Thank you. And when we look at Fort Lauderdale, Fortify Fort Lauderdale, the totality of the city, our expectation of completion with the entire project is when. Once, right? Yeah, yeah. Come on up. So just following the way the funding is coming along, it's going to be around 15-ish years? 15 years from today. I think that's what we originally anticipated. Yeah. Yeah. 2040. Right. Well, I mean, we're rebuilding a city and a lot of this has been ignored over the years. And certainly when the city was developed, the developers were allowed to get away with this. So they had alternative methods. I know in particular, Melrose Manors, they used the swale system, which seemed to work for many years. But now we have, you know, whatever the reason for the cause of all these intensive storms, you know, we now have to adjust who we are and what we do to accommodate it. So it's a lot of money. I'm just wondering, when the debt service is paid off, do the rates come down? Okay. So in 2040, everybody, your rates will come down. Wait a minute. It's not quite that simple. Yeah. Oh, not that simple. One thing that we're also building into our financial modeling is that we don't just build these projects. We must also maintain and ensure that they continue to have the level of integrity that we're hoping that they function at. And so one of the things that we're doing as we build out this plan is also building out the maintenance and the staffing to ensure that we are able to maintain these. So maybe not a rate decrease, but the rates won't increase as steeply as we're currently seeing. Thank you. And Mayor, I know I'm kind of this, I bring this up regularly, but 15 years is a long time. And I just, we've got to, I don't know how to say it. We've got to do better than that. We just, we've got to do better than that. We, you know, I know it's complex. I know it is disruptive. I know it's a big investment, but we've just got to figure out ways to move this faster. And I don't know the solutions to that. Before you know it, we'll be here. I don't know the solutions to that. I've been on this commission 15 years, not consecutively, but 15 years total. And, you know, where does the time go? It's like, you know, if we, if we don't have the resources or the staffing, that's going to be the challenge. And, and that's what gets to be very expensive and oftentimes complicated. So just keep that in mind, commissioner. Sure. But, you know, go ahead, Raquel. Yeah. No, please. Birthday girls first. Go ahead, please. Just echoing what Yvette explained earlier about how we've structured the funding over time. And so, yes, resource is an issue. And if we don't have all the funding drawn down for the projects, we won't be able to execute them in a more expedited manner. And so what we're aiming to do is to make sure that our procurement process is aligned with the funding that we have scheduled for the next 10 years, as indicated in the presentations. Well, suggesting that we have to increase, we have to, the annual increases be even greater than what they are now, because right now they're spread over a longer period, the 15 years. If we reduce that to 10 years, we'd have to increase the rate even greater than what we've done now. So that's another challenge we have to consider. Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Labrie. Hello, mayor, vice mayor, commissioners. I'm James Labrie. I'm the vice president of the Poinsettia Heights Civic Association. And I just wanted to make a few comments today. Excuse me. First of all, all morning long, I've been trying to get the slide deck, and it was not available on the website. So I don't know why that happened or who's responsible for that. But this is the first time I'm seeing it. It also came up as an error online, too. So what's going on? Tell us, mayor. I don't know. What's going on? Yes. We'll make sure we give you the slide presentation at some point. Well, all right. Thank you for that. Next thing, I wanted to remind this commission that back when we had two directors before in public works, Poinsettia Heights was flooding, and we had the director come to our neighborhood, and he would add us to the list of neighborhoods that were being repaired and fixed. And that would have put us right after Victoria Park. So since then, things have changed. Obviously, you've seen several other neighborhoods been pushed ahead of us. Next, just learning today, we had the groupings now are three groups together, three projects. There's four. And what happened to the four projects three times? So when we had those three groups of four, that's when the estimate was $500 million. But now it's in silver, a billion, because we had to fund it, so it turned into the group to three. How does that change the price? Price doesn't change. So when we had the original estimates, that was based on the first project we did. But we saw immense cost escalation as time went on, especially after COVID. So once we got more accurate cost estimates, we were able to adjust for the next phase to get a more accurate representation. Hopefully, that answers the question. Well, it's not making sense to me, so we'll go on. And then, do you have a slide on the timeline when the different projects are going to start? So group three, the first group of three, the second group of three, the next two? Well, why not? Brad, you have to come up to the microphone. I think that's a fair question to ask. Well, it has to come up to the microphone to answer the question. Please. As we go through this process and as we come back to finalize this, probably sometime next year, we'll be able to answer that more firmly about timelines and projects with design. I think, as we indicated in the slides, some of the stuff for the first three will be going into design next year. So that's as much as I can tell you for construction and all that. It's very, it's too preliminary to give you those kind of answers. What part of Poinsettia Heights are we talking about? Because a significant part of that neighborhood already has storm drains. So what part are we talking? There's too small and they can't manage the water. 15th Avenue, you know, it's floods. Right. Poinsettia Drive floods. So it's 15th Avenue, which is the main corridor through the city, and Poinsettia Drive, which I know always floods, which is ironic because it's right on the canal. But I know. But the rest of the neighborhood isn't impacted as much as I recall. 17th Avenue, Northeast 17th Avenue. 17th Avenue. 17th Terrace. Okay. Heading south. Right. Yeah. Okay. So you asked a couple of questions. And I got answers and I appreciate that. But I just think I agree with Commissioner Sorensen. It's taking too long. So if there's a way we can speed this up, that would be great. Because I have to go back and tell my neighbors that it's going to be 15 years before this thing is done. And I can't tell them when my own neighborhood is going to be done. And we were told years ago that we were going to be right after Victoria Park. So thank you. So to answer that question, how was that switched? Was it switched? No. This was before the Fortify Fort Lauderdale project even got pulled together. Thank you. Anyone else wish to speak on this item? What's your name? Ted and Sarah, President of River Oaks. Has he been sworn in? Yeah, there it was. I just want to, because you brought something up, Brad Cain did, that River Oaks is not done. We're on the done list. But like he even mentioned, we are not done. So I don't want that to be considered, you know, okay, checklist, checklist, and have what still needs to be finished in River Oaks, you know, kind of forgotten about. I just want to make sure that, you know, we're still. And we have canals also. And the water was being pumped into the canal and it was coming around over, back over the seawalls is what happened a lot in our neighborhoods. But we still got some things we need to tighten up in River Oaks before we put that on the big checklist that's done. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Anything, any other questions from the commission? If none, we'll move on to business two, which is regarding the City of Fort Lauderdale Urban Forestry Master Plan. City Manager. So we have our team from the Sustainability Division. Dr. Nancy Gassman will lead the presentation. And we also have consultants joining us. Good afternoon, Commission, Mayor. Nancy Gassman, Deputy Director, Parks and Rec and your Chief Resilience Officer. Today we'll have a presentation on the Urban Forestry Master Plan. With our consultants, Res, Justin Friedman will be providing the presentation and available with his team to answer additional questions along with staff. Justin. Thank you. There we go. All right. Mayor, Vice Mayor, Commissioners, I appreciate this opportunity to present the Urban Forestry Master Plan. We've been working on this project for quite some time. It was advertised back in fall of 2023. Res was the selected vendor as of December of that year. And we started work in April of 2024. It's been a very collaborative effort. We've worked closely with city staff and the Sustainability and Urban Forestry Department. Dr. Nancy Gassman, Laura Tooley, Glenn Hadwin, and Melissa Doyle were very involved with the project. We have our project team here, Mark Clark, Megan Rising, Kyra Paris, and Larson McBride. So we've been working on this for quite some time. And we're excited to get to this final step to present it to y'all today. So the presentation outline here, we're going to talk about the goals of the plan. We're going to talk about the state of the urban forest. We're going to talk about the stakeholder engagement that really informed the plan and helped build it. The recommendations we came up with, implementation, and finally, a conclusion. So let's talk about the goals of the urban forest forestry master plan. So the city's tree canopy right now, or as of 2024, was 26.6%. The city measures every year. For those that don't know what tree canopy coverage entails, you know, picture Google Earth. You're looking down from above on the city, where you see trees, you know, as a percentage of the overall city area, that's a tree canopy coverage. The city has set a goal of 33% by 2040. That was set in the advanced 2040 comprehensive plan, one of the many plans that we reviewed as part of the development of this plan. So the purpose of the urban forestry master plan was to create a pathway to get to that number. The 33% can be covered by 2040. So the plan itself has 62 recommendations that create kind of a roadmap to get there. Those 62 recommendations fall within 14 action areas, really to improve the urban forestry program itself. Obviously, we're going to need to plant a lot of trees. The city's going to need to plant a lot of trees. All right, so let's stop right there. Sure. Same question. Where do we plant 160,000 trees? And if it's being said to us that this would exceed the amount of available land in the public realm, how are we going to ever achieve that goal of 160,000 trees by 2040? And is this a goal that's already set out to fail before we start? I mean, it's a great question. It is an ambitious goal. But again, if you're looking down upon the city and you're looking where the trees are, and where there's available planting spaces, some of that is in public right away. A lot of it is not in public right away. Right. So how do we get it in the non-public, in the private part of way? What role can the city? I mean, it just seems like a Herculean task that to get 160,000 trees planted in the next 15 years, especially since most of the area that is going to be accommodated is not in the public realm. No, I mean, it's a great question. So if you look at the 62 recommendations, part of growing the urban forest canopy is preserving trees that are already there. A lot of those trees are already in public sector lands or private lands, right? So preserving existing canopy, but there also have to be... Or replacing them. If they die, if the trees die, then we want to replace them, correct? Absolutely. And planting more trees on private lands. So there's a combination, but really preserving a lot of mature canopy on private lands. It's going to take effort in both public lands and private lands to get to that number. I mean, the urban forest canopy in any city is comprised of all of the trees within public and private lands. I get that, but I mean, this sounds like coffee, you know, coffee clash conversation. You know, let's get to 33%. Oh, by the way, there's no place to put all these trees. So why are we even doing this? I mean, well, I mean, again, it's an ambitious goal, and there are reasons to want to improve the tree canopy coverage. You cannot have meaningful canopy growth on public lands only. I mean, you know, many cities have come up with these types of ambitious goals. It all requires some aspect of planting and preservation, planting and preservation on private lands. Can we incentivize private landowners in some way? Is that one of your 64 recommendations? Yeah, there's a lot of, within the 62 recommendations, a lot of it is geared to both public and private lands, you know, incentivizing tree planting, preservation across the board. So, I mean, and again, you know, the trees that are planted and preserved now, I mean, that's what this slide shows. Obviously, you're going to have a greater impact on the canopy than trees planted or preserved down the road. All right. So let's talk about the state of the urban forest canopy now. The city measures its urban forest canopy every year using a tool called I-Tree Canopy. It also sets a canopy goal every year. As you can see, the goal has gone up every year for quite some time, whereas the canopy itself has kind of hovered in that 26 percent range. So it's not easy to be an urban tree, especially in South Florida. There's a lot of pressures on urban trees, infrastructure. Down here, we have storms. We have flooding. We have pests. And a huge pressure on the urban forest canopy is development and growth. And this is a very desirable place to live. I already heard that today in multiple presentations. People want to move here. They continue to move here. And as you accommodate those people, it is a challenge to grow the urban forest canopy. But there is a benefit to doing so. So the urban forest canopy, as of 2024, generates $3.3 million in benefits. And that's in reduced stormwater infrastructure needs, pollutant removal, carbon sequestration and storage, and all that for a price tag of $1.3 million per year. So it's a good return on investment. Planting trees tends to be a good return on investment. Plus all of the placemaking, the beautification, and all of the other benefits that trees provide. So again, we're at 26.6 percent as of right now. As you can see, it's not necessarily evenly spread across the city. There are neighborhoods with a lot of trees, beautiful tree canopy coverage. And then there are some other neighborhoods with substantially less tree canopy coverage. There are tools out there to measure what is called tree equity that take demographics and income in certain neighborhoods into account. Fort Lauderdale has an overall tree equity score of 78. But kind of looking at some of those differences across the city, it really helps inform where maybe some of the investment should start. So we obviously give a higher priority to those areas that have fewer trees. It's kind of an easier way to jump in and start to make a difference. Really, to build this plan, it took a lot of stakeholder engagement. That's really what built up the recommendations. The city's urban forestry practices are distributed amongst 14 different departments and teams. So we got input from 12 of these groups, and that really helped inform the recommendation. But any time moving forward, you're going to try to implement such a or try to accomplish such an ambitious goal. Coordination between those departments is key. We also did a lot of stakeholder engagement with the public. We attended a lot of events. We had a survey with almost 800 responses. We did four in-person district-wide meetings and one virtual city-wide meeting. We received a lot of comments. Not surprisingly, most of the comments that we heard, people were dying to tell us about, you know, development's impact on trees. They had personal stories about, you know, trees that they loved in their neighborhood that they saw cut down. Very passionate. People are very passionate in the city about trees, and I totally understand that. There's broad support for planting more trees. And there's enthusiasm, especially people that tend to go to those meetings, about community participation in planting and outreach. So, we prepared our draft Urban Forestry Master Plan. It was published in September. We've received another 99 comments from residents, 30 additional comments from city staff and advisory board members. We brought this presentation to the Sustainability Advisory Board, and they seem to endorse the plan. Again, there is, there seems to be support for the plan overall. We still have heard concerns about the impact of development on trees. I mean, that's going to be an issue, you know, obviously with more and more people moving here. So, again, we came up with 62 recommendations across 14 action areas. Obviously, the city may not, you know, take every one of our recommendations. This is a framework to improve the overall program, to create a framework and a pathway to get to this ambitious number. As you can see, you know, these are some of the areas in which those recommendations fall. I'm not going to go into more detail, but it's all right there in the plan. And then implementation. So, this kind of gets to your question, Mayor. You know, the city has 8.75 square miles of canopy right now. There's 5.6 square miles of potential tree planting area. That's obviously spread across both public and private lands. To get to that canopy number, we need to grow 1 square miles of canopy. How do you determine – sorry, go back there. Thanks. How do you determine potential tree planting area that's privately owned? Like how – I'm going to bring up Larson McBride. Okay, great. Thanks. Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Commissioners, Larson McBride, Consulting Arborist for Resource Environmental Solutions. This is a figure that FDAC's put out in their 2023 statewide tree canopy cover, potential tree planting areas for every city in Florida. And this figure of all of the vacant land in the city or just, you know, considering sidewalks and roads and tops of buildings, these are areas that can be planted with trees. It depends on the size of the tree. We get into that in the plan. But that's where we're at. There is room to plant a number of trees. But as we said, it's ambitious, but we do believe that it's doable. Okay, great. And so is that inclusive of commercial, residential, all of the above? Yeah, all of the above, yes. But obviously, you know, ball fields and parks and utility rights of way are excluded. You know, it's actual potential planting space. Great, thanks. All right, so here's just some of the backup for the potential planting scenarios. Figures are based on hypothetical canopy averages. Costs are based on average cost of the 10 most commonly planted trees in Fort Lauderdale. It's very obvious that trees planted, you know, sooner, you know, earlier in the planned period will develop as larger trees and create more canopy. And planting should be done by city staff, residents, community organizations, businesses, and development. It's really all hands on deck to get to that ambitious number. And that was really the purpose. Recommendation cost estimates. So implementation of all 62 recommendations is estimated to cost between $1.2 million and $2.1 million annually, and that's excluding tree planting. So that's the, you know, building up the program, the training infrastructure necessary to do that. Achieving 33% tree canopy may require public and private entities to plant between 10,000 and 18,000 trees annually. So, again, very ambitious. All urban forestry master plan funding requests will be submitted consistent with the city's regular budget processes. Obviously, it's going to go through all the same procedures as any other expenditure. So we evaluated 13 different grant programs valued at $21 million to potentially fund the plan, but I believe that's already obsolete. I mean, I think, you know, a couple of years ago, I think in the Biden's Infrastructure Improvement Act, there was $2 billion out there for tree equity. And now I think most of the grant programs are, I don't know if you have more detail on that, are sort of being taken away. I do want to just kind of sum it up as when we started doing our analysis of what was out there and how we could potentially make this happen, this preceded the significant funding cuts to much science and infrastructure that happened at the beginning of this year. Not something that we could have foreseen, and according to people in agencies that administer a lot of grants that fund urban forestry, a lot of these cuts may not be permanent, but they are current. Over the 15-year plan period, things will probably change multiple times. Internal funding sources, urban forestry budget must increase to meet the canopy goal. I think that's pretty clear. Another, the urban forestry master plan recommendations will generate revenue for urban forestry, and that's permit, mitigation fee, schedule changes, additional penalties for tree violations, and so forth. So the goal is to try to build up some of those funds by protecting existing trees. Don't we do that now? Yes. Yeah. So it's reevaluating those fees to help drive additional revenue for additional plantings. In conclusion, you know, again, it's an ambitious goal. Again, the city does not need to necessarily implement every recommendation. It's a framework. It's a strategy to help inform a path forward. We believe it's a data-driven document. We did a lot of research on, you know, other programs, on the city's own policies and procedures and codes, a lot of feedback from internal and external stakeholders. The recommendations reflect public urban forestry goals and city staff's vision for improved urban forest management. And I believe it'll pay off in the future if the city's able to reach that goal. And next steps, obviously, we would love for the commission to come back and consider adopting the plan. Certainly happy to answer any questions. It's been a great project for us. And, you know, we've had our offices here in Fort Lauderdale for quite some time. We really love the city, and we'd love to see this come to fruition. Well, great. Thank you so much for your presentation. Anyone have any questions of the gentleman? Yes, question. Yes, go ahead. In regards to maintenance of the trees that we're going to be planting, I'm really focusing and thinking about an area in my district that I, you know, frequent often. We have the canopy that's grown very beautifully, but also it's overgrown now. Are we implementing opportunities for who's going to maintenance the trees to cut back? Is there funding included in this cost, or how do we address that? Address that in our recommendations regarding staffing. Obviously, as you're saying, the status quo is not going to deliver the city to its goal. And so staffing, as well as funding for staffing, is going to need to increase. You already have excellent existing staff who know where gaps are and where holes could be filled and what areas could be strengthened. And we think that the city will be able to meet that according to our recommendations. With your recommendations, do you have any dollar amount when you were talking about all these additional trees? In this budget of what's being presented, how much would go towards that type of maintenance financially? Yes, we have estimates. Those are in the plan. They're broken down into figure tables. So you can actually see our estimated annual cost for each recommendation multiplied by an inflation factor up until 2040. Just to add to what the commissioner is inquiring about. So this plan is very much aspirational. And on an annual basis, we would look at recommendations incorporated in the plan to determine if there are initiatives that we would be able to move forward. And that would be based on funding availability and some other factors. And so it's not that everything in the plan would be implemented, but we would use this as the framework and foundation to identify opportunities to promote growth of our tree canopy. And that would be inclusive of maintenance activities. So I just wanted to share that for the record. It's not that everything included in terms of costs within the plan. That's not something that the commission is bound to do by accepting the plan. But it allows us to have a starting place to have further discussions and policy recommendations and decisions going forward annually. All right. And one additional question in regards to our tree equity score, we're 78. How do we compare to other cities in our in our county? That's a great question. It depends on the city. Oftentimes you'll see cities that are smaller kind of kind of de facto have a greater percent canopy because there are fewer trees needed. I think Lazy Lake is probably 99 percent. Sure. Sure. What about what about what about what about countrywide? You know, what's the average? That's that's difficult to ascertain because each community is is broken up differently. The the tree equity scores are determined at the at the census block group level. It's kind of, you know, like I understand that. Just just for a overview for us in this in the city. What are we how do we understand the difference in the popularity? I mean, the population. But give me some figures if you can. And I'm sure, by the way, that you have to differentiate between the urban like Hollywood, Fort Lauderdale, Pompano versus, you know, Parkland and everything else out that way. Those are trees. Right. They've got a lot of trees out that way. Last time I was there. Absolutely. Our analysis was limited to the city of Fort Lauderdale. Seventy eight is is not a bad score. There's room for improvement. But there are certainly cities that have lower scores than than that. You know, there's there's room for improvement. It won't be able to, you know, happen in every area of the city. But by raising some of the the local equity scores of some of the neighborhoods that are, you know, in the darker red there, it will elevate the the overall score of the city. Thank you. Any other questions? I'll go ahead. Thanks, Mayor. Raquel, so how I think there are some great recommendations in here. So thank you for your work. This is great. I understand you're saying, OK, we're going to evaluate and we'll kind of implement what we can. So will what's your plan in bringing forward recommendations, what you'd like to implement or how does this look? And then how do we track what we've implemented and not implemented or how is this? Sure. So I'll start with the approach as we're looking at the existing slide. You know, we would want to make sure that we are focusing our efforts on those areas that are darker. So not the greens and the yellows so much, but more so the orange and red. What is that, Birch Park and the greenhouse area? Yes, Birch Park is the darkest green there. So our approach would be to try to ensure that we are enhancing the canopy in the areas that need it more so than other areas. But we do want to look citywide to see where there are opportunities. And I think on an annual basis, as we go through our budget development process, we will then bring forward opportunities for the commission to consider. And Dr. Gassman, would you like to add to that? Dr. Nancy Gassman, I think it's important to recognize that there's different layers and different action items within the plan. Some are related to maintenance, some are related to preservations, and some are related to planting. And so one of the things that we'll be doing probably in the next four to six weeks is to gather internal staff and prioritize those 62 recommendations, looking at what we can accomplish at the least cost, looking at which items will give us the biggest bang for a buck as we invest, and then looking at those items that we want to bring forward for decision packages moving into fiscal 27. And so using that process to prioritize and look at where we can get some quick wins, but also where staff feel is the greatest prioritization for more maintenance, more preservation, more inspection, we will follow those recommendations and use those to help guide how we request funding going forward. And there's a certain amount of funding that's available within the Tree Trust Fund as it stands today that we can work through the budget amendment process to request some additional funds earlier on to start some of the process moving forward. Great. So that sounds good. So like some of the recommendations, like just getting a couple of specifics, is like this idea of tree baits, which are a play on rebates, right? So to incentivize irrigation-related tree baits to homeowners who plant trees on their properties, or another one that I thought is really interesting is utility-based tree baits to homeowners who strategically plant trees on their property, which could provide shade and thus lower energy consumption. So do we, just as those as just one example, would we have to fund those rebates, right, from another allocation? So anything that would have a fiscal impact, we would have to bring that to the commission, whether through a budget amendment or through the annual budget development process, which is more so where I would like to see this go so that we can take a holistic view of how we implement the Urban Forestry Master Plan. So yes, anything that is a rebate that has a dollar value, yes, we would need to budget for that. Okay, great. And so that's something, Raquel, I just see as regardless of where the greatest need to grow the canopy, which is great to focus on that, but regardless of that, the tree baits could be everywhere, right, and helpful anywhere, just as one example as I kind of think about this. So for example, a tree bait rebate program could be initially piloted in a certain area of the city based on the need and the prioritization. And I don't know that we would launch with a citywide tree bait program because we may not see the impact that we'd like to see. So all of those recommendations will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis based on the level of impact both fiscally and actually, you know, to the canopy. Great, thanks. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. And I just see what I'm saying is where can District 3, as the city commissioner, how can I be a part of this process with the staff, with what's going on to make sure that we are receiving the attention needed to be just up to level? We are how many points behind the east side of the city? And there was trees. I grew up in this neighborhood. But we had fruit trees. We had many trees. And I remember when the fruit fly incident and all our trees, in a sense, were removed because of that situation with the trees being infected. So how do we get to a point, I guess I am addressing as the city manager, to be a part to make sure that this is a balanced opportunity for the west side of the city as well? Thank you for that question. And if we could just look at slide 13, it's a little less of a distinction. Now we have shades, various shades of green. And so each slide depicts something a little different. But it all does tell the same story that District 3 is at the lower end of the spectrum when we look citywide. And so, again, I think that the approach from staff is going to be for us to focus on those areas where the canopy coverage is less than in other areas of the city. And that would be the holistic approach across the board for the various initiatives that might come forward based on those 62 recommendations. And if the commission wants to go in that strategic direction, that type of support when we bring the items forward would be necessary. If the commission wanted to take a more district-centric approach and, you know, perhaps maybe there's a combination of a tiered way to do this, maybe areas of the city that are less on the canopy scale would be in the first tier of prioritization. And maybe we do a district-wide pot that can be spread across and have every district participate. But, again, I think the primary approach is to go where the need is. And then, secondarily, we would want to touch all the districts. Well, I think you originally said, why don't we consider a pilot project? Because I think that, you know, it's an enormous task, an enormous responsibility. What you're suggesting, for example, in the area of District 3 where there seems to be the greater need. So what would be the plan for the city to go into the public realm? And certainly we can plant trees in the public realm. But to the extent that most of the deficiency is not in the public but in the private property owners, what do you do there? You knock on their door and say, you know, we're here to plant a tree in your yard or, you know, we're here to give you an incentive to plant a tree. You know, how far can we go financially to try to make up for 160,000 trees for the whole city? I mean, it's daunting. You know, certainly I think the whole project has merit because at least it shows the direction where the city needs to go and trying to green up the city for all the reasons that you described. But, you know, but the reality is how do you how do you get there? How do you get past for a space? So that's that's the strategy we have to come up with because, you know, this idea of a of a would you call it a tree bait? That assumes that the owner of the property has the money to spend $100 to go buy a tree and and then we give them a partial rebate. Certainly, we're not going to give them a full rebate. We used to give out trees. You know, I don't know how successful that was. Usually 20, you know, we used to have I remember years ago, the promenade in Victoria Park and Holiday Park used to have that big fair and people would come there and they would they'd get a free tree. I remember events at South Middle River and different different neighborhood associations would have these scrawny little trees where people would take them home and they become trees. OK, and but those are all very, you know, here and there kind of things. They're not hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of of trees being planted every year. So I don't know how to do that. So I think building off of that, what you said, you've said much. And I believe that's a great place to build, start our project pilot program on that. Like you said, with those activities, those events where free trees were given, if that's something we can still do. I believe we at neighborhood day, neighborhood support night, we still do that. We still do. We still do that. So even that that is a a tree being planted, if that person who takes the tree follows through. And then also with the the opportunity where you stand knocking on doors, having those conversations, you know, that begins with that conversation at the homeowners associations. And whatever town halls that we're we're promoting this opportunity for the trees. And, yes, we still have that that conversation about can I afford to maintenance the tree? We're back to that part of it, because a lot of times that becomes a lack of a better term, another mouth to feed. Now I have to water my tree. I have to nourish my tree. And that has to be considered as well. So thinking about the species of trees that we're offering, is it a tree that would be self-sustainable in a sense, if the if the nature would take care of this new baby that I'm assuming in my yard? So all of that could be a part of the conversation. But I believe we would have some folks that would enjoy now having a shade tree in their backyard or their front yard. I remember when I planted last year five apple trees in my yard in Connecticut. By the end of the year, every single leaf had been eaten off by the deer who saw it as a smorgasbord. So, Mayor, you're just going to have to step up to Bishavat this year. Yeah, I know. I have to plant two trees. You're going to have to really step it up. We'll plant two trees this year. Step it up, Mayor. The things that I hear the most in my district is basically that we need to focus on disincentivizing the removal of trees. When I see a lot of redevelopment happening in my district, people get really upset. I thought we'd do that, though. Not enough. It's so easy. Isn't there a penalty? It's nothing. When you take down trees, you have to replace them? With the new tree preservation ordinance, higher fees and additional disincentives have been put in place. And when you look at a map like this or a map like the equity map, the red areas we can focus on planting more trees. The areas that already have a good tree canopy, we can focus on more of the preservation enforcement type work. So, again, the plan offers opportunities to protect the existing trees as well as to incentivize the additional trees. And I think that there's something in there for every corner of the city. It's a matter of where we prioritize what aspect of the plan. Because I hear from neighborhoods when people come in and if there's some sort of new development or even if it's a single family home or townhome or whatever and very, really lovely, mature trees are removed. And what gets put back in place is just a little tiny little nothing. And people have an issue with that. I mean, I remember, although it wasn't in my district, I heard so many complaints just west of the Oakland Park Bridge when we lost. The city lost, I think, one of its most magnificent trees. I think it was a mahogany. It was in front of the Crescent Office Building. One of the most incredible specimens we had, and they really didn't have to pay much to remove it, and I don't even know why it was removed. But I hear those kinds of stories a lot. Obviously, it's anecdotal. But I think that's where people want to focus. I did want to mention, I did appreciate, I think, the mayor sort of referenced Doug Coleman's email that we got. Did you all get a copy of that as well with some of those recommendations? I wanted to have a little bit of a discussion because I think some of those comments are really worthwhile discussing. But I, too, am not really in favor of allowing funding to come from the Tree Canopy Trust Fund to deal with staff. And I really want to see it just go for trees. And maybe if you could just discuss that concept of using that fund to train staff. So when the recent tree preservation ordinance was approved, there were changes made for the allowance of the Tree Trust Fund. And a small portion of the Trust Fund is allowed to be used for a variety of activities that are not directly related to tree planting. But I think one of the things to consider is that a small investment in the training of staff, a small investment in the education of the public can result in major changes in being able to better enforce our rules and regulations. And so the way that our current ordinance stands, we can use the Tree Trust Fund, a small portion of the Tree Trust Fund, for those types of activities. So that's already an ordinance. That's already available to us. But what is that kind of a dollar amount or a percentage, or how is that ascertained what you can get to use for that kind of training? So the way that the ordinance is currently written, a portion of the cost of planting a tree related to auxiliary costs, we can use up to 20% of the Tree Trust Fund in any given year to support auxiliary costs. In addition to that, a portion of that 20% can also be used for supporting recommendations of the Urban Forestry Master Plan, which could include training. And from a dollar amount standpoint, you're talking about a quarter of a million dollar maximum out of the Tree Trust Fund, for example, in this year. But that doesn't mean that that's the amount that would end up getting spent. Understood. Thank you. And to the city manager's point, all of those types of expenditures have to go through a process in order to be approved. Okay. Excellent. Thank you. And thank you, gentlemen, for your work on this. Appreciate it. Thank you. Is there any other questions you have? Do you have anything else you wanted to add? Okay, great. Thank you so much. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Gassman. Mayor, I just wanted to get consensus that the commission would like to bring this back for acceptance via resolution. Yeah, we could. I have a few people who have signed up to speak, though, so let's hear from them, and then we can make that decision. Kira Porras. Is Kira here? Kira? Nope. Megan? Megan's not here. Charlie? King? And Doug Kuhlman? I don't think the percentage is that important of getting hung up on this 33% or that sort of thing. For me, it's more about the quality of the tree, that it should be like a native tree. You know, like, I think our live oaks we should be protecting. Like, you just treat them like they're regular trees or something. But they, you know, if it's hundreds of years old, it's just never going to be replaced, especially with the speed of what your society moves, where every 60 years we come in and scrape the lot and cut everything down. So, I mean, it just seems like today, I mean, a year ago I was here trying to help me stop a developer from cutting this hundreds-of-year-old tree, you know, that was like this big around, and, you know, you guys didn't help, you know. He had a boom truck 20 feet over my property line doing it. I couldn't get the city to help stop that. They just said it was a civil matter. What was the reason that the city allowed that tree to be cut down? Was it because it's not a native tree? It was before this latest tree law you did. He still hasn't built anything on the property. It's still a vacant lot. But he jumped ahead to cut the tree down when you were just giving it away. And then you changed the law. It's a little more expensive now. But it's not hard to get a tree trimmer to say, there's some bugs on this tree, you know, or, you know, the fork should have been here or there. I mean, that's what they – that's their job. They work for these people. It's not hard to get a sick tree report out of an arborist or something. So if you – you would protect the trees, treat live oaks like they're something different. No, it was very frustrating because that was a beautiful tree, and I couldn't believe that it got cut down. It was part of what makes Victoria Park so charming are the old-growth trees. I mean, I saw a pile of live oaks over by the Parker Playhouse. There's a huge tree there. Are you guys cutting that tree down? You mean where the YMCA is? Yeah. Yeah. I know that we're moving some trees. I mean, there's a huge one that's still there. Are you leaving that one or – I don't know. You better go look quick. I think you should treat those things that are here that can survive hurricanes and can survive floods. I don't disagree with you. And if you just get up to 33 percent by planting a bunch of trash trees and then there's a hurricane, it just leaves us with a giant problem where there's trees down all over the place and we have that giant mulch mountain in Holiday Park. I mean, it's like you're just creating a problem. You're not solving anything. You're not going to have a billboard. Fort Lauderdale's tree canopy has reached 33 percent. It's not like something you're going to brag about. It's not like – I mean, maybe in certain circles. But it's – Well, we're a tree city USA. What is that? We're a play city USA. Well, we've got a lot of things we pay for. We should be – We should take that to Salt Lake City and she'll be waving a tree. But I mean, just start – oak trees. I don't know what the other big native trees are that can survive hundreds of years and go through hurricanes with no problem. Like, those are the things you should be planting and not just a tree that basically grows the fastest and then it falls over in a storm. So, I mean, have a long-term view of it and get into the quality versus the quantity. You know, that's what I would say. Okay. Thank you. Doug Kuhlman. Good afternoon, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Commissioners. My name is Doug Kuhlman. I'm here as an individual. But I'm also here as a member of the pro bono advisory group that helped over the last few years write the tree ordinance. I want to commend RES on their project because the data that they accumulated is immensely important and was unknown in 2020 when we set the master plan goal of 33% tree canopy by 2040. Had those people had that information, they wouldn't put this commission in position to have to plant 10,000 to 14,000 trees a year for $1.1 to $2.4 million a year to meet that goal. That doesn't include the trees. Huh? That price doesn't include the trees. That's just for staffing. No, no. Well, that's – I'll take a minor point on staffing. Yeah. When we endorsed the – when we rewrote with the city staff the tree ordinance, we agreed to modify the tree canopy trust fund to allow up to a certain percentage of funds to be spent for non-planting of trees, specifically to help them write the urban forestry master plan and maintain it. The one thing that's in their recommendation, to tap into that again for training or anything else, we certainly don't endorse and it would be a big mistake. If we're going to plant trees, we're going to have to set a realistic budget. With that said, there are things we can do, and the new tree ordinance has started to address them. First of all, we just need to enforce the existing tree ordinance. The problem we have in the city we have identified is A doesn't know what B does. They send 10 inspectors out to the site, and they only look at the one thing they're looking at, instead of looking at all the things, specifically tree abuse. That's one. Two, all the city's tree properties in the city need to be looked for compliance. A lot of these projects, specifically commercial ones, were built, and the trees expired in a year or two. Go back out there and make them replant them. Three, we need to continue to require all new projects to meet the code. And four, definitely don't take money out of the Tree Canopy Trust Fund for anything other than trees. Trees and update this urban forestry master plan. Oversimplified, I would hope you would redirect the city's consultant to reconsider their recommendation to achieve a goal by a realistic year that the city can afford. We can't afford to spend up to $2 million a year out of our general funds in the next 15 years to reach this goal. So we need to reach this goal, but we need to look at it a little differently. The stuff that they've provided, that data is immensely important. We didn't have it. I'm sure the staff can use it to guide us. But the main thing is, let's do the plan, but let's kind of think it over a little different. Because the goal, by 2040, that much money, that many trees, 10,000, they're planting 2,000 trees and now the city is. How are we going to plant five to seven times that? But anyway, I did send you an email with a lot more specifics, and we look forward to, we certainly endorse the urban forestry master plan, but it needs a few tweaks, specifically the one about take money out of the fund to educate the staff. If we need educated staff, let's hire some. If we've got some great staff, we need more, let's hire them with the education. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Any further comments with regard to this item? There being none. Thank you, folks. We really appreciate your work on this. Moving on to business three, International Swimming Hall of Fame project updates. City Manager. Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to begin by saying thank you so much to the developer for going back to the table with city staff and being very flexible and amenable to the District 2 commissioner for working with staff and the developer. And to the commission for allowing us to do a little bit more homework and due diligence on this. We've made some tweaks since the last presentation at the last meeting, and we believe that we have a project that reflects more risk mitigation on the city or for the city. And Susan is going to go through the presentation, and then I believe that the development team will also provide a few comments. Thank you. Thank you, Manager Williams. And good afternoon, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Commission, Susan Grant, City Manager's Office. And I join the city manager in thanking you all and the project team in helping us get to where we are. And I'm going to start off with just a little background, so that way the recommendations we're going to make at the end will be in a little bit of a context. So we remember receiving the unsolicited proposal five-plus years ago in September of 2020, all the way to the agreement, the comprehensive agreement being approved in September of 23. And then the closing of Phase 1, if you remember, that is the seawall and the Ocean Rescue Building happened in October of 2024. And we're getting monthly or weekly reports of the progress of that. And I know the folks in Ocean Rescue are very excited about the progress of that building. So we talked about it last time, but there is the phasing of the project. And you see there's Phase 1. Phase 2 would be the next one that would close, and that includes the West Building. And you could see all the things that are included there, as well as the public promenade, and that's the ground-level promenade. And then you see Phase 3 and Phase 4 there. Project structure. So the city leases the land to Hall of Fame partners, and that they construct the improvements. Those improvements are leased back to us through that master facility's lease. That's the number we're going to talk about as far as the maximum number that increase. You could see that there are two entities, ISHOF Peninsula and ISHOF. All of them would have a set of sub-sub leases, and that's what they would generate what we are calling the revenue waterfall. And that money would go back up to offset the cost of our master lease payment. Currently, that waterfall that I just described has 100% of the lease-based revenue going back to the city. And currently, the next $2 million of revenue, the non-lease-based revenue coming to the city, and then a 50-50 split between ISHOF and the city, again, to offset that master lease payment. So the initial set of requested changes that we talked about to last meeting was, number one, to revise the comprehensive agreement to allow for grant awards. We know the folks at the Hall of Fame partners have worked closely with staff on applying for grants from FIND and have been very successful in that. But the current CA doesn't necessarily have a provision that allows for the acceptance of grant funds. So we would amend the CA to allow for that. The next request was to increase that minimum lease payment from $11 million to $13.6 million. As a result of that increase, we negotiated a change of that second tier in the waterfall, taking the first $2 million and increasing that to $4.75 million. Again, that was designed to help mitigate some of the risk of that increase. And then there would be a few other changes in the CA and in the other agreements. First, to reflect the change in the East Building that would be renovated versus reconstructed, and possibly the addition of an elevated promenade. So if you remember, PFM was here at the last meeting, and they gave us the base case of the revenue waterfall, as well as five different scenarios. And you could see there with the base case, we were looking at a $1.1 million positive position for the city. And in those scenarios, the worst case was a minus $1.4 million. So based on the feedback that we got from the commission at the last meeting, we went back to the table and met with the folks from Hall of Fame Partners and came up with two additional recommendations, both during the entire 30-year term of the contract or the agreement. First, if we wind up in a negative position, the city, that there would be no 50-50 split with the revenue with ISHOF, that it would all go to the city until we wound up in a break-even position. The second would be in any year that there was a positive position, half of the ISHOF revenue share would go into an escrow account that the city would hold, and we would be able to use that to offset previous or future years where there's a negative position. So based on those two additional recommendations, we reran those scenarios that you saw. So that top set is what we looked at initially that PFM provided to us. In that revised case, the set on the bottom in the, what do you call it? In the base case, obviously, no difference because we're in a positive position, but you see there's an escrow deposit going to offset future losses. Under scenario one, you can see that we go from a minus $264,000 to a minus $225,000, so a better of $39,000. You can see the biggest difference in scenario three. And in that case, we were looking at a negative position of $1.4 million. This takes it down to $323,000, so we wind up for the better of $1 million. So that's what we're looking at as far as revised recommendations. And I'd like to, at this point, I could either answer any questions now or have some folks from the project team come up and talk to you about a few of the issues or questions you might have. Okay. Anyone have any questions of Susan? Let me ask you something, Susan. So how do these folks make any money? In other words, we're collecting where rent is being paid. Correct. And the rent is being paid to us. The override on profits, a certain percent, according to the lease, is going to be paid to us. Correct. And it will be paid to us 100% to ensure that there's no deficit that we have to cover. And should there be a surplus in any given year, that surplus is put into an escrow account to make sure there's no deficit in any future year. So where are they making money here? Are they making money on the businesses that they're running here? On the businesses that, yes, absolutely. So, I mean, if you look at the aquarium, they pay rent of, I think, $1.5 million under this scenario. Right. In addition, if they meet their revenue goals, there's an additional about half a million dollars in revenue share. But again, that's the part that goes to us, and they make their money from running their businesses. Okay. So the rent is just a normal expense that they would have with any other landlord. Okay. Thank you. So anyone else have any questions? I have a couple of people who have signed up to speak. Thank you, Susan. But the folks from the project company, I think, wanted to... Sure. Come on up. I'm mayor. You hadn't signed up to speak, so that's why I did. I'm sorry. Mayor, vice mayor, commissioners, Stephanie Toothaker, on behalf of Hall of Fame Partners, we're excited to be back before you today after having the opportunity to work with your city staff. And I think the project team would just like to say a few words, and then we're happy to answer any questions. But we're excited to move this project forward. We're actually on planning and zoning board tomorrow night to present the details of the site plan project. So we're very excited to move forward. Okay. Great. Thank you. Mario. Mayor, vice mayor, commissioners, thank you for the opportunity to come back today. I want to commend the city manager, Susan and Ben, for working very hard and being very creative in approaching us in a very positive way to try to use the word sharpen your pencil. And it was a big job. It was not an easy conversation, and I had to go back to ISHOP and make sure that they understood the implications. But fortunately, we all came together, and we have a, like you inquired about, we have a very good plan for ISHOP to make money with the operating businesses. The tenants are going to make their money operating those businesses successfully, and that's why we wanted to make sure we had a good track record as operators. But I invited the CEO and founder of the aquarium, my friend Rich here, to debunk a little rumor that we heard lately. Go ahead, Rich. Mayor, commissioners, appreciate your time. Okay. So I think there was a rumor that the aquarium was going to be open, and there was going to be no live fish or anything live. It was all supposed to be virtual reality. So I wanted to bring a... I thought it was both. I thought it was both. We're going to have both. But they said there's going to be no live species of fish. So I wanted to make sure that just ahead of time that you kind of knew that we have over 135 live species of fish, shellfish, crustaceans, we're going to have sharks and rays and touch tanks for the kids. We're going to do a lot of oceanic conservation with Guy Harvey Foundation and Jacques Cousteau Society. But you can see up here, there's an area up on to the left of different areas inside the aquarium of a lot of the different shallow reef areas, the different marine species. There's different tanks, stingray touch tank. There's called an invert touch tank with all types of sea stars. We're going to have coral. And we're also going to do rehabilitative animals that come in. We're going to rehabilitate them and also coral and put it back into the ocean to help our great reef right outside, right off the shore. We're going to have all kinds of lionfish and eels, you name it. There's going to be great. There's like a mid-reef area. There's a mangrove area. There's also different species that are going to change in and out because we have so many. We're going to have hundreds of different species that are going to be live for everybody to learn from. But I wanted to kind of debunk that real quick. Thank you for clearing that up. How many square feet is the aquarium supposed to take up approximately? 20,000 square feet. So it'll be 20,000 square feet of a fish tank. That's huge. Yeah, we're going to have like a tunnel that you walk through and you're going to see the sharks and the rays going above you. It's going to be really cool. That with the interactive and we're going to have a mascot. He's a turtle and his name is Finn and he's going to walk everybody through and kind of teach the kids about the different sea life and what we're going to be doing. So it's going to be really cool. Great. Great. Thank you so much, Rich. Thank you. Anyone else have any questions? Yes, Mario. I wanted to add a little commentary to some of the points that were emphasized by Susan. So I want to point out that the sensitivity analysis, the worst one, the number three that had 1.3 million potential loss, which is now substantially reduced, is based on 25% vacancy, which is never been recorded in the history of Florida as the highest potential vacancy. There are pocket sectors that have reached that, but overall never happened. So this is very conservative. So what I'm trying to say is that I think the upside is a lot bigger than we think here. And just to add one more comment, in all of our projections that we provided the city with the business plan for the aquarium especially, the most conservative numbers show 300,000 visitors. When we're talking with Rich and the Cousteau people and Guy Harvey, they're thinking more 500,000, 750,000 or a million potential visitors here. So when you're talking about putting an additional tool in the toolbox of the city of Fort Lauderdale to attract people to create a destination, we're going to be it. Another important point is... Well, don't be too successful. We're going to try to be extremely successful so we can fund the next one, the expansions. Anyways, so the increase in community benefits, just a reminder, started at $35 million, ended up at $53 million. And that's an equivalent of an extra million of that $2.6 million that we're talking about, the cap increase. $1 million of that is just community benefit additional stuff that we're providing. And then the building, which is paid for by the private sector, at the end is worth $500 million, but it's going to be an old building. So you discount that by 25% to renovate it, put a new roof and put new HVAC and new elevators. That building is going to be worth $400 million. And I know some people might think that you're going to demolish the whole building, but it's not a stadium. This is a building with 24-foot high ceilings that's been judged by the community about its height and everything else. So I don't know that you can really consider that seriously the point of demolishing it. It is a valid point, but I think that it's an unlikely one. How is it that we go to cities around the world and the buildings are 1,000 years old and we're destroying buildings every 30 years? And I think we've got to change our mindset and we've got to plan accordingly. Yeah, okay. And that $400 million, if we break it down for the 30 years until it's paid for, that's the equivalent of putting $13.33 million of equity into the coffers of the city every year, year in and year out. Then the construction economic impact is $393 million, creating 3,283 jobs. The yearly economic impact after it's completed is $29.3 million with 312 local jobs. The ad valorem taxes over 30 years in cash for the city, $12.9 million. The county, $17.8 million. Why do I mention the county, especially after the conversations I heard today? Because we're going to go, Rich and I are going to go to the county just like we did to go get the grant for the seawall and the promenade. We're going to go to the county and say, you're getting $17.8 million of free money. We want you to chip some of it back into the project, into this destination that's going to benefit you greatly, which is going to be a very nice addition to their convention center. The schools are going to get $19.8 million. The hospitals, $3.9 million. So a total of $54 million, that's just in ad valorem taxes over 30 years. The ISHOF Rainy Day Fund, that I call, is the 50% of positive cash flow goes set aside, and that's about $895,000 a year. Every year, year in and year out, that's the skin in the game that ISHOF is contributing to this project. So I want to commend Bill Kent, the chairman and the executive committee and the board, and especially Steve Glassman, for having the vision to support this for the past five years, and really pushing and pushing us, pushing the envelope and challenging us to always rise to the occasion. And every other comment that we got from the commission to encourage us to go further and do more with less. So at the end of the day, the preferred income that goes to the city from $2 million to $4.75 million, and don't forget that if the Project 1 stabilized as we projected, cash flow is $1.1 million a year. So no deficits for anybody, and that's our goal. Now, will it take time to stabilize the probably? Probably a year or two to stabilize all the businesses and get people to know this as a destination. But I can tell you that we are working with some major local and national and international PR firms that we're about to hire with our own funds to go promote the water district and everybody that's included in there. And those are stories about the city, ISHAF, FLAC, the financial package, the development package, how this is revolutionary. People don't realize yet what we're bringing to the table. But what we're bringing here is the private sector subsidizing government components while the government gets the benefits, and the private sector provides the funding and pays off the debt so that the asset belongs to the government in the end. This is new. Not too many people have ever done this, and I think this is going to be our case study to show the world how Fort Lauderdale is at the forefront of many things, including development. So thank you. All right. Thank you. If you have any questions. Thank you. Any further questions of these folks? Okay. I think we're good. There are a couple people who signed up to speak, and perhaps why don't you just have a seat for a moment. Susan Peterson. Susan, are you still here? Oh, there you are. Hi. Susan Peterson, swimmer, local history writer. I came down here the first time in 1962 when I was at University of Pennsylvania, all-American swimmer for the College Coaches Swimming Forum. And I moved to Fort Lauderdale because of the pool. And I used to work in the museum also as a history picture researcher. And here's a picture. This is August Burghardt. He was a founder of the Historical Society. He was the first professional lifeguard in Fort Lauderdale. And he also was the sports writer for the Sun Sentinel. And in his hand, here is the 1927 New River Marathon swim trophy won by Alice Shaw of Davie. I actually own this trophy. I found it in an antique shop in Midway, Georgia in 1978 when I was on a boating trip. And why I'm bringing this up is the swimmers who started all this were really public-minded people. G. Harold Martin started the Every Child a Swimmer. And I was lucky that I met August Burghardt. He was actually the same age that I am now, 40 years ago. And he was my writing mentor for my first article. I wanted to know what's the story of this trophy. And he sent me, Buck Dawson at the Hall of Fame sent me to see August Burghardt. So I'm a little bit concerned about the quality of the user experience for individual swimmers. It's wonderful now at the Hall of Fame when we have the meets. I'm very proud of that. But I hardly go there to swim anymore because the water is very cold. The hours are limited. We put all this money into this wonderful pool. And now we're told, oh, we can't have any afternoon swimming hours. We don't have enough lifeguards. When you go to swim, you have to share a lane with four or five people. Before the improvements, when they had the 25-yard times 50-meter, you could get your own lane. And I'm concerned that all of this traffic coming into the small peninsula is going to generate pollution. And really, the focus should be on not only the hot shot, wonderful swimmers, but the community fitness swimmers. Because really, I feel like I've lost my community. I was there every day before. Now I hardly go there. And I'm worried about all the traffic. Number two, I have a question about what would happen in the worst-case scenario if we have a terrible hurricane and we're out of power for a couple of weeks or a month. How would the animals survive who need electricity, air conditioning, et cetera? And number three, I'm just concerned about the finances, what's going to happen in the future with our economy in the next couple of years, and if it runs a deficit, if the taxpayers are going to get caught holding the bag for expenses. I also think the design is not safe because it uses too much of the peninsula, and there's not enough roadway for emergency vehicles in case of accident or some kind of disaster. Those are my concerns about it. It looks beautiful otherwise, but I needed to say this about the user experience and the original purpose of the whole thing, which was to have a community pool. All right. Can I just ask you a question, Susan? Sure. None of this exists right now. Why can't you consider this a community pool? Pardon? None of what they have described exists. The pool is still there. Right. You're saying it's not open to the public? They keep it at a very cold temperature, and not only me. I'm a senior citizen. I still work out every day. I'm a senior citizen, too. Pardon? And I'm a senior citizen, too. Right. And the water has to be a certain temperature for swimmers? That's what that is. They keep it at a certain temperature for competitive swimming. For competitive swimmers, but not for recreational swimmers. Before, we could swim in the diving pool sometimes, so it's warm up. It's actually too cold for me. And also, locker room, the design, it's like going into a New York subway tunnel. The ceilings are black. It's all painted gray. There's no windows. It's kind of creepy looking. Before, it was much more cheerful with white tile and windows that opened. That wasn't an improvement. All right. Well, thank you for bringing that to our attention. So I'm just talking about the user experience personally, but other swimmers also who are younger than me, they go to Carter Park because it's warmer. So that's a problem. Okay. Thank you so much. John Burns? Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Sure. My name is John Burns. I'm the president of the Venetian Condominium, which is right next door to the Swimming Hall of Fame. We realize that the city is committed to a certain level of financial targets and financial support of this project. What we're concerned about is, as the mayor asked just a few minutes ago, how will these businesses make money? We understand that PFM has done a comparison between 2023 and 2025, particularly on the leasing rates, the square footage leasing rates. But have they dug into the business plans and the business models of these particular businesses? For example, how many salads and energy bars do you have to sell in a kiosk to pay up to $835,000 in rental payments? We don't understand that. The same thing, we just saw some pictures of fish that are going to be in the aquarium. That's something that we've never seen before. So what is the business plan? How will it be marketed? And how will the businesses make money? Because if not, the taxpayers will be on the hook. You know, we hear about dive shows and private swimming shows. What are those and what's the plan? Before you make a decision to commit the city to additional funds, you should ask the developer to produce a show, just like with the fish that we just saw, so that everybody understands what this is all about. A couple other questions. The dock activation is scheduled to bring in almost $900,000. What is that? I didn't know the peninsula had docks that weren't managed by Suntex. When I look at the planning and zoning filing, which we'll talk about tomorrow, the entire fifth floor is labeled as storage. So I'm not sure if that's just unleashed space, although I understand that the entire project is leased out. So there are just some questions on the business plans on how this is really going to work. Thanks. Thank you. Is there anyone else who wishes to speak on this item? Commissioners, do you have any other questions or comments? Mayor, I'm just wondering if it's appropriate. I think it actually is. But because of the need to just keep moving and not just revisiting, revisiting, revisiting, I would ask Dwayne to actually prepare a walk-on item so that we can begin to amend the comprehensive agreement. And Susan had a slide that had a few things that needed to happen anyway, I guess under requested changes, and then that was on page 6 of 10 of Exhibit 1. And then also the additional recommendations, the two bullet points that also do a little bit more in terms of mitigating our risk, and that was on page 8 of 10. So is it possible that we can just keep this rolling in terms of... Tonight? Tonight? Well, I... You said walk-on. Right, and in terms of the amendments that we need to do for the comprehensive agreement, what is the plan for that? Can we... I mean, it's a lot of stuff to add to the... Well, in general terms, it doesn't have to be the specifics, but at least it shows a direction that the commission wants to keep moving. So we wouldn't be prepared to prepare an actual amendment to the comprehensive agreement as a walk-on, but what the commission can do is adopt by motion a general term sheet to give our office direction in terms of drafting a document to bring to you at a later date. Okay, so... And that's fine with me. All right, so is there a consensus amongst the commission now to move forward based on the terms that have been presented by Susan Grant and the developer? Are we good with it? Yeah, I am mayor, and I just... If I could just take a moment and say thank you... Where did Susan go? Where you are? There you are. Thank you. Thank you, Susan, for your work with us. Thank you, Mario and team and Rich for working together to, you know, I think make a much better partnership structure for this. So thank you, Susan, thank you, Raquel, for your work on that. So, yeah, I'm supportive, mayor. Okay. Commissioner Beasley-Pittman, are you okay? Supportive, yes. Okay, and vice mayor? Yes, this is a big improvement over what we had last time, so thank you for coming together on this. Okay, very good. There's your answer. Any other questions? Okay, great. Thank you all. Thank you, folks. Good work. Let's see if we can get this... And Susan, if you want some of your questions answered, why don't you speak with Ms. Toothaker right here? She can maybe answer some of your questions. Or Mario, who knows a little bit more about the project, if you want to get some of your questions answered. All righty. Hi, Brooke. Okay, moving on to commission reports. Vice mayor. Thank you, mayor. As you all know, I typically don't do commission reports, but there is one thing I wanted to bring up. I had a meeting with the city manager and staff, and we were just doing an update on where Lockhart Park is, and it happened to coincide with a conversation I had with Brian Smith, and I think this is probably a good time to maybe talk about an opportunity that I think we have. So what they had explained to me is that... Who is Brian Smith? Brian Smith is one of the partners in the fort down at Snyder Park with Pickleball. Yep. So you may recall that prior to the mediation with Inter-Miami, we were actually at 100% design and going out to bid for the development of the park. And now subsequent to the mediation settlement, we're back at 15% design, which puts us out... I think we're at 30. We're at 30. I'm sorry. Well, from our conversation the other day, we were at 15. We may be further than that, but either way, we're still at least a year out from having a completed design, from what I understand from staff. But what Brian shared with me is that in order for the fort to be successful, they would like to see the Pickleball courts up at Lockhart go away. They're of the mindset that that is a direct competitor to their project down in Snyder Park, and they were hoping that perhaps we might reconsider having the Pickleball courts that were part of the project up at Lockhart be removed from the project. And so what I said to him is the thing that bothered me the most about the redesign at Lockhart was the loss of the playing fields that we had for the children with the addition of the parking spaces on the field. So what I suggested is if we could find a way to reconfigure the park to get playing fields back, I'd be happy to sacrifice the Pickleball courts in exchange for the multipurpose playing fields. At the end of the day, as far as I'm concerned, parks are for kids more than they are for adults. So I suggested that Mr. Smith talk with Ms. Toothaker and see if perhaps her clients would be amenable to reconsidering it. We haven't gone that far down the road. Again, I know the last time we were designing the park, we spent quite a long time trying to come up with something that worked. And I think since we're only at 30% design, we have an opportunity to get this right. Again, we lost a valuable amenity for the children of District 1. I'd love to see if we could get back something that actually works for the children up there. Again, I think it's more important to have playing fields for children than it would be to have pickleball courts for adults. And if that's something that everybody can work together to bring for the district, I think it would be a way to basically capture something that works for everybody. Well, as it happens, I think it would be cheaper to have an open playing field, right? Well, I don't know if it would be cheaper. It might be. And I don't want to – I would cross my fingers and hope for the best. But I leave that up to the folks at design parks. So you're saying then you'd like us to go back and just cut out the pickleball area, plus the viewing stand, the viewing stand also. I think it would – so what I've said is, look, I'm agnostic to where anything is in the site configuration. I don't want to go into this with any preconceived notion about where parking should be, where anything should be, with the exception of one thing. I think if we're going to have fields for kids, it should be as far away from traffic as we can possibly have it. I don't want them on Commercial Boulevard or on 12th Avenue because that's a major thoroughfare for trucks because it's an industrial area. So I think having kids next to tractor trailers is probably not safe. But other than that, I'm agnostic to it. All I want to do is try and salvage something for children out of this project if we can. So that's my only goal. So I want to put it out there and see if we can get support for everybody to come to the table and say, let's do something for the children of District 1. So, John, in the current iteration, there is a huge open space playing field. It's not demarcated. Well, it's not a playing field. It's just grass. We don't have a soccer field for kids to play on. We don't have a multi-purpose field, soccer field, football field. There's no field. There's no... There's grass. Right. Like yoga, stuff like that. You can run around, throw a Frisbee. There's no dedicated field for... Like you have at Holiday Park. You have fields. So if there was a way to convert that open, grassy area to a defined field, that might help accommodate the need. But you're just saying we should get rid of the pickleball courts. I'd rather get rid of the pickleball courts because that's something that's geared for adult usage. I'm more amenable to getting rid of the pickleball courts and putting in fields for kids. That's my goal. Again, parks are for kids. All right. So... Primarily. So, Ms. Toothaker, we can go back to your client and we can have that redesigned again. Yes. Vice Mayor, thank you. Brian is a good friend and he did reach out to me yesterday and shared that you had had a conversation. I told him that I would go back to my clients. I believe, you know, Inter-Miami is agnostic about the pickleball courts as well. I think when we were looking at park design, we tried to use all the elements that were in the previous design. So I think with that direction, we can certainly look at that and happy to... I've not had a chance to speak to Inter-Miami about it yet, so I will commit to doing that quickly. This all came together serendipitously over the weekend. This was a rather off-the-cuff conversation. He came to me and I said, look, if I had to sacrifice something, the last thing I ever would have given up, had I had the opportunity, would have been the fields for the kids. I would have given up anything else. I'll give up dog parks. I'll give up pickleball courts. I'll give up anything but playing fields for children. For me, kids come first. I hear you loud and clear. So let's contact them and... Absolutely. Okay. All right. All right. Yes. Thank you very much. We'll take care of that. Commissioner Beasley-Pittman. Yes. Thank you, Mayor. Sharing what I've had the pleasure of partaking in over the last couple weeks, I want to start with Thursday, November the 6th, attending Broward League of Cities board meeting. I was able to do that also on November the 7th at the YMCA. There was a Veterans Day salute at the YMCA, and we were able to recognize a lot of the veterans within the area. And it was a great turnout. And grateful with the YMCA, they have a large event. Their signature event is held out in Western, but they do allow the YMCA here on Sixth Trunk to do an off-site satellite, in a sense, celebration to recognize the veterans in the community. So, it was a great turnout, and once again, hats off to the staff at the YMCA for putting on a great event. On Saturday, November the 8th, at Carter Park, the sorority, the Deltas, they offered a small business pop-up shop. This event is usually held on the Friday after Thanksgiving, but this year they moved it up, and it's an opportunity for the entrepreneurs and the small businesses within the city, also outside of the city, to come together and have an era for neighbors to come in and shop and see what the goods are. And it's a good exposure for those new businesses in the area. Again, hats off to our staff with Parks and Recs. They always work very well with these events, with the Deltas, and it was a great event. On Sunday, yes, Sunday was a busy day. Sunday, November the 9th, we celebrated New Hope's centennial anniversary. That was fun. It was fun, yes, and the company of our mayor, Ben Sorensen, was there with us, our commissioner, our city manager was there, and, well, a list of, from county, state, and federal level was there, elected officials celebrating the 100-year anniversary. And I have to tell you all, you all missed a summer net that the mayor gave. He gave a word of encouragement. He took the mic, and he had a moment. And I was like, okay, then, do we need to pass the offering plate? Let me tell you something. When you go to that church, do not sit in the first seat in the front row. You get blown away with the excitement. Yes, yes, yes. It was a great celebration, a great worship service, and to Pasca Scott and the congregation, we encourage you to continue to be that beacon of light in the community. You do so much for not only the Northwest Session, but District 3 overall in the city. We thank you for what you're doing. Also, that evening, the Women of Veteran Affairs, they had their annual military ball, and I was honored to be recognized as one of their honorees this year for my civic work here in the city. They recognized that before I became a city commissioner, I was actually the chairperson for American Cancer Society for 10 years for Relay for Life, covering Carter Park, Lauder Hill, Lauderdale Lakes, and North Lauderdale, along with being the president for historic Dorsey River Band president, and just highlighting some of the things that we have accomplished. And I'm truly honored that being recognized, you know, I often say that if you haven't had a personal conversation with me, this isn't anything that I got into a commissioner to be recognized for me. The things that I put my hands to is for the opportunity to elevate community and others. It's not about Pam, so to be recognized under that umbrella, it really was a blessing to me. Thank you for that. Thank you. Also, sharing that on Veterans Day, we were here in front of this Sandy Niniger statue, and this is always a wonderful opportunity to represent our veterans. And this year, I want to thank the mayor, because we know that in our society, we did not officially recognize those Vietnam veterans when they returned home. And with a conversation that we had overall through city manager, we were able to agree to recognize those veterans. And I believe that that was a great solidarity to just to acknowledge their service and let them know that we do appreciate them and we honor what they've done for our country overall. I also want to share with you on November the 14th, that was the annual, the fifth annual prayer breakfast that we are familiar with, that Chaplain Ron Perkins, he was originally the visionary for it and put it in place. And we know that Chaplain Ron Perkins, he's transitioned, but his vision, his spirit is still alive. And those who are now heading that particular organization, they're still moving forward in the same direction. We were there together, and it was a great, great morning. It was a great way to start the morning. And then also, they took a moment and recognized our fire department chief, Chief Golden, and also our police department, the chief of police as well, for the services that they're doing. So, I don't see either of them in the room right now. Oh, yes, I do. Hey, back there. Hi. Congratulations. And thank you for your service. And thanking those who are now in charge of that prayer breakfast, encouraging you to continue doing what you're doing, because it does make a difference. And we appreciate everything that you do, as far as being chaplains that represent our city. Also, on that afternoon, I had the privilege of participating in a groundbreaking ceremony in our district. We had a brand-new home that was brought to us through the process with – no, it was not Habitat. It is Oasis of Hope developers and new family that's moving in. And it was good to see this. You know, we are often moving in the direction of townhouses, which there's nothing wrong with. But that single-family home is a different feel. And it was great to see that opportunity. So, thanking all of those who were involved with that from our CRA, from our staff. Also, Oasis of Hope being one of those nonprofits in our community that saw a need and was willing to jump in and be a part of the process. And also wanting to welcome my new homeowner to District 3, Mr. Hayes. So, with that being said, that's all I want to share today. And thank you for the time. Great. Thank you. And you're going to be our representative this week at the National League of Cities. So, have a safe flight. And thank you so much for participating in that event. Thank you very much. Commissioner Glassman. Yes. Thank you, Mayor. Look at this boat. Excuse me. Yeah, it's actually going for repairs, actually. It's being towed. Well, which is what we are all about. There you go. Well, not for them, but yeah. No, but this is what Fort Lauderdale is about. We're the marine capital of the world, and this is where people come for servicing their yachts. Quite a lovely yacht, yes. Thank you. On November 6th, I had the pleasure of joining quite a large crowd at A1A and Las Olas to unveil the Florida Historical Marker. That was unveiled in honor of Diana Nyad and all of her accomplishments. That was a really lovely day, and thank you to staff for helping with all of that. She had quite a nice turnout there, and that marker is now there at A1A and Las Olas. November 7th, I had the distinct pleasure of welcoming the Celebrity Accel. I'm sorry, that was the next day. On the 7th, we actually attended the Port Everglades Association lunch at the Lorelai Yacht Club. If any of you have never been there, that's an amazing group of people that gather every month. An incredible turnout. Congratulations to Lorelai Baer for putting that business support group together that does so much in promoting and working on behalf of our port, which is such an economic engine in the area. A couple of days later, I did return to Port Everglades and presented a proclamation to the brand-new Celebrity Accel during their plaque and key ceremony, which is a traditional ceremony on these ships when they arrive. Again, as we had mentioned earlier in the day, that was some weekend and some week. We are really generating really incredible numbers in that port for the folks that are coming to get on of these ships. And as the mayor mentioned, three brand-new, super-incredible ships did arrive in the last two weeks in Fort Lauderdale. And that are home-based here? Home-based in Fort Lauderdale at Port Everglades. Disney Destiny, Celebrity Accel, and Star Princess. Yes. All three brand-new and generating a lot of excitement in that industry. And November 14th, as was mentioned by Commissioner Beasley-Pittman, that was a lovely way to celebrate what Ron did, Ron Perkins, in terms of being a founder of that chaplaincy. And the work that they do with our first responders, always incredibly, incredibly appreciated. That evening, November 14th, had the pleasure. Got to give it to Nermy Isles Neighborhood Association. I think it's probably the first neighborhood association to kick off the holiday season with a holiday party on November 14th. A great, great turnout. That might be probably not just the first district to Neighborhood Association party, but maybe in the entire city. So a great group of neighbors gathered there, and it was really a really nice time. Very positive energy, nice spirit, and a lot of positive comments all throughout the evening for what's happening in our city. November 15th, had the honor of attending the Broward Gala for Equality Florida at the Westin Beach Resort. Again, a great turnout of over 500 people. Equality Florida is the state's largest LGBTQ organization promoting civil rights for that community. They do great work, especially in these very challenging times. Excellent, excellently attended gala. Coming up, we have tomorrow evening, November 19th, Light Up the Beach at the La Solos Oceanside Park. November 20th, I'll be speaking at the Central Beach Alliance monthly meeting being held this month at the Bahia Mar. And then a brand new event in our city on Friday, November 21. If you've driven by the Marina Village at Bahia Mar, the tree is there now. It's about, I'd say, 45 or 50 feet high. It's quite a tree. And they've done a magnificent job of lighting that entire promenade and all of those kiosks. I saw it the other evening. It's beautifully lit. So we are actually going to light that tree Friday evening, and that will be a landmark that I'm sure is going to attract a lot of people. But if you haven't had a chance to see the lights just in general in that strip, please do. It's really quite attractive. Then this Saturday, we will have the annual Grocery and Turkey Giveaway at Sanctuary Church. Thank you to all of the folks that are behind that. We'll be doing a proclamation later this evening for that event. I did want to ask a question, Raquel, and maybe someone else can help me with this. Turtle season is over. Why are we not doing a better job of lighting up A1A and a lot of those areas? I know turtle season is like six months on, six months off. But I get asked this question a lot, why we still seem to have it so dark on A1A, especially during this time of year when it is tourist season, and yet it's not turtle season. So is there anything that we can do to make sure that we're having a little bit more light along A1A? Sure. I think I saw something earlier today indicating that 95% of our lights are operable and functional, and perhaps we're having a challenge with about 5%. So we will be addressing that through our Parks and Recreation Department. I think what he's referring to is the dimness of it. The lights are working. They're just dim. Yeah. I don't understand why we have to have it the same intensity. Aren't they on dimmer switches? Why do we have it the same during the six months when it's not turtle season versus when it is turtle season? We have the tall lights that have those shields on them, and then we also, when we did the A1A Streetscape Project, we have a lot of those double old-fashioned lamps. Here's the man. Here's the man. Carl is going to provide some insight. Hi, Commissioner. Carl Williams, Parks and Recreation Director. I wasn't aware that the change hasn't occurred, but let me look into that further with our team. You need to take some more romantic walks along A1A, Carl. Stop and smell the ocean. Smell the ocean. You got it. Well, that was very helpful, Carl. Thank you so much. I have all the answers I really needed on that, so thank you. That was really great. Okay, so maybe we can just look into it a little bit because it really can be better, I think, for the six months when we're not worrying about the turtles. That's all. And especially because those six months are now during our high tourist season when I think people would appreciate just seeing where they're going. Thank you for that. And then last, I have an issue that's been brewing for five years on Royal Palm Drive. Royal Palm Drive, 213. I want to hear from someone that can help me know what to expect this Thursday. This is coming up in front of a special magistrate. I really want to make sure that the city is as aggressive as possible. This is a vacant single-family residential property at 213 Royal Palm Drive. It is so dilapidated. It's in terrible condition. The neighborhood is really upset about it. It's been going on and on and on forever. So many, yes, and so many building and code violations and compliance matters, and I can't even imagine what the fines are now up to. But this has really been going at least for the last five years now. I know that this is coming up on Thursday. This is definitely an unsafe structure. The neighborhood is also very concerned because what's happening now is the electricity is on, and the owners are making money off of renting out the dock space because of the fact that the electricity is on. They would love to see that electricity shut off because of all of the violations and all of the fines. I know that the Nermy Isles Homeowners Association would welcome any assistance that they can get in dealing with this issue. This is owned by a foundation. That is their chief address of the foundation, so I have no idea what's behind that. But there have been lots of lawsuits since 2020 with regards to this property, with regards to the foundation, and I just think that there's so much going on here that we're just not dealing with, and I feel that we're just sort of getting taken for a ride on this. So I would love to hear what our plan is. Chris, do you have any information on this? Good afternoon. Is that where you've been having your parties? It is, it is, absolutely. So I was told by Ms. Garcia with our community services department this is actually a building enforcement case, so we'll need to look into the case history of the violations. But what I can say is that when we go to the magistrate, the magistrate will take a lot of what you just described in the consideration if it's known to the magistrate, so that's something we'll talk to our team about and pressing upon them during the hearing on Thursday. And then we can apply minimum compliance timeframes and other tools to get them to be motivated to comply with those violations that they have. But, you know, obviously it's been going on for a while. It's something we need to track, but also make sure the magistrate is aware of on Thursday so their order is appropriate given the circumstances. Is it within our purview to actually do something like shut off the electricity or have that turned off because of all of this history of five years and the fact that that is becoming now an income generator for the owners? So we'd have to look at those circumstances. Again, I don't know the exact circumstances and what's going on at that property right now today, but the magistrate can include things in their order that may accomplish what you're seeking to accomplish. But, again, it's dependent on the circumstances and what's actually physically happening and what the use of that property is today or tomorrow or on Thursday when that hearing occurs. Well, hopefully we will be as aggressive and comprehensive as possible. Well, are residents permitted to speak at these hearings if they attend? They are. So if they come to the hearing and sign in, the magistrate may give them an opportunity to share their experience with the property as it relates to the violations that have been cited. Okay. Thank you, Chris. I'm surprised there's not already a case pending on it. Is there one, Patricia? Sorry. Good afternoon, Mayor, Commissioners. Yes, there is an active case. That's the case that will be heard on Thursday. The city can request an order to appear from the magistrate for that property owner. In terms of shutting down the electricity, that's not something that I've typically seen the magistrate do, but the city does often request that the magistrate enter order for the city to provide any relevant relief. So we can consult with the city attorney's office on that. Okay. Thank you. I would appreciate that. Thank you very much. Much appreciated. Thank you. That's it for me, Mayor. Thanks. Okay, great. Thank you. Commissioner Sorensen. Thanks, Mayor. Raquel, good discussion about 17th and Eisenhower and the bypass. Just to add to that, if we can also look at the Spangler Federal Highway eastbound to the bypass, and, Milos, I'm sure you're already kind of thinking about this, but just that entry point as well and traffic flow going eastbound into the port, into bypass, and then also, as I think we're already talking about, the northbound exiting bypass convention center and so forth, just all of that. So if possible, Raquel, we don't have to talk about it now, but just I know Milos is working with the county, who's the main entity we've got to work with. Just if we can schedule a time for Milos, you, me, to kind of fully debrief, talk to neighbors about that, about how we're kind of partnering to ease congestion and flow. Yes, Commissioner, we can do that. That would be great. Okay, cool. Thank you very much. At one of our recent past commission meetings where we talked about basketball courts on the beach and pickleball possibilities, that generate a lot of conversation in my district. So, one, just a lot of concern about moving the basketball courts from folks in my district. So, one, I think it'd be helpful to have a, put this on a conference item as the city kind of identifies possibilities for it. I think it'd be helpful is what neighbors are asking me for. And, you know, the neighbors, at least kind of folks that I've talked with, really do not want the basketball courts moved. Unfortunately, we already approved it. That's the thing. So, I'm sharing with you what residents in District 4 feel. I feel the same way. So, I think that was a bad decision, and I just want to articulate that. And, you know, so look at other options. So, Commissioner, what we've been doing along with AECOM since the last time that we discussed the Fort Lauderdale Beach Park improvements is to take the feedback that we received. Some of the feedback was specific to separation between the two basketball courts that are proposed to be at the southern end of Fort Lauderdale Beach Park. And we also heard feedback about the number of pickleball courts to be located at the site of the existing basketball courts and what that configuration could be and, you know, how many pickleball courts we would be able to accommodate and how they would be positioned. And so, we've been working on that. We've gotten some feedback from AECOM on that. And so, I just wanted to share with the commission that we are working toward what we discussed at the last meeting, but your request to discuss at conference, is there a possibility then that you are saying that instead of moving the basketball courts from its existing location to the southern end of Fort Lauderdale Beach Park, that relocation just would not happen, but the pickleball courts would still move forward as agreed upon in the Memorandum of Understanding. Yeah, so my view is basketball should stay where it is. Doesn't that not violate our agreement with the BMR development that we did in January of 2024 that the pickleball will replace? But I'm having just one moment here. Is this like a Twilight Zone moment for me or for anyone else? Because I thought we, did we unanimously consent to your 1A proposal of where the basketball would move to at a recent meeting? Did we do all this? So, there was consensus to move forward with alternative 1A. I do believe that there was a request. It may have been from Commissioner Sorensen for staff to come back to the commission to follow up on the feedback that we received that day. Not that I felt that staff could not move forward and progress with the project. Without any additional feedback, we thought as staff that we had some direction and some clarity around concept or alternative 1A. So, if, you know, what we're potentially hearing now is that there is a challenge with the basketball courts being repositioned or relocated within District 4 to the southern end of the Fort Lauderdale Beach Park. I just want to get clarity from the commission that we would still honor our obligation based on the interlocal agreement or the MOU to have the pickleball courts located at the site of the existing basketball courts. Well, that agreement from January of 2024 says that the only way that can be changed is if both parties agree to changing it, correct? That is correct. And Bahiamar, the development district has, the CDD, has made it very clear that that's not going to happen for a variety of reasons, including the fact that they've been selling condominiums there, and basically part of that sales is the fact that they're telling folks they're going to have the ability to go across the street and play pickleball, correct? My understanding is that the Bahiamar CDD has no interest in amending the interlocal agreement to deviate from what the city currently has as its obligation to provide for the pickleball courts. And I'll have to go back and look at the minutes, but I don't remember at the last meeting, was the consensus unanimous to go with 1A, and did we hear no to 1A? Did we hear anyone say no to 1A? I'm not sure if anyone said no to 1A, but I'm also not sure if Commissioner Sorensen, if anything happened between that time and today. Yeah, so my view on what we last talked about was a discussion, right? We were exploring options, right? There was no vote taken. There was no definitive, this is what's going to happen. And it allowed for the public, for the first time that I'm aware of, maybe I'm missing something, but for the public to hear a public discussion and see visuals about what is being proposed. And that provided a great opportunity for a lot of folks, at least in my district, to talk about their feelings about pickleball, basketball, and so forth. So that's what's happened in the last couple weeks is great discussion in District 4, at least. Okay. Well, again, I would just love to revisit, and I will go back and look at those meetings, but I would like to be able for us to ascertain, I think it's one thing to have that discussion about whether that 1A site is going to work for the basketball, although I thought we were actually unanimous in that consensus. But the other issue, which is very important because it's an agreement that we signed, is whether or not the basketball will be moved from its current site. Correct me if I'm wrong, that's a legal issue now, and I'm just hesitant to go down that path. I know Commissioner Sorensen said he's not in favor now of moving the basketball, but I can't see how we do not move the basketball. So my understanding is consistent with your understanding, that we are obligated, based on that interlocal agreement, to have the pickleball courts at the site of the existing basketball courts, unless the interlocal were to be amended, and the Bahia-Mar-CDD has not indicated a desire to do so. Thank you. Okay. Great. Thank you. Um, next topic, very grateful for the FWC, uh, working to change a portion of the intercoastal waterway speed limit, um, where, uh, tragically a 13-year-old was killed, um, down to a much-reduced, uh, no-wake. So what was that, was no-wake then, right? It was 25 miles an hour, I think, uh, double-check with Chief maybe, but, uh, it was 25 miles an hour, Mayor, and I think is now, uh, no-wake. Am I saying that right? Slow, slow zone. Slow zone. What's a slow zone? Thanks, Chief. I mean, 25 is pretty fast. I'm surprised that we ever had to. Very fast. Good afternoon, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Commission, Bill Schultz, Chief of Police. Um, the initial vote was taken to make it a slow zone, but it is not official law as of yet. So it's not enforceable as of yet, and we have not seen the final written product as of yet. So I don't want to exactly comment on miles per hour yet. Okay, but how far in the process is it? Did, did, did, uh... The commission voted, voted to support slowing it down. FWC voted. Yes, correct. To, to make it a no-wake zone. Correct. That's what I thought. That's what, that was the information we were talking about. Yeah, and one of our FWC commissioners, Steve Hudson, really, uh, led this effort, uh, amazingly. So just thank you to the FWC and Chief Schultz and Marco Aguilera, our Chief Waterway Officer. Um, just great collective effort. And Steve Witten at the Marine Advisory Board. So great work there. Um, had a great opening, kind of official ribbon-cutting at Hardy Park with a duck hunt, uh, which was a fun, Mayor. Thanks for being there. And holding the, uh, bedazzled duck that you held. That was awesome. Just packed with kids. Uh, just a great... Just packed with kids. I mean, it's just... A lot of kids... Folks are loving it. A lot of kids in this city. I mean, everywhere we go. I know. Just booming. Um, so that was great. Uh, I went down to Miami to tour Kind Design's 3D-printed Living Seawall Facility, which is amazing. And that's the ordinance mayor that we're working on, incentivizing folks to install living seawalls rather than the traditional seawalls. Amazing work they're doing, um, at Kind Design. So that was fantastic. Thank you to all our veterans. And that was a great ceremony that we had at, uh, Sandy Nininger, uh, Statute. Um, let's see, uh, as was mentioned, the prayer breakfast was fantastic. And, um, yesterday I toured the Prospect Lake Clean Water Plant, which is fantastic. Another example, mayor, of a fantastic P3 partnership where we're working together ahead of schedule. Um, just amazing site. 50 million gallons of water are going to be, uh, surged from there a day. Uh, phenomenal, phenomenal, uh, work being done there that's going to deliver, uh, amazing quality water for our city. So, uh, that's, that's very exciting to see as well. And that's all I've got. Thanks, mayor. Okay. All right. Thank you so much. Uh, you pretty much covered about everything. I just, there are a couple things I'd like to mention. I want to thank the school board and especially Alan Zeman, who helped push the school board to help contribute towards the, um, improvement at Southern Rise Middle School, in which we're going to improve the, uh, the, um, the field there to create something more useful for kids to play there. Uh, to your point, vice mayor, another opportunity for us to, uh, create open space for kids to play. I think we're going to build a soccer slash football field there, but, uh, the city's contribution, along with the million dollars from District 4, thank you, Commissioner Sorenson, that you helped contribute. Um, and, uh, and the school board's, uh, matching contribution is going to make that site really important. And, uh, it finally shows that, you know, the city of Fort Lauderdale wants to participate with, in other, with other governments to make things happen in our city. Mayor, could I interrupt you for one second? Yeah, go ahead, go ahead. Um, I was remiss when we had our, uh, groundbreaking. So I, I failed to thank Sarah Leonardi, who actually back in August was the one who did the motion to, to get that money added. Yeah, Sarah. And, and, as you know, uh, uh, uh, Dr. Zeman was also instrumental in leading a number of, uh, meetings between all the groups to help get it together. But I failed to acknowledge the significant, uh, contribution from Sarah Leonardi, who's the district, uh, school board member. Thank you, Sarah. So, thank you, Sarah. Wherever you are, Sarah, thank you. Thank you so much. And, and maybe you just mentioned, but Sarah's the new school board president, right? Did you say that? Chair. She's the chair. I'm sorry, she's the chair, and Jeff Holness, I believe, is the vice chair. So that's Fort Lauderdale, you know, representatives. Thanks. Yay! Thank, thank you for letting me interrupt, Mayor. So, I, I, uh, that's fine. I failed to do that last time. No, it's okay. No problem. I wanted to make up for it. Uh, let's see, uh, the Museum of Discovery and Science has a new exhibit, the Holo Theater. It's a holographic kind of theater, uh, really focused on kids. Um, and I just, my, just take a second to, uh, congratulate, uh, Joe Cox, who has turned that museum from a sleepy center to one of the most, um, dynamic, um, opportunities for especially young children to experience science, to understand science, and to, uh, to know that in their own hometown, they could, they can come to a place like that and really understand how the world works. So, um, again, Joe, thanks for all the great, uh, efforts you make in getting funding for these projects. Uh, he, he raises millions of dollars every year to, uh, to help underwrite many of these projects. So, if you have a chance, if you have kids especially, I suggest go down there and take a look at this new hall of theater that they've created. Um, we had a grand opening at the Garden Hotel and Resort. Did you mention that, uh, Commissioner? I don't know. Did someone else mention the grand opening of the Garden Hotel and Resort? No, I did not. I did not. Okay. On A1A, uh, uh, this gentleman and his family, they moved up, uh, to our area, made a tremendous investment into a property that languished there for years, uh, and, uh, has brought life and excitement to, uh, a really large, sprawling property on A1A, uh, across from the Galt Ocean Mile. Uh, also that night, we lit up the Galt and, uh, a great, uh, event, hundreds of people. I want to thank Parks and Rec for putting together, uh, another great show, bringing, um, vendors there and, and, uh, uh, really creating a lot of activity in an area, whereas before we never really got to that point. So, uh, also, um, on the 17th, I attended the Capitol campaign kickoff. That was last night, yeah, at the Stonewall Library Museum, uh, hoping to raise $10 million dollars, uh, to, uh, um, buy a new building. It's, it's, it's bursting at the seams and, uh, uh, it's a great, um, cultural institution that, uh, it's the only one of its kind in the United States. Uh, let's see. So, light up the beach is when? Tomorrow. Light up the beach, 5.30, Oceanside Park. So, um, um, hopefully we'll get to see a, a lot of young people there to, uh, help bring in the season on the beach. And, of course, um, uh, Thanksgiving is next week. So, I wish everybody a very happy Thanksgiving and a healthy Thanksgiving. And right after that, um, World AIDS Day is being, uh, recognized December 1st throughout the country. And the night before, there'll be a concert at Oceanside Park, uh, entitled No Day But Today, World AIDS Day Concert at 6 p.m. at Oceanside Park. So, one thing I would like to bring up, I don't know if it's too late. Uh, I know, uh, DeWayne is going to tell me no, no, no. But you probably all recognize, uh, the fact that our next meeting is the same night as Christmas on Las Solas. We keep doing that to ourselves. I don't know how many times, how many years. We don't think of it in advance. Have, uh, it's too late to do it now, DeWayne, to move the meeting. Your name is not DeWayne. Stop trying to... I'm just weighing in. Yeah, well, don't. I'm just weighing in. I won't ask you. It's way too late. There would be concerns with regards to the items published for public hearing. I'm going to bring it up early. Okay. Can we open and close the meeting? Well, we... Well, uh, Madam City Manager, I would ask that you abbreviate the agenda as much as possible so that we can appreciate the, uh, Christmas on Las Solas celebration. Just saying. We will do our very best. Well, let's just look at the calendar in advance sometime. We could just... Look at the calendar. Yeah, thank you. Well, in the future, let's just be more... Well, it happened last year, too. I... Well... Where were you? Where were you? Waiting for you to say something. Anyway. Okay. And the other thing I had was the Lockhart Park update, but we kind of got that already, so, um, and I guess that's it. So, um, City Manager, your report. Thank you, Mayor. I just want to say thank you for the acknowledgement of my milestone birthday. You're 30? 50? We'll go with 30. I'm really excited to spend it with the City of Fort Lauderdale, with all of you, with all the members of our team. Oh, come on. Come on. Tell the truth. Tell the truth. I've been having a wonderful day thus far. So, thank you. I also want to highlight our Parks and Recreation team as well for all the light-ups that I've been experiencing and that I will experience, so thank you to the team for all their effort. I also want to highlight FXE and the entire team there for the seventh annual 5K on the runway that took place over the weekend. We had about 1,700 attendees, and I believe we raised about $160,000, which is up $30,000 from last year. So, thank you to the commission for approving that special event permit and for the partnership that we have through FXE. You should have received an LTC on November 12th, LTC number 25236, related to the City Hall project. We just wanted to share that the four shortlisted proposers did, in fact, submit responses to the supplemental request package that was sent out to them. And so, we're currently reviewing that, staff and a combination of consultants are reviewing those submittals. Also, we'd like to share some information on the presentation specifics for December 2nd, just to make sure that everyone has a clear idea of how we intend to proceed and if there's any feedback, we can make modifications. The proposers were asked to submit... This is for the conference meeting, correct? Yes, on the 2nd, yes. So, all right, for the evening, though, why don't we just eliminate, you know, the normal presentation periods so we can shorten the meeting? Think about that. Okay, we'll look at the presentations that we have scheduled and share that with your office and you can help make that determination. Okay. So, we wanted to make sure that we publish the presentations from those shortlisted proposers on the agenda in advance so that you could have it at your disposal and the public could be able to look at it. On the day of conference, we're going to ask you, Mayor, to randomly select the order for the presentations. We'll probably put their names in a hat or something and have you draw the names so that we can identify who's going to go first, second, third, and fourth. And what did we agree as far as the allocation of time for each presentation? Was it a half hour? I thought you said 30 minutes. It was 30 minutes with 15 minutes allotted for questions and answers for each presenter. Again, the 30 minutes or an additional? Additional. Okay. All right. We will be asking all of the shortlisted proposers to convene after the initial period where our consultants will provide general information to the commission. We will then ask those proposers to convene at a designated waiting area and essentially be sequestered. And then each proposer will be asked to set aside their electronic communications devices while in that designated waiting area. We will have a staff liaison or security present with them. We'll have refreshments and whatnot. It'll be very comfortable for them. Is this a soundproof booth or something? We'll do our very best to make sure that it is secure. What we don't want is to have any proposer feel like their presentation might be viewed by another proposer coming after them and create the potential for an unfair advantage. We want to try to mitigate that. Cone of silence. If we can. Yes. So then we would ask each proposer, depending on the order that you randomly select, to come into the chambers, do their presentation, and then afterward they could either stay in the chambers or they could go back to that designated waiting area. Is that something that the commission would be supportive of? Yeah. That sounds good. Yeah. Okay. All right. Well, that's it for my report. That's it. Okay. Thank you. Dwayne? I have a few items. Mayor, could I just jump in on Raquel's report, Dwayne, before you get in? So, Mayor, just to be clear, so we will be hearing the presentations of each of the four at the conference meeting, right, in the afternoon. The limit will be 30 minutes for their presentation and then 15 minutes for question and answer. So that will probably be the only agenda item, correct? We do have two very brief finance-related items that would take probably five minutes, if I'm not mistaken, Yvette, something that we do on an annual basis that we want to get taken care of. We've built that into the schedule. We've also built in a little bit of time for a staff summary after the presentations and then time for the commission to deliberate. Okay. I just don't want it to cut into the evening meeting. So we're looking at three hours, so that's a long time. Just keep that in mind. Okay. So we'll hear the presentations, hear the questions, then we deliberate, and we deliberate up here. Yep. Right? So we have some discussion, and that deliberation, ideally what we come to in that deliberation is saying, okay, we would like to move forward with, have a walk-on resolution with a service. No, I think it's for the following meeting. Okay. Go ahead. So, Mayor, it was initially recommended that that decision be made at a following commission regular meeting. Right. It was later requested by the commission, and I think you shared in that request, to have it done on the same night. And so we would bring a walk-on item with a blank space for the selected developer. Okay. So we went back to that. Okay. Yes. All right. Good. I went back to that. Okay. So we'd have deliberation and hopefully, you know, consensus around, okay, this is... Or a majority will end up... Majority, right? This is the... And so we're not ranking them. We're just saying, this is the one we want to go with, hopefully, as the majority... I would think that's what we should do. Is that the plan? Yeah. We could rank them, actually, in case, for some reason, the number one choice somehow is disqualified for some reason. Does that make sense? Maybe one and two? Yes. That does make sense. Should we have any challenges with the negotiation process and the commission would like us to go to the next developer or proposer, it would make it a lot easier if we already had a ranking. We're just doing one and two. That's it? One and two? One and two. Okay. I like that idea. Okay. So we'll talk about that and hopefully the consensus will be one and two. Yeah. That's a walk on that evening on December 2nd. And just for clarity, when you were, just so people don't get confused, when you were talking about the presentation, limiting the presentations in the evening on December 2nd, that's neighborhood presentations, not related to City Hall. Correct. I just want to be clear. Okay. Just, yeah. Just in case. Okay. And again, maybe you mentioned this, Raquel, but just to be clear, what will you and or staff be making a recommendation after the presentations of saying, hey, this is the one we like, or what role will you be playing in this? So I am currently combing through the four submittals from the shortlisted proposers. Our consultants are doing the same and compiling information that they will be presenting on that day. I feel as though staff is duty bound to provide a recommendation on a project of this magnitude. And of course, the commission will deliberate and determine, you know, which direction to go in. Uh, but I think staff should provide some observations and potentially recommendations as to how to move forward at this time. I'm not able to say whether staff would recommend, uh, a ranking or one or two, uh, proposers for the commission to consider. Uh, the commission is always at Liberty to take whatever step or direction that it would like to take. But as your city manager, I feel that staff should review and staff should, uh, look at everything in totality in terms of what the consultants have put together and what the shortlisted firms have put forward and make a recommendation on a project of this magnitude. Yes. Okay. That, that sounds good. Um, keep in mind, I'm just thinking, you know, we're going to take public comment that night too. So this thing's going to run long. Right. I wonder if we should start earlier, like maybe one o'clock instead of one 30, you know, can, can we do that? Nine a.m.? Well, we laugh, but they're going to be people. They're going to be 30, 40, 50 people. Well, yeah, we'll, we'll, yeah, it's a great question. So will public, will public be commenting during the conference meeting? Yeah. Is the one question. Yeah. So they all, unless we don't want, I mean, I don't want to, I don't want to, I don't want to silence the public. Right. So they need to weigh in on the conference. They're going to hear the, they're going to hear the presentations and then let them, let them chime in on what we want to do and what we should do. And then we'll make our decision. That makes sense. So in other words, have all the presentations, then have public comments and then deliberations. Okay. And then can the public, I'm assuming they can, the public can comment in the evening too. Is that, or how does that work? Good question. Good question. We could shave off a little bit of time on the Q and a, we've allotted 15 minutes for the commission to ask questions for each proposer. Maybe we could bring that down to 10 minutes and that could buy us a little bit of time. Now that you've got me thinking, maybe we should, maybe we should only have public comment in the evening because, um, uh, because most people are at work in the afternoon and those that can come to the meeting at night. Um, I mean, I'm just, I'm just trying to see what, what do you think is the best process? I don't want to have two, I don't want people doubling up, you know, coming in the afternoon talking and then wanting the opportunity to speak in the evening and they'd be the same. Unless I, unless I make the rule that if you spoke in the afternoon, you can't speak in the evening kind of thing. You could do that. Yeah. I think the comment, I think the comment in the afternoon is going to be the most helpful for us because it'll help us in our deliberation and assessment and evaluation. This is true. Right. Yeah. So by that time it gets to the evening, we've now ranked number one and number two. So chances are we wouldn't change our mind. Yeah. There's maybe a little bit less. Okay. So that's, we can do that. Okay. Do you want to move it, the conference meeting earlier than one 30 or whatever you want? I think we should just, can we do that? So the, the conference meeting time is set by ordinance. Yeah. Um, but you can, by resolution, establish a special meeting that convenes a little bit earlier. Well, maybe we can get some of those housekeeping things done. Those other two matters that, you know, that you wanted to bring forward. We can get those taken care of in the first half hour and then we can begin. Cause I don't want to, I don't want to, um, truncate the, uh, this effort to make, you know, to listen to the, uh, presentations, to listen to the public and to have, um, the, the, uh, members of the commission, uh, deliberate. I don't, I don't want to, I don't want to say, all right, you're done. You know, we've heard enough. I don't want, I don't want to be in that position. You know, I want to, I want to, I want to be a free flowing conversation. So if we can move it up at, you know, at least one o'clock, you want to do it sooner? Twelve o'clock? I mean, whatever, I'm open to doing it earlier. If you all want to do it at noon, let's do it at noon. Yeah. So we, we can start with those, uh, finance items at noon transition into. You do. All right. So 1230. That's fine. All right. So we'll say 1230. Yeah, we should bring lunch. Yeah. Okay. And then for the, so mayor, if I'm hearing you right, public comment. Sorry, go ahead. No, I'm not. He's just grumbling. Public, public. Okay. So, so we have presentations. Presentations. Public comment. And afternoons. Public comment and then deliberations. Deliberations. For the evening, still opportunity for public comment if you didn't speak in the afternoon. Is that right? Right. Okay. Yeah. Then for the evening, can we have on the agenda, even though I know it's a walk-on, but can we have an agenda item published in the agenda in the evening just so there's a placeholder? There's a placeholder. So people know. Yes. That's our intention. Okay. To have the placeholder already incorporated. In there. So people look at the agenda, they'll see City Hall. Okay. Yes. With a blank line. And that way they can. Okay. Great. Thank you, Mayor. That's. Yep. 1230, sir. 1230. Thank you. Okay. Sorry, Duane. I think I interrupted Duane. Duane, please go ahead. Your report. Okay. So I was asked to look at the BDA bidirectional amplifiers and whether or not the building fund can be used to offset some of those costs of the private condos. It cannot. The state statute provides that that fee can only be used for the enforcement of the Florida Building Code. And the enforcement of the Florida Building Code is well defined in the statute as to what those activities are. There is a matter that I'm looking for guidance for, and I don't think we need a closed door session for this that involves two fortune tellers, Selena Ventlow and Gary Miller. Back in 2005, they filed suit with the city because they were denied an occupational license in a B1 zoning district at the time. And the city settled that suit, allowing them to operate from that location. They have found another location that they are desiring to move their business to, and that's at 1263 East Los Olos Boulevard, Suite 203. It is my recommendation, and I sent you all an email that kind of outlines the past history on this, that we, under the same terms and conditions of the existing settlement, allow them to, allow us to amend the settlement agreement. I'll bring back an item for the next agenda, allowing them to operate as an ancillary use to a retail use at this location. If there is no objection, we'll bring that item forward at the next agenda. Okay. Additionally, I do have a late closed door session request. Dwayne, I'm sorry to interrupt you because it's interesting because they're saying that at the new location, they're not able to do the fortune telling? So it's because of the zoning at the location? But you know what, if you look at, if you, I just happened to just Google 1263 East Los Olos Boulevard, and ironically, there's a business located there that's called Astrology Crystal Visions. So that's interesting, isn't it? I mean... Are they already there? Yeah. There's yoga, there's Astrology Crystal Visions. It sounds like some of those things that you're saying are not permitted there are already there. I believe that's the issue. I think they are the proprietors of that business and entered into that business under the name Astrology Crystal Visions Boutique. Yeah. But my question is, if you're saying it's not allowed there and they're asking for that settlement to carry over to the new address, it sounds like it already is allowed there because that business is already there. Correct. And they have been violated by our code enforcement, which resulted in the current matter that's before the court. But that was not 1263. I thought that was another address. I thought you said they're moving to 1263. Yeah. They have moved to 1263. They have been violated. They were previously on Federal Highway about 20 years ago. But isn't Federal Highway where they had this settlement that we allowed them to... That is correct. So I'm still not getting the point yet. I don't know if I'm... Maybe I'm just not explaining it correctly. I apologize, but... Sure, sure. But if you... In 2005, we entered into a settlement agreement with these individuals at a location on Federal Highway to operate in a B1 zoning district. They have since relocated their business to 1263 Los Olos Boulevard. They were cited by our code enforcement, and they have filed suit in circuit court seeking a declaratory judgment and injunctive relief to allow them to operate from this location. What I'm suggesting is since we've already had the settlement agreement with them, which was specific to that prior location, that we allow them to amend the settlement agreement for this new location. So I guess my question is the astrology of Crystal Visions is new in that location. It has not always been there. That is correct. That's... Yeah. But they're in violation by being there. That's correct. Right. So that's what the closed-door session is about. I understand. Well, he said we don't need a closed-door. If you're okay with me just bringing an item on the next agenda in terms of getting your official vote on the settlement or the amendment of the settlement, that would be fine. Okay. Yeah. That's fine. The closed-door session request, there is, as in the case of Paula Wren versus the city of Fort Lauderdale, there's a mediation scheduled for December 9th. We'd like to get settlement authority that exceeds the authority that the risk committee has under our statute, so I'm requesting under Section 286.0118A permission to have a closer session at the December 2nd meeting. Is there a time that... There's no time unless we do it at the end of the evening meeting. Unless, you know, it depends when we finish. Which, I mean, I don't know how long it's going to take for the city hall discussion. This would be between the conference meeting and the evening meeting, correct? It typically is. Can we do it at the end of the evening meeting? Does it matter? We could. You've got, Mayor, you've got Christmas on Las Olas, right? Which you were trying... Can we move it to the 16th, Dwayne? December 16th? Let me confer with our assistant city attorneys, and I'll get back to you before the... Night's End. Okay. Right. Thanks for reminding me. Yeah, yeah. Thanks. That concludes my... Okay. Any further business of the conference meeting? There being none? Just, Mayor, real quick. We don't have... Sorry. We don't have a resolution for appointment of board of committees tonight. We didn't have any nominations, but we do have two names for the next one, and I just wanted to read them into their record at one of the meetings. Okay. So if I could read them for the December 2nd resolution, Central City Redevelopment Advisor Board. John Van Vlack, nominated by Commissioner Glassman, and Public Art and Placement Advisory Board. Edison Lozada, nominated by Commissioner Sorensen. And that's it. I'll be on the next one. All right. Thank you. Thank you. You want to do the CRA meeting now? Please call the roll. Vice Mayor Herbst. Commissioner Glassman? Here. Commissioner Beasley-Pittman? Here. Commissioner Sorensen? Here. Chair Trent Ellis? Here. Here. So the Community Redevelopment Agency Board is now in session. M1, motion approving minutes for the November 4th, 2025 Community Redevelopment Agency Board minutes, meeting minutes. Do I hear a motion to approve? Moved. Second. Moved and seconded. Please call the roll. Commissioner Beasley-Pittman? Yes. Commissioner Sorensen? Yes. Vice Chair Herbst? Yes. Commissioner Glassman? Yes. Chair Trent Ellis? Yes. And M1 is now approved. R1, a resolution approving the budget amendment, appropriate unspent remaining Northwest Progresso, Flagler Heights, and Central Beach Community Redevelopment Agency estimated fiscal year and fund balances. Someone would like to introduce the resolution? Introduced. Are there any questions? No questions? Please call the roll. A resolution of the Board of Commissioners of the Fort Lauderdale Community Redevelopment Agency approving a budget amendment and appropriation of unspent remaining Northwest Progressive Flagler Heights fiscal year 2025 fund balances and providing for an effective date. Commissioner Beasley-Pittman? Yes. Commissioner Sorensen? Yes. Vice Chair Herbst? Yes. Commissioner Glassman? Yes. Chair Trent Ellis? Yes. And R1 is now approved. PH1, a public hearing accepting the proposal of Broward County Habitat Community Housing Development Corporation for the development of permanent owner-occupied affordable housing, which includes the donation of Fort Lauderdale Community Redevelopment Agency property at 427 Northwest 20th Avenue, 1207 Northwest 2nd Street, 420 Northwest 8th Avenue, and 521 Northwest 13th Avenue, and authorizing the Executive Director to execute any and all related instruments and delegating authority to the Executive Director to take certain actions. One person to sign up to speak, but for questions only. Do we have to close public hearing? Yes. Do we have to close public hearing? Yes. Do I hear a motion to close public hearing? So moved. Second. We'll move the seconded. Please call the roll on closing public hearing. Commissioner Beasley-Pittman? Yes. Commissioner Sorensen? Yes. Vice Chair Herbst? Yes. Commissioner Glossman? Yes. Chair Trent Ellis? Yes, and PH1 is now, public hearing is now closed. Is this a resolution? Is this a motion? It's a resolution. It's a resolution? Okay. Someone would like to introduce the resolution of PH1? Introduce. It's been introduced. Does anyone have any questions regarding, this is infill housing that we're donating the land and working through Habitat for Humanity in order to build homes for these folks? Yes. The house working? Yes. All right. Any further questions or comments? There being none, please call the roll. A resolution of the Board of Commissioners of the Fort Lauderdale Community Redevelopment Agency accepting the proposal of Broward County Habitat Community Housing Development Corporation approving the donation of real property located at 427 Northwest 20th Avenue, 1207 Northwest 2nd Street, 420 Northwest 8th Avenue, and 521 Northwest 13th Avenue, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, 33311, subject to conditions approving the commercial contract and addendum delegating authority to the executive director to execute the commercial contract, addendum, conveyance instruments, and related documents delegating authority to the executive director to take certain actions in providing for an effective date. Commissioner Beasley-Pittman? Yes. Commissioner Sorensen? Yes. Vice Chair Herbst? Yes. Commissioner Glassman? Yes. Chair Trentals? Yes. And PH1 is now approved. Is there any further business of the CRA? There being none, this meeting is concluded. We'll return at 6 p.m.