City Commission Conference Meeting on 2025-06-03 1:30 PM - Jun 03, 2025

Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to the City Commission meeting this June 3rd, 2025. Thank you all for being here today. We have a number of items to talk about this afternoon, and so we might as well get started. Probably begin with our communications. We have a communication from the Education Advisory Board. Not quite sure I understood the communication. Is anyone here from the Education Advisory Board? Come on up. Good afternoon. It says in your communication that you're requesting our support for the approval of the education funding request of $200,000 to provide two aviation scholarships for $5,000. There's something missing in the translation there because two times five is $10,000, and then you're asking for $200,000. So I guess there's more to that communication. Yes, can I explain? Yes, please do. Please identify yourself. I'm Juliet Gray-Williams, and I represent the Education Advisory Board for the proud city of Fort Lauderdale.

And I'm going to read a little bit about what's going on, give you an update. And the first that I'd like to share, and then I have a second part. Captain Barrington Irving Technical Training School at the Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport. Captain Barrington Irving is the record holder as the youngest person and the first black pilot to fly solo around the world. Just a little history. He has a passion to explore, inspire, and educate others. He has established this flying classroom and the Barrington Irving Technical Training School, which is acronym BITS, that provides workforce development to youth and young adults in the aviation industry. As part of the school district redefining initiative, Fort Lauderdale staff have connected with Captain Irving, and we would like to share this opportunity, as some of the commissioners already familiar with this young man. This partnership will provide students in Broward County and in the city of Fort Lauderdale with more exposure, awareness, and opportunity in the field of aviation. The Education Advisory Board previously approved $2,500 for two scholarships for students entering into the field of education for aviation. At this time, the Education Board is requesting the commission to support that approval. So that's what that's about. And the rest of it was in regards to the purpose of assisting with the funding at the scholarship for that training school at the education for the Fort Lauderdale International at the airport.

Okay. I understand. Does anyone have any questions?

I do, Mayor. So thank you for your work on the Advisory Board, for sure. I have a question. Thank you, Mayor. I'm just wondering why this falls upon the city.

Good afternoon, Commissioner. Susan Leigh Ann, Chief Education Officer. Thank you so much for the questions. Great to be here today to speak with you. Wanted to just give a little more background about that. Barrington Irving's Technical Training School is currently at the Opelaka Executive Airport, and it is available to all students in Miami-Dade County through the airport. And we are following that path. They have partnerships with the school district in Miami-Dade, and we are partnering with the school district here in Broward County to bring the program to FXE. The school district has been engaged with several conversations with myself and Rufus, as well as the folks at Barrington Irving and the staff at Opelaka's Executive Airport to have a partnership with them to bring this to fruition. So the school district has already committed to providing support via materials, supplies, uniforms, and things of that nature to assist us with implementing the program. However, the program would be housed at FXE, and it would be a premier workforce development program for the city.

So the 200,000 requests of the city for the program is to cover why?

So we are building a classroom, basically a workforce development classroom that focuses on how to operate an FBO and all of the mechanics that are involved with the part of having an FBO at an executive airport. So if you can picture the machinery and the items that would be needed in this classroom for the students to learn the technology as well, that's what the funding would be towards. That would not be a total commitment, meaning it would take more than that to actually completely fulfill all of the needs of the school, but it would certainly get the ground running and get it started. The program, as I understand, will be in a donated hangar at FXE. So that in itself is a large feat just to have the location being provided for the school.

And what exactly is the financial commitment from the school board for the program?

I think that I've had several email communications with the career and technical director in the school district and several meetings with the superintendent. And I do believe that in addition to already committing around $20,000 towards supplies, materials, and uniforms, the commitment would grow as they see us implement the program.

So is this something that you're requesting for the fiscal year 2026 budget? Correct. October 1?

Yes.

Okay, so has this gone in any way, shape, or form through the Budget Advisory Board or City Management Office? I mean, is this on everyone's radar that this will be considered and then also fleshed out a little bit more with those joint meetings with the Budget Advisory Board so that it follows the process like any other request for an allocation would follow? That's correct. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor.

I just want to confirm, yes, this is on the radar. I'm very familiar with the ask, and we're contemplating this request as part of the budget development process.

Anyone else have any questions?

Not questions, just a comment in regards to this opportunity. We are the city we often recognize and understand that. We have so many of our youth that are born here, raised here, and they go off to college and they decide they don't want to come back to Fort Lauderdale. They're determining that, in their mindset, that there's nothing here for them. So to me, this is also an opportunity where we can emphasize that live, love, and live, work, and play opportunity, giving them an option where they can see themselves a part of economic development, job opportunities, that are being actually, in a sense, created and filtered through the city, the municipality itself. So I see this as an opportunity as Fort Lauderdale to invest in our youth, to invest in our future.

If I may also add to that, this city directed the previous chief education officer to conduct a study that was taken place with Broward College about the field of aviation, and that report showed that this is an extensive need in our community and in our state, and that overwhelming workforce development need in that area.

First of all, I want to thank you for continuing with the commission's initiative that this commission took several years back to try to find educational and training opportunities outside of the normal high school, college curriculum, and to be able to fulfill the demands that aviation has in the industry, and locally, because of our airport. This commission had requested that we find ways to partner with other schools, and in this case, one of the partners was Atlantic Technical College, and this is yet another partner in the effort, and this is simply, this communication is simply to put on our radar that when the budget process comes forward, that we support the addition of two $2,500 scholarships to assist in the fulfillment of that goal that this commission has outlined several years ago. Is that correct?

Yes, sir.

Yes, that's how I understood it. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you for your… One more. Oh, wow.

I have one more presentation to make. Go right ahead. Actually, before… Fortify Lauderdale and… If I may, before we… Oh, I'm sorry.

No, that's okay. I apologize for interrupting. Before we kind of move off of this, so I had worked with my predecessor, Heather Moraitis, on the original concept for trying to bring an education program up to FXE. When she first came into office, she and I was the auditor, she expressed a desire for looking at a charter school of some type in Fort Lauderdale, and I told her my experience growing up in New York that there's aviation high school outside of LaGuardia Airport that has been training the youth in New York City in power plant and avionics, you know, going back to the 30s. And it's an amazing program, and I was able to connect her with some of the folks in the school up there, and she was very excited and was working diligently trying to move that forward. Unfortunately, it ran out of gas.

You know, I know Broward College has a program, but I think it's critical to do it through the high school program because not everybody's going to college and going to be able to pay for that education. It's a great program, but it's still not cheap, but when you can get that training in a high school and it's funded out of, you know, regular tax dollars, that's amazing because you're creating a pathway for kids that are going to be able to earn significant incomes working in our airline industry. We've got an amazing, you know, commercial airport right here at Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport. I mean, there's so much opportunity for the youth in our community to be able to introduce to the aviation industry and get into a career that's going to be incredibly lucrative without having to go to college, and I think we have to continue to push that. Well, I think we already – we are doing that. Well, we need to do more of it, though, Mayor, because like I said, we had an opportunity to create a whole school up there, and we didn't do it. Well, wait a minute. Let's back up.

What we did was we didn't want to reinvent the wheel, and so this commission made a policy decision that we were going to see what we could do to try to find education opportunities for high school and post-high school individuals who were seeking training, who would be interested in training not just in aviation but also in the marine industry. And the idea was to see what value existed already in our city, and we spoke with Briarwood College. We spoke with Atlantic Tech, and I believe we partner with them already. Susan, you want to talk to us about that?

Absolutely. Thank you. And, Commissioner Herbst, you brought up the part that I forgot to say, so thank you so much for doing that. This program really targets students that have unmet needs, right? They're graduate. They're passionate. They want to participate in our society and in our community, and they don't always have the monetary means to do so, and this is something exactly for them. When they finish this program, they are employed. Virtually 99.9% of the students that finish BITS has employment when they're done. They can then move on to Broward College and take more coursework once they're employed, which is a wonderful thing for us to be able to be a part of. But as far as Atlantic Technical College is concerned, we are currently partnering with them to provide coursework in our area of public works. So we're actually utilizing one of our current employees to be the teacher. It will be run through Atlantic Technical Center College, and we're actually going to host the course in one of our buildings so that our current employees won't have to travel, but will be able to take the coursework and complete their certification through the partnership with Atlantic here in our facility.

But, Susan, above and beyond public works, did we not also direct staff to – okay, talk to me about that.

So there is an – I've forgotten the name of the class, but there is an airframe or air mechanics course at Atlantic Technical College at the campus in Coconut Creek that we partnered with that has an advisory board that has about 10 students in it, taking the introductory coursework that would then lead to Broward College's program. And those students could also be eligible to partake of this course, which is much quicker. They learn hands-on in the real world at an airport and have great opportunity for employment.

Great. Thank you so much.

Next.

There's more.

Fortify Lauderdale and the Underwater. Fortify Lauderdale is a citywide initiative focused on improving resilience to impact the climate change within the city's most vulnerable neighborhoods and communities. Neighborhood outreach community meetings are being held to bring awareness to residents and to encourage them to be engaged and participate in shaping the future of their communities. It is important to include our youth in this initiative. In addition, the Underwater is an innovative project that uses interactive art installations to reveal South Florida's elevation, spark conversations, and urge civic engagement. We believe that expanding Fortify Lauderdale and the Underwater to more schools and parks in the city of Fort Lauderdale can significantly enhance community awareness and involvement in addressing climate-related challenges. Fortify Lauderdale and the Underwater are partnering to elevate awareness and to bring this exciting opportunity to our schools and to the parks. Our Education Advisory Board supports this initiative and requests the commission to support the approval of the funding request that was submitted via Cultural Affairs for the following. School slash park engagement campaign for a minimum of five locations, and this would include location assembly presentation led by artists, includes 100 elevation markers, 6x9 hand-painted indoor elevation murals, and assembly presentations, and the fee for that was $51,200 and $500 for five locations.

Okay, so that's not part of your current communication, right? Is that something you want to bring? Part two.

It's part two, Mayor, but without the price tag on the second page of the communication. Okay.

I have a question. Is Underwater the presentation we received about three or four months ago? Is that the same project?

Yes, it is.

Okay, thank you.

And is this something, another budget request that you're asking us to be apprised of? Is that what this is? Yes, sir. Okay. All right. Well, thank you. It's just, when I said I didn't see it, I didn't see that number in your communication. If I saw it, I'd probably get scared. So, is 51,000 you're seeking?

Yes. We are seeking to expand the program. Broward County Public Schools currently partners with the Underwater, and each year they do a district-wide program where they have an entire assembly with certain schools that participate. We would like to see more of those schools in the city of Fort Lauderdale and or at our parks, so that there is more awareness among the youth that are in the city. Great. Okay, excellent.

So, may I just have a question? Go ahead. Thank you. So, when I was reading the minutes from your meeting, I was curious because I noticed that actually my appointee voted no on this item. And later on in the minute, she explains that she voted no because of a similar program that's done at no cost. So, could you talk to me about that? Is that, she said, another resilience group offers similar school programs at no cost and question the need for city funding when free alternatives are available. So, is it apples to apples? Is what she's talking about offering the same kind of program, especially tied into the art component, or is it something different?

So, I'm not that familiar with the program that she's speaking about. They have not come to the Education Advisory Board. They have not presented, and we are not familiar with what that is. We do know that the Underwater includes an artist that comes and does an interactive assembly with the students. Xavier comes actually to the location and does the artwork with the students. I know that the Underwater is also partnered with Broward County Public Schools. I am not familiar enough with what Mrs. Galtieri is speaking about. To tell you whether or not it is apples to apples. I don't know. Okay.

I was just wondering, so when it says in the communication that you're asking us to support the approval of the funding request via the Cultural Affairs Division, was that funding request made of the city for our budgetary consideration, or who they made that funding request to whom?

It goes through the budget process, just like the aviation program.

Okay. So, you also are aware of that other additional request?

So, I don't think that we have the dollar value nailed down for this request, but it's something that we would discuss in the budget development process as well. Yes.

So, did we get a correspondence from the Broward County Cultural Division requesting that funding?

I would have to confirm that. I do not have any communication before me that would support that.

Okay. Thank you. Thanks, Mayor.

Any other questions? This is really good. Thank you. Thanks for your work. It's really great. Thank you. All right. Moving on to Business One, Prospect Lake Clean Water Center update, who will be giving us – how are you, sir? Can we turn the faucet on yet? Push the button at the bottom.

Thank you. Do we have the – Yeah, we'll pull it up for you. Okay. Great. Well, good afternoon, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Commissioners. It's a pleasure to be here today. My name is Mark Janay. I'm the – I'm here representing the Prospect Lake Clean Water Center and am here to give an update on the progress of the project. It's actually been several months. I think our last project update was in September of last year. And while that is a lot of time and we've made considerable progress, you know, I will say that kind of the proverbial no news is good news. The project has been progressing, the team, the stakeholders involved, including your city staff, your owners representative at Hazen and Sawyer have all been doing a great job. It's been a true collaboration, and that's really indicative of the progress being made. I'm going to start by just giving a little bit of a – kind of an overview of kind of how we got to where we are today, and then I'll have my colleague, Joy Perdon, kind of talk about sort of what's going on at the site actively. So just to talk for a moment, the project – you know, we initially approached the city back in 2020, and I'll talk about the timeline more in a moment. But the project itself is to build a new 50-million-gallon-per-day water treatment plant comprised of about 70 percent nanofiltration, the balanced 30 percent ion exchange. In addition to the work that's being done through this public-private partnership, the city has embarked on a number of projects to essentially connect this new supply to the city's distribution system, and we refer to those as the enabling works. Collectively, some of the key goals that this project in bringing this new plant online will achieve, this will be built to withstand up to a Category 5 hurricane, so it's certainly going to have that weather resiliency, which is getting more and more important. It's going to take care of all the color issues that the current supply has faced for a number of years. This city will effectively own and will be staffing this. A very unique component about this particular public-private partnership is the fact that while our partner, IDE, will be providing kind of the operational oversight, it will be the city staff that will be – we're going to start the training later this year that we'll roll into early next year, and we'll be ready to go. The current scheduled and still on schedule date for operations is September of next year. Thank you. So, again, on timeline, the commission accepted our – what's referred to as an unsolicited proposal back in June of 21. That kicked off a 90-day go-shot period. There were a few other proposals that were submitted. After those were reviewed, the commission unanimously selected our team to move forward with then ultimately finalizing the contracts. The overall project and the contracts were awarded in February of 2023. We immediately began some of the design and permitting activities. That led to mobilization in the fall of 23. And going forward, we're already getting into some of the commissioning activities. Those will take us all the way through commercial operation again in September of 2026. So, actually, with that, I'm going to introduce my colleague, Joey Padron. Joey's our Prospect Lake executive on the project.

Good afternoon, everyone. Excited here to give an update. Like Mark said, I wanted to kick it off by thanking the commission for the partnership that we've had together on this project. You can see here the list. I'm not going to go one by one, but you can see the list of work that the commission has approved in support of this project since the actual NTP in February of 2023. So, really appreciate the work as we move forward to our commercial operation date in 2026. So, last time I was here, we were in the thick of the mass excavation for the project. And I'm very pleased to announce that we are 100% complete on the excavation and the backfill. If you come to the site, you'll see the pictures at the end. The site is essentially at grade. So, all of that massive earth moving is complete now. So, same with the underground pipe. Last time I was here, we were in the thick of finishing up all of the underground piping. You can see the pictures of where it's come. And we are now 100% complete as well on all of the underground piping. Same with electrical. This is a great picture of some of the fantastic work Keywood is doing on site for the project with electrical conduit. We are also now 100% complete on the electrical conduit for the facility. On our injection wells, we are now complete on injection wall number two. We're complete on the monitoring well. And we're 1,800 feet out of 3,500 feet into the last injection well. So, you can see there's a current picture of the one rig that's there drilling the last injection well for the site. It's going very well. Just these are some of the new pictures. But just to give you an idea before we get into the bulk of the pictures, some of the upcoming activities that we have. The power distribution centers, you can see a picture on the lower picture of there being loaded by the crane and also to the left. That's the big power distribution centers that are on site already. That's essentially started in May and it will be complete in June. We're starting and also completing the nano filtration building. As you can see on the upper hand picture, the blue filter modules that you see, they'll be surrounded by the Cat5 concrete encased building around it. So, that'll start now in June and actually complete in June. We're also starting up the commission activities. In July, a lot of dry commission activities, we're not going to be flowing water, but it's all the testing, powering up systems, making sure it's all good to go from their factor acceptances that they've been completed. Just a quick update on OCCT. We gave an update last time and this is one of the activities the commission approved. Our bench scale testing is complete, is at the Virginia Tech and we are working on completing that draft report this month to provide to the city. That being said, you know, what's the next phase for OCCT is the pipe loop modules arriving now in June. We've been working with the city to put the pipe loop modules in an available city warehouse so we can test, obviously, how the water quality is going to affect the distribution center system within the city. Another big pilot that the commission approved is the PFAS pilot and that final engineering is nearing completion and we'll have all the drawings that we need to start building that in June. And we expect that the pilot skid to be fully arrived and installed by August, followed by a preliminary report. We'll get, by January of next year, we'll have an understanding of how much PFAS we can really remove with the current installed design that we have. So this is just a quick overview.

But we do have, we do have goals established anyway, right? We have, when we, when we originally. From EPA. Yes. Well, EPA, well, let's talk about that. EPA is relaxing its standards. But we had, we, when we first contracted with you, had set benchmarks as to the amount of PFAS that we, that this new project was going to be able to withdraw from the water system. And we're still using those as our target, correct?

We're still using the same technology. Right. And the technology that we're installing does remove PFAS.

Of course, what the pilot's going to answer is, can the installed technology remove the PFAS to the levels that the EPA is asking us?

Well, again, under the new administration in Washington, the, the EPA standards are being relaxed. So I don't want to use them as a, as a guidepost.

Tell us what you, tell us your thoughts.

Sure, sure. So, Mayor, they have, there are, I'll call it three kind of main PFAS components to the, to the EPA's rule. There are two primary PFAS constituents, PFAS and PFOAS. I may have that wrong. And then there's another kind of third bucket that kind of catches a number of others. What, what they're currently proposing is they're going to eliminate sort of that third bucket of, of, of having rules or, or, or requirements around, around those constituents.

But they are maintaining kind of the two primary constituents and, and, and they're maintaining those same levels of removal required, which is the four parts per trillion.

That's what we're targeting.

Right. And so we, you know, we've now done the, the, the testing to see how much, uh, PFAS is, is in the well field. And they're, you know, those levels are higher than certainly four, but they're not, I mean, I, I want to say the, the average, um, when you have all the blended wells is something around maybe 20. So we, you know, we, you know, we don't have that much to get to the regulatory limit for those two that we still have to require. On our own, right, right.

I understand the natural water is, is lower than the standard, but still higher than our, our, the, the goal we wanted to establish with this filtration system.

Correct. Correct. And, and, and to meet the, the, the, the federal and, and likely the state regulatory requirement of four. The other thing that that's likely going to change is that the requirement was to ensure that, um, that you would meet that compliance. The deadline for that was 2029. And they're talking about extending that out to 2031.

Okay.

Um, and those are still, they have not finalized those changes, but I think most people expect those to be finalized.

Okay, great. Thank you so much. Thank you.

So, so just, just drawing your attention to the screen, the, you could see at, at the, uh, wellfield site where the site is going to, is, is being built. Just to give a big overview of, of where we are, um, starting back in November, 2023, you can see the site was just open and full of trees. We, we began to remove all that in November, 2023. You can see the progression through February, 24, uh, May and July of 2024. You can see all of the piping, uh, being installed. This is, this is the picture of, of where we last met in September. This is what it looked like in September when we, when we last gave an update in September, 2024, moving to now of May, 2025. You can see, uh, this is not an AI generated photo. Uh, some people, some people think it is, but it is not, it is real. And we've come a long way since September of 2024. It's amazing what you've done. It's really amazing.

Yeah. Thank you.

So this, this is another picture, uh, a little bit more in zoom that the, the tank in the back, uh, with the cylinders, that's the product, uh, tank. That's where the final water will, will be sent to before it's being sent over to five ash and the distribution system. There's a great picture of our nano filtration building. Again, 70% of the water will be flowing through this and there will be a concrete, uh, building surround, going around this all the way around the cat five. That's a huge component. It's very, it's very large. It is the heart of the plant.

I'm sorry. What is the percentage? 70% seven or 70, 70, 70% will run through this section.

And this is the section that primarily, uh, the technology that removes PFAS.

All right. Anyone have any questions? Keep it going.

Okay. Thank you.

I would just say mayor, uh, and commissioners, it's a great time. If you have time to come and see before they put the walls up, um, it's, it's a really fascinating time in particular to see the nano filtration. So if you can, we'd love to, to have you. So thank you. Okay.

And one other clarity, I'm sorry. Um, when we began the presentation back on page two, um, I thought I heard, um, in regards to, um, being able to, the document says withstand cat five class five. But yeah, I heard up to a class five. So which is it, can it withstand or up to, cause this says, I heard one thing and I'm reading something different.

Um, commissioner the, so it will like the, and I'm going to have this number wrong, but I think a category five is sustained winds of 155 or 57 miles an hour. And this will be designed to meet that, to, to meet that kind of threshold. If someday we've created a heaven forbid, but a category six and the winds are 200, it, you know, it wasn't designed to get a, but so we, we absolutely can withstand, you know, the, the definition of a category five. Okay.

Thank you.

If it's category six at 200, I think we're all moving. We would, let's hope that never happens. We would be. All right. Very good. Thank you so much, gentlemen. Uh, business two city hall update. Who will be talking to us about that?

So mayor and commissioners, we wanted to give an update on the city's efforts toward a new city hall site and campus, as well as to discuss an unsolicited proposal that we received recently and communicated to the commission via memorandum.

Great.

Ben Rogers will be speaking on this topic.

Okay, great. Ben.

Uh, good afternoon, mayor commission, Ben Rogers, acting assistant city manager. So as the city manager alluded to, um, we're just going to give a brief update on city hall and seek commission feedback on some next steps. We were last with the city commission to provide an update in January of this year, where we did a conference presentation at the first meeting in January and followed that up with a conversation during the goal setting meeting. Uh, before we get into it, I did want to also highlight some of the demolition efforts that went into this project. Um, it was about a year ago, May 7th, 2024 is when we did the, uh, time capsule unveiling, um, and found, uh, what was left for us, uh, many years ago. Uh, we then, uh, relocated a lot of the assets with inside the building, uh, and started the demolition process. It took about 12 months to complete. Uh, and you can see the image there today of the current site. Uh, it's fenced off with grass and a project information board. Some fun facts. Uh, there's about 32,000 tons of concrete as part of the demolition. Uh, 80% of the materials were recycled. Uh, while the building was vacated, we used it as a public safety training site. Uh, so they did some drills and some, some tasks inside the building. And then there was, uh, about 120 concrete pilings underneath the building, some of them up to 45 feet deep. So if I can ask the IT team to help real quick, I've got a quick video to highlight the demolition process. Are you okay, Mayor? Do you need a tissue? Yeah. I need a tissue. You know, I think it's important to highlight those type of things and capture it in video because a lot of hard work, a lot of effort went into that, um, to get us to where we're going. And I think that's where we are today. So in January, we talked about some things that the city staff were working on. We talked about an owner's representative, uh, uh, initiative, uh, where he issued a solicitation in November. We closed that, uh, solicitation in January. There were seven proposals that received that the evaluation committee have gone through. Um, in March, they, uh, did presentation, heard presentations from those, uh, top listed proposers. And they've recommended, uh, Jacobs project management as the, uh, consulting firm. Um, right now we're currently in negotiations to get the finalized agreement, and we're hoping that we can bring it to the city commission, uh, the summer of 2025. So part of that, uh, scope, um, that they would be delivering is a task order based approach. So we wouldn't be committed to a dollar figure or a set, um, set of deliverables. Um, but rather in the five different construction phases, there's different elements that they would help, uh, the city staff, uh, move through. I've heard a lot of input and a lot of questions about how big will the building be, what will be in the building. Um, these are some of the tasks that we'll, we'll lean on them to help us with, uh, with their knowledge and expertise in dealing with other city hall projects and other municipal, uh, government sites.

Yes, but, but, and we've already, we've already created our needs assessment, correct? That's correct. So that part's already done. They're just here to organize and coordinate and make sure what we expected to get done gets done in a, in a commercially reasonable way.

Yes, and each, and again, each phase will have a task order that we would, we would issue. And so we can define and limit what the scope of their service would be in each different phase.

Okay.

Um, the next thing that we're working on right now is the design criteria package. The design criteria package, uh, solicitation has not been released yet. We wanted to provide the commission with an update before, but we are ready to, uh, move forward should that be the direction. The design criteria package has two separate tasks associated with it. Um, and each one of those tasks have the, the deliverables there on the project definition. What's being asked is that the design criteria package, uh, consultant would come up with three different concepts. So three different kind of layouts of what the building could or couldn't look like. And then we would narrow it down to one design concept and have them advance that through the design process. The end goal being a 30% design, that would be our, our foundation for a design build or whatever the next step would be in the construction process. Design criteria package elements. Again, it has an array of tasks and deliverables, but these are things that we've asked to make sure that the, uh, responding proposals take into consideration. Things that we feel are important to us as a city, making sure that we have, you know, the public at the forefront, that we have meeting spaces, that we have cultural and arts elements, that we have a public space that can, can host public meetings and foster civic interactions. Uh, and the building massing again, it still needs to be determined, but right now, based off of the ULI report, we have 350,000 square feet in here, uh, with 800 plus employees. That breakdown is about 350 square feet per employee, which is the, uh, ULI recommendation. And then it had about 70,000 square feet and, uh, uh, on the floor plan for the commission chambers for meeting spaces, customer service areas, paying your bills, uh, things like that. Uh, the, and can you just go back, please? Thanks. The second row of rectangles, are, are those also needs that we've identified or those wishes or? These are all, these are all wish list things, but these were things that we wanted the, uh, respond to proposers to keep in consideration as they're responding to our, uh, if we put this design criteria package out, things that are important to us to make sure that we incorporate into, uh, the design of the building. Okay.

And just some of these boxes are higher priority level than others. Right. For example, a commission chamber, that's a non-negotiable item that we would need as part of our city hall.

Yep. Got it. Thanks. I mean, all of these pretty much seem common place, right? I mean, I don't see anything extraordinary.

Yeah. I mean, this list was to really illustrate the public outreach that we did through the reimagining city hall. I know the commission's provided vital feedback along the way. And so we just wanted to memorialize that in our design criteria package solicitation. So that way the, uh, the consulting firms that respond to understand our priorities, uh, the anticipated timeline where we're at now, uh, we, you know, we did the, uh, reimagined city hall outreach. So that's been completed, got the foundation, got the ULI, got, uh, the infrastructure task force, uh, feedback and others. Uh, as you saw, we did the completed demolition, uh, the middle of 2025 and we got the owner's rep, uh, RFQ that is currently being evaluated with, uh, hopefully, uh, uh, an item for the city commission sometime this summer. Where that leaves us again is we're at the design criteria package, RFQ, RFP phase. Uh, so if we move forward with releasing that, that would be, uh, probably the next four to six months of, of the, this calendar year. And then we bring back a recommendation for an award. And at that point we would start the design criteria package with the design firm. Um, we put in here 12 to 15 months as kind of the timeline for the design criteria package. That's what we utilized or that's what we had in the joint government center effort. But until we put the design criteria package out and we get the information back from the proposals, that's just the placeholder of our timeline.

But how does that, how does that interface with, uh, unsolicited proposals that are going to be presented to us, um, that will come with designs, that will come with a lot of the, a lot of the components that you would want to put into a design criteria package? What happens if it's being presented to us in an unsolicited manner? Does this interact, how does that interface with this timeline that you created? Because this isn't a very extended timeline. I mean, I mean, if you've followed this path, we won't get city hall till 2030.

Understand the concerns. And I think that's one of the reasons that we're here today is the safety commission feedback. We continue to move this forward as a city led project. So that way we, we don't, uh, stumble or don't wait for something to happen. If the city commission provides directions, they want to go through a different process, a solicited P3, an unsolicited P3, that would change the service delivery. And so right now, staff's prepared to move forward to the design criteria package pending your direction. Okay. Uh, a funding overview. Um, you know, we, we have some seed money in this, uh, project. Uh, we anticipate putting another million dollars in it. So we'll have a balance close to $10 million for, uh, next fiscal year. Uh, we do anticipate that between the owner's rep and the design criteria package that utilizing majority of those funds, if not all. Uh, we do have a community development block grant that the city commission has heard about in the past. And I'd like to take a second to invite Chris Cooper up to tell you where we are on that process and, and how that, uh, review is going.

Thanks, Ben. Uh, mayor commission, Chris Cooper, acting assistant city manager. So as Ben alluded to, um, the city received roughly $88 million earlier this year in our community development block grant disaster recovery, uh, grant program through the, uh, housing and urban development department. We are in the process of doing our required public action plans. So part of that plan requires us to, um, onboard a technical advisor, which we did a solicitation for the scoring for those advisors is actually happening today. So in the near future, we'll bring those advisors, uh, ranked to you to get approval to move forward with our consultant. Once that consultant is onboarded, there's about 120 day period of time where there'll be public input. We'll develop a impact and needs assessment that will be submitted to HUD. Once it goes through the public process, which includes stakeholder input coming to commission for review and approval. Um, once that gets to HUD, they take about another 60 days to approve that plan. And once that plan is approved, we can begin to draw down funds based on that plan. So the commission had previously provided input that they would like to see potential ways that we could utilize all or part of the $88 million towards the city hall project. So with that work, we'll keep that in mind, we'll include that in our planning process and developing that action plan. Um, so that when we bring that back to you, there may be opportunities to use those funds or portions of those funds for the city hall project.

Is that $88 million in addition to the 9.7?

Right. That is our, so our 9.7 is our, our regular CDBG allocation. This is in addition to, okay. Oh, I'm sorry. Is that Ben? Oh, I'm sorry. Okay. That's the general fund balance. I'm sorry. I was thinking about our general CDBG allocation, but Ben reminded me that's the actual general fund amount. They're very similar. So, okay. Yeah. So, best case scenario around December, 2025, we have that plan approved by HUD and we can access those funds for whatever the plan determines the best use of those funds will be.

Great.

In addition, since our last meeting in January, we started initial conversations with our financial consultant as well on looking at different structuring if we need to have long-term loans or debt for this building. So, we've reached out. We've done some initial exploration on federal grants and federal loans. So, we're, again, continuing to work behind the scenes so that way when we get to a decision point, we have all the information readily available.

And that includes the Department of Transportation's program. Okay.

It does. We looked into the TOD program by the Department of Transportation. Okay. Great.

Thank you.

In addition to the city efforts, on May 15, 2025, the city received an uncivilized proposal from Meradium. They are an international developer with a 20-year track record of delivering complex capital projects. We, again, wanted to make the commission aware of this uncivilized proposal, seek feedback from the commission on where they are for next steps, and determine if the uncivilized proposal is the path to go forward. This conversation is very similar to what we had for the Holiday Park parking garage at the last meeting of learning what the desire of the city commission is on next steps. And to help facilitate that conversation, we really kind of laid out three different options. Advanced as option A, as a current city project, and that could mean a myriad of different things. It could be a solicited P3 project, very similar to the Las Olas Marina project. It could be moving forward with a design build or a construction manager at risk project. So we don't have the procurement method or the delivery method identified at this point. But option A would tell our direct staff to continue moving forward with onboarding the owner's rep and to issue the design criteria package. Option B, explore the unsolicited proposal. We can schedule a conference meeting to have Meridian come and present their proposal to share their vision and their experience with the commission to determine the commission's intent on if they would like to accept the proposal or not. You could create a competition period as well. And then option C, I think, is the path that staff has been on to date, is really trying to move forward with the project with all different options until the commission is ready to provide direction on which way they would like to go.

Okay, so there's an unsolicited proposal on the table now presented by Meridian. So let's talk scenarios. If we accepted that today, the commission is not really accepting them as a vendor, but we're accepting their proposal to review by city staff. They give us a check for $25,000, and then we establish a time frame, right, the window. What is it, 21 days up to 120 days? That's correct. And during that time, other possible vendors could step forward and submit their unsolicited proposal, and all that would be done within that window of time, right? So we have that option today as a commission to make that decision whether or not to move forward.

Yes, the one clarity, and I'd defer to the city attorney, is that the actual acceptance and creation of a competition period would be, I believe, a resolution. So we'd either need to walk on an item tonight or prepare for the next meeting.

Okay. All right. Any questions of Mr. Rogers? I guess not. I just have one. When this was submitted, but did we already get the check for $25,000 when it was submitted, I think, right? Yes, we were interested in the $25,000. Well, we received the check. We haven't negotiated it.

No, what we do is we take it, and we put it in escrow or put it in an account, a holding account until we get direction from the city commission on expending it.

Sorry, go ahead. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. I didn't realize.

My question, what is the budget? What can we afford for this city hall? We haven't talked about that. We've moved in a direction where we are maybe considering a P3. If that's the direction we decide not to go in, again, what would be our city's budget, the max we're willing to invest in the city hall? I don't recall having that discussion.

We haven't had that discussion because we're not there yet. We haven't, we don't have a, we've come up with a needs assessment in terms of square footage and so forth. And we've come up with a, and we've come up with the list of purposes, page six, which we would like to include those purposes as much as possible. And as Mr. Rogers has indicated, there, there's still, there's still design phases that have been scheduled. That's on page seven, that if we continued on our own, it would lead us to the point of what it would cost ultimately if we were to do it on our own.

Okay. Even with that, you know, I'm, I'm, you know, I always say I'm very, I'm a layman. I think at that level, if I'm going to purchase, build, or going to any type of investment, I have an idea how much money I can spend. So I want to know how much money we as a city could spend, even in this capacity, because I can, I can dream big now. You know, this is, we have a great wish list here and there, I'm pretty sure that others have some more they would like to add to that. However, what can we afford? Can we add that to our conversation?

Yeah.

It's a good question, which we'll get to, I guess, at some point. I don't think, we've got a hundred million dollar down payment that's been, that's sitting in, that will be available to us. So at least we know that we have a good head start in helping to pay for this. But it's a, it's a question that will ultimately have to be asked and answered depending upon the design, depending upon the space. We may have to cut back on the amount of space, you know, as we look to see what the price tag is. But, but it's a, it's a good question and I don't think we're ready to answer that yet, are we?

But if I could just add, I think you have to look at, well, for instance, if you look at the Meridian plan that we received and you go to page 20, 21, 22, 23, you see all of those financing plans. You see, you see what those plans look like. You see what the payments look like. You see what the time looks like. You see all of those proposed service payment. You see all of that financial in their proposal. So that will differ if we, if we do open this up and we accept this and then we, we ask others to also give us their plans. You'll see different proposed payment structures. So that's a tough question to answer at this juncture because it's all dependent on how these unsolicited proposals are laying out their proposals and what they expect in return and what, as a partner with us, what that would mean for us over time. And that will, that will differ. So that's a hard question to answer at this point, but I, I would just think that we all just need to look really closely at those sections of, of the unsolicited proposals just to see exactly what they're talking about in terms of, you know, capital expenditures from both their side and our side.

That part I understand, but again, can we, can we afford our part?

Yes, we can.

Well, we have to find a way. We have to find. Well, no, you can't find a way if you don't have the money. No, we have to find the money because we have, we don't have a city hall.

That part I understand, but we are, we need to be responsible in how we put burdens on our neighbors, our residents. Yes, I'm excited. We need a city hall, but I cannot go and buy a Rolls Royce. I'm not going to buy a Rolls Royce because I know my budget. Well, no one wants to buy a Rolls Royce. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Listen to me. I'm not, I'm not throwing any type of shade. I'm making an example. Let me rephrase that because I'm not trying to be out of order. What I'm saying, I know my budget. Before I go to purchase anything, I consider my budget. We as a commission representing our neighbors, we need to know how much money we're working with. Not money that we're going to reach and find, but what are we working with? That's what I'm asking. And I think that's a fair question for our neighbors.

If I may, Mayor. Go ahead. I think the questions are valid. I think at this point we are trying to determine the various funding sources that we could put together. And we're also determining the level of partnership and investment we would want to have in a facility. We're looking at our debt capacity. We're looking at the potential grants that we could have. We're looking at the amount of space that we need. And so there are a lot of moving pieces. And so it is challenging to determine how much money we would need because it all depends on the level of investment we want to have in this project. And if we want to have project partners, I think the biggest piece of the puzzle that is yet undefined is that CDBG allocation that Chris mentioned earlier. We'd like to see how much could be made available for the City Hall project because we know the entirety of it probably cannot be used for the project. And so I think that that's an ongoing discussion that we would like to have with you. This body for sure would not be able to make a decision in either direction without the city knowing how much funding capacity we have for this project.

Okay. So there's a couple of things going on here. So first of all, in terms of the space planning, I think I've gone through space planning probably four times since 2006 because that's how long we've been talking about building a new City Hall. HDR has conducted this several times. And by the way, every time it comes back, City Hall gets bigger. It's never gotten smaller in any iteration that I've been through. Just in terms of ballpark numbers, the last time we went through the planning for the joint city-county government building, we were, I believe, at like $400 million. I doubt it's gotten cheaper because that was, what, six years ago? So to my knowledge, I haven't seen construction costs coming down. They've only gone up since then. So I think if you're going to start anywhere, you're going to start at that number. You know, I've looked through the unsolicited proposal, and I don't see anything here that talks about how much it's going to cost. I see they talk about an availability payment structure. They talk about no upfront capital expenditure. But there's nothing in this P3 on those pages 23, 24, 22 that actually tells us how much this is going to cost us. So I think to Commissioner Beasley-Pittman's point, it's premature for us to be considering unsolicited proposals until we've done some kind of design criteria package. We have an idea of what our space needs are. We have our own engineering estimates of what we think this is going to cost. We do this with almost every other project that we engage in. Our engineers figure out what they think it's going to cost, and then we go out to bid. We don't go out to bid without knowing how much something is going to cost us. So I think we need to go through that exercise first. I'm not in as much of a rush as some of my colleagues are. You know, we have opportunities available to us up at Cypress Creek to continue to rent space for staff if need be. I think we need to be deliberate in how we approach this. If we're going to go down the P3 path, I would say the unsolicited P3 path is probably the worst one I can imagine because then we get the design and a building that somebody else wants to foist upon us. The only good P3 delivery model is the solicited P3 delivery model where we develop that design criteria package.

We put it out there in the street, and then we invite partners to come in.

There's a lot of things here about our ability to borrow tax-exempt that is preferable to having the private sector go out and finance. Our borrowing rates based on our AAA rating are significantly lower than the private sectors right now, so I don't even know why we would be considering a design, build, finance, operate, and maintain. Design, build, perhaps, but finance, I don't see the benefit to that.

So somebody will have to explain to me how it's cheaper for the private sector to borrow at a taxable rate than it is for the city to borrow at a tax-exempt rate. I haven't seen it yet. That's why with our prospect lake, we wound up taking on most of the financing for that project because it turned out to save the city a significant amount of money when we financed using our ability to do that. So I think we need to really have a clear idea of what our space needs are,

what we think it's going to cost us to do that, and let's be realistic about this. Again, I've been through this space planning three, four times since I've been here, and it's very interesting when you see this because the original plans back in 2006 was everybody had an office, okay? And we had a break room for like every 10 people. Well, guess what? In this modern age of space planning, we use open concepts where we have flexible space. We don't use an office for everybody. So how we work and what we think is the most efficient and effective way to put employees together has changed substantially in the last 20 years since I went through this the first time. So I think we need to be very mindful of what we're doing. We also, and I say this over and over again, I've been a strong advocate of the fact that the workforce has changed and not everybody wants to be in an office every single day. Not everybody wants to commute downtown and fight parking and fight traffic every single day. So work from home is still a very viable option. Hybrid workspace is really the most preferred option. It's the highest productivity and the most preferred option for most employees. So let's keep an open mind as we go through this. Let's figure out what our space needs really are. Let's think about open concept and flexible space, and then let's have our engineering team and our consultant come up with an estimate of what we think that's going to cost. And once we've done all that, once we've done our due diligence, once we know what we want, then we go out to market and we see what that is going to actually cost us. So that's just my approach, and I think that would be the intelligent way of moving forward on this. And I'm not in a rush to get it done because I want to do it right because we didn't do the police station right, and I want to make sure we do City Hall right.

Okay. Anyone else have any comments?

Well, there's some of that I agree with, but a lot that I don't agree with. And we've already had these discussions before as a commission. Most of those points we've talked about, and we did come to consensus on that, and that's all I'll say. We could certainly go back and look at all those meetings and look at all those minutes, but that's a discussion for later. But it's probably maybe why I'm also thinking that letter C, the hybrid approach, might be the best. This has been going on for many, many, many, many years, and the more we talk, the more years it will go on and on and on and on. I would like to see us come to some sort of direction today in terms of how do we want to approach this. Do we like A, B, or C in front of us? And if so, let's just get moving because, as I've said, all of those points that were just brought up, we have gone through those points, each one. Thanks.

Okay. Anyone else wish to comment?

Yeah.

Mayor, please, go ahead.

Thank you, Ben. When was the last space planning analysis done?

So we did space planning analysis as part of the joint government complex, and then we've done some informal things just internally of kind of centralizing departments, especially the standalone departments, and bringing them into a central city hall.

Wow. Great. So when have we done that?

The informal stuff is ongoing. I would say that probably at the end of 2024, early 2025 is when we did the last update on that. Okay.

And that's where you get to the 350,000 square foot?

The 350 came from the ULI study, and that was their recommendation. What we did is we went back and looked at our information. The old city hall had about 350 employees based out of it. We looked at centralization efforts of development services, some public works, CRA, transportation mobility, and some remote space that Office of Management Budget had. That added another 350-plus employees to get you somewhere around the 800 number.

So what was the square footage of our old city hall, do you call it?

The old city hall was 100,000 square feet, and that equated to about 62,000 usable square feet.

Can I just – just a question. So you're proposing that we're going to move DSD from the Greg Bruton building into a centralized location, and the CRA, you're going to move them out of District 3 and into a centralized building?

So part of our initial space planning had some of those services getting centralized, so that way there would be a central service kiosk for a lot of the public-facing entities.

And just to add, there are portions of DSD that are not part of that Greg Bruton building, and we are leasing space for them right now, so we would want to bring them into a new city hall.

Okay, because I remember conversations about increasing the size of the Greg Bruton building, which is why we were keeping the land across the street from it to add additional parking capacity. So this is a new direction for me. So I want to have a little more discussion about that, because we put that building over there to help with the revitalization effort of the Sistrunk area. So before we start talking about moving that out, I think that's a much larger conversation, and I don't mean to step on your toes, Pam, but, you know, I've had these discussions in the past, and the neighborhood went ballistic when we talked about moving the folks in the Greg Bruton building.

Understood. We have a DSD operation adjacent to Peter Feldman Park, and that's a leased space, and we're looking at opportunities to bring that group to City Hall.

Yeah, that's not a retail center. The Greg Bruton area, the Greg Bruton building is a retail center, right? And the convenience of that, I think, needs to be respected. But as far as the back of the house area, that's what they're talking about. But I want to chime in a little bit about... So, wait, Commissioner Sorensen finishes comments.

Yeah, thanks. Great. So, I think, bless you, so sounds like very recent space planning. I'm a big believer of, you know, when appropriate, centralizing. Also, when you look at the research, there's, especially at the federal level, there's more and more emphasis on in-person work. So I think that space planning analysis is probably taking that into consideration. Is that right, Ben?

Yeah, and it took into consideration some of the elements that Commissioner Herbst hit on of hotel space or common-use desks, things like that. But yes.

Okay, great. Can the unsolicited proposal, can the city finance?

I think a good illustration is what we talked about with the water treatment plan earlier today. So the answer would be yes.

Great. Thanks. When we look at from a city project versus a unsolicited process, give us a sense in terms of timing and cost. How can those be impacted in either path?

I think from a general perspective, the public side, we go through our procurement processes and regulations and requirements that we need to do, that sometimes the private side doesn't have to do those things. So I think from a generalization, the time delivery can be quicker. But again, I don't feel comfortable at this time talking about the details of what their unsolicited proposal would look like and what the city project would deliver.

Okay, great. Thanks. I have more thoughts, Mayor, but go ahead.

All right. I just want to chime in on a couple of things. I do not want to use the study that we engage in for the Joint Government Center because so many of the metrics that were produced during that project were just unreal. For example, the $400 million that Commissioner Herbst refers to, that was based on 150,000 square feet of space that the city had determined was going to be its need. And the $400 million came from the $3,000 per square foot times the 150,000 square feet is how you got $400 million. And the $3,000 a square foot was ridiculous. That's why we ended up canceling our participation in that because it was ridiculous. So now how it grew from 150,000 square feet to 350,000 square feet is something that has to be really examined because I don't see how it could get that big so quickly, more than double. And just listening to part of the presentation, for example, you said 70,000 square feet for non-office space, like meeting space and commission chambers. Well, this area here is probably about, what, 8,000 square feet? Okay? So if the lion's share of meeting space is going to be commission chambers, and this has been more than adequate in providing for commission chambers, I can't imagine what another 62,000 square feet is going to produce. So we need to rethink those numbers, and we can shrink the whole project down. You know, the new police station, that was not an unsolicited proposal, was it? That was, we came up with the design, we came up with everything, and then we just went out to bid for the construction. Isn't that correct? That's correct. Okay. So that was a whole different process. So was that, Mayor, just so I'm clear, was that considered a city project A? Is that what the police station is? That would be A. That would be A, yeah. So, and yet, at the same time, we've had a very successful history with a lot of unsolicited proposal projects here in our city. And so there's great merit and great weight to be given towards that approach. But I do, in listening to Commissioner Glassman, I do think, however, that perhaps the number C approach, the hybrid approach, might make the most sense, that we continue to allow staff to refine the design and to continue to define the need. And at the same time, maybe today we should make the decision to accept the unsolicited proposal and establish a timeline up to a certain number of days and let other proponents come forward, if there are any, and submit their proposals. And then at the end of the day, we'll have several to look at, and we either accept one of them or none of them. But I do think we need to keep moving on this because it is costing us a lot of money to be in exile the way we are. You know, it's costing us a lot of money for the police department to be located remotely. It's costing us a lot of money for city staff to be relocated remotely. And I do think that we need to move this process along. And like you said, Commissioner Herbst, construction costs only become more expensive every month, every year we wait. So I see no merit in waiting because every time we wait a year, costs go up a certain percentage, and it just keeps driving the whole project to a point where, you know, we are putting an extra and unnecessary burden on our taxpayers. So my feeling is, and this is my recommendation to the commission, that we proceed with the hybrid approach, perhaps accept the Meridian proposal today through by a resolution, a walk-on resolution tonight, and let the process begin. We have nothing to lose. We have absolutely nothing to lose. And at the same time, we have everything to gain. So that's my recommendation. I don't know what the, what is the appetite about it? Can I address one thing, Dan, go ahead. So there's an economic fallacy in what you said.

It's not cheaper to build than it is to rent. It's usually cheaper to rent than it is to build. So we're not losing money by continuing to rent because the cost that we'd be paying if we started construction right now would simply be debt service. So it's, it's, you got to remember, cash is fungible, right? So we either pay rent or we pay the cost of construction. Either way, there's no such thing as a free lunch.

So it's always cheaper to rent an existing building than it is to build a brand new one. But there's, but I wasn't speaking just in terms of rent. I was speaking in terms of costs that are the intangible costs of having a dismembered government that's spread around the city and it, and the inability to function in a coordinated way where people are housed under the same roof. I disagree with that. I disagree with that. I'm still talking. Sorry, I apologize. And that, and that whether there are studies for or against any of those models, you know, I'm of the belief that, that in-person participation in work is more cost effective than people working from their, from, in front of their TV. So my feeling is that, you know, and again, I put it out there for the commission to decide we should make some sort of decision this afternoon as to whether or not we want to proceed going forward and accept the unsolicited proposal and allow others to also submit proposals during that time frame that we set and, but yet instruct staff to continue with the, with the investigation and design criteria so that we don't lose any time, regardless of the path that we ultimately choose to take.

So, Mayor, if I can provide some clarity in terms of the unsolicited proposal process, as we discussed last, at last city commission meeting, there is a, an evaluation period. Right. That needs to occur before the intent to enter into a comprehensive agreement. Right. That triggers the period for accepting additional proposals. So, what the action tonight would be would not, would not require a resolution. It would just be an enabling action for staff to evaluate the proposal that we have on hand and then bring back the, the proposal, an item for resolution with the intent to enter into a comprehensive agreement with Meridian and that would trigger the time period for accepting additional proposals. Okay. So, there's not just, so there's a, there's a preliminary step we have to take before we even get to the point of accepting. Correct. So, the direction would be for staff to evaluate Meridian's proposal and then bring back a, um, bring back an item with, if it is the desire of the commission to enter into a comprehensive agreement with, uh, Meridian.

Okay. Is that exactly what we did with the Holiday Park garage when that came before us as a, an agenda item at the last conference meeting?

Yes.

And did it come back to us at night for any kind of... It hasn't, it hasn't come back to you yet. You're still evaluating. Okay.

It's, it's during the evaluation process now.

Okay.

What, what was the evaluation duration expectation for the Holiday Park? Did we set one?

Yep. So, staff's already started working on it. We have meetings scheduled with both of the proposers, uh, later this week and early next week. Uh, we've done our initial evaluation of key criteria, and we're hoping to bring it back to the commission for consideration, uh, before the summer recess.

Great. Um, Ben, what role, if any, does the owner's rep play in this, um, if, moving forward with any of these options?

Yeah. So, if I go back to the slide with the owner's rep kind of general services, I think they can play a vital role through whatever methodology we move forward with. Um, these are some of the high-level tasks that they can assist the city with, and I think I've heard, uh, numerous of them come from the commission today about the space planning, the size, um, the budget, the cost. Uh, so, onboarding the owner's rep, if, if the hybrid option C is, is the direction the commission takes, that would be my recommendation, is that we move forward and continue to onboard the owner's rep so we can utilize their subject matter expertise in making key decisions to move forward.

Yeah. Okay. Thanks. So, Mayor, I think that, uh, we should move forward with an evaluation period, uh, of the unsolicited while continuing to progress from a city evaluation perspective.

So, that's hybrid approach. That's the hybrid C, right?

Yeah. Yeah, I agree with you. And, and move the evaluation forward. I, I would be remiss if I, if I didn't again remind the commission that the legislature has added that additional public, um, hearing or public meeting process that would allow you to go with a unsolicited proposal, proposal, proposer without going through this public bed process. So, it would just require, um, uh, certain findings and, uh, two public meetings. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Um, explain to me again. So, there is an alternative, alternative process for unsolicited proposals that the legislature has now enabled, um, municipality, well, government agencies to go through. Right. Um, all it requires now is a public meeting rather than the public, what they're calling the public bid process. There is a finding of public interest that requires about, um, there's five findings that you would have to discuss at that meeting. Um, and you can move forward without having the, uh, 200, I mean, 21 to 120 day, uh, open period for additional proposals.

Yeah, but the public is allowed to participate even in the, the, the other, the, the original

way. Yes. There's no, we're not excluding the public in either direction. No, what, I agree. I was just, uh, alerting you to an alternative process that the, the alternative process would eliminate the need to solicit additional proposals.

Oh, well, we want, we want to just, I mean, we want, we want there to be competition. So, so I don't think we want to follow that path. Okay. Right. Yeah. Mayor, just for clarity,

I think is, I think it's important to have the valuation period of the current unsolicited, then create a competition period for other unsolicited. I think inherently the evaluation period is a competition period in some ways, de facto, but having a formalized competition period as well, I think is important to ensure we're getting the best options coming forward.

Okay. Is, is, is, so we have a majority. Okay. All right. Yes. I, I just want a little clarity. I just want to make sure, Dwayne, are you sure that we cannot accept this proposal tonight, uh, and start the review at the same time? Because we can't spend that. They gave us a check for $25,000. We can't spend that for the review. I just want to be really certain.

You, you, you, you can spend it for the review. I think past administrations have had some angst about actually spending the dollars that proposers have, uh, used for the application fee to evaluate applications, particularly if the commission decides not to move forward. But that is the risk that they take submitting an unsolicited proposal. So once we start evaluating, yes, we can, uh, take down, we can spend down off of the application fee that is submitted. It just has been the policy here not to do so, but that is what those, those funds are for. They, they, they take the risk of submitting the application. That application fee is for the evaluation of the proposal.

I just want to be certain that we cannot move forward this evening with accepting the Meridian

proposal. Well, they have to determine whether or not the proposal, uh, qualifies in the sense of

being complete enough to accept. Is that what this is about? If the commission is, is okay with the proposal, having not received any input from your staff in terms of a formal evaluation that you want to enter in a comprehensive agreement with Meridian, you can request a resolution for tonight.

Because what I'm, what I'm basically saying is I know that this is the first of several that we're going to get. There is going to be an evaluation period regardless. Staff's going to evaluate, we're going to evaluate, we're going to have a public participation meeting. In other words, the evaluation that would first occur now, uh, is not the end all and be all, uh, by staff taking a look at this proposal. Uh, but for me, what it does is it just gets this process moving, uh, because we're going to have to evaluate anyway. Uh, all of them will have to be evaluated. So that's why I'm just wondering why we're just going to wait. Can we skip that step? Yes. You cannot skip the evaluation

step, but what, what, what I'm saying is yes, you can, as a commission, adopt a resolution tonight. If you are comfortable with the idea of moving forward with this particular proposal in terms of entering a comprehensive agreement, there's no obligation for you to enter into the comprehensive agreement, but you're stating your intent to enter into a comprehensive agreement and enter into a negotiation phase. Once you have evaluated all the other proposals, if there are other additional proposals that come through. So other proposals really wouldn't be submitted until we, we, we,

made the decision to move forward, to enter into, express our intent to enter into a comprehensive

agreement. The way that the statute is, is constructed is that you have, you have your valuation period, you have the consideration of the proposal. Right. Once the commission decides to move forward with a particular proposal, then the notice goes into, uh, the Florida register and other proposers are permitted to submit proposals. Once you have announced your intent to move forward with a particular proposal. And what I'm, what I'm hearing is the commission desires to, uh, or desires to go forward with a particular proposal so that you can start receiving additional proposals. I don't, I, I personally, just to be

clear. I don't, I think that is a very, very bad path to go down. Let me, let me, if I may, because I remember when we've done this in the past and we've had unsolicited proposals and then we've received other ones that were not similar in nature, that we were not able to evaluate them when we looked at it. So if somebody proposes a 300,000 square foot building, uh, with a certain financing structure and somebody proposes a 100,000 square foot building, that's completely different with a completely different financing structure, you're now comparing two entirely different proposals and we couldn't score them

against each other. So what's changed? No, that's the statute says the same project. What we've, what I've advised in the past is that there have been, um, proposers that propose a completely different type of project for the same property. And I've said that would not constitute the same project, but in this case, we're looking for projects that are city hall, uh, whatever, as, as long as it is the same project, meaning a city hall, uh, complex. So to my point then, thank you. I appreciate that. Sure. So if

somebody were to come along with an unsolicited proposal and say, I want to do a 50 story building that has 10 floors of city hall in it and 30 floors of office or residential or something, and I'm going to use the revenue off of that other component of the building so that the city doesn't have to pay a dime, that's a completely different project, right? And you can't evaluate that against somebody that just comes in and says, Hey, I want to build a building for you and make you pay for it. No, that's not true. No, hold on. Mayor, I'm not asking you. I'm asking the city attorney.

Thank you. The same project. I would, I would suggest that a city hall building would be the same project regardless of the other ancillary components. So then how would you evaluate those two against each other? So if I have somebody that says, hang on, let me, let me finish. If I have

somebody that says, I'm going to come in and build a 10 story building and you're going to pay for it. And it's going to cost $5 million a year in an availability payment. And somebody else comes and proposes a building that is a hybrid building that has other components to it that are going to have their own revenue stream and the city doesn't have to pay anything for it. How do I

score those against each other? That would be the prerogative of the commission. The statute doesn't, the statute doesn't lay out particular criteria to do the comparison between the other proposals. And like I said, I don't think it even contemplates it comparing the proposals actually.

Right. Well, we've struggled with that in the past and, and, and how we compare projects that are substantially different in scope against each other. And, and, and previously we've, we've, where we struggled in the past. We, we've been, we've been told that we can't compare the projects because they're, they're not the same. And so we were told that the other proposers did not bring in something that was similar in nature to the initial proposal. That's not true. That's not true. That's not true. Yes, it is. Mayor, thank you. Your reaction might be different from that. I'm glad. That's not true. I hope you were paying

attention. Because I was evaluating the proposal. I made the decision that we have success in this process. What you're trying to do is derail the process and we don't want to do that. We are trying to get this thing. You're trying to ram this process through and I disagree with that. And we know that we do not have to compare A with B. We compare A with what our criteria and expectations are. And if they can't interpret them the way we want them interpreted, then they lose. If we find someone that doesn't interpret it the way we want them, then they win. We don't have to compare them. Someone can come through with this idea and someone can come through with another idea and still a third idea and they don't have to look alike at all. We just want them to be, to fit what our needs and expectations are. What are our needs and expectations if we have not articulated those? So that's why we're choosing

hybrid approach number C. Then we don't need to accept this other one tonight. We do. Well, we do. Because that's part of the hybrid approach. No, you don't. Because now you're letting the developer

drive the process. And that's a mistake. It's not. Mr. Mayor. The developer's not driving the process. No, that's misinformation. Mr. Mayor, if I can just maybe illustrate what we're doing on Holiday Park. So maybe that will help clarify some of the confusion. So on Holiday Park Park and Garage, staff has put together 15 to 20 different criteria based off of Florida statute, public purpose use, other things like that. We're not comparing Proposal 1 to Proposal 2 and saying which one we like the best. We're just merely going through a checklist to make sure that all the foundational basis are achieved. Then we bring that back to the commission. Once the commission desires their intent to enter to a comprehensive agreement, and once that competition period is over, then staff would then start doing a little more due diligence, probably the financial studies, comparing them to each other. I believe in the water treatment plant, the process was we went out and we had a consultant do a pro and con list or a benefits and challenges list that the commission used when they ultimately ranked the water proposals. So that's kind of where we're at right now. So what you would see for Holiday Park Parking Garage before the summer recess would be just that staff's evaluation of the primary basic criteria, not this is who we would recommend or this one has these successes and these ones has the challenges. So just for understanding of what staff is doing on Holiday Park. And that's coming to us before we recess.

That is our intention. So that we could actually have a walk-on resolution. Let's not talk about Holiday Park right now. Let's just focus on this one project.

No, I understand. So basically then, that's going to come and we'll be able to put the resolution on and accept the proposal and then open it up to other proposals. So with what you just heard here from this discussion, and if we do decide to do C, which is the hybrid, do you have any issues

if we move this forward tonight, accept the proposal? You're going to have to evaluate this proposal at some point in time anyway. So why not now? Because also, if we do C, you're going to continue to advance the city project option A anyway, correct? We're going to do two paths.

So I have to step back and say, as the city attorney alluded, it would be up to the city commission and their comfort level if they want to accept it without staff doing that initial evaluation. There would be nothing that stops you from doing that according to the city attorney.

Option C, if we would move forward with that, I think staff would then be trying to finalize the negotiation with the owner's representative. I think we'd need clarification from the city commission if you'd want us to issue the design criteria package and start that formal solicitation process, or if you want to wait and see how the unsolicited proposals go. So I think there's still some additional direction that we're going to be as part of option C.

Regardless, though, at the end of the day, staff will evaluate everything that comes in, and ultimately the commission will make the decision. And the commission will get to evaluate based on what you're presenting to us, and we will make a decision at the end of the day.

If I may add, whatever proposals we receive or that we're directed to evaluate, staff would still engage in a negotiation process with a firm, a vendor, developer, what have you. So just because we receive a proposal that we might want to explore further, it doesn't mean that the provisions within that proposal would be what we are bound to. So ultimately, we would have to negotiate everything as part of a comprehensive agreement.

Exactly. Pam?

My question, Ben, just for clarity, I want to make sure what I just heard you when you answered Commissioner Glassman's question. With going with option C, are we in position to execute this properly if we go with option C today? Because I heard some rollback on what we're saying. So if you could explain where we are in position if we move with C, how would that move forward?

So with option C, the clarity I would want from the commission is finalize the owner's rep negotiations and bring back an agreement for your consideration, right? That's something we could do. The second thing would be, would you want us to issue a design criteria package so that way we continue to move forward with the city-led initiative and see what happens in the meantime with the unsolicited proposal? And then the third one would be, if you have a desire to accept the unsolicited proposal by Meridian and do a notice of intent for a comprehensive agreement and create a competition period. Unfortunately, I can't answer if that would be tonight or if it would be the next meeting or the one after. That would be a commission decision.

The commission still has a number of different opportunities in which to change its mind, add to the process, bring in the community. This just triggers the process, gets it going. And that's the whole

point of this, moving it, moving it along. Another question I have is, is can a unsolicited proposer adjust their initial proposal during the process? I would defer to the city attorney. My

understanding is they, they may. We've received amended and modified unsolicited proposals in the, in the past. I'm not sure once the acceptance is done, what that limitation would be. So I'd defer to

the city attorney. The statute is silent with regards to that. In my experience, if I'm recalling right, we've had unsolicited proposers that have adjusted during the process. Is that my memory? I think that's what the city manager was alluding to in terms of when we negotiate. We have a base

proposal that comes in and during the negotiation of the, uh, the comprehensive agreement adjustments have been made. But I think you're, you're referring to that actual adjustment of the proposal.

As I said, the statute is, is silent on that. I, I, I, you know, the, the window of the competition, competitive, uh, time period for submitting new proposals is still open at that time. So I don't know if there's anything that would bar them from, uh, submitting another proposal within that window as

well. Right. Yeah. I don't think there is. Okay. Um, what, uh, any suggestions or feedback, Raquel or D Wayne in terms of if we went with a competition period, the duration that you might

suggest that to be for this project? I think at a minimum, uh, a 60 day period would be appropriate. Um, and of course, additional time I think would help the industry put a better package together for the city to review, but I think at a minimum 60 days. Okay. D Wayne. I, I don't have any comment

with regards to that. That, that that's something that staff has to, um, suggest with regards to

evaluation. Ben. I concur with the city manager. I think 60 days is, is an adequate period for a baseline. Uh, also remember you'll be at summer recess as well. Um, so you won't be meeting during that, that period of time, but 60 days, I think it's a minimum. John. All right. Mayor, I think we have

good. Okay. All right. So what direction are we giving this, uh, city attorney then? So to exceed, to, to, to, to accept the unsolicited proposal, but are we skipping, are we skipping over the initial review process? Can we, are we allowed to waive that or is that part of the process? No, you can't, you can't waive the evaluation process. Right. So we're going to go forward with the evaluation process. The question that, that Commissioner Glassman poses, whether or not

it can be done concurrently, um, with the anticipation of the other proposals being evaluated, as well. And I say there's no bar to that. So, uh, this project will be evaluated, but you are also stating your intent to enter into a comprehensive agreement for this type of a project. So that

would be a resolution this evening, accepting it and then opening up the process. And we would set those 60 days that we're hearing from everyone. So that could, that could happen tonight. Yes.

Thank you. All right. So it begins the process. Yes. All right. And in concurrent to that, I think it's important to continue the city design criteria package process. Yes. Yeah. So does that

make sense? Yeah, that's hybrid C. Yep. So option C, we're going to finalize the negotiations for the owner's rep and bring that back to city commission for consideration of award. We're going to issue a design criteria package solicitation that will go through the normal procurement process. And it sounds like the commission is directing or asking staff to bring a walk on item for tonight to show its intent to enter a comprehensive agreement and set a competition period with, for the meridian on solicit proposal.

And, and just for my stance, I'm, I'm, I am comfortable with option A. So when this comes through tonight, I understand that I will be, I won't be, um, voting for, uh, the walk on for hybrid. Okay. All right. Just putting it on the table. All right. Okay.

All right. So do you need anything else? I think there's a majority that wants to still move this

thing forward then. No, I have clear direction. I don't know if the city attorney or city manager

has any clarifying needs. No, I think the direction is clear. Thank you. Okay. Thank you.

And I just wanted to clarify points that were made earlier. If you remember the water treatment plant process, um, we received four very different proposals, very different. And yet we were still able to make our way through that process, um, and get to what we needed. But again, just remind everyone that those were not similar in any way, shape or form the entire part of their proposals,

everything very different. Thank you. All right. Uh, moving on to business three, uh, Fort Lauderdale police department headquarters. Who will be speaking to that?

Anthony Fajardo. Okay. Um, good afternoon, Anthony Fajardo, assistant city manager. I will be giving you, uh, a joint presentation with, uh, Brett Chancellor. He's the associate principal, Weiss Janney Ellisoner and associates Inc. They are the company that is doing the third-party peer review on the police department headquarters. Um, in the room though, I just want to point out, we do have representatives here from Moss construction, as well as a Ecom and Thornton Tomasetti. Uh, as I said, I'll be doing, uh, the introduction to the agenda, which would be an update on the construction status and the phase one. Um, I'll turn it over to Brent to talk about phase two, and then I will close out the presentation, uh, with next steps. And if there's any questions that you have that we didn't answer during the presentation, we've, we can address them at that point. All right. Great. Thank you. Uh, so just to remind everybody about the phase one deflection. So this was only in the area of the building on the north abutting Broward Boulevard, as you can see in the image. Uh, the remediation work has begun there. There was a lot of back and forth between TT, the engineer of record and WJE for the peer review on coming to an agreement on how to address the deflection in the area, uh, to walk you through it. Uh, just for the first story, there was micropile installations. Um, those have been completed. There's an epoxy injection that should have been done yesterday. Interior slab restoration should happen on the six. Uh, the first story column, column jackets, uh, should be completed by now. And the third story columns and cantilever beams, the column enhancements should be complete with the fiber reinforced polymers, um, expected, uh, for about a two week installation once proposals have been received, which should have been received on May 30th. The upturned cantilever beams, as you're aware of was already done. And just to let you know, we did send an amendment to AECOM for their agreement, uh, on May 6th and Rhonda, Rhonda Hassan Montoya is working with their city, their, uh, attorneys to discuss what that agreement, um, would look like. Uh, just to walk you through a little bit of what we saw. Um, so here's the enhancements you see, uh, starting from the ground floor, you see the, um, uh, micropiles, the caps and the column work on the first floor, third floor, you see the column work and then the upturned beams. And then also there will be a fiber reinforced polymer added to the column on the third floor, as well as under the upturned beam, uh, a more of an oblique angle. You can see the, uh, the four beams on the top, the upturned beams, as well as the two columns on the third floor. And then all four columns at the ground floor, where the micro micro piles and the caps and the foundation work and the column work was, was completed or is under, um, is, uh, under currently under construction. Uh, just to give you an update on the overall construction status, the project is about 90% complete pending items include interior finishes, um, the pavers on level two, the skylights or the skylight, the retaining wall and the landscaping and the fire alarm testing, which has already started. Um, by percentage, we have 80% of the site work complete about 35% of the landscaping, 99% of the drywall and ceilings. The floorings at 75 and the paints at 60. At this point, I'll turn it over to Brent and he can start going through, um, the phase two, which you received, uh, as your memo or in early May. Anthony. Um, so with this phase two summary,

we're going to go through basically what we had put into our report, uh, with regards to our findings of the peer review. And you represent whom? I represent, uh, with Janie Elsner, WJE. And you were the,

and you were the third party, um, contracting firm to investigate and inspect the work that was done

by the other parties, correct? So, so for this phase, our job was to review the design of the

rest of the building. Yes. Did you have anything to do with the original design? We did not. No. So you just, you're here to inspect and review the design of, uh, that other parties had done, correct? That's correct. Okay. Just want to make sure, because there seems to be some confusion in the media that we were using the same people that built it and designed it to inspect it. And you had, you had nothing to do with that, correct? That's correct. Okay. Thank you.

Okay. Um, and so this, this peer review or design review was to be for the remaining portion of the structure. Um, and it was a review of the design basis, the design codes and loads, um, the design criteria, a review of drawings, reports, and really a review of the structural design itself, the gravity and lateral load paths, which means, you know, put load in the building, how does it get down to the soil? The wind blows on the building, how does that get down to the soil? And to do calculations for a representative fraction of the elements in the building, as well as confirm, uh, some of the building code provisions as it relates to structural integrity provisions. Um, we grouped our findings into three categories. Uh, the first category we called life safety, um, and the second category was serviceability and the third documentation. And to, and we developed a total of 16 items and to resolve these items, um, there's a number of things that can happen. There could be building rectifications or changes to the building. There could be additional data provided to us, um, because we did their analysis based on the design drawings and design specifications. Um, and we all know that in construction things can be a bit different. Um, or there could be updated building documentation to address some of these things. And so it does, it's not necessary that every, every one of these would require a change to the building. Now, shortly after we released our, uh, draft report, um, it became clear that what I understand is life safety as an engineer and how that is interpreted in the codes is very different from the general public. And so we had released a follow on letter describing what that meant. And I want to try to explain a little bit of that here now, before we jump into the findings themselves. And so when we refer to life safety, um, the building code requires that the buildings be designed for an extreme event. And one example of that is for hurricane loads. And this little diagram on the right is sort of a diagram of what happens as the load is increased on the building. And so this building was supposed to be designed for a category five, uh, hurricane, but everyday loads on the building like today are quite, quite small. And under that category five hurricane, it's not only has to survive that it has to maintain a pretty significant margin of safety at that point. And so when we develop a finding or an item, it's looking at that extreme load condition and is that margin of safety maintained. And so even though we put it into a category of life safety, that does not mean that the building today in its current condition is a problem. It just needs to be addressed and resolved in some way before that building would ever see that full loading condition. The serviceability category, um, it's related to the building's ability to, um, perform without excessive deflections, rotation, vibration, et cetera. Um, and we check those typically under a lower level of load when they call those service loads, that those are checked down. And then on the third category for documentation, uh, we would expect that this building would have a design life of greater than 50 years. And during that design life, the city may choose to make changes to the building. There may be changes in function, um, and other things. And it's important that that documentation that we put together today, uh, reflect the design of the building so that when an engineer comes and picks that up in 20 years, they're able to, uh, look at that and design that change accordingly. And so now what I'm going to do is I'm going to go through the 16 items that we, uh, laid out in the report, uh, one by one. Um, feel free to stop and ask questions, um, as we go. Um, there's a lot of text on the left. I'm going to try to explain it through pictures on the right. Um, but the text is there, um, if you want to read that as well. So the, the first, uh, finding we had was related to concrete shear walls within the building. And this is for lateral wind loads. Um, there are three concrete shear walls, um, that are present in the building. And what we found is that under those, uh, full wind loads at that category five level is that the first story of that south shear wall, um, did not have sufficient margin of safety to, um, meet the code at that point. So let me just stop you at this point to

your, to your earlier comment. While you may be making these findings, um, are you also suggesting

that they are remediable? Yeah. Everything that we put in our findings, each item is fixable. There's nothing about this building that would not be a fixable issue. Okay. Thank you.

If I could just ask you one more question based on what the mayor just asked you. So when I went through the report, there were many times where you raised concerns, but you also said, but if you explain this a little bit more, it might not be a concern something that I'm just paraphrasing. Uh, how, how are you going about getting the answers that you need to then say, okay, I understand what you're saying. It's no longer a concern. Sure. So the typical peer review

process, which would happen normally in design, but this is kind of after the fact during construction, it could happen at one phase or multiple phases of design. And the peer reviewer would review what was provided to them, develop a series of items, and that would be provided to the design team for their consideration as they're moving forward. Um, what would happen here is as we provide these issues, there are additional information that can be provided back to us. And so there's a little bit of a back and forth that needs to happen before this can be fully resolved. Because as I said, we evaluated it on the basis of the design drawings and design specifications that were provided to us. As we'll talk a bit later, the actual material strengths in the building may be higher than the design strength. And we could take advantage of some of that as, as we try to review and resolve some of these issues, um, to get through these 16 items and make sure that they're addressed. Okay. So those discussions will continue. Okay. That's right. Up, up till now, after we released, uh, the draft report, we've had multiple meetings and the past couple of weeks, we've had weekly meetings. Um, uh, the design team has provided us with responses to part of those items. And I believe we received the rest of those responses this morning. I haven't had a chance to go through them, but that's the process, the back and forth process of, we receive the information, we review it, we agree, disagree, we ask for more, we say this is sufficient to resolve the issue, whatever, whatever the case is. And that process continues forward. Thank you. Um, in the report, we were, uh, we did put some timeframes related to some of these issues. This particular one, we put zero to two months. Uh, the draft report, uh, was sent to the city, I think in of April. The reason it says zero to two months is we feel like this should be addressed before the major hurricane hits the building. Um, and that's the only logic behind that timeframe. Um, in terms of rectifying this condition, uh, we did look at a conceptual rectification where a sheer wall was added where the red line is shown at the south end of the building. Um, if that is done, that will provide additional strength to address the issue. The second, uh, item is related to the foundations of those sheer walls. Um, so we had looked at those, the capacity of those foundations, uh, and the two that are shown with the dark box, um, we found that had some deficiencies. If you do put in the rectification, which we suggested on the previous slide, that addresses the one at the south end of the building, the north end may require some additional work, um, as far as addressing that condition. And that may also be a point where additional information is provided and we're able to resolve that in another way. There were three column foundations that we found, um, in terms of their capacity relative to their demand, um, was exceeded at that, that really high level. Um, one possible way to fix this is to enlarge the footings. Um, is to what enlarge the footings, make them bigger. Um, but the design team has pointed out that the design load that they have put on this building is actually in excess of what the code requires. For example, the roof, uh, the roof live load that the code requires is 20 pounds per square foot. What was shown on the drawings and what we evaluated for was 30 pounds per square foot. And it may be possible to reduce that to the code, uh, allowed limit. And this issue could be resolved. Now I would say that the city gets a say in this, they get to decide if what they want to do here. And we're just relaying what we found and the process as it stands to date. And so the design team has told us, Hey, we think we can reduce this from 30 to 20 because that's what the code only requires. We chose to go above that. Um, we can go back and evaluate those foundations and see if

that resolves the issue. Well, um, are we on page 15? You're on 14. I am on 14. Yes. Um, I mean, it's better to be safe than sorry, right? It's better to have the, the, the extra capacity rather

than the, than what the code provides as a minimum. So, so the code is, so often what the code asks for is well above what it, in many cases, what it'll ever see in its design life. Okay. Um, but it's, it's the building code tries to anticipate what could occur over the design life of a building. Now the 30 pounds versus the 20, the 30 does give you some additional flexibility in terms of both re-roofing in 20, 30 years. Um, it gives you some additional flexibility as it relates to whatever you want to do up there, but it's not necessarily required by code.

So how did you establish the 30 if 20 was all that was necessary by code?

So when, when we evaluate the design, we took what was on the design drawings, which said 30. Right. And we said, if it's supposed to be designed for 30, if that was what is on the drawing, then we're going to make sure it has the strength to resist that 30 pounds. Okay. And if it doesn't, we'll raise the issue. Okay. I get it. All right. Thank you. Sure. So the next is what's called the slide bearings. That's actually misspelling there on the left. It should be slide, not side. Um, but there's two bearings at the expansion joint between the main portion of the building and the community room to the Northeast. Um, we had found that the, the loads on those slide bearings at the full design load, that, that upper, upper limit load, would exceed the manufacturer's, um, published capacities for those. Uh, the design team has acknowledged that that would, that is the case and plan to upgrade those bearings with a higher capacity bearing. The fifth item here, um, is, uh, related to a code provision that's called, it's called structural integrity, but it's basically a prescriptive provision that if a really, really extreme event were to happen, that would cause a column to be removed and fail. And we're typically thinking, I don't like to say these things, but something like a bomb, but it would cause that to be removed there. The code tries to give us some residual capacity to the structure so that we don't have, uh, that localized condition spread through the building. And the problem is, is that the system that is used, and it's widely used in South Florida, um, there's some, a way that the system is used that the code is silent about. And so we said, well, we're not sure what to do with it, um, because the code doesn't directly tell us what to do with it. So we'll raise the question, the issue, and see if the design team has information that we do not have. Um, in, in the efforts of resolving this, uh, we had a phone call with the building department last week to see if this type of system, which is widely used, is just deemed to comply because it's been used in many other buildings. Their summary of their comments was they see nothing unusual about this, but as engineers, we are the engineers we needed to figure out this provision. And so this effort is ongoing. Um, ironically, there is a little bit of test data that was some gentlemen at our company had participated in as a research project. Um, TT brought that up as a potential way to resolve this. Um, those discussions and determining if that data fits this application are ongoing. Uh, ultimately, I think we're going to be able to get to a resolution here. It's just a matter of are, are we addressing the code issue, even though the code is silent on it. As it relates to columns, um, we, we found that there were up to 24 columns that were overstressed, meaning that full design, uh, extreme load was greater than the design capacity, that reduced design capacity with the factor of safety. Um, but, and we say under axial flexor, that basically just means under an axial load and a little bit of bending on the column. Um, however, of those 24, only eight were overstressed by more than 10%. And why is that distinction important? So we evaluated the building under a specific set of assumptions. And those assumptions are related to, uh, design strengths, um, where actual material strengths might be higher. They're related to certain modeling parameters. And there are variability within the building code. We often think that the building code is a no, a go no go type of document, but it's actually much more of a gray area than, than we would otherwise anticipate. And so, and there's also building codes that say, and an existing building, you can go over by 5% with no problems. It sort of acknowledges that we have a very large factor of safety built into these, uh, these structures. And so that's why we've presented to the city, uh, considering all of those things that even though 24 were overstressed, we don't need to worry about anything less than 10%. And quite frankly, even of the eight that are left, only two are greater than about 13 to 14% over. And so those are probably the two that I would focus on the grade the most. And the design team has indicated that they do intend to provide us some additional material strengths as it relates to the steel that was used. And that can be used to reevaluate some of these things. So they'll just strengthen the column. So, so it's, that's one way to rectify it is just strengthen it. If we can take advantage of the design, the actual material properties that were used to justify that this goes away, that's another

way. Um, well, I mean, I, with all due respect, not so much directed to you, but with regard to this whole process, you know, we're not looking for opportunities to kind of explain away deficiencies. We just want to address them and, and reassure the men and women who are working there as well as the public, that they're able to enter into a building that is safe and will be safe for the next two or three generations. You know, we don't want to be able to just find, you know, back road justifications to just maintain the status quo.

And, and, and I don't think that's what we're doing here. Okay. What we're trying to say is that the code says, here's this narrow lane. Right. Right. The reality is the building will perform well outside of that a bit, even if you go into the shoulder a little bit. I mean, you don't want to drive off in the ditch. Come on. I mean, well, that's the point, that's the point. And so when we make this, it's like pickleball, you know, you don't want to go, oh, I'm sorry.

Is that your, okay. So you don't want to go outside the lines, but you can still perform.

Sure. Okay. And, and so when we make this recommendation, it's not to try to just make stuff go away. It's that we believe that the building will perform as intended in the parameters that we've, we've recommended. Okay. And there's certainly other information that can be provided that will make the question even not, not exist anymore. Okay. Because it's, it is correct and plausible, reasonable to use the actual material strengths that are measured, to go back and say, well, our design was this much. The actual is 15, 20% more than that.

We can take advantage of that because it's known. It's, before it was, okay, it's got to be at least that. Now we know what it is because it's been measured.

Okay.

The second one is, is kind of a similar thing. We had found that up to 50 columns did not meet a, some of the code provisions and it was related to spacing of the column ties. And a tie is a piece of horizontal reinforcement that wraps the vertical reinforcement. And the code is, it's once again, one of those go, no go. If it's slightly more than this spacing, you can't count on it. It doesn't mean it's going to behave that way. And there are other codes that say, well, we acknowledge that actually it does have additional capacity and we'll give you some of that capacity. And what we have said is we've looked at those other codes. We've looked at the actual spacing that's there. And based on that, the capacity is there. And so we don't think you need to do anything at all here. It doesn't strictly meet this 318-14 provision, but if we go look at a different code, ACI-369, that lets us account for some of that, then it's got sufficient capacity at that really high demand that the code requires. So we looked at the roof beams, particularly as it relates to some of the mechanical areas. And we had pointed out that there was a discrepancy on the drawings. There's one that identified a uniform live load. And there was one that identified equipment weight. And depending on which one you chose, it may or may not work. The design team has said that the the 150 pounds per square foot live load is outdated. They think it could be reduced to 75 PSF, and that would still exceed what's there for the weight of the equipment. Once again, the city has a say in this, but we can go back and reevaluate at that updated design load.

So why would the designers come up with the 150 pounds per square foot benchmark if it was outdated?

Help me out here. So I think that's probably a question better addressed to them as to why it was here and then went into construction and now we're updating it. Sometimes early in the design process, you don't know the full programming of the building yet and what equipment will be used. And so you pick a high number and then that could have gotten updated before.

Well, we do know what it was going to be used for. We do know what the purpose of the building is going to be used for. People working in a building, police department.

So these areas is for mechanical equipment. And so it's all those rooftop chiller units, etc. that are going to be there. And in the design process, if you're early on, you may not know if it's a 20,000 pound unit, a 30,000 pound unit or 12,000 pound unit, which these ended up, I believe, having about 12,000 pounds. And so you might say to make sure I'm covered for whatever the mechanical engineer decides to use, I'm going to use 150 PSF. Now, that doesn't say what the future of the building would be in 20, 30 years, what you need to put up there.

Well, again, I'm just a small town lawyer here. These numbers are alien to me. I'm just trying to use common sense to try to understand how you start from one point and then end up at another point. They knew what the size and the dimensions of the interior space were in terms of determining the capacity and the need for air conditioning or heating. So they already kind of know what size units they're going to be using. And then to design a building to hold that piece up on the roof, they should kind of know the the size of the of the unit they're going to be using. So how does it go from 150 to 75 already knowing the size of the units that they're going to be needing?

I don't know if I'm going to be able to fully answer that question, but what I can what I can answer rhetorical question. Sure. Because because I'm just trying I don't want to, again,

have to rationalize or justify the reduced the the reduced quality of this of this particular structure by insinuating that, well, we didn't really know it, you know, that what was going to happen, what kind of what kind of air conditioning unit we're going to need. You know, I mean, it's just I don't know how they picked 150 and then we're we're comfortable with 75.

So what we would have expected in a design process is that early in the design, when we don't know a whole lot about what's going to happen up there yet, we don't know the weights of the equipment, we might start with the 150. And then as we get closer and closer to construction documents, and everything starts to become more nailed down as to this is what we're using, this is its weight, this is what we anticipate for future weight, that we could take that number and maybe whittle that

down. So this is really a defect then. But this is not a defect. But we what is under that thinking,

what is a little bit different is we usually expect that process to be complete by the time you hit construction, not to be at this point in revising it. Okay. But in terms of what equipment is there, what uniform live load is needed to address that equipment, even in excess of what that current equipment is, 75 is enough to address that. And you find 75 is enough to address it? We would want to reevaluate under that we've held off evaluating till we have better direction as to the what the city wants to do here. But in doing quick calculations, that 12,000 pound piece of equipment over its footprint is more like 50-55.

75 and the 75 is more than adequate to sustain the weight relative to that. Yes. Okay. All right.

Did you want to say something, Pam? Yes, I'm, I'm, I'm uncomfortable with what I'm hearing because I'm hearing, um, numbers and then it's being suggested what the city is comfortable with. So I'm trying to understand if there's a, um, a requirement and then there's be an adjustment and then it's up to the city if we are satisfied or comfortable with it. Where's the safety line in that?

The, the safety is addressed in both scenarios where the difference between 175 and 150 is the 150 says that if I've got equipment 10, 20 years down the road, it's twice as heavy. I still have enough margin at that larger equipment weight to address that. What, what, what I'm saying in terms of the city's direction to us is that it wasn't 150. The design team said 75 is more than enough. For what is there. And we've looked at the numbers and that seems to be true that we have no problem reducing it to 75, but it's not our building. It's your building. And if you decide you want it at 150 and you want to keep it at 150, the margin of safety is still there at 75, but it's your choice as to whether or not to say, no, we want to keep it at 150. We want to maintain that

future flexibility for that equipment. Thank you, Anthony question. So who in the city's making a

determination like that? So as Brent was saying, uh, it's probably more common practice that it happens before this point. We would look at it as whatever the specifications were on the plans, right? So whenever it comes to the building department, they're going to look at whatever the engineer of record has written on the plans and what those specs are. And so they would go through it in terms of what we're talking about now. I think all Brent is trying to say is we may not have known that it went from 150 to 75 if it happened during the regular process. They just pointed it out because the plan showed the 150. We more than likely would have been totally fine with the 75 because I don't think there was anything in the specs that said that the roof had to be at 150. It's just what is designed to carry the load of the equipment on the roof. And is it adequate for that? And what Brent is saying is that the 75 appears to be adequate for that. So in terms of the normal process, that number may have changed and we might not have even really been aware of it as long as it had gone through the review process and everyone had come to terms with that meets all the specification requirements, what we put in maybe the RFP and what's part of the

building code. Right. I get that. And now it's at 75. And so what I'm hearing him say is we have to decide, are we comfortable with that? Right. And so if we're not comfortable with that, then we need to go to AECOM and say, we're not comfortable with this Delta, right? Yes. If we're comfortable with it, we're going to say, Hey, outside engineering firms comfortable with it. We're comfortable with it. Good to go. So who's making that determination, that city determination of if we're comfortable with

a component like this? So I think what would need to happen here is we have, you know, we have several experts that are involved in this review on WJE side. And then we have Thornton Tomasetti and AECOM. We also have our in-house individuals. Some of them have a structural engineering background that we can lean on. And for instance, the structural plans examiner, the chief structural plans examiner, we could talk to him and see what his recommendation might be and the building official to see if they have any concerns there. I would, I would say that in terms of the recommendation from WJE, it appears to meet the loads that we would anticipate for the rooftop structure. Right.

Under, under the current conditions. Right. As to me as well. And, and would like, I think it's important to still have the city team member to sign off, approve that we're comfortable with each of these recommendations that they're suggesting they're comfortable with. Yeah. Right. We, we, we've

already, as he mentioned earlier, we've already engaged the building official in one capacity on this report. We can definitely keep engaging them. I had intended on whatever remediations we come to terms with because they're going to have to go through the review process anyway. Right. Same thing we did with the phase one. So they will be involved throughout the process.

Right. So great. So in summary, we have two sets of completely independent eyes on something that someone else is building. In other words, right? Yes. JWE and, and city team. Yes. Great. Thank you. You're welcome. Sorry, commissioner. I don't know if you have more, but that's nice. Okay. Please proceed.

Item nine is related to what we call serviceability. And this is really, this, this item is related to the lateral movement of the building under wind load. And we're talking specifically about the community room area for this. Our analysis showed that it was sensitive to certain parameters. And what we've asked for is that, well, let me back up. When it comes to these issues, the code might give recommendations, but they are not code requirements. And the reason they are not code requirements is different systems have different movement capacities. And what they want you to do is match those up. You expect the building to move this much. Can the system handle it? And so what we've asked for is we've asked the design team to provide some additional information to address our question as it relates to these assumptions and confirm amongst members of the design team, because it's not just structural, it's architectural, it's the building envelope, et cetera, that whatever movement is expected, that that system was designed to handle it. This is not a retractable roof, right? No, no. And the movements we're talking about are, if you were to look at the building, you wouldn't even know it moved, but it still moves a little bit. Okay. Is that a case of

earthquakes? Well, Florida is... In other words, I'm not trying to be facetious, but is the design of the building going to be subject to the, if it's a strong wind, the, the, the, the overhang is going to cause perhaps the roof to be impacted by a strong wind? So what we're talking about here more is

the building might move sideways a little bit, the top of the building. The top of the building. Relative to the bottom. And we're talking very small amounts. Well, I mean, but it's an all glass building. So would that impact the glass? That's why we want to check. So that glass typically has a sealant joint around it. Right. And that sealant joint is designed for a certain amount of movement. Okay. And so what we're asking is, okay, whoever did that component, how much can it move? Structural engineer, how much does your model say that it's moving? Do those match up? Okay. And so we're just making sure that that bookkeeping is taken care of. Okay. Thank you. This comment is related to the building period. So all things that have mass vibrate at a specific frequency, whether we realize it or not. For typical buildings, this particular building, if you only consider the reinforced concrete shear walls, has a natural fundamental period of vibration that's greater than 0.9 seconds. That's more than what we would expect for a building of this height. We would expect it to be less, more in the 0.5, 0.6 or less range. It's not, once again, it's not a code provision, but it's more about just typical building design. To demonstrate what that means graphically, if, for example, if wind were to blow on the building, right now it kind of wants to twist a little bit, and it wants to twist around that dark X up towards those two shear walls at the top. And that natural frequency is about 0.9 seconds or greater than 0.9 seconds. What we've said is, if you put that shear wall in that we've recommended at the bottom, that pulls that point down more closer to the center of the building, which we would want it to be more symmetric, and changes that to more of a lateral instead of a twisting type of vibration. It's not required by the building code. It's something that we had noticed in the design process, so we wanted to point it out to the design team as part of the process. This, number 11, is related to concrete cover depth, and why does that matter? We need to maintain a certain amount of concrete over the top of the steel for durability purposes, to make sure that steel has a long service life and is not corroding. This appears to be mostly a documentation issue, and the design team is going to provide us with that documentation to show that, yes indeed, the proper cover depths were maintained. And they indicated to us verbally that the precast supplier just noted that, hey, this is just a, the line is on the wrong place on the drawing. It wasn't actually there. Items 12, 13, and 14 are basically related to documentation within the drawings, because we need those to be, sort of live on 20, 30, 40, 50 years down the road. The design team is working to provide that documentation and update those. Now, one thing that the design team has pointed out to us, and that we looked at a bit in this process, is they have indicated that, if you look on the right side, that there are a number of masonry walls in this building, particularly in the first story, that they are contending are part of the lateral force resisting system. We, in our evaluation for this report, did not consider those, because the information we had at that time indicated that the connection at the top and bottom of those walls was not necessarily a reliable connection, or something that we could have confidence in. There's just too many unknowns related to that. And so we didn't think that was a reasonable choice at that time to use that. And so we said, we're just going to use the reinforced concrete shear walls in our evaluation. The design team wants to have the opportunity to provide additional information to demonstrate whether or not that those walls have appropriate connectivity to the slab above and the slab below. Once again, they sent a package this morning. I'm not sure if it was in there, because I haven't looked at that yet. But that is part of the process and part of this ongoing back and forth process as a in resolving these issues. And then item 16 is basically, it's related to modeling of the building, and it effectively will resolve itself as we address some of these other issues. It's more of a back and forth between the engineers of about how the building was modeled. Just to quickly summarize, and this is probably this is out of date at this point, because we've had some additional meetings. Item one are the shear wall. There's ongoing discussions related to that. The column foundations were once again, if the city is comfortable with the lower roof live load, we'll confirm those calculations. Slide bearing has been addressed and acknowledged and will be rectified in the building. The structural integrity code provisions ongoing. The column axial, we've got a resolution pending there. Same with the shear capacities. The roof beam capacities, we spent a fair amount of time discussing. The serviceability items, each of those is pending, and the documentation is also pending additional information.

Thank you, Brent. Thank you. That concludes the presentation. If you have any questions, I'm happy to try and answer them. Brent can as well.

All right. Anyone have any additional questions? I do. Okay, go ahead.

Thanks, Mayor. Brett, may I ask you a few questions? Thanks so much. So, Brett, how usual is this real serious examination of a structure in your career?

So, a peer review is relatively common. For example, the city of Miami requires them for buildings over a certain size or height, et cetera. It's not required in all jurisdictions. It's not required in every building, but it is relatively common to do these types of peer reviews for larger or more important buildings.

So, I've seen structures go up in our city over the years, and I can't remember this kind of really taking a good hard look and making sure that we're okay with a structure. And I'm thrilled with this process, and I'm thrilled with all of the sets of eyes that are on this. So, in your estimation, where we are today, do you feel confident? Do you feel that at some point in time, whether it's at the end of this year or shortly after, that we're going to be moving our good folks into this structure, knowing that this is a safe structure? And is that level of confidence high at this point? And if not,

are we going to get there? I think we're going to get there. So, once we've addressed all these items, we've resolved them or rectified them in some way in the building, that at the completion of that, I would have no qualms at all that this building should perform as well or better than any other building that's designed appropriately towards to the building code. Okay, thank you. Brett, thanks.

Thanks. If you could just recap for, in a way that, you know, we all can understand just from your view here. What happened? Why do you think it happened? And what are some lessons learned? So, what just high level, what kind of just basic, what happened here, why, and what can we do to prevent?

So, I probably won't be able to answer all of those questions. I think there's some things that are known about what happened as it related to issues with the building. The full extent of those without diving into all the project communication that happened along that timeline, I can't answer. I think this, it would have been helpful for this type of, you know, essential facility that's for it to have gone through this review process during the design. It certainly would have resolved many of these issues up front. It would have made the process, I mean, I wouldn't have even been here today if it had been done during the design process. You know, all of these things, these questions that are even coming up as we talk about the different load levels would have all been addressed and resolved at that time. And so, that type of effort, not for every building, but for buildings that might be deemed critical in some way or of an unusual magnitude, it's probably

appropriate. Great. Thank you, Raquel. So, that, what I'm hearing there is one of the lessons learned possibly from this is that there may be certain buildings that we should require peer review in the design process. Are you familiar with that being a requirement in other municipalities and what's

your feedback on that, exploring that possibility? I do believe that based on the magnitude of this project that we could have benefited from that early on in the process. And so, I would support that going forward for major projects in our city. Great. And so, I'd like, great, and I'd be interested what,

what do we deem major projects? So, we don't have to figure that out right now, but I think that could be a helpful conversation for us to have of deciding how, what that looks like and when,

when it, when it is necessary or not. Absolutely. I think further discussion is necessary. I think there are more lessons learned and lessons potentially to be learned through this project. And I'd like to sort of do an after action as we wrap up the project and continue through it. I think there are more items identified that we need to build into our process.

Oh, great. Nice. You know, Ben, it's interesting you raise that point because I don't think we ever would have gone through this exercise if that whole deflection issue hadn't triggered it, right? Correct. Correct. So, um, and we have major projects going on like the water plant. So, do we want a peer review of the water plant, for example? I mean, that would be a major undertaking. So, again, we wouldn't be in this process if that, if that particular incident, that deflection issue didn't materialize on this project. I don't know where we, where we want peer review. Should we engage in peer review for the, for the water treatment plant? Should we engage in peer review for the city hall? You know, these are questions that have to be built into the budget too, right? So, um, you raise a good point. But again, would we have even done this had we not had that one, you know, obvious defect? So, um, it's something that we need to hear back from you, I guess, in, uh, in terms of going forward. All right. And understanding

that, um, it's normally this would be done in the design process. Is that what was I'm hearing? So, it would be basically in the genesis of the process. That's right. And it could actually happen

in multiple phases of design. Sometimes early in the design process, the peer reviewer will be engaged to provide feedback. And it's sort of a parallel examination of the design as it moves towards construction documents. But it could also be just a one shot right before you get construction documents that you look at it, um, to get a second set of eyes on it. And I, and I would view a peer review more as, as a, as a risk management tool. It probably not every building needs it. Most buildings are designed to perform well over their entire life without this second set of eyes on them. But if it's, it's, it's a, it's a building that you think is of particular value or use or something like that, that would be a good candidate for something like that. Thanks. Okay. Any further questions?

All right. We have one person who signed up to speak. Thank you, gentlemen. Uh, Barbara Stern.

Good afternoon, Barbara Stern. And, uh, I'm glad to hear these concerns about the peer review because these are typically done on these types of projects and they're done early on. Hollywood police department engaged in a peer review study as they were going through their design phase so that they wouldn't have these problems. Unfortunately, yeah, we did have that deflection issue. And now we know the other design flaws that were in this project. So shame on the city for not engaging in a peer review process earlier on when you take on a project of this magnitude. And I certainly hope one will be used for the city hall project. Um, you know, we've heard a lot of stuff in the news. We've heard it in the meetings about different issues that have happened with this building. And I know the public, myself included media, all have general concerns. And we heard today that you have the utmost confidence that this building will be fine for people to go into. And I think that's great. And I think that the public would feel better if they actually saw some commitment from the city, like Mr. Fajardo, would you want your office in this police headquarters? I think our, our residents that are going to go there and work would feel comfortable knowing that you've been involved in this project and helped identify some of these problems. I want to see in February or March of last year, even though it didn't make it to the commission until May, would you want your office in there? I think our men and women would feel more comfortable knowing, yes, you would want to be there. We talked about needing space and things that we could do. This ballroom, by the way, is not 8,000 square feet. It's roughly 3,500 square feet. The community center over there is slightly over 5,000 square feet. When police headquarters opens up, perhaps we can start having our commission meetings there and take down on some of the costs we have for renting facilities. I know we have an agreement with the, uh, with the Broward Center on use of space under the tri-party agreement, but that's something that we could be doing to at least some concerns. Um, we keep hearing that we're going to get, actually that that's some, that's we're planning to do that. Excellent. And I think the public would be happy to know that. Um, we keep hearing about payments that will be coming through the E and O and, and offsets. I requested a copy of the errors and omissions policy of insurance for this project. There should be multiple levels each year it's been done. The city doesn't even have a copy of it. I don't understand how we don't have a copy of the E and O policy that's in effect for this, or how we haven't been able to get one in the month. It's almost been since I've made that request. But the contract that we have with AECOM also requires us to deduct these errors from their payments. And from what I can tell, and I could be wrong, we haven't been deducting those payments. We approve change orders.

They're right. You're right. And you're wrong. Uh, you're wrong. You're right in the fact that

they have not been, um, the, the credits have not been trued up yet. But, uh, in the end, it's our intention. In fact, we met with, uh, I met with AECOM yesterday and that's the intention that we will be given the, I'm talking, uh, uh, with the city, we'll be given the credit necessary in order to make up, not just for the construction costs, but for the delay and the extra costs that we are incurring, uh, being in, even in this building, when we could be meeting over in the community center there. So all those, all those consequential damages,

we will be making a claim against AECOM. Right. But the agreement requires us to deduct it from their payments and we haven't been deducting yet. Yet. So have we made a claim against the policy because the city doesn't even have the policy. So it's just going against the ENO policy or it's just coming out of AECOM's pocket directly. We don't know yet. Um, we're not

there yet. Uh, we don't know the full amount yet. So your concern is, is valid, but believe, but believe us that, that this is a high priority concern. The commission is very sensitive to this issue. And, uh, and I know staff is keeping their calculator at the ready to make sure that we account for every aspect of, uh, consequential damages that the city is, is suffering during

this process. Well, for every payment we're laying out under the contract, we're supposed to be deducting as it goes along. It doesn't say when it's all over, we true up. It says we deduct it from their payments. And from what I can tell, we have not been doing that and you can make claims. You can get progress payments throughout the time with an insurance claim. If an insurance claim was timely made, you're a lawyer. I'm a lawyer. I've gone through litigation. You make the claim. You can start payments. You get conditional payments. You don't get necessarily the final ones, but it's concerning to me that the city doesn't even have a copy of the ENO policy on hand that we haven't started. Clearly we haven't started a claims process because if you don't have the policy, you haven't gone through it. We don't know what the exclusions are. We don't know what the notice requirements are and that is concerning. So as this is going forward, I certainly hope that it's going to be handled in an appropriate manner, in a timely manner where our tax dollars are coming back to us and that we're not keep laying things out with these unknown expenses that we keep getting for a project that had defects. We're known about it last year. We made a decision

to continue to move forward. Okay. Thank you. Anyone else wish to speak on this item? Okay. There'd be nobody else. So mayor, I just wanted to let everybody have an opportunity. So I'll also

add to that because I raised some of those same concerns with staff myself. I was very surprised

that we didn't have a full copy of the ENO policy. This has been ongoing now for over a year and I was disappointed that nobody's actually reviewed the policy to see what exactly is covered by it. Um, this is something that I would have expected that as soon as we started running into problems, it would have been the first thing that we would have done was made sure that we had a more than just a deck page, but the full policy in hand and that we would have reviewed it because we're making certain representations. Staff is making certain representations to the commission about our ability to recover all of our costs. And I'm, I'm hopeful and, and, uh, uh, and expecting that that AECOM will stand up and do the right thing. Uh, they're a good company and, and, uh, I have no doubt that they desire to make this right, but it's incumbent on us to make sure we understand what our position is, what our, what our rights are, what the policy covers and all of that. Now I'm disappointed. And I've expressed that to staff that we have not, uh, that we have not reviewed that policy in depth to understand exactly what's covered, um, as we move forward in this.

Well, um, and the reality is that an insurance policy is to protect the insured. Uh, we're not the insured. Uh, we, um, we are an additionally named insured oftentimes in these policies, but we are not in privity with the insurance company. So our claim is against the contractor and where they get their money from is up to them. We are, their responsibility to us is based on the comprehensive agreement into which we entered. So whether they fall back on their ENO policy or they choose to write a check out of their own account, we don't care where we get the money from. We know that our responsibility, uh, to the taxpayer is based on our claims pursuant to the, the agreement into which we entered to build this. So the fact that we don't have a copy of it. Yeah. Okay. Well, we don't have a copy of it, but the reality is we've, we know that AECOM is a deep enough pocket upon which we can rely in order to secure any damage claim that we may ultimately make against them. So to your point, I don't disagree with you, but I don't know if it's really, you know, the death knell of our, any claim that we may make because our claim is against the company, not against their insurance.

Right. But the point of having us as the additional insured is that we know that we will get paid. That is the point. If that wasn't the point, it wouldn't be part of our RFP in the first place. The reason that we require that as part of the RFP is so that we make sure that there's coverage

there for us to get paid. Okay. All right. All right. Very good. Anyone else? Yeah. Yes. Okay. So, Dwayne, feedback on ENO policy? You don't, you know where it is? Have you reviewed it?

So, so pursuant to our agreements, what we require, uh, for proof of, uh, insurance is a certificate of insurance. Um, we do have that, um, uh, risk management has that. It is not, uh, part of regular practice to have the full policy that as the mayor stated, you know, we are not the insured. We are, you know, we're, we're named under certificate, but, um, if we go after, uh, uh, the, uh, provider, uh, they're, uh, they're responsible for, uh, the, um, they're, they're responsible for paying

the city and not the insurance companies. Okay. So is what we have sufficient from a existing documentation standpoint in your mind or not? In, in terms of assurances that,

that were sufficiently, that they're sufficiently covered. Yes. Okay. All right. Great. Thank you.

Um, when we last talked about this, uh, Raquel and Dwayne, and we had talked about, um, AECOM's agreement to, uh, provide, um, the mitigation costs, the further evaluation costs, and a, um, ongoing, uh, evaluation, uh, of the deflection and other components. If I understand it right, you are working on that agreement. Uh, how is that progressing? I think that's progressing

positively. Attorneys on both sides are meeting this week and we have every indication that this will be resolved shortly and that we'll have that amendment in place. Great. Any concerns,

Raquel, at this point that you have around the, uh, appropriate mitigation and AECOM, uh, providing the funding for all of those things that, that I mentioned and all that we've seen today?

I have no concerns from the staff perspective. I'm not sure if our, uh, city attorney's office

has any legal concerns at this time. Okay. Great. Dwayne, that any legal concerns with where

our position is and where we aim in the short term? So we've only had the, the comments from, um, representatives of the companies will be meeting with the attorneys this week. Um, and after those meetings, we'll have a better understanding, uh, um, in order to address that question. A better feel for, um, the position. Okay. For whether you have concerns or not. Correct. Cause, um, I think the prior city attorney has stated what he accepted in terms of their, um, their statements on record to the city commission in terms of their, uh, culpability and their responsibility and what they desire to, uh, uh, take responsibility for. Uh, we're not, I don't know what it is that their attorneys want to exactly speak about in terms of our, um, amendment. So, uh, again, I'm, I'm positive in terms of moving forward with the meeting, but I'm waiting to hear, uh, what they have to, um, offer or, or suggest or add to the conversation.

Okay. Great. So you're having that meeting next week. No, this week, this week. Great. Um, so, uh, at what point can you provide the mayor and commission with an update in terms of how that discussion went and where we're heading in terms of, uh, hopefully end of the week and again, it all depends on how those discussions go. Okay. Great. So regardless of how they go by the end of this week, can you give us, uh, an update, whether that's, I don't know, memo or phone call or however, or, okay, it's going to be great. Thank you. Thanks mayor.

Anyone else have any comments? Okay. There being none, let us proceed to business for, uh, discussion of the city attorney candidates. Jerome.

Good afternoon, mayor, vice mayor and commissioners Jerome Post, director of human resources. Uh, at the May 6th conference meeting, I presented to you, um, the list of candidates that was, um, reported by the citizens committee, um, for consideration for the position of city attorney. And just as a reminder, we had 52 applicants. They were boiled down to 17 for interviews. And then finally four, four in-person interviews by the commission of the, uh, committee. Uh, and the final three that they brought before you included Alexander Boxner, James Saunders, and D Wayne Spence. And at that time, the commission decided to interview those candidates individually, which I believe you've had time to do. And now we are opening this up for discussion.

Okay. Thank you so much. Um, I opened it up to the commission for any comments. Uh, first of all, did you each have an opportunity to, uh, meet with these candidates? I assume we all did. Yes. Okay, great. And thank you for taking the time to do that. I myself did it as well. And, uh, and it was very helpful, but, um, where do we wish to, how do we wish to proceed with this process? Was there any one candidate that you would like to offer up as a recommendation for, um, the permanent position of city attorney? Do you want to continue with the process? Do you feel we should expand the search? What, whatever, what are our feelings? Why don't we start with you, John?

John. So again, mayor, as you said, I had the opportunity to meet with, uh, with the candidates. I, I did not meet with, uh, D Wayne. I don't think I need to. I've worked with him for well, well over a decade and a half. So I think I know him fairly well at this point, but, uh, the other two candidates I did meet with, I spent an hour and a half, uh, with, with each one of them, um, gotten to a lot of detail. Uh, I'm very impressed with the, with the caliber quality experience of both of them. I think they're both outstanding, uh, uh, attorneys, um, who I think will, will be great whether they're with us or with that or, you know, stay with the cities that they're currently with. So I think we're, we're very fortunate to have such, uh, competent, um, folks that want to come work with the city. Um, I'll leave it at that. I just, uh, want to hear what everybody else has to say. Well, but I was again, very impressed with everybody that, uh, that we've

got available to us. Okay. Uh, Pam. Yes. Thank you. Um, I too, um, interviewed, I interviewed all three. Um, I had the pleasure of, um, speaking with each one of them. Um, very, um, detail and, um, great conversation about, um, history, their previous experience, and then also what they believe they can bring to the city. Um, I'm ready to, um, move forward with, um, recommending for, um, appointment. Um, I will wait for what everyone else has to say, but that's the position I'm taking. I'm ready to move forward. Okay. Uh, Commissioner Glassman.

Yes. Thank you, mayor. Um, I too had the pleasure of, uh, speaking with, uh, all three candidates and very much appreciate that time. Um, and I, I'm going to get into some issues later, but I, I did have some questions for Jerome. So Jerome, let me ask you a question. When we had the search for the city manager, um, I remember the committee chair was here. We, we had a lot of input from the committee. Why was that component missing from this particular search? We never really heard from the committee chair. We never heard from the committee. We never got a lot of insight into their thoughts and what that process was that was all missing this time. So I'm just wondering,

can you shed some light on why I'm afraid I can't shed too much light other than that. The committee had full faith in us as staff to be able to present their findings to you. Um, I did ask the committee, uh, committee members and the committee chair, if they'd like to attend, uh, and they politely declined.

Their schedules were quite full. Okay. Well, that says a lot. Um, all right. I got you. I'm, I'm, I'm going to reserve my comments for the, uh, I have some more, but I, I want to hear what, uh, Commissioner Sorensen has to say. And then the mayor, um, you are the, the, the leader. So I will wait to hear what you have to say as well. I'll remind you of that. Commissioner Sorensen.

Thanks mayor. Uh, thanks Jerome. Yeah. I also got a chance to spend with time with all three, um, some very good qualifications and abilities. Um, I don't feel as though I have one that I am feeling is, is the right fit, uh, at this moment, um, for the city attorney mayor. So, um, just my view is I think we need a little bit more time and casting the net, um, to, to what I think is get

the right person. When you say casting the net, you mean, um, uh, like engaging, uh, a search firm. I mean, yeah, something more than what we've done so far. I'd be open to that. I think I,

yeah, I, I think we've got to, um, work a little bit harder to, to get, um, more candidates, uh, in the kind of, uh, uh, in consideration, uh, that can be the right fit for us. Yeah. All right. Um,

so of the four of you, okay. So Pam, you said you have somebody in mind that you would like to recommend. I don't hear anyone, anyone else stepping forward saying they want to recommend any of the three that have been presented to us. Am I understanding that correctly? Um, commissioner Herbst, did you have a name that you wanted to present tonight?

So what I was expecting to hear, uh, is a somewhat more robust discussion. Again, I was hoping that we would have some folks from the selection committee here. I was really interested in hearing what they all had to say as well.

I kind of agree with you because I wanted to hear why was these four or now three, what, what, what brought them forward? Cause they're the ones that did the extensive backgrounds, um, uh, research and I feel a little wanting here because, uh, I, I was hoping to get their

recommendation as well. So yeah, no, I, I had expected a little bit more input, um, again, as we went through this. Uh, so a little surprised, just, you know, not, not, not disappointed, just a little surprised. I expected a somewhat more, uh, robust process. All right. Uh, I'm happy to move forward with, uh, with someone today. If, uh, if, if we go in that direction, I don't think we need to go out and look for any other candidates. Again, I, I think the three that we have available to us are all top notch and I'm, I'm happy to move forward today.

Okay. Um, all right. So, and commissioner Glassman, I didn't quite get, what was your conclusion as a result of your interviews?

Mayor, you haven't weighed in yet. You haven't said anything about the process. So I, I'm just one of you, you, you keep asking all of us, but I haven't heard you say anything. Well, I, I, I defer to your, to your wisdom. Well, I, I, I said, I said what I had to say. I was disappointed in the process. I asked Jerome about that process. Why isn't anyone here at any of our meetings from the committee? And then I said, I will reserve the rest of my comments until I hear from commissioner Sorensen and our leader, the mayor. So that's, I, I still, I'm going to reiterate that. Thank you.

All right. Well, I don't think we can make a decision today because I want to hear from this, from the committee. Um, it really, it's, it, there's a reason why each of these people were presented to us. I have, I have my personal opinions about each of them. Um, but you know, I think the committee that we, that we, uh, appointed at least one member should be able to come and report on behalf of the committee as to, um, the pros and cons of each of the candidates. Um, you know, I think, you know, I think, uh, in the interim, Duane has, uh, has been serving us, you know, uh, well that we can still proceed with the process. Um, I, I, I mean, I would like to hear from the committee members. So why don't we, why don't we postpone this discussion?

I have a question. Roosevelt was on the committee. He's here. Roosevelt, weren't you on the committee?

Well, there is someone here, but can you, are you here to represent the findings of the committee? No. Well, you can't talk from there. Get up here. You should know better. You're used to yelling from

the back. I know. Roosevelt Walters, um, a member of the search committee, search committee for the city attorney. And, um, the reason why we didn't do, uh, the recommendation on the city attorney this time that we done the first time, or when we did with the city manager, I also was on that, is the, the committee tried not to influence, uh, your thinking because you had the interview. And I asked that we sent up a ranking on, um, on the candidates, but I was only one of five votes and I don't normally lose, but I did. And, uh, and that is why you find yourself not having anybody to speak before you. And, uh, they said, you know, let the commission be the, the people that make the final decision on, um, on the candidate of their choice without having the influence from the

committee. Well, everyone's dancing around the issue. Well, I noticed. All right. Good. Thank you.

Yeah. Thanks for as well. I mean, I, I just, my limited perspective is that as we're hoping you

will influence us and share with us your perspective. And I know that's kind of similar to how you feel, but, uh, and so I'm just preaching to the choir. So thank you, but thank you for your service. Yeah. That's okay. Well, mayor, maybe this will make it easier for you, mayor, but I'm going

to actually, Commissioner Sorensen, you said we should reopen this. Yes. I'm, I'm going to concur with that

mayor. Reopen it to, uh, by in what, what, in what way hiring a hiring a search firm? I think we

should, uh, yeah, I think we should have a search firm. So based on those comments, you weren't really comfortable with any one of these three choices. I don't feel there's, I don't feel the right fit at

this moment. No, I don't. Were you going to say something, Pam? Um, yes, I was going to say, I don't agree with, um, reopening. I believe we've gone through a great process. I was going to ask if it seems to be the, um, thought of this commission that we invite the advisory board of the review committee to come before us and let them explain to us what the process was and how we got to these, um, four or now three candidates, but I'm not in support of going out again to start this process over. All right. So before, Senator, before we do that, what, why don't we see if

we can get the committee to come here at least to, at least a couple of them to, I don't want to put it all on Roosevelt's shoulders, you know, um, uh, but at least some, a spokesperson who might be able to act on behalf of the, uh, the committee so that any questions we have with regard to their choices could be answered and any concerns be resolved at that time. Does that make sense?

No, no, it doesn't make sense. Okay. It's just, it's just stalling. It's just, it's just keeping this going. What is your concern? Tell me, help me understand what your concern is. What are you going to hear from a committee member other than what Roosevelt just told you that's going to all of a sudden awaken you and say, Oh, okay. That makes sense. I'm fine now. Like, tell me what your concerns are as well. I just want to hear what that is. Um, but I, I, I, I look, this has been advertised this meeting. I mean, Roosevelt, thank you very much for being here, but we obviously have been told by the committee that this is as much as they want to do. They've given us their rankings. We've interviewed the folks. So what are we going to do? You know, my mother used to say, may she rest in peace, uh, S H I T or get off the pot. So it's like, that's how I feel. Let's just figure out what we're doing here. Let's move on. Um, and, and let's, I don't know other than wasting more time by bringing that committee in, what is that going to accomplish if you bring the committee in? I don't, I don't, I don't know what that does. So you're suggesting that if the committee had anything more to say, they might be here today without a doubt, without, without a doubt. I mean,

could we be reminded of what the, um, the, um, uh, I'm going to say responsibility. What was the instructions given to the committee as to, um, what we were, um, expectation with their results?

What was that? I think the committee was assigned the task of reviewing applications that were being submitted through HR and sifting through qualifications to determine, uh, whether or not they met a certain level of qualification and then, and then going and then dismissing those candidates that didn't reach that level and then interviewing them themselves, getting a comfort level and then making a final recommendation to the city. So I, I have to say one thing and I'm, and I'm tending to agree with, uh, commissioners Sorenson and Glassman in the sense that what I've heard anecdotally is a lot of people qualified people did not seek to apply because they figured we were just going to hire from within, which would have been Dwayne and that they were afraid to apply. And, um, and therefore we, we lost out on opportunities that the others may have, uh, wanted to apply, but just thought that the, the fix was in and they didn't want to waste their time or waste, uh, excuse me, or lose favor from their current bosses. If it word got out, they were trying to leave. So, um, so that's the one reason why I might be supportive of that because I think that we did lose out on opportunities of people who might want it to apply. And, uh, we're just, um, unwilling to put themselves at risk there.

So what would change be with what you just said, what's going to change by opening it up again? You're still going to, if that was the, um, benchmark for people, not applying re reopening the opportunity, what has changed between that date and today?

The, what the difference is that if we wanted to hire from within, we would do that today. And if, if it seems, it seems to me, I'm getting the sentiment here that they're not willing to hire from within. I mean, they, they, they want to see someone other than Mr. Spence serving in that role. Otherwise I heard too. Are you also saying you do not want to hire from within? I would like to see more examples of, uh, of I, I wasn't, uh, I met with Mr. Box Boxner and I met with Mr. Saunders. Um, uh, each one had their strengths and weaknesses. I just don't feel that they measured up to what I feel was the, uh, requirements of the position. I've worked with Dwayne for a number of years as did, uh, commissioner Herbst. Um, and I've seen Dwayne perform admirably and I feel that there, uh, that he, there's great merit to his application, but I do also feel that there might be someone out there also that, uh, um, could fulfill the role. Dwayne has always been ambivalent about the Dwayne. You've always been ambivalent about this role. And, uh, um, and so while I think you're a great member of our staff, I just wanted to see who else might be willing to take on the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, the role, um, that we may have been denied because they felt that, uh, that they shouldn't waste their time because they thought that we were going to hire from within. So that's my feeling. And, uh, so I guess I would go along with you guys. I don't know what commissioner Herbst wants to do. Um, but, uh, do you have any final thoughts on this commissioner Herbst? Yes. I'm ready to make a decision today,

but it doesn't sound like there's a consensus for that. Okay. All right. So I guess the majority

would ask that we advertise this and, um, and see where it goes. I do want to just add one thing to

answer, uh, commissioner Beasley Pittman's question. I've also heard those, uh, those comments, Mayor, that what you said about, um, why people felt they didn't apply. Uh, cause I did dig a little deeper on this. Um, there's no reason why Hollywood should be getting so many more applications for a city attorney than we, but I also heard from folks that at the time we were in the midst of a city manager search, there was just a little bit more uncertainty with what was going to happen in terms of our leadership in the city. Um, and I just wanted to add that as some other

comments that I also heard. Jerome, can a search firm be helpful in getting more candidates or more aggressively pursuing qualified candidates? Well, I think it's, it's fairly well known that a search

firm has more contacts and more ability to reach out to candidates that they're acquainted with and, and they have on the market or in their pocket already, um, that may be interested. Um, I, I, it's my opinion. I, I think you will still find a number of those that will be reluctant, um, to put their

name out there. Well, all right. So that's, I'm sorry. I'm forming my words here. All right. Um, Commissioner Glassman, you made a statement, you cited what your mother said, and, um, I think we need to do something tonight. I don't understand why we are going in this direction. Um, we talked about earlier today, moving forward and being a commission that are, is taking action. And I believe that the three candidates that we have, um, including Mr. Duane, they are of statute that could do what we need. Um, mayor, you're coming about individuals, um, being thinking that it will be inside or it's already decided. I don't think that's going to make a difference with including a, a search firm. This is running deeper. And I, and I've, you know, I've made this statement. I'm going to continue to make the statement until we, as a commission began to change. Um, is it that people don't want to apply because what this commission looks like and how we're doing business? Are we going to make a change and show that we are a commission that can unify and stick to a plan? We already said that we would not do or utilize a, a firm that was decided when we started this process. Now we're rolling back. That's my statement for now, but I would love to see us move forward tonight. I understand that the majority has stated, let's start over. I believe

we're doing a disservice to, um, the city by starting this process over. Thank you.

Okay. Any other comments?

So how do we start over? So we're not starting over. I know, but how do we continue?

So it seems that your, the recommend, your recommendation that we, uh, engage a search firm would probably be the next step. And so that's the direction.

And we will start the process of getting a search firm. Okay.

Okay.

What is the guidelines for the search? Are we doing nationwide? What do we, could we have at least that conversation if we're going back to a search firm?

Well, we can't go nationwide because they have to be Florida attorneys. So it has to be more regional than, uh, national.

Well, they have to be registered with the Florida bar. Right. So they technically could be outstate. We did have some candidates from outstate.

Well, clearly, clearly a person who has Florida credentials, Florida experience, uh, municipal experience are going to be better candidates than those who live in California. Right. So, so it just, it's a, it's, it's just a totality of the, of the, of the experience and the background that is going to weigh in on this. So I wouldn't waste my time doing a national search. I would, I would focus on, you know, Florida or maybe even the region. And, uh, uh, and, and I think that would help the committee in terms of narrowing down the, uh, the number of, of acceptable applicants. Right.

Okay.

All right.

All right. My next question with the, um, the listing for the job, the posting of the jobs, is there anything that, um, the majority of this dais wants to see different on that posting? If we're going to put the same information out again, if we're looking for a different cattle, cattle borough of employee, what is going to change about that posting? Is it a user service, a type of what specifically is the difference?

Yeah, that's a good question. Um, what's the salary range on the posting? Do you know?

It was listed as being, I believe above the 300 range. Yeah. Or in, in that range.

In 300, in 300 range. Right. Okay. I may apply for it. Okay. Um, yeah. I mean, that's just my, so city manager is that what? 350,000. So does that range go up to that level? Do we know?

We don't have the appointees on the city's pay plan. Those are negotiated salaries by the commission. So you could set that rate however you want.

Right. I guess, Laura, you're shaking your head. I don't. So I guess what, so I guess we don't know what the specific range is listed on the job.

So there is no pay range. There's no pay range. It's determined by contract negotiation with your team.

Okay. So I don't know if that's something that we should articulate more clearly on the, on the, um, advertising. Same range.

Yeah. Well, again, uh, your point is well taken. Um, how have we, how did we do it the last time when we hired Tom? What was the, uh, what was the solicitation?

We did use a search firm for that when we used Mercer. Right. Uh, and we developed a recruitment brochure, uh, and, um, Donya Higginbotham from Mercer actually conducted that search using the brochure that we had put together. Uh, and then she collected the, the applications and resumes and they had a similar process to what we just conducted using, um, uh, citizens committee with men, a few of the same members that we had this time.

And, and, and was there a salary range, uh, uh, using that solicitation?

It was similar to the way it was posted for this one in that we put a, a base range around, but we didn't put specific numbers in that brochure.

All right. So why don't we just follow that? So you have that brochure. Yes, we have. Uh, okay. So if I could just ask the question, how do you see this in terms of a timeline moving forward now and when we might get a selection of folks that would come to the commission for our decision?

Well, we already have a lot of the, um, pre-work done, the brochures done. Um, it would be a matter of getting, um, quotes from, um, a few search firms and make a decision as to which one we want to use and go from there. I would imagine it would be another three months.

So, um, so the, um, so the beginning of September, which is, we're on break anyway until the third week of August. So that's not bad, right?

Okay.

Okay. So would the process be going, the search firm would recommend directly to the commission or would the search firm recommend to the committee? To the committee. To the committee.

Are we establishing a committee again?

Well, that's, that's my question.

Technically the committee is still intact until an appointee is made, an appointment is made.

Okay.

That was done by the resolution when you created the committee.

Yeah, I think the committee, the committee still would want to be part of this, right? Yeah. So, okay. So the, because there's going to be a lot, we're assuming there'll be a lot of resumes, um, hopefully, and we would want the committee to help distill, you know, down to, down to a few and then again, proceed with the process. I'm hoping, you know, the message is out there that, you know, so that people don't feel, you know, hesitant to want to apply.

So, well, I, I think one of the things that's different now is, uh, I think that Raquel is here and I think that we've fact that we have, uh, you know, excellent city manager, um, when prior to there was, you know, there was transition. Um, I think that's a steadying force that's going to attract, I think even more candidates, frankly. Um, so I, I think the number given to the committee should be, um, a relatively small number just for timing and efficiency standpoint, mayor, um, given to the, so that we can, you know, continue to move this along. Okay. So, Jerome, I don't know what that number is, but, you know, I would think, you know, eight or fewer just to throw out a right idea.

Yeah.

And can you get this back to us when we come back in the third week of August?

We'll do our best.

Thank you. Thank you.

Okay.

Um, commission reports, commission herbs, no report, but just a question, mayor. So folks in district one are wondering what's going on with inter Miami. So we're hoping that you could provide us with an update at some point.

There will be a, I will have a final, I've been meeting with them regularly. We just had a meeting last week. We're getting really, really close to terms that I think when I present to the commission for acceptance, um, I would, I, uh, I think we're going to see something really good and it will include, it's a comprehensive agreement on all the issues involved. And I should have it before either the next meeting or the meeting after, before we go on our break.

Thank you.

Commissioner Beasley Pittman.

I'm going to tell everybody how we've been hanging out and you're leaving, you're leaving. Okay. Okay. All right. Um, since May 20th, giving you, um, giving everyone a report of some of the things, um, activities, events, um, also a memorial service that I attended, um, on Wednesday, May 21st, the homegoing service for World War II veteran, Mr. Thomas dowry. Mr. Darry was, um, 100 years old and, um, he served our country well and, um, it was a privilege to be able to attend his service. He, he was a, um, resident of district three for better than, um, about 60 years. I believe he was a resident for a long period of time. And our condolences, um, goes to his family. Also, um, wanting to share that on Saturday, um, May 24th was the Great American Beach Party. It's always an awesome event. Um, I was there with mayor and vice mayor and, um, I got to watch what everyone else did parachute, the parachuters that came down. I keep throwing this out there, everybody. If you don't know, I am one who loves to skydive and I'm trying to get that opportunity to skydive along with those, um, that gives that entertainment, um, during that event. So maybe, maybe next year you all see me come down with them and, um, what I'm, what I'm working on, cause they're telling me they don't do tandem. So I'm still a tandem.

So that's an insurance policy. I want to see in full go. Just so you understand. Okay.

Okay. Risk management. We're already in contact. Okay. All right. But, um, just a great day. And then also that Monday, the Memorial Day, um, ceremony and remembrance day of remembrance. Um, Mayor and I were at the, um, Memorial Cemetery on 84 and a beautiful event that, along with, um, Parks and Recs and the, um, Cemetery Board, a beautiful ceremony that recognizes and remember those Fort Lauderdale, um, servicemen in a day of memory. So I was able to attend that. Also, I would like to share that on, um, Tuesday, May 27th, as a member of, um, elected official for AHAC, the workshop, um, we have, um, two obligated meetings a year. Um, we are part of region seven. So I did attend, um, that meeting via zoom, um, sharing with affordable housing, Florida housing, um, coalition, what it is that we are doing in the city of Fort Lauderdale. As far as including and adding to the numbers for affordable and sustainable housing on Wednesday, um, May 28th, I attended the continuum of care board meeting, um, great meeting. Um, some great things are going on, um, via that board along with pong. Um, Chris, are you Chris Cooper? I'm sorry. I was on zoom via that meeting. Were you in the room that afternoon?

Good afternoon. Commissioner, I was on for the pong meeting. I was not able to go to the COC meeting. Okay.

All right. What I wanted to share because, um, they, some great things are coming together, um, with the continuing care board. Um, the county is aligning with, um, of course, the school board. We had, when I first started, it was difficulty with, um, being able to identify within our school system. How many children were actually listed as being homeless, houseless, or in a shelter. And with the new, um, program that's being used, there's a better, um, and more accurate count of those individuals. Um, and, um, we received the report of, um, there was 55 families that were identified that needed some form of shelter. And with that, they've gotten down to basically 16 families that have been, that remain, um, that don't have exact housing. But the others have been addressed with their situation. So, I was really excited to hear that, um, because I said, I've been a part of this board since I started, um, with the commission. And it seemed that we weren't really making any progress. But that particular meeting was so impactful. So, I was very excited about the direction that we're going in, um, with the continuum of care board. Um, the United Way, um, they've taken on a new, um, initiative also with, um, that, with our overall initiative for the county. So, I believe that, um, with what we're doing, of course, with our homeless, um, task force, we are seeing some things accomplished. So, I want to say kudos for, um, that particular board and all of those who are coming to the table as well. Um, also, I want to add, let's see, that I had the pleasure on Thursday, May 29th, um, we have a, a academy, a private, um, um, elementary school in District 3, which is, um, named the Baldwin Academy. And along with our, um, um, police, um, community action team, if I'm using the right term for them right now. But they, they are awesome in the, um, south end of my district. And understanding with our schools some of the things that are needed. Um, they believe in keeping these students encouraged. And through the, um, heartfelt charity of Mr. Shane Gadanot, I may not be pronouncing his name correctly. But he's with, um, the company Rebuild Restoration Solutions. They gave six brand new bicycles to students who had increased their testing scores. So that was a great opportunity and an initiative for the students to prepare for the testing and then to excel. So I want to thank both our police and then also Mr. Shane for his donation. Also, um, sharing with us that, okay, the other item is not a share. It's a conversation that I want to have. Um, and I last, I believe it was during the conference. And, and, um, Ben, you can correct me if it was conference or at our regular commission meeting. Um, you brought up the conversation about a, um, order and decorum, um, uh, conversation. And you, you, you, you talked about more so being addressed to those, our neighbors that come into our meetings. You were concerned about the meetings. And when you started the conversation, I thought you were going to be referring to the dais. Because I believe that we, as leadership, in leadership, we need to lead by example. And I truly feel that we're not meeting that mark. But with that being said, I had a conversation, um, with our attorney. And I asked about what does our, our being the commission, what does our, um, code of ethics conduct looks like? And what was shared with me was a, the, um, ordinance. If it's a, Mr. DeWayne, if you can help me with this, um, 2.29. And it's also the form that we signed when we took this position saying how we would operate in this capacity. So, uh, yes, sir.

Oh, section, uh, 2-29 of the city code of ordinance. Yes. Which provides a code of conduct for the city commission.

Okay.

And, um, I had asked for, um, for a memory for all of us if our IT could bring it up on the screen. So, if they are available to post that for us. Because, um, what I'm asking for us to be, us being the dais, being in a position that we are leading by example. So, when we open with our meetings where there is a roll call, I want this statement a part of the, um, agenda. And when we acknowledge that we are here, we are also acknowledging again each time that this is how we will operate according to this document that we all sign. The city commissioner code of conduct. Now, um, we all are familiar with this, um, mayor. Am I correct?

Yeah, what, what is, what, I don't understand what you're asking. You're asking that we recite the code of conduct as we open each meeting?

No, I'm not asking that we recite it. What I am asking that with our, um, agenda, where we have, in the beginning where it explains how our meetings are conducted, what, um, with public appearance, how it works, all of that. This being a part of our opening agenda statement. Okay.

So, the community knows. So, when people come, so when people come here, they know that they have to show respect to the...

No, no, no, no, no, no. I'm talking about the commission.

Okay.

Okay? That's who I'm talking about. Well, the community has to do that too. I agree. But if it starts with us, I believe it will follow through the commission, the, um, the community.

Okay.

All right? Because we need to do, we need to operate in a more professional manner, in a more productive manner. And everything that's cited here, um, may I ask, um, the city clerk, could you read this?

Well, you know what, Pam? Let me just point out, if you look to the, uh, if you look to the agenda, um, the third paragraph, it says, Pursuant to Section 3.13, uh, according to the charter, the mayor shall maintain order at all meetings and shall expel any person who refuses to obey the order of the mayor. So, you're asking us to insert this 2-29 somehow in there so that people know that, um, that there's a certain code of conduct that, uh, must be respected by people participating in these meetings. Is that kind of what you're saying?

No, I'm still saying this is addressed to us as the commission that we follow our signed commission, a mission that we will follow in, um, accordance to what is our code of conduct, being transparent with our neighbors. So they know when they come here or either just knowing overall that we're giving the best of who we are to represent this city. Right. Okay. So that's what I'm asking. Um, I'm not sure who knows about this other than us as commissioners that we are required to sign it when we are elected.

So, so, so you want me to reference it? How do you want me to, how are you asking me that I should reference it at the beginning of a meeting? What, how, how would I reference it?

Well, this is what I, this is what I'm asking that we do included here, wherever it can fit in our, um, agenda, agenda statement.

Right.

However, by putting it there, we, as a commission, when we have the roll call, we are also acknowledging again that day that we will be in compliance with the, um, code of conduct. I'm not asking that we read it each time, but however we can word it to put this disclaimer there, that we as commission are committed to following this oath while we are doing every aspect of our responsibility.

So you're suggesting, let me give you an example. So I would say, Mr. Clerk, please call the roll pursuant to section two dash 29. Is that kind of what you're saying?

However, legally we need to do it. I, you know, I leave the legal part to those who do the legal components of it, but if that's the, um, I'm going to say watered down version, but yes, it needs to be recognized. And then we need to make a commitment to each one of these, to each meeting that we will follow this oath.

Has there been a recent example that has triggered this concern?

Um, I would just say continuous. I won't point out any one incident, um, but it's disturbing. I don't know how you all feel the, um, conversations of what's being, um, discussed about interaction between us as a commission, negative, positive, indifferent. How comfortable are we with the fact that, um, our, some of our neighbors don't have faith in us. They think we are, um, just a show. And this to me, believe we'll give them the opportunity by us committing to this. We are showing our best effort to follow and be an example of what a true operating commission looks like.

Mary, Commissioner Easley Pittman, I apologize for interrupting. As I mentioned at the prior meeting, I have a commitment. My son's, uh, eighth grade, uh, graduation. Yeah. Uh, promotional ceremony. Uh, so I have to take my leave at the moment. Um, I do have members of staff that are here.

Are you giving me the commencement address?

I'm not. But travel time. I need, I need to be there. Okay. But, but I, I appreciate it. And I apologize for interrupting. Okay, sure. Good luck. Drive safely. And is Paul going to take your place? He's in route, but Rhonda Hassan is also here. Okay. Senior assistant city attorney.

Come on down, Rhonda. So, Commissioner Beza Pittman. Yeah, I mean, sounds fine to me. Sounds like a good idea. So, Mayor, do you need more guidance? Well, I don't know if it's such a good idea.

I mean, I mean, I, I, we've, we passed it. We, we obviously are obligated to respect it. Sure. I don't understand the community doesn't think we're, we're behaving well up here. I don't. That's not what I hear at my district commission meetings.

I, my, my, my district is very pleased with the work.

They, they write to our office all the time, thanking for helping with every day. I would love just some more specifics, because that would be helpful. I'm just not agreeing with your perception or the people that are talking to you. Yeah. Okay.

But that doesn't dismiss the fact that we have, um, being transparent, I believe would be an opportunity to share with our community. Again, um, before, um, my, my thought was kind of paused. Um, I've, I've been using this term a lot. I'm disappointed. I, I, I was excited about, I'm still excited in this position that I stand with as a city commission. But what I am disappointed about is the engagement that we hear among this dais. Um, I'm looking at E, it says I will be respectful to others and being, and performing these duties and, and agreeing, and agreeing to refrain from, um, I'm, I'm sorry, because I'm trying to read it from a distance, um, and avoid contact, um, conduct, increasing in appearance of improper, because I want to read, thank you, because I can't see it from here. Impropriety of which is otherwise, I have one good eye.

Okay.

It's otherwise benefiting a public officer, including, but not limited to false accusations or personal

attacks against another public officer or behaving in a rancorous or contentious manner.

Do you feel that there has been, there have been episodes of this? I do. I do. This is what's called the democratic process. People get excited and people have opinions and, and we all get, uh, you know, um, we all have zealous points of view. That's just part of it. I've, and I'll be honest with you. I've attended many city commission meetings throughout this County and in other parts of the country. And we're tame compared to, but we're tame and right.

It's two different things that, you know, you can be tame, but that doesn't make it acceptable.

Well, and then with that, um, I don't understand why we would not want to put the best face forward to show that we don't want to be in that category because everything starts at one point and it keeps escalating. And what I've experienced and what I've been watching is an escalation of conversations that are, I don't even call them tame, they're disrespectful. And I believe that it would do us good and it wouldn't hurt anything. What would it hurt to just, we've already signed it. Each one of us has signed this document. So what more, uh, how would it be damaging by putting it in writing on the agenda saying that I've already committed to following these particular, um, items of the oath. It's just validating it again and again and again.

Okay. Let us, let us consider it and we'll think about it and perhaps we'll be able to find a way to implement it. Um, I'm not quite sure, you know, that I need to, I personally need to think that some, for some reason I've misbehaved or that I've shown disrespect towards any one of you during the years that I've been on this dais.

So, um, but I, I did not identify any name.

Uh, okay.

So don't, I, I, I've, I've learned not to do that, but videos minutes is the proof of it. Okay. Okay. So I don't want to go into name pointing. That's not who I am. But at the same time, understanding that this is something I believe that would help us become, um, or remain a tame, you use the word tame, tame, uh, meetings and not allow this to escalate to be one of those commission meetings that makes the 11 o'clock or the national news.

Okay. Okay. All right. Thank you. Is there anything further in your report?

That'll be all. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Uh, commissioner Glassman.

Yes. Thank you, mayor. Um, welcome to another new small business to our city, which was great when we did the ribbon cutting for you, Kaya on the river walk. Uh, and I will tell you what is so interesting when you spend time down here and you spend time on the river walk and you, you, you participate with these new businesses, you sit for a while and you look around and you realize the, the number of young people that are in our downtown, you realize the number of young people, uh, that are in our city in areas where there never were. Uh, it's refreshing. Um, and, um, it's interesting because I speak to them a lot. I have a lot of those folks in my district. They have a very different take on the city, uh, than what I'm hearing tonight and reasons to put this code of conduct up or what I'm hearing about in terms of transparency. Uh, they have a very interesting perspective and I think that sometimes we don't listen to all of these voices, um, as opposed to just maybe getting, uh, trapped, uh, with the voices that we hear all the time. That's all I'm going to say about that Thursday, May 22nd. Um, it was a fascinating event, uh, for the, uh, MPO state of the region awards, uh, congratulations to, uh, everyone that was honored at that, uh, again, for all of those contributions. Um, to the city, uh, about a thousand people were there and, uh, always, uh, a very interesting, a very interesting event. Um, I then that day, uh, took a really good walk. Uh, I spent some time, um, in the CRA portion of my district in Progresso Village. I will tell you that if folks, if you have not been down there, uh, if you have not seen Thrive, Progresso, um, you must go there. Uh, I will just say that, uh, maybe four years ago, five years ago, when I met with

the developers of that site, uh, and they took me on a tour and they told me of their vision for this area, I was a little bit incredulous and I really did look at them and say, really, uh, this is what you're going to do, uh, because it was blighted is a kind word for what I saw. Uh, when I looked at the area and I looked at the warehouses and the rag shops and the

auto part bays, uh, and it was really, um, nothing that it looks like today. So I want to commend, I want to commend the Fish Brothers for what they've done in that area. Uh, the number of artists that they have brought, the number of businesses they have brought, uh, it's a tremendous, tremendous site, uh, only getting better. They had a yoga class recently on a week and they had 300 people show up for an outdoor yoga class. Um, there's a brewery there, restaurant, arts galleries, even a, a vinyl record shop, uh, incredible. The, I don't know where they get their collection of vinyl. Uh, but it's just really a great place and I would urge people to go. Um, congratulations to them, uh, for what they've done to the Progressive Village neighborhoods. I say thank you. Um, uh, that evening also, uh, attended a really nice event. Over at Catch and Cut on Las Olas, uh, it was a Mary Brickle social, the first of its kind. It brought together a couple of those neighborhoods, uh, and really, a really nice history of what Mary Brickle meant to our city, uh, and how these folks, uh, in Coley Hammock, uh, were celebrating, um, what she meant for the city. Uh, a really tremendous pioneer, um, and, uh, it was a really nice event. Uh, also that evening then ran over to, uh, um, the Honorable Meredith Berger was in town from Washington, D.C. Uh, she is the sponsor for the USS Fort Lauderdale. Uh, not many cities have, uh, a ship like the USS Fort Lauderdale, uh, with that name on the ship. Uh, and it was a great, great, uh, evening of just letting us know how the ship is doing, how the captain is doing, uh, how the crew is doing, uh, and that commissioning and support committee, uh, that was in that room, uh, these people worked tirelessly, uh, on behalf of not just that ship, but also Fleet Week, and it was really, uh, a very educational evening. Saturday, as Commissioner Beasley Pittman mentioned, uh, we got a chance to, uh, celebrate, uh, for the Great American Beach Party, uh, Commissioner Beasley Pittman and the mayor and I, uh, had a good time that day, uh, always congratulations to the folks that we honored, uh, with the Walk of Fame, uh, as well, uh, folks that have done so much for our community. Uh, Thursday, May 29th, had the pleasure of being with the Middle River Terrace Neighborhood Association and speaking, uh, with them about issues that affect not just their neighborhood, uh, but the entire city. Uh, Friday, May 30th, uh, the Port Everglades Association luncheon. Um, I think, uh, Commissioner Sorensen, the mayor were there. Uh, that's always a fascinating event because of the statistics that you hear and the data that you hear and you understand why in a current event, uh, time when things are not that well in terms of business and certainty of business, uh, and many cities are struggling, uh, with these issues, um, we are, we are not, uh, the impact of Port Everglades and also the airport on our city is tremendous, uh, and when you read the data and you hear these folks talk about that impact, uh, you cannot help but leaving that event feeling very positive about our city, uh, feeling very impressed, uh, by what is accomplished by all of these folks that work, uh, on behalf of the Port, um, and also the airport. Uh, I always find it very educational, uh, and pretty, pretty uplifting. Um, tomorrow, uh, Wednesday, June 4th, um, there'll be a meeting at ArtServe about the Andrews Avenue redesign. Uh, we've announced it to everybody, um, in our district because, uh, it goes from Sunrise Boulevard to Oakland Park Boulevard. The county is behind a very large redesign program, um, and I'll look forward to meeting with the residents on that as well. Um, also tomorrow is the 2025 Marine Industries Annual Meeting and Awards Luncheon. Um, always again, uh, a really interesting day when you get to see people that are coming up in that industry. I love the way they highlight young people that are coming up in the marine industry. Um, Tuesday, June 10th, I'll be hosting the District 2 Neighborhood Association President's Roundtable. Um, Raquel, I think you're joining us at that, aren't you? That's correct. All right. Um, I'm sure everyone's going to look forward to that. Um, Wednesday, June 11th, um, uh, we've all been invited to a first stroll around Huizinga Park, reimagining the Riverwalk and Huizinga Park. Uh, they're making great progress, uh, on that area. Um, and then lastly, I just wanted to take a moment, um, and, uh, I want to just thank Milos, I think he's, he was here before, oh, there you are, you're over there. Um, I, I know that our office has, uh, been, you know, there are a lot of concerns that have been coming, especially from Victoria Park, uh, and you and your office have really gone above and beyond. And I just wanted to say thank you, uh, because I know that, um, let's just say that we have very passionate residents in District 2. Um, and not many people are afraid of sharing that passion with all of us. Uh, and it's always a good challenge. Uh, and I just want to say thank you, um, because you did such a great job helping everybody, all the neighbors there, um, learning, uh, making sure they understood all the procedures and everything that was involved with regards to traffic calming. So I just wanted to say thank you for that. Um, and that's about it for me, Mayor. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Commissioner Sorensen.

Thank you, Mayor. Uh, today is the last day of Broward County public schools. Uh, summer has begun officially. Chief Schultz, I just want to check in with you. Just last day, everything gone smooth from your security. Very, very thankful for that. Um, I know our girls are really excited about summertime. So I just want to thank teachers, parents, guardians, everyone who who's working so has worked so hard the school year, uh, to make it a great, um, you know, safe school year, uh, here in the city of Fort Lauderdale. It's no small feat and, uh, just, um, you know, Mayor, just, uh, it, you know, some of the horrific things that have happened at our schools to, you know, when I drop off our daughters at schools, uh, it's always, uh, concern, um, and it's, uh, shouldn't be that way. And so I'm just very grateful for our guardians, our school resource officers, uh, who make this such a, uh, a safe place to go. And so I'm just very grateful for that, for our police, um, and for all who educate our kids. Um, so I wanted to just thank all everyone there. Um, also, uh, wanted to celebrate our cats, the Panthers, one of only nine NHL teams who have gone to the Stanley cup finals three years in a row. It's an amazing accomplishment. I mean, just awesome. Vamos got those. And, uh, you know, uh, Raquel, I know you weren't here for the whole, this whole experience, but the ice plex opening, you know, a little over a year ago. Um, I like to, you know, I like to thank mayor and commissioners that the ice plex and that partnership has played maybe a tiny, but, but a role in that phenomenal success. And, um, you know, um, you know, when I talked to the leaders of the Panthers, you know, when you talk to CEO and you talk to the leaders, they say that their players are drawn to live and work in Fort Lauderdale because they find this such an amazing community. And the turnaround story for the Panthers is really a phenomenal one because, uh, years ago they had 4,000, 5,000 people go into their games. Um, and this is one of the great, if you like sports or you just like comeback stories, it's one of the great comeback stories. Um, and you know, one of the reasons why I was listening to Matt Caldwell, the CEO, give a speech the other day. And he said, one of the reasons kind of that we've been able to be so successful as the Panthers have been is because they've really used the community as a selling point and engaged in the community fully. And that's led according to Matt to their success. It's been at least a core component of that. And so I'm just, I'm just grateful for our community, everyone up here on the dais, our neighbors and fans who have supported them. So, um, just grateful for that. Uh, also wanted to share some other good news. Um, just things that I've been working on. Let me pull up my notes here. Um, this weekend, so Saturday, again, great partnership, um, with all kinds of folks who are passionate about our waterways, uh, going out to, um, George English, uh, park, uh, where we planted 50 mangroves, 50 mangrove trees, uh, which I think first time ever in the city, never done before. Uh, just amazing to see all the partners, support of the commission, um, out there making that possible to improve our waterways. And, and that's just the beginning with Marco, uh, leadership of the chief waterway officer, um, just making great progress on a host of components, uh, oyster, oyster hanging to allow oysters to help clean our waters, um, putting them in the water, um, working with Nova Southeastern University, University of Miami and amazing partnerships that have never been done before. Never in the history of the city have we had these kinds of partnerships coming together. So that's really exciting. Um, really exciting about the possibility of living seawalls and, and Mayor probably talked about this, but it's this idea of instead of just traditional concrete seawalls, can we encourage and possibly look at incentivizing the building of living seawalls, which allow for and attract marine life, uh, seagrass and other components to our seawalls. So some exciting possibilities there that we're exploring. Uh, another great, uh, uh, I think positive for our city is, um, uh, we've been working with the U S coast guard, Marine industries, uh, association of South Florida, um, city staff, county staff, other key stakeholders around, um, bridge openings. And we've started with Southeast, uh, 17th street bridge and very proud to, uh, report that. And you all saw this mayor and commissioners, but, uh, the coast guard has expedited our request to reduce the openings of 17th street bridge, um, by a factor of four. So reducing the openings by four, two in the morning rush hour, two in the evening rush hour. And already mayor, just phenomenal feedback, um, from neighbors and so forth. And, and, you know, hopefully you're hearing that too. And, and I hope that that can be, you know, a continued template we can all work in terms of collaboration. Um, but just great responsiveness again, hearing needs from our community members and together as a commission, acting on it, working together and getting results. Um, and I'm proud of that and proud of the, the continued work, uh, we're doing on all those fronts. Um, homelessness is another area I wanted in commissioner Beasley Pittman. Thank you for your work on the COC and just want to share a couple of things that I've been working on, on that effort again, collectively. Um, so I've got a couple of different working groups with the United way and others that I'm, uh, part of and with, with housing and Chris Cooper leading the charge, uh, just some of the really positive things we're working on. Um, we're working on, uh, Broadview Park, our, our site to have 515 affordable and workforce housing units, 515. This is going to be one of the biggest affordable housing, uh, possibilities I would think ever built in the County. I could be wrong. Uh, Raquel, you might know better than I, but at least one of the major ones and that's city land partnering with the neighborhood, partnering with the community to build more workforce and affordable housing. Um, we're partnering right now with life net for families, uh, and hope South Florida to explore wraparound services, safe parking programs. Um, we're partnering with developers right now that there are several, uh, mayor, there are several developers are really interested in purchasing older, uh, hotels, older apartment buildings, and turning those into workforce and affordable housing around the city, uh, with case management support, which would have our service providers like United way Salvation Army partnering side-by-side, uh, working together with them. Uh, I was just at Fellowship Recovery, which is a great organization, recovery organization. Again, Chris helping lead the charge there where we partner to help people through recovery. Amazing success and successful in part because of the city's partnership. So the city applies for a grant funding from the state, brings that down and invest in Fellowship for Recovery, which serves men and women going through recovery. Phenomenal success. I got to meet and spend time with some of these folks. Uh, fantastic, uh, work that they're doing. Um, mental health. Uh, we have something called Mobile Integrated Health Team. Fantastic. Chief Golan, this is your, uh, brainchild, um, and, and you're driving at success. And just to share with y'all a little bit about what it does is they address, uh, frequent 911 callers and those with mental health needs to help identify where the root causes they're having mental health service needs. And we have Fort Lauderdale Fire Rescue, specially trained staff that go out to those people where they are and help serve them to address their mental health needs, address their service needs. Chief Golan, I mean, you would know better than I, but there are not a lot of other places that have this targeted task force that is doing this kind of work. I mean, it's, it's, it's amazing. Is that right? I mean, is this a fairly unique program, at least maybe in Broward County, um, that we're driving? I, I had, Mayor, I had, uh, uh, there was a mental health crisis in district four, uh, a couple, uh, maybe a week ago and, um, uh, I was able to reach out to Raquel and they were able to get the mobile health integrated team out on site, helping a family in crisis to immediately provide support, immediately provide resolution and resources. And that family was so grateful because, Mayor, they turned to all kinds of other places and no one had been able to help them, uh, until the Fort Lauderdale Fire Rescue mobile integrated health team responded and, and, and serve that, that, that family in an incredibly powerful way. Um, and lastly, Mayor, just want to, uh, talk about the education, um, that we're really engaging in. Again, team effort around how we're partnering with Broward County public schools to help encourage vocational training, skills training, career source Broward. So all of these different components are really coming to bear to help, uh, some of the most in need in our community. And in addition to community court, and you all were at the, the retirement of judge tutor. So we are doing things in the city, in our community that few, if anyone else, uh, is doing and it's working. We've got a lot more work to go, uh, mayor, but we're forming the partnerships. We're driving towards solutions and I'm proud where we're, uh, leading, uh, by example throughout and, and largely mayor, it's our city staff members and leaders that are really driving this. Um, so I'll stop there, but just want to thank all the work, uh, especially in our community to serve the least of these.

Well, thank you for bringing up all those issues. They're very important. And, uh, um, and thanks city staff for the, you're partnering with them and trying to fulfill, you know, many of the goals of our community. So thank you. Um, I just want to mention a few things. Uh, first of all, uh, I want to thank everybody that helped create and fulfill the great American beach party. It was a great day hot, but, um, it, it once again showed our community's appreciation to those who, on whose shoulders we stand, who have made this community as great as it is. And, uh, the people that we recognized, uh, um, certainly wonderful people and, uh, well-deserving and, uh, I love the tradition that we have created here. So thank everyone. Our, our parks people, um, public works, everybody who's there, police and fire, uh, who kept everyone safe. Thank you so much for making that such a great day. I just have one critique. Um, it's great that you put a tent out there in the park so people don't bake like they used to, but at the same time, they can't see us on stage. The only people that can see us on stage are the people in the first row. So my suggestion is next year, maybe put us under the tent as well so that we can engage and, and speak to the people that are there to, to participate in the event. Uh, otherwise the only people that see us are the first 10 people in the row and that kind of defeats the purpose. So just a suggestion, um, uh, cause it will always be a hot day and we'll net, we'll always need to have that tent. Um, it was a great day on May 21st to, uh, participate with the public works department and enjoy that great hot dog lunch we had. Uh, and I want to thank the, the city manager's office for continuing to put that on. I have to say that the quality of the hot dogs was a little bit better this year. So thank you.

We had vegan options too. Yes.

Okay. Yes. So thank you. Um, uh, and, uh, I also want to thank our city staff for putting together a, another wonderful, uh, ceremony on Memorial Day, where we recognize the men and women who have, uh, died on behalf of this saving our country. Uh, the Memorial Day ceremony at the Lauderdale Memorial Park Cemetery, and then the memorial at the Sandy Nininger statue. Uh, great turnout, both events. Uh, and I want to, I just think it's another great tradition that we follow and, um, thank everyone who put that together. Uh, it was just a, a very moving ceremony. Um, we had a few restaurants that opened up in the last couple of weeks. So the, the, the Ukiah restaurant, which you mentioned, uh, and also Pokemoto on, uh, East Commercial Boulevard, uh, wonderful family. Yes. Small restaurant, pop-up restaurant, but really, really great food. Um, I wish them all the best. It's 2705 East Commercial Boulevard. It's, uh, um, in District 1, a great, great, uh, uh, new eating place. Um, so what's happening tomorrow? The first game of the Panthers versus the Oilers in the, uh, final round of the Stanley Cup. So we're very excited to, uh, to cheer them on and we wish them all the best. And I hope we're planning our, our next Stanley Cup parade here. So, uh, we're very excited about that. Yeah. What's that? No jinxing. Not jinxing, just planning. Okay. It's okay. Anyway, uh, also tomorrow, um, uh, it's my honor to participate in the, uh, uh, Fort Lauderdale Police Department's, uh, officer swearing in ceremony. This is taking place tomorrow morning at 8, uh, at 10 a.m. at the Cypress Creek office. Just everyone's invited to be there, um, and, uh, uh, looking forward to, to witnessing the swearing in of the officers. Um, anyway, I've been invited, been invited to a number of speaking events, uh, sitting on panels. Uh, everyone is very bullish on Fort Lauderdale and, uh, you hear it from the people that participate. One of the panels I was on was, uh, this past, uh, excuse me, last week. The BizNow organization hosted a mayor's roundtable. There were four mayors that participated and, uh, from, um, from Pompano Beach, from Hollywood and Oakland Park, as well as myself, talked about the growth of our cities. So, um, with that being said, um, Madam City Manager, do you have any report?

Thank you, Mayor. I just want to take the opportunity to highlight our fantastic strategic communications division. Uh, they are award-winning. We have several members of the team who recently were recognized. We have, uh, Anthea Thomas. She won the Social Leadership Award from Government Social Media Conference. We have two national tele-awards. We have a third place from the National Association of Government Communicators for our Cleaning Catch Basins video, as well as our, our SysTrunk video. And some other marketing collateral was highlighted in a memorandum that went to you recently, but I just wanted to make sure to highlight the team. Uh, and to really congratulate Ashley Dessard, uh, on May 21st, we rolled out a unified communications plan, and I see that several of you have already adopted our new, uh, signature for the emails. And so we're doing things little by little to improve our internal and external communications. So just want to highlight strategic communications and Ashley. Uh, this weekend we have our second iteration of the sandbag distribution. So that's June 7th and 8th from 10 to 1, uh, in each commission district. Last month we had about 300 bags that were distributed. We're hoping that more neighbors will take advantage of this opportunity, especially as we're currently in the hurricane season.

So we're, we're in each district.

So we have Holiday Park.

Holiday Park.

Floyd Hull.

Floyd Hull. Mills Pond. Mills Pond. And George English. And George English. Okay, thank you.

Uh, last week we participated in the Eye of the Storm event, and I just want to thank our fire department, police department, uh, our CERT, uh, volunteers for participating in that event. It was great. Uh, got to meet with, uh, Kevin Guthrie, the Florida Department of Emergency Management Executive Director, and got to exchange with him a little bit and talk about the needs in our city. So it was really a great opportunity. Last weekend, our public affairs division also participated in a small business event sponsored by, uh, Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz. And so I just want to thank them for highlighting Fort Lauderdale as a place to do business. Uh, other than that, I do want to talk a little bit about the Florida Panthers. Uh, staff has already begun discussions, uh, with the Panthers and various other partners, uh, locally on a potential celebration, uh, that could include a parade. We don't want to jinx it either, but we want to be prepared. And so given the activation last year, we've learned a lot of lessons and we're anticipating that there could be a huge crowd coming to Fort Lauderdale should the Panthers advance. Uh, we want to potentially bring on a walk-on item this evening that would authorize me to execute an agreement with the Panthers so that we could outline our potential in-kind contributions, uh, toward that activation should they reach the very end. Last year, I think, uh, Broward County played a significant role. My understanding is that, uh, they are looking for Visit Lauderdale to contribute, I think, potentially $200,000, and I'm asking for authority to contribute up to that amount for in-kind services. Obviously, the agreement hasn't been, you know, discussed in detail, but we want to be proactive so that should they make it all the way that we're ready. And so I'm looking for your support to have a walk-on this evening that would authorize me to execute such an agreement.

Did Visit Lauderdale say they had $200,000?

They have, they have not said they have $200,000. Just as a reminder, uh, we contributed about $100,000 last year from the city. Right. As you know, the, the bid, uh, they also contributed $100,000 based on what we're- And the county contributed nothing. I cannot verify what the county contributed. I can verify that. What the county contributed.

Uh, so we need to engage the county to, to consider participating. I mean, they, it is, they do consider it their team. And I just don't think they contributed because they weren't asked. They weren't asked until the very last minute.

Well, this year they have been asked and we want to be as engaged as possible with Broward County to make sure that all the logistics are ironed out and that we are operating as partners for this celebration. Uh, we do know that there was a significant economic impact to the city, uh, the last time this happened. And so we want to be supportive. Uh, it's not to say that we definitively have to contribute that amount. I would just like the authority to go up to that amount, uh, after having discussions with the Panthers.

All right. Is there, is there an appetite on the commission to allow the city manager to go up to that amount to in, in kind services in order to support the parade? Should it happen? Yes. Okay.

Thank you. So we'll bring that item later. Uh, in addition, we wanted to follow up on the request made by commissioner Beasley Pittman for a street renaming or code designation for a portion of Northwood. Northwest 23rd lane for Reverend Dr. Willie Cleveland bell jr now deceased, uh, having 66 years of service in the ministry and we are supportive and just wanted to get your feedback. We did issue a memorandum a few days ago, giving some background information.

Sounds great. Great.

Okay. That concludes the manager's report.

Okay. Very good. Mr. Acting city attorney interim. Nothing. Thank you. Okay. All right. Any further business of the commission on this conference meeting? There being none, it is now concluded. We'll resume at six o'clock.