together let's resume our our joint city commission budget workshop budget uh uh advisory board workshop what's that you can't hear me you can't hear me now okay so yvette uh could you please uh bring us back to the uh absolutely and thank you for making the time this afternoon so um with me is kyle stevens from santec consulting and what santec does is look at our current financial position and help us determine what we're going to look like over the next 10 years this information is really intended to help you set the rates at the next meeting the june 30th meeting where you'll be setting the maximum millage rate in addition to the non-advalorum assessment rates and so with that i'll turn it over to kyle hello kyle good afternoon mayor and commissioners um thank you for making time to to go through this information as yvette mentioned um really what we're trying to do here is dovetail with the conversations that you've been having today with regards to taking the fiscal year 26 budget and providing that snapshot going forward of the next five or 10 years and the dynamics that are in play with regards to ongoing sustainability be covering eight funds today um and feel free to ask questions as we go through if there's certain topics you want to dive further in uh in this first slide here i just wanted to tee up why we really do this and i was mentioning that it's really fundamentally to take a look outside of the budget about items we know about future capital investments or future expenditure commitments that we have integrate those into the model so that we're planning for those okay just one second this presentation has not been attached to our agenda is that correct i don't see it is it exhibit one it's not oh business two it's under the joint workshop business two got it thank you so much so as i was mentioning the big item here is financial sustainability and sensitivity testing as well as uh really taking into account the current economic conditions that the city operates in um it really is a team effort so we've spent the last few months integrating with staff including the city manager's office to assistant city managers department heads to really get the latest and greatest information on the ground with regards to the various funds that i'll cover today across all of the funds there are some common information uh that are included in the analysis and i'll also highlight as we get to each individual fund the unique observations or planning assumptions we've made so 2024 unaudited actuals are included in our analysis the 2025 adopted budget and the current draft budget as of june 4th additionally we've integrated the latest numbers looking forward for the community investment plan which is 2026 through 2030 uh a key assumption that'll go across uh all funds as well will be the new city hall so that's 10 million dollars that we have currently as a placeholder for that the majority of that being in the general fund um but other funds do have a share of that and we've also recorded rent reductions um when that facility would come online rent reduction because we'd be consolidating exactly so within the funds we put that that order magnitude estimate in got it and so here are the funds that we'll be covering today we'll be going through through them in order um typically if we've presented this historically really concentrated on the first i'll say three or four is the larger funds that have some of the more dynamic uh investment decisions associated with them and first we'll go into the general fund and these next two slides i just want to list the key observations that we've included in this year's modeling and so what we're looking at and this has been mentioned today is a full cost recovery of the fire assessment that would be in fiscal year 21 to six uh 61.8 million dollars over fiscal year 25's uh levels additionally we've included placeholders the city has a past practice of every three years doing a fire assessment study and we've included 10 percent increases to represent that trip to full cost recovery over time additionally we've included the latest information from the broward county property appraiser with regards to increases in ad valorem valuation uh that is associated with that 48 percent of the revenue in the general fund uh the ad valorem tax side uh that's 77.3 percent over the fiscal year 2025 budget number for fiscal year 26 we've also included the las olas marina revenue uh and so that's additional revenue sharing of 300 000 in fiscal year 27 and it'll reach 1.2 million as we move out to fiscal year 2029 additionally we've got the bbamr um annual revenue down here which near term uh the last one on this one is uh 900 000 in near term revenue reductions uh 27 through fiscal year 29 when we get further out we're anticipating 17 million to 23 million on the annual increases through fiscal year 2030 through 2035 i just what's that what's the uh reduction due to there yeah i'll ask staff if thanks so part of the contract that we have with bahia mar is for rooms which are the hotel uh the marina and then other services we're anticipating that at the end of 20 december 2025 the hotel will go offline and so it'd be a reduction in the revenue associated with the hotel that the city receives but doesn't doesn't the rent go up though so our actual rate that we charge has historically been four point two five percent in the contract when they begin taking assets offline in order to do their renovations that amount reduces down to three point seven five percent and so it's a culmination of both the hotel being down as well as the amount that we anticipate receiving as a percentage of the total revenue also going down but isn't there isn't the base rent going up um it is i know that yeah when it comes back online but not immediately as they're taking items offline so maybe susan if you have susan you sure about that i thought that i thought that we increased the base rent does this work yeah the the base rent did increase um and it is a percentage of revenues but when the hotel closes down that's the that's the the reduction in essence okay that the revenue so what's left is i think the marina and and a couple other the the retail those still are yes yes so they're still generating revenue um but just again a reduction in the short term and then we start picking up when the units start closing did they indicate when they're going to uh begin demolition on the hotel have they indicated that yet um the email that we had said anticipating earliest december 2025 well that's now uh it's in a couple months but yeah december of 2025 december that's when they're going to demolish the hotel that's when they would begin the process okay it's right after the vote show okay thank you thank you appreciate it and then continuing with the observations uh we've included uh the annual required pension contributions and so that is due to lower assumed rates of return in the future in fiscal year 27 and going forward that's 600 000 a year additionally associated the ger ger s retiree cola that started in 2025 and continues for seven years it's 2.2 million dollars in expenditures we've also included within the model looking forward um service enhancements related to growth so half a percent of salary and wages and fringe benefits that's approximately eight percent so that's beginning outside of the budget year in fiscal year 2027 900 000 and escalating up to 10.5 million uh through fy 35 additionally we've got the swimming hall of fame at 1.9 million dollars in fiscal year 27 and then at the bottom section here i've got some notable ongoing increases and so let's stop right there yes are you telling me that we're spending two million dollars a year to keep the swimming hall of fame oh is it the aquatic center or swimming hall of fame it's a swimming hall of fame that's the building mayor that's the swimming hall of fame project and if you remember we had a range of that it either broke even or there was a worst case scenario that's the middle point okay um so just to be conservative that's the middle point between um what our sensitivity analysis did it when when the swimming hall of fame the project comes online okay thank you absolutely for clarifying that thank you and in the bottom six section here these are the items i was mentioning up front which is um a high degree of the value of this exercise analysis we go through it's these out year items that we're including into the forecast so the safer grant that expires uh that is 4.6 million dollars it's equivalent to 28 firefighters that's in 2028 uh we've additionally got two million dollars for the las olas downtown garage um fire rescue staffing and 6.5 million dollars for the general funds portion of new city hall is that uh safer grant renewable so the way the safer grant works it's only to provide new uh ftes so we could reapply for additional ftes but we couldn't apply to continue funding for existing ftes okay and they would not be considered new even though they are new under the original grant correct okay so with all the assumptions we've just gone through on the last few slides it really comes down to this analysis that i'm showing here which is the dashboard for the general fund this is our fiscal year 2026 baseline and so what i mean by that is i'm very much like going to your doctor this is a diagnostic view going forward we've held the millage increase flat going forward and we've looked at the dynamics over time what what we're seeing as we've updated this is and i'm really contrasting this against the last few years it generally has a shape expenditures have tended to increase faster than revenues however as we updated the model this year and was mentioned in the earlier discussion several positive dynamics have occurred this year property values have continued to increase at a robust rate as well as staffing uh turnover and vacancies have resulted in a slower growth of those uh expenditures from fiscal year 25 to 26 so this is the old forecast no this is the current one well they just told us we're having a 15 million dollar surplus you have a five million dollar deficit so for 26 we've got a balanced budget right so for 26 we're showing zero with this the next year we're looking at we've had discussions on earlier today what we're showing actually out there is 27 we expect deficits to evolve at the current millage rates right but what is the 4.6 in fiscal year 2025 you show cash flow deficit that is that's that's the current fiscal year we're in right now and that's us the latest updates we have so we are we are showing okay mayor yes um so when we went through the preliminary budget presentation that 4.6 million was the amount we used to balance last year's budget as part of the adopted budget so that's what that number indicates okay so we'll do get a budget amendment that will allow us to zero out for 2025 then um so for 25 we used as part of the balanced budget we're using um as part of our savings to balance the budget so that's showing the adopted budget in 25 okay okay so a couple other key assumptions to show here so from a property valuation increase year over year um it's been mentioned the 7.3 percent and you can see that in the second uh table the second row if you will what we're showing right now is stepping that down to seven percent and then holding it at 6.5 going forward that's very much in alignment with what we've seen is the overall history here in fort lauderdale if you exclude the kind of covet bump that we can see and i've got that in the graph down on the far left corner here so we're still showing you know long-term average growth here for taxable values going forward but for 26 we already know that it's not 7.3 percent so it's 7.3 if we compare the 2025 budget level to the 26 level it's a little bit higher in the overall growth number but with from a revenue standpoint that's the increase you would see from a budget to budget level okay so i think the other number that was mentioned was right over eight eight percent eight point one six percent i think was the number that was mentioned earlier it's the exact same this is just because it's budget to budget okay but but but under but under but under the real increase um it's not a zero it's just shows surplus so i'm trying to i'm trying to i'm trying to reconcile what you're saying with what our staff has been saying to us i have to know what a real number is right now you're you're saying the real number is zero for 2026 and they're telling us we got a 15 million dollar surplus so tell us what's what's what's going on here the public wants to know yeah so when we can both answer this i mean so every year when you go through your budget setting process you have a zero-based budget right your revenues will match your expenditures here and that's what we're showing in the model hopefully yes yes and then what we're really trying to show here is the long-term dynamics as we go forward i understand all that but you're showing for 2026 that we have what we zeroed out but in fact staff has said we're 15 million dollars in the black yeah and so in the earlier presentation what we showed was on the base budget um after you take revenues and expenses the delta was 15 million dollars right what we do as we're going through the budget process is we look at the strategic enhancements that we're going to be making we look at our transfers to capital and so what stantec has in their model includes all of those enhancements are increased transfer to capital and that's how you get to the zero dollars so when the commission adopts a budget traditionally it's zero um the delta between revenues and expenses because we either adjust our expenses down based on the funding that are available that is available or we increase our transfer to capital if we have additional funding which is how the zero number comes what you see in 4.6 negative was just because of the decision that was made that year to utilize fund balance to offset the cola contribution and there were some other increased capital transactions that we included in the adoption of the budget and so that's why that year is negative traditionally it's a zero zero amount when we're adopting a budget i thought that we had money from another source to cover the cola increase i thought we had member susan you said we had this extra money so it was fund balance is what the direction from the commission was that we use fund balance over the seven years but i thought we had i thought it was uh there were several millions of dollars that were available i didn't know that we're taking from the fund balance was this a contribution that would have otherwise gone to fund balance we we redirected it towards the the cola increase well you know the reason fund balance is there is because you have years where you know you have um revenues more than expenses so it drops down to fund balance um but it was the excess fund balance maybe that's what you're probably talking about the amount that was over the 25 percent at the time was the okay so that was that we were drawing against that yes okay thank you so the key takeaway takeaways on this chart before i move to the next one is what we project out layering two items on layering uh our expectations for inflation going forward on expenditures across the city and the general fund and the known expenditures that i covered in the last few slides we would uh see evolving deficits going forward now that's generally had this picture as we've looked at this over the years as i mentioned it's more positive this year and we see it would be 2028 would be the first year before you're at your minimum fund balance level for the general fund and it would be after that 29 30 and 31 before you would get below that level and so this this is evolved but it does still show that similar structural item as we've talked about and in the years past that there would be a deficit evolving what we've next done on the next slide as we often have done historically is tried to calculate an order of magnitude number with regards to the millage increase to provide an estimate of what that would be needed in order to balance the equation going forward so in the last slide we saw that deficit evolving in synchronization with a lot of those expenditures that come online what i'm currently showing here is a 0.55 mil added in fiscal year 2027 and when you add that in what we can now see down in the revenues versus expenditures the black line is in alignment with the orange line which is our expenditure so kind of our definition of sustainability over time and the fund balances on the far left graph now are going to be at or above your minimum target throughout this period for some context historically we've often showed a need for additional millage increases further out in the forecast so this one is only showing one that would essentially provide sustainability over the next 10 years it any questions on the general fund no no questions okay please continue uh last slide here we put in here is a overall table here so this tracks millage rates across broward county for the last 18 years i really on this one dropped to the bottom line here which shows the average millage rate uh and its evolution over time and what that shows is it went from 4.4755 to our latest survey here is 61583 that's a 37.6 percent increase and you can see various communities have done higher or lower increases over that time but the average has has tended to trend up over the last 18 years with that i'll move on to the water and sewer fund with the water and sewer fund a few other observations and considerations to go over here so our minimum reserve level in this utility fund is three months of operating expenditures additionally we put in assumptions with regards to the prospect lake clean water center so that's 9.5 million dollars for chemicals electricity and personnel in fiscal year 2027 and going forward and then additionally in 2027 we would have a subordinate note and an availability payment that's 20 20 uh 29 million dollars at that point in time and we expect that to increase to 40 million dollars by 2035 uh capital investments excluding prospect lake uh what we're targeting right now in the current model is 50 million dollars of cash funded capital annually and then in addition uh we've included assumptions with regards to larger investments that are funded via debt and so 73 million dollars in the current year that we're in 100 million dollars in 2027 and 29 and then 170 million dollars in 2033 additionally we've got the advanced metering infrastructure program which does have some contractual savings of 1.4 million dollars in 2028 and we've also made some assumptions so as you invest in those meters they're typically more accurate and will result in increased revenue so we've made an estimate of 1.75 increase in volumetric revenue for fiscal year 27 and 28 when those meters are fully rolled out throughout the community and this is the current picture for the water and sewer fund a couple things i'll highlight here so the rate adjustment plan or rate revenue adjustment plan is shown in the top two parts of the table the top two bars here what we're showing for fiscal year 26 and 27 is the adopted in increases the same as we've shown last year uh nine percent uh for both water and sewer and then when we get to 2027 it would be nine percent for only water and sewer would drop down to five percent and then once we get through that period what we're showing in the model right now is with all of the assumptions i just went through five percent from 2028 forward would allow the fund to remain sustainable and i would just mention for context that's very much in alignment with the overall level of water and sewer rate increases you see across the u.s so the u.s government measures this each year in the inflation indexes and that number is always run right around five percent so after a few years of i know you've had adjustments that have been much larger what we're currently forecasting is a return to those more inflationary level of increases going forward and again that would support the ongoing cash funded capital and debt issuance related to water and sewer infrastructure the last few slides here is just to show comparisons with regards to the bill currently for water and sewer at different usage levels and so what i've got here on your on your screen right now is a low volume user at three thousand gallons a month so you can think of this kind of a two-person household with indoor domestic use we're showing the bill right now 60 59 would be below average for the communities that we've surveyed here on the chart and we've also put a little table here of some of the additional increases we've seen across other communities or that they've advertised they're doing as we go through the next slide here what we're just showing is due to the inclining block nature of water rates meaning that we price as you use more of the commodity we price it at higher levels the bill increases so what we're showing here is the current bill for 5 000 gallons is 107 dollars and 15 cents which put you on the higher end of the spectrum here and then finally another one here up to 8 000 gallons of monthly usage 176.99 which is the second highest one on this particular survey chart moving on to our next enterprise fund we have the stormwater fund up next and the key observations and considerations with regards to stormwater are mainly uh in the mainly related to the capital intensive nature uh that stormwater is undergoing right now so the phase one and phase two projects uh what we're showing in the model right now is a need for 230 million dollars to complete the phase one projects and that would be a new bond issuance and then in fiscal year 26 we have an additional hundred million dollars which would begin the planning design and some construction for the phase two projects and then moving forward fiscal year 29 32 and 35 we have additionally placed 350 million dollars in debt issuance that would support the full construction of the phase two projects over that time period we've also going forward assumed within the model uh some additional operations and maintenance costs so when you make really large investments like this what you'll see over time is your electricity costs are going to go up your operations costs are going to go up we've put in there 800 000 in each year fiscal year 2027 and fiscal year 30 so we've added it as you've made these large investments uh over time and then outside of the big bond investments we also have some reoccurring investments so the watershed management plan that's 3.75 million a year fiscal year 25 through fiscal year 29 and we're targeting outside of that additional capital that's in the range of roughly 10 million dollars when you average it over the next five years which will be paid through fund balance as well as revenue over time and so what we've got is the screenshot here for the stormwater fund currently and what i'll point to is this is the sustainable outlook right now given those investments that i just talked about and the main driver in this particular fund is the need to raise revenues in anticipation of those bond issuances and so what we're currently showing at the very top is those rate revenue increases as was mentioned in the fiscal year 26 budget window we're looking at 15 and that's the same as it was in last year's presentation of the same analysis however what we've updated now are the out years right so the out years with those larger investments that have been entered into the model the 350 million dollars what we see now in 2027 is a likely need to approach 20 for two years of increases and then going down to 15 through 2032 before we could drop it back down to 10 and what that would do is allow the city to have revenues at a level where you could issue that debt and be sure that you could repay it over time over the life of that debt which is typically 30 years and showing just down there on the bar on the bottom there the magnitude of those debts so four debts are now included in the near term and then in the long term for the phase two projects in addition to the analysis this year we've also put together a rate survey of stormwater rates and surrounding communities and throughout the state what you'll see up here is fort lauderdale right now is that that 284 dollars or 16 cents a year uh yeah about the third on this survey um you know my commentary here i do a lot of stormwater i lead up stormwater analyses for stantec many communities are seeing the pressures that fort lauderdale has already faced um coming through in their rates i'm working with a lot of communities right now that are um a bit behind you in the sense that they haven't moved and are now needing to move and so every year as we update this we see a lot of these rates make large leaps not just 10 but oftentimes 50 or 100 increases as they move to combat the underlying investment needs that they have in their community very similar to this community moving uh forward into the next enterprise fund the sanitation fund the minimum reserve target is different in this one we're at 1.5 months of operating cost in a target level of three months um the notable updates from recent contract and service changes so contract cost is assumed increase at four percent per year for the contract and we're also expecting disposal cost to move at five percent a year going forward um franchise fees uh 13.3 million come into the general fund uh that are transferred uh to solid waste that's escalated by four percent annually in the projection going forward and what we've got here is the uh outlook currently the ten-year outlook for the sanitation fund um what we're seeing is a very predictable level of increases for sanitation as it stands right now with the assumptions and observations that i just talked through um we expect that five percent per year will provide enough revenue to sustainably match the ongoing expenditure increases over time and this shows uh in that chart again looking at revenues and expenditures we're trying to get those two lines in alignment over the long term five and ten years so the revenues match your expenditures each year this shows a comparison across communities of the monthly bill for sanitation uh you can see right now fort lauderdale's 49.99 uh the second on there the thing i like to mention here is the level of service across community communities can widely vary so when you dig into these numbers some communities provide a lot more service or a lot more disposal capacity than other communities or yard waste services there's a lot of differences between communities when you look at a comparison like this side by side so the other funds as we step through the the last four to look at today parking fund building regional sewer and then the airport fund so with regards to the parking fund uh in the key assumptions that we've included in the parking fund uh we have the federal courthouse parking garage which is operational in fiscal year 2028 uh that includes an additional seven million dollars of cash funded capital for fiscal year 2026 and in staffing and operational costs going forward of 250 uh thousand dollars in fiscal year 2028 and forward uh the annual revenue receipts for the courthouse garage are estimated right now of a million dollars that would start in 2028 and we also have included in there the las olas uh downtown garage the heron garage which is operational in 2028 that's 1.2 million of additional revenue this is our screenshot right now the outlook for the parking garage so the key things to draw your attention here is we're not showing currently uh with this projection any increases across time with regards to parking rate um what we're showing is with the dynamics that i've talked through right now over the next 10 year with 10 years with the expected investments to be made the fund would be sustainable ongoing over time and it would likely be in the the farther end of this forecast as new investments came up or increased costs came up that you would need to look at increases but they're not in the near-term forecast move to the building fund which is a special revenue fund uh what we're looking at here and one of the key considerations here is the florida statute which puts limits on the amount of fund balance that you can carry from one year to the next um so it may not exceed an average of the operating budget for the last four fiscal years and then we've additionally included here and had great discussions with staff to understand the current projects that are underway and the expected revenue from those projects that would enter the building permit fund and so that's the sears town 1.5 million in revenue 2026 through 2029 and additionally b bmr which would be 4.4 million that we've spread out from 2026 through 2030. uh and then additionally you know what we'd say here is really monitored fees and fees overall and periodically to scale cost or resources according to the overall economy so this is our current outlook for the building fund uh what we've included up top is annual increases uh in 2027 going forward of three percent in those building permit fees and what you'll notice here in this dynamic is um that will sustainably run operations as you move out through uh 2030 you'll see the fund balance starts to drop off what i really see there is more the project window right you've got a lot of near-term projects that we have clear line of sight to that we've included those revenues but of course as you roll forward in time new projects will come up new investments will come up that would likely come into this fund and so this is always an effort of this kind of rolling bow wave of projects and how much revenue does that bring into the fund uh for with regards to the matching expenditures to that the central regional uh fund so uh separate from water and sewer uh the city also has an enterprise fund for central regional and this is the large user so we have a large user agreement for this particular fund to provide that wastewater treatment services to fort lauderdale and some surrounding communities um essentially what we're trying to do here is update this model to understand the changes in overall capital investments needed at the plant uh what we're seeing right now is uh from a perspective of proportionality fort lauderdale is uh 83.2 percent of the flows that come into that plant the other communities oakland park wilton manor tarmac and davy are 16.8 percent in this fund much like water and sewer and stormwater um we do have ongoing needs that are funded two different ways on the capital investment side so funded from debt we're anticipating near term the need for 127 million dollars in fiscal year 2025 and then outside of that we also each year get an update of the ongoing investment needs which are included in the renewal and replacement uh estimates uh that are prepared from an external engineer and you can see down below how that's trended over time so those are roughly running in the uh low 20 million dollar levels going forward but they have substantially increased over the last five or ten years this is the current outlook for the central regional fund what we're showing is in the near term a need for our pressure on the fund uh to increase rates so we're showing in fiscal year 2026 no order of magnitude if you will the agreement uh stipulates exactly how it will change and as the year uh closes for this fiscal year uh what should be done with fund balance so this is a always take as order of magnitude going forward we expect low 20 percent increases in the needed bulk wastewater rate for fiscal year 26 then dropping down to 6.76 in 2027 and then much more of a inflationary level of increases going forward really tied to the r and r increases uh outside of that year and you've had some uh near-term uh challenges that have really showing up in that 26 number uh the need for additional debt as i mentioned as well as operational changes at the plant and then finally for today's presentation i have the airport fund and so with the airport fund it operates a little bit differently than the other enterprise funds or the general fund that we've talked through so far this is really fundamentally revenues that come into the airport fund and so they have a very stable uh base of long-term leases both aviation and non-aviation and then secondarily we're looking at the dynamics related to capital funding as it interrelates to the federal government and fdot or the faa and the essentially grants that come in to provide funding for some of those projects this is a quick outlook for the airport fund and what we're showing here is a picture of financial sustainability so the airport fund's not going to need any help from the general fund going forward um what we see here is fundamentally sustainable cash flows revenues over expenditures for the forecasted period over the next five or ten years and with that i conclude the remarks but happy to go back to any slides if there's any particular questions or discussion you want to dive into great thank you very very much for your presentation that's very comprehensive and clearly well thought out and researched um does anyone else anyone have any questions of the gentleman i guess we're all stunned it's going to take a little time to digest all of this obviously and uh ben is saying he would like to say who would ben ben rogers yeah hey thanks mayor can you hear me all right i forgot about you ben i'm sorry yes hey ben yes okay great thank you thank you appreciate it um kyle thank you for the presentation and i also mayor i didn't get a chance to thank bill brown and the uh budget advisory board so thank you all for your great continued work cal can you go back to the um the overview page which uh it kind of showed where we are overall from a budgetary revenue at the beginning um expenses thanks absolutely and we're talking about the general fund yes yes thank you kyle and which page did you want to do you want to do the baseline or did you yeah that uh yes right here okay perfect yeah that's perfect great kyle thank you so um it looks like what what i'd like to hear kyle is your uh maybe over overview take on this again then raquel i'd like to hear your perspective there's some significant deficits projected in the future um that's concerning so uh like to hear a little bit about that uh obviously these are just projections what will hopefully change but uh want to get some feedback yeah absolutely happy to just walk through the high points here as we look at the general fund so this picture overall that you're seeing here in front of you is very similar to many of the general funds we work on when we do the budget year and we project it forward oftentimes the layering of two types of expenditures come in we have ongoing inflation and we have historical trends that help us understand how that's evolved but then we have known uh expenditure commitments so we've made past decisions that are then coming up in the out budget years right 27 28 like the safer grant that we've mentioned and so that's really what's showing up in the next few years 27 and 28 i guess i would notice this um picture looks a bit better though than what we've looked at the last few years so that provides a bit more time for the city to get to go forward um you know it really is is till fiscal year 2028 to where decisions uh need to be fundamentally made from a fund balance standpoint however you know we do see that deficit widening right the expenditures and and revenues are are getting a larger gap over time and so um you know the question is i don't think it's a decision you have to make to you know today as far as an increase but really in the next few years um if those expenditures come to fruition we know a lot of them will at the levels we forecasted due to the contractual nature of them we would expect deficits of this magnitude to start to open up and likely a decision to be made to to try to rebalance the budget at that time so it's really policy decisions with the commission would have to make either to increase taxes or reduce expenditures and and in the next couple years we're going to be revisiting our public safety contracts so clearly whatever decisions we make at that time are going to impact the the outcome of what you're analyzing here today absolutely okay yeah thank thank you kyle thanks thanks mayor raquel let's get your feedback on this please hi commissioner thanks for the question so a lot of factors come into play here as we look at future years um the mayor touched on one of those things that's our collective bargaining agreements and how we approach that negotiation process also the millage rate is an ongoing discussion uh we're also looking at opportunities to increase revenues so i would like to revisit conversations around our business tax fees and our special events and sponsorships and all the ways that we can add to our revenue sources and i think that the team is already uh understanding that i'd like to explore that for the upcoming budget process so that we can have something to present next year to address some of these concerns okay great thank you yeah i i don't i don't want to increase uh millage rates so we've got to be very cost conscious and be as efficient with the resources we've got because there's some big gaps that that are projected to open up so okay thank you so commissioner um uh to your point you know since we've been informed that we have some new sources of funding coming through because of lawsuits we might even consider applying some of that money towards the budget to offset any deficits that we could anticipate can we do that mayor so i think earlier today you asked about the pfas settlement funding for fiscal year 2025 and i think you wanted to have a preliminary discussion on that and that's exactly what we want to do we want to advance some of the capital projects that we have in the out years to make it a little easier on us going forward uh in consideration of the potential economic climate right exactly um anyone else from the commission have any questions okay i think we're good for now and i appreciate kyle your great work and everyone on your team back at stantec and uh um laura um yvette any questions no we're good okay thank you so much thank you we appreciate it it there's one person who signed up to speak spencer lasdy is spencer here there he is oh it's for a communication this afternoon okay i'm sorry never mind it wasn't well it didn't quite uh specify okay uh raquel do you have any other comments or questions with regard to these presentations today no i just appreciate the opportunity to give the presentation and to get your feedback and so this is preliminary we still are waiting to see where we land with the property appraiser and looking forward to providing a proposed budget okay so as kyle indicated these projections are a heck of a lot better than they were last year uh i know you weren't here to see the dashboard but uh we saw red last year uh and uh deep red so uh i'm glad to see that the the the the scales have balanced out a little bit uh better um and so anyway i want to thank the budget advisory board for all their work and their continued efforts to keep us uh solvent and uh informed and we appreciate uh visiting when is our next meeting together august okay very good okay that concludes our budget workshop and we now go into our conference meeting for uh on june 17th 2025 and uh let us begin with uh communications we have a communications from the sustain sustainability advisory board um is there anyone here from the sustainability but yes we have spencer yes you are come on up how are you good can you push the button at the bottom of the speaker great yes there we go we're good yes hi i'm spencer lasday i'm with the sustainability advisory board and i'm just here to let you guys know um about the communication that we had so on april 25th or april 28th 2025 rather uh we had a conversation with drew newstrom from the city's electric vehicle fleet and he let us know that in order to meet our net zero goals um we should consider moving our non-pursuit emergency vehicles in addition to other city fleet vehicles to hybrid or electric so in addition to the ev fleet policy uh we wanted to advise the cities um to advance the city's goals we wanted to um help achieve limiting greenhouse gas emissions and in order to do that by the goal of 2040 and then community-wide by 2050 um we wanted to just let you guys know that adopting an ev fleet policy for like the non-pursuit vehicles would be the most direct way to do that okay are you hearing that okay um anyone anyone from the commission have any questions all right spencer thanks so much thank you have a great day thank you for your great work and thank you to the committee for their efforts in pulling this together for us uh the next uh communication is from the uh historic preservation board is there someone here from the historic preservation board chris are you going to report i think trish come on up come on yeah so i can speak on that so the board received the sailboat band vision plan presentation which you're going to receive here in a few minutes right they were favorable towards the outcome of the plan and the report that they were provided but also supported taking actions and steps to implement some of the things that are included in the plan which you also heard earlier in your budget presentation that we are bringing those forward to you to do just that okay great so trish i'm sorry did you want anything do you want to add anything to that no okay go ahead just ask you a question i'm sorry so is that what they meant specifically when they said they wanted to see a more concrete avenue explored to identify funds is that is that what they meant that they were hoping that some funds would be put into the fiscal year 2026 budget just generally to assign funds to um some of the initiatives that are outlined within the plan itself as part of next steps okay and do you feel confident that what we saw today a hundred thousand dollars allocated will be able to take care of all that not all of it it's just for one initiative that's outlined within the plan and as chris mentioned we'll get into some specific details within our presentation okay great thank you thank you mayor you're welcome and our third presentation uh excuse me communication is with the uh planning and zoning committee anyone have any is there someone here on behalf of pnz is there is there a presentation you want to make what is the communication regarding proper facilities for the city of fort laurel boards in general so so mayor as you don't like meeting in the basement so mayor commission as you know since the uh flood of 2023 and the loss of city hall we've had to move some of our public meetings from to different facilities throughout the city planning and zoning board has been held since then in the lobby of the development services department prior board members had brought this up as a concern that they didn't feel the facility was the appropriate place to hold that meeting but since then we have implemented some audio and video upgrades to the space and taken some other steps to make that space more suitable to hold these meetings so it's my understanding that the current board is not as concerned about the facility space in the east where's i was distracted while you were speaking where is it being held so we hold the uh planning and zoning board as well as the board of adjustment meetings at in the lobby of development development services so okay it's after hours the lobby is open and available we we have a complete team to set that up and have audio and video resources available to conduct that meeting hello jackie mayor commissioners jacklyn scott a member of the planning and zoning board i think the frustration is that the majority of members or everyone feels that it is kind of an unprofessional uh atmosphere although staff has done a good job trying to accommodate their members are becoming frustrated and wondering just how long will we be put uh continue to be in that environment and so i believe join the group yeah i know so that that to me was the gist of the communication wanting to hope that we get out of there soon and if not is there other alternatives so as we continue to make progress at the police department uh we're hoping that the community uh center there can be used for public meetings including the future commission meetings in the interim so hopefully you know if you have patience we'll all be able to convene in that site and going going forward thank you and that was no negativity on staff they really have done a good job trying to accommodate okay thank you thank you may i ask jackie um what what's cited to be you says an unprofessional environment yeah they they just don't feel that that particular building is a building that we should be um i guess yeah bringing in yeah like a lobby bringing in all the development all the attorneys all the people trying to invest in our city they just you know haven't really enjoyed being there i just got back on the board commissioner i've only been to like four meetings so the majority of people are now leaving the board and there's a bunch of new appointments coming on and i am only speaking because i'm the only member that's here today okay oh why didn't you speak okay thank you okay let's continue business one a presentation on the sailboat bed vision plan who will be making that presentation okay so mayor today you have trisha logan principal planner with development services urban design and planning division and andrew georgiatis from dover colon partners it's a pretty extensive report um i know there are a lot of pretty pictures and all that but you're going to distill it down to it's basic components right great absolutely she only needs an hour mayor it's okay yeah start the clock good afternoon mayor and commissioners i'm here today with andrew georgiatis from dover colon partners to present on the sailboat bend vision plan and we started this process about a year and a half ago in november 2023 with a communication from the historic preservation board to the city commission to consider doing something like this to revitalize the area and come up with a vision plan there was also another effort from the sailboat bend civic association in the formation of a master plan committee in the conversations that they had with staff and the district commissioner um so at that i will turn it over to andrew who we have hired as a consultant to prepare the plan and he will go over in more detail um the feedback that we were we've received and our next steps thank you yesu andrew yes um thank you very much mayor and commissioners um so as she as trisha said my name is andrew georgiatis i'm with the firm of dover colon partners town planning and i i forgot to ask you to advance the slides was oh just say is it is it this one sorry oh it's this sorry i should know that by now yes so um as as as you see on on this slide there were uh different objectives that had been identified you know in the in the project scope and some of these uh related to interconnectivity connections both internal and into the surroundings accentuating the historic sites and the cultural uh uh resources that we have uh activation of the parks and park programming and how to balance the new infrastructure that will be needed over the coming decades with the uh the neighborhood's character and and and history and this is a timeline showing some of the activities that uh that happened so uh in august we had a kickoff meeting and we had uh uh site tours with the sailboat sailboat bend civic association and with other residents and we came back with uh a series of ideas for an open house in october of 2024 and uh then uh we continued to refine it based upon those uh that feedback from from the community and and also from from you commissioner and uh now we're we're here in in june with the uh presenting the more refined work product and so the open house uh uh we what we did is um in thinking about how the report would be structured we divided the room into some thematic stations so in those stations were street design intersections park programming uh resilience and and and adaptation to flooding uh special sites and so uh those uh those would later become the the mini chapters in the report but each of those stations had had a series of boards three or four boards and uh the the the community was encouraged to uh respond to it with uh post-it notes and different ways of of attaching their opinion to the board so that we could see that later there was also um an online survey that that sought to distill their opinions and also uh prioritize some of these different themes uh for us this is just one example of one of those boards and so uh we had several of them and they were filled with ideas filled with opinions uh from the community and so we sought to you know distill those for each board to see to gauge the temperature of of of whether different recommendations were liked or not and so here's uh one of the um i'm just going to show you a few of the exhibits as an example of each of the thematic stations so this one was the one regarding sea level rise adaptation so we wanted to show what peer communities have been doing and so the upper slide was what miami beach has been uh pursuing which is their actual raising in a coordinated coordinated way some of the streets that that traverse the island and then in in in houston following harvey we know that fema and epa gave us technical and also financial assistance for the raising of some of the historic houses and even non-historic houses in some of the worst blood affected areas so we were uh trying to show you know what the peer communities are doing that are uh you know who are also vulnerable to flooding and storm surge and sea level rise and um regarding the street design and intersection design there were a series of boards which showed a menu of possible what if scenarios for the future that we wanted to see what the community's opinion would be this particular one is showing the uh how lauderdale park and also to quest a park and rivermont could be unified by maybe making the street more crossable and easier to walk along uh then in in this slide we looked at um this wasn't our idea but we loved it which was the uh civic band association and in previous efforts they had already illustrated what a gateway feature could be at la solas and and aven and avenue of the arts uh boulevard of the arts excuse me and and so um this one is showing how uh in the future something whether it be an archway whether it be a marker could could could in fact tell uh visitors that they have in fact arrived to this district you know oakland park did something similar right for their main street you uh they put an archway at the beginning of it i think at the other end too and uh it's uh it it's simple but effective you feel you feel like you've arrived somewhere right yes and so uh is that what the community is looking for something like that yes yes they and they were hoping just to set the tone and and and you know allow those who are experiencing especially from outside to know that that you you have arrived in sailboat bend a district into its unto itself so well in the past we've used monument signs right like like edgewood and um and river oaks and we just have like monument signs in all of our neighborhoods um you know i would like i've always wanted to see those for entering into fort lauderdale you know you go into miami beach for example you cross over the uh uh i 195 and you cross over the causeway and you see this huge stand of trees and the sign you know welcome to miami beach when you come to fort lauderdale it's welcome to fort lauderdale you know it's like there's no big splashy announcement so but sailboat bend people want something like this okay yes yeah and like you said it would be wonderful if the city as a whole had some of these gateway features so that it it also helps to slow the pace of of those who are driving and and and set the pace because once you pass something sometimes your tendency is to put the brakes a little bit you know like you said with miami beach when we see those glowing discs on on the cabbage palms you know necks and that that helps us to slow down uh once we come off the causeway and onto the city grid so and then um the missing middle uh and and i i know i need to accelerate um missing middle is is very important because what that means is that many american cities have have high rises and then they have one story uh detached houses and they have very little in between like row houses townhouses garden apartments and some of these other uh uh higher density but yet human scale uh housing types and so this was looking at how could we increase the diversity of sailboat bend which already has some of those ties but could have more and in terms of uh making different households feel welcome in the neighborhood and this was showing some of the park programming we heard several opinions regarding the need for a playground for dog for uh dog parks uh uh even outdoor uh gyms uh food gardens you know for those who want to cultivate the land so there were several different uh ideas about where that where some of those uh programmatic elements could land in which of the parks because we know we have the the sailboat bend preserve on the west which is very natural and has a native beautiful hammock and then we have the more culturally oriented lauder hill uh lauderdale and uh to quest a park along the river and then of course the gateway um features at at west la sola so there's several different uh characters and and there were a lot of opinions regarding that we also looked at the police uh uh station and the headquarters site and one of the things that uh the community the community came up with this this uh we just we just tried to illustrate it which was when we were at the the big parking lots that are at the head of the canal which i think that canal spurs called the argyle canal but i'm not sure but it's the canal that runs right into the the new river from the police station and they know they they showed us that that that canal had some nutrient pollution and runoff problems and so they asked us what could we do to clean the water before it enters into the canal and so one of the ideas that we discussed with them was this idea of a polishing marsh that would reduce some of the asphalt and then treat with uh native plants the water before it runs off and very and right next to it we have some of the buildings which in the future may be um uh accommodated elsewhere for that for the the that site and so what we looked at is how could we complete the street scene because we know we already have uh sailboat bend village uh townhouses and artist lofts right across the street but then there's a there's a sort of a blankness and an emptiness on the other side of the street and so we're wondering if we could complete the street scene with porches and front doors and and housing eventually and then this was uh the site that's just south of dr kennedy um uh homes and it's it's it's bounded more or less by southwest second street and middle street and uh so what what we were showing here after they talked about the need for food garden is what if we could help to weave in the the idea of self-sufficiency and and access to organic produce by designing the site so that the middle of the block has this this sort of edible edible island that's there and then it would be rung by the missing middle um missing middle uh housing types around it that was uh illustrated earlier this is the overall master no i shouldn't say master plan it's the overall uh illustrative vision plan that could become the precursor to a master plan in the future and uh shows the walking route uh that was taken with most of the community although we ended up walking most all of the streets in in the neighborhood uh for this and it'll just show you some of uh the uh the the more significant projects that were proposed in the in in the report there and so finally uh the implementation framework how you know what is the path forward to to making this reality and so as you'll see that there are uh uh short term midterm and long term uh tasks that have been identified and also the uh the responsible or or or the department that would take the lead on all of those tasks and so we worked with staff uh in order to write this and to to see if that could help guide uh what happens next and so here are just some of those um ranked and and timeline features and who's responsible uh trisha was there something that i should add about the the implementation framework i feel like it could be missing something but okay all right thank you and so yes we encourage your comments and questions okay great thank you so much andrew uh district commissioner do you have any comments on this yes well first andrew thank you so much and for your work and dover cole's work and trish and uh historic preservation board um and also especially to the neighborhood i know that christian is here christian gray the president of sailboat bend is here his board and his master planning committee um this has been going on now for a little bit of time maybe a couple of years and um we've had some really good meetings and really good public input and people showing up uh to really tell us how they feel about what we think can happen um this is a very significant neighborhood this is the oldest neighborhood um in the city of fort lauderdale it is our only residential historic neighborhood in the city of fort lauderdale officially designated as such um and so it's very important uh i'm really happy to see uh the work to date and i wanted to thank all of those folks that i just mentioned for that um i'm happy to see the budget now is including the next steps um because that's important um so many times we we get everyone excited in neighborhoods and we we bring people together and uh and then we look at each other and we say okay well where's the funding or how are we going to implement this uh and i'm really hoping that we continue that work um just as i know that we're going to continue the work on sunrise lane on the beach after we brought all of those people together repeatedly uh for workshops and charrettes and we had uh consultants and uh it's just important to bring these kinds of projects over the finish line uh and not just talk about it uh and have another plan that sits on a shelf so i'm really encouraged i know that um you know christian's been communicating from the neighborhood and i'm sure i feel confident that he and staff are working out exactly how we're going to see this work progress uh in the next fiscal year uh so i just wanted to say thank you i think we're making really really good progress thanks mayor all right great um any other questions or comments from the commission um just a comment um thank you for this presentation i am excited as well um commissioner glassman in the direction that this is going in um because i too believe that this is a in a sense a pilot to encourage us as a city to and highlight the other neighborhoods throughout the city that should be also moving in this direction to become highlighted and included as a historic community so i'm really excited to see this take flight um and being able to um move forward also in the conversations that we're having um this you all have done an excellent job um in this blueprint and um i thank you for what you're doing i'm excited um to watch this unfold great um i guess commissioner her vice mayor has left the meeting um so just quickly when you did your surveys with the people what has been the generals what has been the majority sentiment about sailboat bend do people want to maintain the historic district all the rules all the requirements has there been pushback against that tell us a little bit about you know before the city wants to commit any funding to something like this what has been the attitude that is the current prevailing attitude with regard to historic nature of sailboat bed and and i encourage tricia to correct me from wrong but from what i remember that there was a a range of opinions of course in in that some felt that that there were some overly restrictive items and those were not only the historic uh not only the historic uh not only the the historic preservation items but also uses the permitted the permitted uses that were located you know in in our zoning charts for the zoning district and so uh and then others felt that it was the the uh that that strictness is what actually has helped crystallize and and firm up you know the character of the neighborhood so there was a there was a big range of responses mayor we didn't ask the explicit question of do you want to keep the historic district or not but um i think over the last several years we have made a lot of improvements to historic preservation in general and our regulations making it a little more streamlined as far as our review process and i think that's really gone a long way with positivity within the neighborhood we have had a lot of conversations with the civic association particularly christian and some of the leadership within the neighborhood about um just you know how we can embrace the historic preservation aspect and i think that a lot of those conversations came clearly through within this master plan effort and trying to make sure we're preserving this neighborhood long term seeing growth celebrating history through different aspects like the gateway feature that could be added in the future uh to identify the fact this is a historic area well i'm looking um on your exhibit one page 16 and we asked select one of the following statements that reflects your view of the sailboat bend historic district and 20 percent say historic preservation is an important part of of community life and deserves public support and 35 percent say preserving sailboat bend's heritage strengthens the community's quality character and vitality so there's 55 who seem to have a sensitivity to the historic nature of it and wants to keep it going and then there's a smaller amount that say the heck with it i don't want it anymore so um but of course i ask why are you i always ask why do you move there if you don't like what the what the district is all about but i just want to make sure that we're still we're still consistent and acting consistently with the the um with the community wishes and um and i think that that's going to be important as we as we make choices on funding what are what are the priorities within the city and is this a priority for the city to pursue and that's that's the reason why i'm asking okay and mayor if i may just add to that i i i i appreciate that question i think you know we've gone through different periods over the you know seven and a half years or so since i've been sitting here with regards to sentiment in that neighborhood um but i think overall and overwhelmingly so at least in the last few years um i get a sense from the neighborhood that it is important it's important to remain a historic district and for many reasons as as trish said i think we've done as a city commissioner a really good job in making it a lot less onerous to own a property in the historic district um we have as trisha said streamline a lot of those processes whereby people that want to do things to their property can get that done administratively they don't necessarily have to go before the historic preservation board anymore uh we've certainly decreased fees for a variety of reasons in uh any kind of work that's going to be done in that district uh we have a lot more to do um don't get me wrong it's it's not perfection um and i do want to see more incentives i want to see us to be able to do things to help people uh with um you know raising their homes i want to see us to be able to do things like help people with archaeological surveys and requirements that they do need to or want to uh raise their homes um but i i do get the sense that people appreciate it um what they really seem to understand is that because of this proximity of this neighborhood to the downtown core um if you did open up this neighborhood and rezoned and did do away with the historic uh designation you know what would happen to this neighborhood um it the sky would be the limit and i mean that in every way shape or form uh that would be an area that would be unrecognizable um if we did remove that historic designation if we did open up that zoning uh to allow what we see happening all around that neighborhood along broward boulevard uh flagler village and other areas pretty close in proximity um so there you know there's really good reason and folks in that neighborhood um really do seem to appreciate the history and the charm uh and what exactly it is but as i said um this is a great step because we really need to do better um we need to make it a more attractive neighborhood uh i'm glad to see that that streetscape is a very important component in the next fiscal year budget um and and we have to do all that we can working in conjunction um with the neighborhood to make sure um that people feel really comfortable and pleased uh owning owning in again our city's only residentially historic district so you know thank you for that question but i think we're headed in the right direction i really do okay great any other questions okay thank you so much we appreciate it thank you okay moving on to business two this is mixed use code project update gentlemen so mayor commission uh development service department urban design and planning division principal planner jim hetzel will present on the mixed use code project update this is a project that the commission funded in the last fiscal year's budget and that we're pursuing and have a have a chance now to update you on that and also seek some direction on where to go next okay hello jim good afternoon mayor commissioners how's everybody doing good so what have you been doing all this time this is what we've been doing all this time what is the genesis of this analysis what what brought the city to make ask this question so it's a very good question to ask and i'll get into that in the presentation that's some of our slides to cover as soon as i think it's up and ready to go so today's presentation includes waiting for the so today's presentation includes a couple different items our discussion points include an update on the project where it stands the implications of brow county land use policy changes and also the state's live local act which i'm sure everyone has heard of both relating to the construction of affordable housing and lastly is some potential options of amendments that can move forward prior to the completion of the project which are based on input we heard from the community on our initial outreach efforts and staff would be looking at some director from the commission on those items some background information this project was approved as part of the 2024 fiscal year budget for the purposes of looking at our mixed use regulations and doing an update to those criteria in anticipation for the development that we expect from those two policy changes the brow county and the state live local act the overall intent of the project is to claim four base regulations that will focus on the major corridors throughout the city these four base regulations would deal with size of buildings in relation to the public realm and the adjacent residential neighborhoods and amending the code will help us address the size the mass and scale as well as neighbor compatibility some of our existing challenges and issues with the anticipation of new construction and mixed-use projects along the corridors there's a need to address the lack of design criteria in our code today neighborhood compatibility is part of those regulations as well as lack of a form-based regulation to apply on mixed-use projects so we get a result that's better for the community and creates a sense of place and more compatible development along the corridors some of these design issues include density height lot size shadowing where historically density has been limited to 50 units per acre now with the recent state law you can increase that density to the highest residential density in the city which is 60 units per acre with building heights that can also be increased to the highest permitted within one mile of any site that would be typically 150 feet throughout most of the cities with exceptions when you're closer to the near downtown or downtown core typically the corridors have a height of building height of about one to three stories and what we're seeing come in uh recently are more uh construction at 75 feet which is about seven eight stories because of construction costs above 75 feet is high-rise construction however it would be permitted to go to 150 along corridors typically throughout the city there's also the length of the lots so many lots the length is long along the corridor creating a street wall or a frontage that is very lengthy this will have impacts on the corridors as well so two aspects there on the screen you have broward county policy 2.16.4 which is commonly referred to as the geller amendment and the live local act which is the state law the county policy deals with a bonus density structure so many market rate units for the amount of affordable housing units you provide in the project that's how it's calculated to get to density there's also a site eligibility requirement meaning you have to front a major state or county roadway with the county policy there's also a pay in lieu of so what a developer can do is pay out of the system but they pay for the total number of units within the project just not for the affordable housing units that amount started off at ten thousand with a three percent annual increase which would today would be ten thousand six hundred so for example if you had a development with 300 units you'd pay for all those units at the ten thousand six hundred amount would equal about three point one million for the project these projects are subject to development review committee as well as planning and zoning board for most of the cases the live local act was adopted in 2023 that's a state law to increase affordable housing as well but it preempts the cities and counties on multiple multiple ways one is the use one another one is the density and another one is the height so what the state law says what the state law says is you can have the highest density permitted in the city which we look at at the rest it says highest residential density which is the 60 units per acre it also says that we can't regulate height we get to if it's within one mile of the site whatever the height is that's the height the project gets to have for the most part that's 150 feet throughout the entire city unless it's near downtown area which has a core height of unlimited or the near downtown character area which has a 300 feet height limit which is about 30 stories sites within that distance could go to those heights as well so so does the state law preempt 2.16.4 it does not it's a separate policy well but it but it's they seem to they seem to interact for example um the state law does not permit a payment in lieu option correct but the county does so how does that work so you can't use both together you'd have to use them separately if you choose to go under live local you would follow the live local regulations or state law what it permits if you wanted to follow the county law or policy you would follow that but doesn't this the state does not allow you to do a panel of no right yeah so so how does the county get away with it then yep sure so mayor the the state law the live local act doesn't preclude cities and counties from having their own policies even if they're in the same area and what that does to create options for developers but live local for example you're required to provide at least 40 percent affordable units within that development but the geller amendment the responsibility to provide affordable units is much lower even includes a payment in lieu of option so developers will weigh out those different scenarios to decide which one works best for them they may choose to do something with the higher affordability because they can go taller they can have more density they can go through an administrative process but others because of how their projects are financed and what their numbers look like may choose to do something with less affordability in lieu of having that extra height so what it does in having these different policies is it creates options and different incentives for developers to choose which is the right path for them but we want to make sure through this project that we have a good basis along these corridors so that we have a little bit more control and maybe offer something that's more enticing or at least predictable for the neighbors and the developers through these alternative policies to live local so i hear what you're saying but somehow it's just not registering my mind that the county can come up with its own land use policy and the state comes up with its land use policy and many of the things in the state's land use policy contradict what the county is so how does how i i'm sure you guys know what you're doing but it's hard for me to understand exactly when you say what they can follow the state path or they can follow the county path i don't understand how that so on top of that not to complicate it but in many of these areas that both of these policies apply or also our unified flex areas so with flex units somebody could also conceivably flex in residential units and do a mixed-use project under that path so it is it is a bit confusing but what we're seeing in the market is that developers are looking closely at all of these policy options all of these development scenarios and picking the one that they feel is the right one for them based on the product they're trying to produce okay i'll ask for a private tutorial on this because i don't want to belabor this and just to add to that i'm sure you all understand it right yeah there's a game tonight okay just to add to that there are some limitations based on land use and zoning so the state law is more expansive and where you can build residential development for instance it could be on industrial zoning mixed-use commercial where the county land use is pretty much commercial only commercial with main along a main order along a main corridor for instance where the county where the state law allows you to go anywhere in the industrial mixed-use or commercial zoning category anywhere in the city so i think the next slide might have the map might help a little bit okay there we go this might be a little bit more helpful in answering your question so the map on the left map one depicts the properties that are eligible under the live local act in red the map on the right map two are the properties eligible under the county land use plan the regional activity centers are shown in gray with the blue boundary those have form-based regulations the areas in red do not you can see there's a lot of similarities between the two but the one on the left map one is more expansive in its red coverage or the properties that are eligible so that's the little bit of the distinction between the two so the mixed-use project timeline and tasks where there's five major tasks we've completed two two is being completed right now with some agency coordination meetings but we have several more to go before the end of the project which is around september 2026 so you can see the time and the project length there staff along with our consultant binesh completed initial public outreach we conducted a meeting on eight different meetings that occurred in each commission district as well as a stakeholder meeting an open house and a presentation to the council civic associations the initial feedback we got focused on three main kind of topics if you will development concerns traffic and infrastructure and the live local act implications in addition to that outreach the city had on its website a link to a virtual room where individuals can go view the narrated presentation provide comments and feedbacks and look at the imagery board that was provided in the actual in-person meeting to date last week is where we took this down to date we had 118 visitors to that virtual room so some potential options that we looked at that came from the public input meetings that we started with on the right you have the scope of work with the consultant of all the elements that they have to address those highlighted in yellow we feel staff is recommending to move forward with which include building length limitations a podium step back a maximum floor plate size and the residential transition uh area with two other elements that are clarification elements would be to remove the single use residential as a permitted in a mixed use uh development as well as make it clear that mixed use applies to live local applications um before you move on yep um you said um remove single use residential reference and mixed use section is that a zoning change what do you need remove so in the in the language under the mixed use section in our code it says that single use residential is permitted if the property is 10 acres or less well that's contradicting to mixed use regulations to have a single use so we want to take that reference out so it's clear that projects that come in are subject to providing mix of uses in the project you're welcome so building length you know building length could be very extensive along the corridors the impact they could have on the public realm is basically a wall on either side of the corridor and creating a very unattractive and unappealing um built environment for the city couple that with a lack of articulation or no building separation or a setback of any sorts it can have really negative impacts on the city corridors and throughout the entire city what we're looking at is some similar to what we have in the code today in the mixed use section for residential building um residential buildings not single use residential residential buildings to limit it to 200 feet in length so we're pulling from what the code already has a limitation in the building podium step back is another item that we're proposing to move forward with this obviously improves the light and air between buildings and those would apply facing the street so there'd be a podium step back facing the street and it would help with the aesthetics in all of our overall surrounding environment maximum floor plate is another element we would be looking at limiting the floor plate to 10 000 square feet for that would be for the tower component so it'd be anything above the podium height obviously again for improving light and air within the project also for aesthetic reasons on the project along the corridors as well residential transition right now we look at neighbor compatibility and we deal with our existing code which is very uh one size fits all we would be looking at something that's a little bit more practical in its sense and modify the section to do a transitional area that would occur along that line between the red color which is just a commercial and the yellow line or yellow color which is the residential this image on the screen depicts a portion of us-1 commercial properties on the left are in the red residential in the yellow this is how currently we apply the neighborhood compatibility requirements in our code which is a one-size-fits-all approach it measures non-residential and residential development as they are adjacent to one another but the heights vary as you can see the graphic on the left the residential height is lower than the right side of the graphic which is a higher residential height of 55 feet so there's there's differences there on how you measure and implement neighbor compatibility requirements what we would propose is a transitional area which you could see in the blue and that would be how we would apply it which would control the amount of building mass in that blue area proportionate to the residential area that's next to it based on the maximum height in that residential area so it's a better transition between development building and the neighborhood so the single-use residential reference in the code we're looking to take that out and there's a difference between the way the code is written it says single-use residential buildings or single-use residential the graphic on the right shows how a mixed-use development could have single-use buildings but it's still a mixed-use project still mixed-use development that's what we're trying to clarify with that correction in the code the second part of this is applying the mixed-use to live local right now obviously our code is silent on how that would apply but we would add clarification language that any live local project would be subject to the mixed-use regulations so a little bit while i'm in front of you my staff in front you looking at some direction from the city commission to move forward with these amendments prior to the completion of the project since the project timeline as you saw on the previous slide goes to september 2025 and what we're getting in and interest with all the applications that we're seeing being submitted for under live local we think we could move forward with a couple amendments pretty quickly if the direction from the commission is to do so and that's what's on the screen for you to look at i'll be glad to answer any questions interesting any questions yeah mayor oh yes ben hey thanks mayor uh jim thank you uh for this presentation this work mayor mayor this is something we've been uh jim's been and the whole uh city team has been really helpful in in our district because there's several live local projects that are uh progressing and so the these suggestions are ones that have been met with largely um real positive feedback from the neighborhoods um it will help um mitigate a little bit of the impact that folks are concerned about from a live local standpoint um so i i'm i'm very interested in kind of moving forward with with all possible as many possible um so that we can bring it forward to city commission meeting for you know more public participation and and and a vote mayor thanks okay anyone else have any questions i have a question of really a couple questions um when i think about my district and how this would play in i think about um the six trunk corridor um even davy boulevard corridor and 19th street um with different things that are different opportunities for those areas could you give me a scenario what this also with the impact would look like for one of those three you're sure the well the sister area is subject to the northwest design standards so it's not um subject to mixed use regulations it's got its own form based regulations so we kind of that's separate um the 19th would be subject to this if properties come in and we would look at how we would apply this to a mixed use development or live local projects live local act project coming in and applying design criteria that would have a building be more compatible with its surrounding or adjacent neighborhood you know that that corridor is very tight and in the commercial frontage so it would be interesting to see someone come in with a tall project adjacent to a very low scale residential just wouldn't be compatible if we can get that developed through those changes then that's good that's a great achievement for the city and the zoning okay thank you for that you're welcome so jim could i just ask you uh how many how many live local projects have come into the office as of as of today and it's a good question i have my notes i think it's six six that have come in one that's been approved for sure um but we get preliminary meeting requests pretty frequently about people coming and wanting to live local because i'm aware of several in my district uh one actually you can see the demolition going on right now by uh just um north of the gateway shopping center that's happening right now that demolition and that'll be a live local project is that the one you're saying was approved yes that's what i thought um you know the the old uh motel it was used i forgot the name of it but then it was also used by the artist the link then it was used as the art institute yeah for uh you know and then used by homeless people yes yes uh it's not it's being demolished as we speak right now um just on federal highway across from the audi dealership it is being demolished yeah right now so and that's a live local yes use development project yes that's the first one we've approved yes so that's underway so for the six or so projects that you said you know are coming in or on the way in or would would any of them be affected or they would be grandfathered right they this wouldn't be applicable to any of them right no they're if they're already formally submitted and uh legally legally we could not apply it we can't retro apply it if they formally submit an application okay um no i i and i agree with uh what commissioner sorensen said i think it all of this does make sense obviously it's not going to affect you know what we see happening right now um but i i think it makes sense to you know continue to look at the work thank you okay um so if there are no other questions just uh um uh there are two people who have signed up to speak and if you can stand by jim of course thank you thank you very much for your presentation uh doug egan followed by ted and sarah thank you mayor commissioners um first of all i just want to put on the record that i'm here primarily today in support of the staff particularly jim ella and others um in the work that they've done and and i've got to tell you and i've known those folks for a long time maybe it's my old when i was a fort lauderdale city planner for several years a long time ago um so maybe i can relate to what they're trying to do and i understand where they're trying to go with it and and i can tell you they're not just trying to go through a process but they're actively soliciting input from people that have been around this stuff including myself for for a long time but and i think maybe this is the intro to the tutorial but um there's there's a couple of key points that i would bring out that i think are important as we go down this path because the world of zoning has changed as as we know you guys know with the things that are being talked about you also know i've probably been one of the biggest advocates for our vibrant urban center for three decades um and i think we're seeing the results of that it's come to fruition it's plans that were put in place 25 years ago but part and parcel with that there was also another goal and that's that with providing for a vibrant urban center with higher densities higher heights that that would also take pressure off of the surrounding neighborhoods and another way of saying that is i think a lot of us for a lot of years even my two decades on the downtown development authority was that downtown densities and downtown heights should remain downtown and that from there we look at what is compatible with the rest of the neighborhoods and that's brought us to the the point where we're looking at commercial properties being able to incorporate or continue to incorporate mixed-use projects and and so kind of trying to to to get to the essence of it there is no units per acre density requirements um other than in the zoning categories that we all know the residential existing zoning categories but you know for the most part flex units are gone okay there's there's a few scattered around that people can use but you know when when we as a community are looking at how we guide where growth goes and and and where we want to have good development take place is with the units that historically if you were going to place residential development slash mixed-use development in commercial corridors you were limited to 50 units per acre that's gone um we also do not have what a lot of communities have which is floor area ratios far so we don't have that to guide us so basically what we have of the the kind of envelope if you will is height and and these commercial corridors have had the 150 foot height limitation for probably some 50 years and and and it's worked fine you know for the most part as staff was saying it's mostly commercial one to three units you have the occasional uh office building that was built for example at commercial boulevard and federal highway back in the 80s and some others so you know when it really comes down to it i think it's it's fundamental to bear in mind that that is the guidepost um and that's what we have to work with you know what what i did i thought as as just a very quick exercise that i've shared with with staff over time is you know um if you if you look at our vibrant urban center the vast majority of those projects are being developed at densities of between 200 and 400 units per acre and and that's and that's kind of what you see 20 30 story buildings 40 story buildings um i also took a look at at projects that are more in in what i would call the higher traffic corridors mid-density and not just here in fort lauderdale um but other places in broward county as well as other markets i i used as a representative sample um my old my old alma alma alma alma um styles corporation because we've done projects in other parts of broward county for example plantation in their midtown district which is kind of more of the character and density that we're talking about on our commercial quarters we've we've also developed high density urban center projects in charlotte and in nashville but we've also developed properties in those in other cities raleigh for example that have been more in these again higher traffic corridors that have been more in the range of 50 to 100 units per acre and and i use that just because we can all relate to that kind of reference um and and and to give a comparison you know um the the the sunrise harbor project which i think many of you are familiar with uh right at the intercoastal and sunrise boulevard also includes the sunrise harbor mega yacht marina that was actually the first project to be done under the mixed use corridor rules at the time for in fort lauderdale and and uh and styles happened to be the ones that developed it and it's still today a very popular project um people complimented every time i turn around um the mega yacht marina is is um very attractive the the people love that as well but you know and i and i use that as a comparison because that is a project that did not exceed the 150 foot height had generous setbacks open space requirements everything that was necessary and that was about 94 units to the acre i'm just about finished okay please do thank you and and and so what i wanted to try to relate is these other projects in other cities that we've developed have all been in that 50 to 100 units per acre kind of range and i'm making that distinction because i think many people in fort lauderdale would consider that to be reasonable you can look and you can see sunrise harbor you can see these other projects that are 60 60 feet 70 feet 80 feet but they all are very compatible with what is allowed in height today at the 150 feet but i think that as i started with since we don't have fer's we we do not have units per acre any longer that height is important to maintain in order to get that distinction between the high density urban center and other areas that if we if we provide the rest of the rules properly we'll get good development on so with that i just wanted to share that with you guys but let me just share this with you yes we do have the height as our as a check on over development unfortunately there are some developers who have found their way to avoid that height restriction a recent example was the sage project which allowed um which never got to the commission and it's and it kind and because of because of their manipulate their ability to manipulate the the rules that we have set um and the state has set for approval process now we have this this huge building that's going to be located next to the corinthian um that's going to far exceed the height limitations of 150 feet and um so rules like what jim has proposed uh today and what you're discussing need to be um abided by otherwise we're going to lose our ability to to maintain the integrity and the dignity of our of our smaller scale neighborhoods so those are the most important things that we have to pay attention to because there's there's such a uh a byzantine uh example of rule rule making and rule following in our city code that we need to get a handle on that otherwise we're going to continue to see um developers who are going to find loopholes in such a way that frustrates the intent of the city and the people and the people that we represent so thank you for coming by today you couldn't have said it better mayor and that's exactly why i'm making my attempt at articulating how strongly i feel about that 150 feet right with no kind of flexibility and a lot of other things and and i think it's because the majority of these projects are probably going to be done at lesser heights but i i personally and for my developer friends out there no i'm not a heretic but i'm a resident first and i think that that will um i think that that we will find very good development if we can refine some of these rules that are being put in place without a lot of rules around those thank you ted and sarah good afternoon everybody ted and sarah president of the river oaks civic association for one thing i'd like to say that mayor i couldn't agree with you more with your last statement that was that was actually right on the money and uh my respect for mr egan is is just limitless you know i've talked to him many times and i just have to say that but the one thing that he did say which i i really uh like is that downtown density and downtown heights deserves to stay downtown i mean and a lot of these a lot of us neighborhoods we almost feel betrayed by what's going on right now um you look at us right now with these uh mixed use corridors we're almost surrounded with uh davie boulevard to the north andrews avenue to the east and state road 84 to the south and there we are like right in the middle of a canyon and uh and and i i was i signed up to speak late because something hit me in the same thing that hit commissioner beasley pitman when that thing said remove single use residential reference that scared the bejesus out of me when i saw that up there because uh from the way it read was just so long neighborhoods you know and we're going to do anything anywhere but uh we just got to be so careful because i attended a lot of these recently where we're trying to get to 33 tree canopy in in the city and went to a lot of those workshops and boy it's just such a tightrope that we're walking with the wanting to get green space and then wanting to get all this development it's it's a juggling if you ask me we got it um then that one phrase also scared me do not have density limitations you know boy our our single family home neighborhoods are the backbone to our city you know you have all the other stuff which i i love and participate in but our neighborhoods you know we we just gotta we gotta be true to our neighborhoods um and trying to obtain that 33 canopy percentage which we were uh you know i attended many workshops about so with that i just want to say boy it's it's a scary thing somebody some what's going on all right well thank you ted is there any is there anyone is there anyone else who wishes to speak on this item okay go ahead um i'm sorry i'm i'm bad with names sometimes ted i had jim ted oh jim jim jim you can't forget ted every time i say ted i'm looking for sarah so ted answer um my question um just looking over um the map that was provided on um what's this page six where it talks about the live local development locations and i'm concerned about two areas because i'm seeing where we are abutting with other municipalities um that 31st avenue from 19th street that area we're abutting with lauder hill and then we go a little further south for district 3 441 we're looking at plantation how does this um how do we protect ourselves to say with plantation of lauder hill they decide to do whatever they're able to do and we are trying to stay at a particular height density how does that play together how do we play good together is what i'm trying to absolutely that's a great question i mean for the cities to coordinate that i'm not i'm unfamiliar with what the exact zoning is on the in those cities we'd have to look at what the zoning maps are one thing is though that the state law applies to all cities so if their frontage is commercial similar to our frontage on our side they would have the same law applied to them now what they have as far as regulations as far as design criteria for for those properties we'd have to look into um they may have something similar they may have something different but what's applicable to them just like us is what the state law preempts the cities from thank you you're welcome any other questions of jim any other questions or comments there being none mayor uh oh thank you ben yes yeah thanks um jim so what do you need to move forward do you have what you need or raquel i believe so i mean i understood the commission and the request for staff is to get direction to move forward with those amendments that were presented on the slide uh those design elements and those two changes to the references in the code language is what great is requesting yes thank you and what's your jim what's your thinking in terms of timeline for this so we probably would look about four months to get in front of the commission we would do obviously could draft the language we would do public outreach uh get it to the planning and zoning board and then in front of the commission you're probably looking at about four months on a tight fast schedule the project's um timeline i think i most misspoke earlier when i was presenting is actually september 2026 for completion so you're talking you know september of next year so that's why we're looking at moving faster with this uh amendments if directed to do so great okay thank you jim appreciate the work there thank you you're welcome okay that's it thank you so much okay thank you okay moving on to business three code enforcement lien collection and administrative cost recovery so mayor next got a lot of face time today yeah i'm trying to be on tv a lot so we have uh portia garcia acting director of the development services department the commission had asked us to bring back a presentation information about our efforts to collect um outstanding code enforcement liens we also have our amnesty program so we want to update you on the performance of that as well so i'll turn it over to miss garcia thank you good afternoon mayor and commissioners thank you so i'll be providing a presentation on the city's code enforcement lien collection and administrative cost recovery with this presentation i'll go over four major points reviewing our actual code enforcement lien amount as well as our collection efforts historically as well as our current programs we'll take a review of several other cities within the briar county area we'll discuss some next steps and then i'll request direction from the city commission a point to start is that code enforcement power is given to the city under chapter 162 of the florida statutes with the city of fort lauderdale's code our code enforcement program is under chapter 11 the main goal of code enforcement is voluntary compliance and so although we have a 66 million outstanding lien associated with our code enforcement efforts our number one goal is to obtain compliance with those properties of the 66 million it's important to note that we have liens that are 20 years old those liens are not enforceable that amount is not included in the 66 million and of the properties in fort lauderdale 1 321 properties are responsible for that 66 million those properties in some instances do have several liens or several code violations associated with them so it's not a dynamic to where one property has one violation or one lien there are several instances where there's multiple liens on the properties and of the 66 million 44 of those property have properties have liens that are greater than or equal to 300 300 000 uh my question what you said the oldest liens are 20 years old right yes they're not enforceable what what caused them not to be enforceable and i'm going to cover that a little bit later in the presentation commissioner no problem and i want to jump on that too so when we talk about enforceable and and this is probably a d wayne question so d wayne i didn't understand that these actually go away at a point in time i think they just become less likely to collect is that the case or or are they no longer actually enforceable so if a house were to sell and somebody does a lien search and we find a lien on the property can we not collect it at that point honestly i don't know when a lien it um extinguishes um i'll find out if there is a time period for that um to my knowledge they don't extinguish but i didn't think they ever extinguished and and one of the things we can do is if we reach out and we contact these individuals and they respond to us i know from debt collection that starts the whole clock running all over again anyway so i just encourage us not to look at these as as uncollectible uh because i don't think they are so so just to that point um in chapter 162.10 the statute of limitations for a lien is 20 years after that statute of limitations runs the city attorney's office can go through a process to recertify that lien okay for our foreclosure process it's another type of lien that can that's another thing that can create a lien being unenforceable however there is an administrative partial lien of partial release of lien that i'll cover a little bit later in our presentation we also have bankruptcies that affect our ability to collect liens under chapter 13 there are instances where the courts can allow bankruptcy to create a discharge of a lien in that instance code enforcement works with the city attorney's office to determine if the bankruptcy has discharged the lien also with homestead properties article x section for the florida constitution actually exempts homestead properties from having liens foreclosed with our limitation on enforceability we do not weigh those those liens actually remain on the city's books and if we receive payment even after the time frame of the 20 years expiring we do still collect those liens another thing that's important to note is that the city attorney's office has often advised us that although a bankruptcy may discharge the lien the fines remain and so in those instances we still do attempt to collect the fines and we have seen several instances in the past where people do apply for a lien reduction to a fine and we accept that as well really we do so a person can file for bankruptcy they can list the city as a creditor and the lien is discharged the debt is discharged but you think you can still collect on it after you've ever it's been discharged the fines in the past we've been told by the city attorney's office that the fines remain and for that reason we do offer lien reductions for the fines that remain okay interesting okay i mean i'm a bankruptcy attorney and i know i have discharged many clients liens and they've not been collectible but if we have another path to collect them good for us the next thing we'll discuss is our collection efforts in 2015 the city had a contract with ncs plus this contract spanned across several different functions of the city one function was for the collection of code enforcement liens we partnered with ncs plus and we sent a total of 948 316 claims we did not have any exemption on the type of claim so it could have been anything from property maintenance issues to nuisance abatement where the city was attempting to recover its cost of the accounts that we sent we actually collected eighty one thousand five hundred and ninety nine dollars however we paid a little over thirteen thousand dollars to the vendor up front for the collection of those costs between 2015 and 2018 we we did see the third party collection efforts as a viable opportunity at the time we were told by the collector that these items would go on the creditors report and even though it may not although the city may not see collection up front that over the years though collection would trickle in as people attempted to clean up their credit we saw eight point six percent collection rate at the time with ncs plus and we did not renew that collection contract following 2018. a different method that we found a lot more successful um in dealing with properties that were extremely by it were our lean foreclosure efforts so with lean foreclosure code enforcement partnered with the city attorney's office we had this in place from 2018 to 2021 all of the properties that we have with liens were not transferred to the city attorney's office we reserved this option for essentially the worst of the worst the worst of the worst being properties that were either extremely blighted or that had fines that were extremely excessive the minimum referral rate was seven thousand five hundred dollars in fines however we did not um typically refer properties with the lien that low due to the amount of cost expended to actually file the foreclosure we saw a lot of success with the lien for foreclosure option typically once the city attorney's office provided the notice of intent to foreclose um the the property owner oftentimes seek a settlement offer with the city the settlement offer allowed us an opportunity to not only collect the lien amount but to also provide some stipulations to the property owner for compliance so we typically have milestones where the property owner had to bring certain elements of the property into compliance this not only included the violation cited we wanted to ensure that following lien foreclosure that the property as a whole was beautiful and that it was in compliance of the 64 properties that were referred we have 15 notice of intent to foreclose issued this amounted to about 1.2 million dollars total cent and of the 1.2 million dollars we collected about 80 000 from those properties that were for referred for foreclosure wait a minute wait a minute you had 64 properties what happened to the other 49 there was no foreclosure action taken by the city for any particular reason i'm not sure we would have to defer to the city attorney's office we made the referral right for those items and after the referral was made if a notice of intent to foreclose was sent and the property owner or their representative responded to that notice of intent we work with the city attorney's office to come up with compliance terms and a settlement offer okay and and out of the the total amount of claims you said there was a million what 1.2 million 1.2 million and out of the 1.2 million you collected how much 80 mil 80 000 i'm sorry what is the problem don't we see a isn't there a problem here well what i would say about the lien foreclosure properties is it was not just about them paying the foreclosure a lot of those properties had to obtain permits and put other improvements dollar amount improvements into bringing the properties up into compliance okay but what's the incentive for a person to follow the rules if they know the chances of their being um of their having to pay the full amount um is is is very small it does reduce and a little bit later into the presentation you'll hear me recommend a reduction to like our current amnesty amount just because when there is too large of a discount it does reduce the incentive for compliance so what you're suggesting here is that when people are when it's brought to their attention that their the city's notice of intent to foreclose it incentivizes people to spend the money to bring their property into compliance and then we do we do some sort of reduction and that's why our collection amount is lowered is that kind of the narrative that you're presenting today it is and what we did as a part of that process is we required the owners to provide us with invoices so that once we were in the phase of discussing the settlement amount we took into account how much money was paid to bring the property into compliance okay thank you you're welcome and mayor if i could ask thanks porsche go ahead um so dwayne what's the what's the reason for the generally for not being more aggressive on the 49 other staffing staffing so we don't like hours of city city attorney staff members to process this so we have a vacancy for a litigation attorney um we previously uh sought to have a additional litigation attorney put on board to specifically address foreclosure issues um and we're in that recruitment process okay and and you think with that person we'd be able to litigate all you know all the um properties that code brings forward so we would evaluate so part of our evaluation in terms of cases and whether to pursue those cases are a cost but again if it's as if it's um if it's not a cost consideration for the kid the commission and the policy is just to move forward foreclosure as an enforcement mechanism our office will do in kind yeah thanks i mean my my suggestion is that it i guess i'm i'd suggest that it be a cost analysis in terms of what would be the full recovery what's the hours logged uh potentially logged and and what does that cost benefit analysis look look like um so if it's obviously if it's favorable then yeah i think it makes sense okay cool uh thanks dwayne thanks for your point ben to your point yes you know um obviously the whole the whole goal in code enforcement is to secure compliance right we're not here it's not a a profit center but at the same time are we losing money in trying to secure compliance by uh by engaging counsel spending a lot of money on legal fees and then in the end only receiving a paltry amount of money to cover our costs so it's it so your your point is well taken and and it would be nice to know what the answer is there i don't want you spending a lot of time figuring it out but i mean are we spending more than eighty four thousand dollars you know to collect on a million dollars worth of fines uh and and does that eighty four thousand dollars really cover all of our legal expenses in order to secure compliance i think that's the question right ben yep agreed so just just the question to put out there and at some point it makes sense to try to find out what the answer is okay anyway please proceed no problem thank you mayor so our next review is of our past lean past and current lean reduction programs so prior to 2015 the city had a policy that allowed the city manager to settle liens that were twenty five thousand dollars or less and the overall policy at the time for settlement was that the city would collect seventy five percent of the lean value plus administrative cost that created a lot of property owners applying to speak to the city commission and the ultimate change at the time was forced to adopt a lean reduction program to offset the negotiations that were in were occurring internally with staff in 2015 we adopted our lean reduction program which switched the power from the city manager's discussion from the city manager's discretion to the special magistrates discretion the magistrate was given authority under chapter 11 of the city's code and with that discretion there was criteria that the magistrate should take into consideration however there was no minimum or maximum amount of reduction that the magistrate had to provide with that we did not see a lot of consistency with the amounts of reduction provided by the magistrate and as a result of not being able to really see a lot of consistency at the time we really did not make a large reduction to the 66 million dollars owed to the city in 2024 the city the city decided to move towards a lean amnesty program so typically lean amnesty programs are a way that cities or jurisdictions use to increase increase their collection of liens or fines normally cities that adopt these programs they have them for around a year sometimes shorter or a little bit longer the value in limiting the time of a lean amnesty program is to really encourage people to hurry and settle their liens and so with the city's initial program we adopted the program for one year and at the time of the adoption we provided quarterly reports to the city commission and then around july of each year or june of each year we provided the city commission with a recommendation on whether to extend or to end the program based on its success our initial program started in 2004 with the 2004 program the city offered a 25 reduction at the time 400 properties or 400 cases were taken before the amnesty program and of those 44 or 400 cases there was 1.3 million dollars collected at the time that program occurred from february for february 2nd until march in 2013 the city decided to do another amnesty program that amnesty program provided a four percent reduction and 119 000 was collected at the time of that program today's program has been a lot more successful than previous programs we've had about 263 applications for amnesty provided one of the conditions of that is that the properties in any other properties owned by the property owner in fort lauderdale be in compliance and our staff has ensured that they are of these we've had 16 million dollars total in liens addressed through our current amnesty program we've had 2.4 million dollars approved in lien reductions with amnesty we provide property owners with 90 days to pay and of the 1.6 million collected each in each instance we receive payment what i would note about lien amnesty and in comparison to lien reduction is that there were instances with lien reduction where the city did not receive payment another method that we've used in conjunction with amnesty is related to our nuisance abatement so in 2017 the city began taking nuisance abatement to non-avalorum assessment what this did was place the nuisance abatement and administrative costs on the person's tax bill the intention of using non-avalorum assessments is to increase the city's collection of money spent by the city to comply the violation in a worst case scenario the unpaid assessment could result in the title of the property being auctioned by the briar county tax collector of the assessments sent we've received 443 assessments that valued at 430 000 819 dollars and so we have 68 of those assessments remaining unpaid what i would mention is that in 2017 when we started the non-avalorum assessments the city had a lot more vacant lots and so our cutting and maintenance of those lots was extremely high at the time as opposed to with the city becoming more developed over the last few years there's much fewer lots and so at some point we may decide to move away from non-avalorum assessments portia does this go for um both homestead and non-homestead that county's ability to collect and that's all for does it matter whether it's homestead or non-homestead i don't believe it does matter okay thank you all right we can't foreclose them right correct that's why i'm asking about that step okay thank you you're welcome so the next thing i'm going to do is highlight our municipal comparison some things to note with the city of sunrise they currently have a lean amnesty program their program is going from august 1st of 2024 through september 30th of 2026 they do have some exceptions outlined in their program in terms of things that they will not offer amnesty or reduction for they have different stipulation for residential properties which is the 10 percent 10 percent payment as opposed to non-residential properties would pay 15 of the face value of the lean their program also stipulates that the lean value has to be at least one thousand dollars and they have a maximum cap of 250 000 for properties to apply for amnesty the city of hollywood's program amnesty program is running from march 5th 2025 through december 31st 2025 they do offer 100 percent lean forgiveness and on the next slide you'll see how that translates to how much money they've collected and how much money they have on the books it is a surprise to me so i'm sure it may be a surprise to you all the other item that i will highlight on this side is that with pembroke pines they've designated or their code administrator has the the discretion to recommend or negotiate the amnesty amount for the fine and lien collection for these cities the thing that i mentioned about the city of hollywood being interesting is that although they will provide a hundred percent forgiveness as long as the person pays the application fee they still have 232 million dollars of liens on their books so i thought that was pretty interesting with fort lauderdale the thing that i would highlight about us over the past five fiscal years is that we've actually collected 20 percent of our final liens based on the different measures the non-navalorium assessments the lien reduction program lien amnesty program and earlier in the presentation i mentioned that we have an administrative partial release that we use for properties that have went through a foreclosure with those i've highlighted the different jurisdictions and the way that they discharge liens that are unenforceable with our administrative partial release of lien that application goes through initial review within development services following that initial review which includes the research for whatever the liens and fines are it's transferred to the city attorney's office for review and for a final decision on whether the property qualifies for an administrative partial release our next steps are for us to modify our current lien amnesty program so there's an item on that schedule for the june 30th agenda to highlight a presentation on our lien amnesty changes we're making several recommendations so one of our first recommendations is to reduce the discount from 90 percent to 85 the reduction in discount can lead to an increase of how much we're collecting we also want to limit the amnesty discount for certain types of violations so nuisance violations would essentially be anything where the city is boarding a property cutting a grass removing graffiti removing a derelict vehicle any of those violations that would be described under chapter 18 of the city's code would only be eligible for a 50 percent discount also repeat violations noise violations vacation rental violations and anything that is irreparable or irreversible we would want to limit to 50 percent a part of the reason behind this recommendation is that as the mayor suggested earlier when there's too large of a discount it decreases the effectiveness of voluntary compliance and enforcement when needed what about um um risk of you know life risking violations absolutely so those are under our really nuisance violations so the city's code defines nuisance as anything that threatens the life safety or welfare of the community okay and we typically use them for the for what you're describing mayor okay um i mentioned earlier that sunrise had some exceptions to what they allow amnesty for and they did not allow it for unsafe structures so our nuisance code would capture that they also did not not allow for repeat violations which we've included they don't allow for towing they do not allow for nuisance abatement dog bites um their business safety inspection program until the property completes its 40 year safety recertification and they also don't allow for anything that's dealing with solid waste so we have two items essentially that we're requesting direction from the city commission on which one of them is the restart to our lien foreclosure process which was discussed earlier with interim city attorney spence we also request city direction on revising the existing discharge policy for uncollectible liens so the city does have an internal policy that does allow liens to be discharged but i recall earlier in the presentation vice mayor giving some comment regarding not wanting to remove or discharge those liens that are over 20 years okay so let's start with the first one restart lien foreclosure um we haven't stopped them have we we have because of staffing issues correct okay so there is not a assistant city attorney assigned to the foreclosure process however what we have done is we have provided the city attorney with a list of properties that were previously referred for foreclosure and earlier in the presentation when i mentioned that there were 44 properties accounting for 300 000 or greater those would be our top priority in recommending foreclosure if they qualify for okay so that's really a staffing issue it's not a policy i don't think it's a policy issue for the commission you know obviously we'd want to continue with that right yeah if you all do i know under the previous well probably three commissions ago there was some direction at the time for us to revisit it well i i just think it's an appropriate policy it's the only way we're going to secure compliance is with a you know with an incentive and if the incentive happens to be a lawsuit then whatever it takes to secure compliance because obviously quality of life is very important here in our city now with regard to revising existing discharge policy for uncollectible liens um you know that gets back to the previous slide about changing the discount for amnesty you know i i would very much support your recommendation and you also have any comments yeah yeah i do mayor yes ben go ahead thanks mayor uh thanks portia so um okay lean restart lean foreclosure so portia and dewayne is are we is this just like there's debt collection agencies are there any legal agencies that we could outsource some of the lean foreclosure work to uh to expedite um the the processing of those so one of the things that we've been looking at uh is a a program to or looking at outside councils that kind of specialize in this area i know some of our not necessarily neighboring municipalities but municipalities in florida have uh similar contractual relationships with um council that provides that type of specialized boutique service um we're looking at the uh fee structure and the compensation structure that those folks have okay great yeah that sounds great that sounds like a could be a viable option okay so duane you'll you'll give us feedback on that once you figure that out sure okay um great that sounds great um revised existing discharge policy for uncollectible liens so i think we need to continue pursuing those uh mayor and portia say it again sorry for the revised existing discharge policy for uncollectible liens i think we should continue pursuing those liens well i i think obviously the question is um you know to what extent does the law permit us to continue collecting on liens there is a statute of limitations which is a bar for further collections and so is bankruptcy so i don't know enough about that i'd have to defer to duane but at some point we would need some uh direction uh no matter what we want to the policy of this commission i would imagine is to pursue every lien to the fullest extent to which the law permits and right right so so that would be the direction from the commission i would think yeah if i heard portia right mayor it sounds like there might be a city attorney action that would be needed to uh toll the the amnesty um or sorry toll the statute of limitations um if i heard that right so i'd be interested in hearing more about that at some point it doesn't have to be right now okay um okay great then portia let me go to the um the previous uh slide modify lien amnesty program what is it slide 17 okay change the amnesty discount from 90 percent to 85 percent in other words what you're saying if i'm hearing you right portia is reduce the uh basically make them make the property owner pay more right correct by five percent okay by five percent great so just walk me through what i know we're balancing this uh seeking um uh appropriate remedial action while still a pecuniary penalty but also revenue stream so i know those all are three kind of components we're working together on what if we move that way back to let's say 50 percent um so you can the max you can only get is 50 percent what so in theory that would then increase some of the revenue in other words some of those properties that would come into compliance we'd increase the revenue that could decrease some of the compliance of others so what give me your pro and con around being even more aggressive on that so the advantage to the increase in 50 percent is it can result in properties complying voluntarily so that they do not begin to accrue a fine or lean right the disadvantage is that for properties that currently have a fine or lean it can reduce their ability to pay or to be able to afford that discount i would also say that a disadvantage somewhat is this could negatively impact the ability to sell or to refinance to make improvements to the property if the value if the discount is not aggressive enough and so i think that there's different things that have to be taken into consideration if we want to focus on voluntary compliance in the overall aesthetic of the community really being a primary goal of code enforcement okay makes sense so but ben uh we should also keep in mind that these are maximums right the the the um the magistrate can certainly um reduce the amount of the amnesty at at any point they these are just maximums and they're at they're at the discretion of the of the of the mass of the uh magistrate are they not they are not for amnesty so with amnesty these do not go before the magistrate mayor these are just administrative correct i see okay yeah so i'm just interested in a more aggressive go ahead chris well i think what i think what porsche is trying to tell us is that um you know there's a balancing act here if you if you're too strict you're never going to get compliance and people are going to walk away and all this other stuff if you have some sort of incentive for them to comply you might be able to work a deal out with them right and i would also mention um acting assistant city manager cooper just refreshed my recollection that with amnesty there has been a modification to allow owners to receive an additional increase or an additional decrease rather at the city manager's discretion based on the value of the property as well as if there's any financial hardships okay i'm glad porsche you went in that direction i was gonna my question is about hardship is there a window where um hardship um incidents play into this um formula to get to payment there are um so we currently have at least two requests due to hardship with those requests what is occurring internally is that staff does research to make a recommendation once that recommendation is reviewed at that point it's sent to the city manager for her ultimate decision but she's provided with essentially the background and facts for it and then another thing that staff does is the city can receive payments and so if a property owner is not able to make the full payment up front we do do like a payment plan essentially thank you welcome any other questions ben uh no i'm good thanks okay great thank you any other questions the commission okay there being none thank you so much porsche we really appreciate it thank you okay moving on to uh business four net zero plan next steps a presentation so good afternoon mayor commissioner city manager i'm louis ramirez sustainability coordinator with public works i'm here just to build on our previous conversation on our net zero plan and hopefully present to you our future actions current ongoing initiatives and help answer any questions okay okay so um so again the goal here is to present our five-year roadmap by highlighting four key actions three of which are budget items and one is a modification to an existing policy we also want to provide more clarity and transparency around ongoing and future initiatives and lastly provide insights into our collaboration efforts and so why am i here and why does this matter there's four articles that are presented in front of you which provide very valuable evidence on why we need to continue paving the way towards net zero number one we are a coastal community and so that makes us especially vulnerable to the climate impacts the flood the flooding that we're experiencing right now is projected to worsening in our community in the coming years and so really implementing this plan is one of the many ways that we can continue proactively addressing the environmental risk number two florida is one of the fastest growing states in the nation so to keep up with customer demand our utility as proposed rate increases of up to 13 percent uh by year 2029 so what does that mean that means that our constituents can expect an 18 a month increase or 216 dollars more on their utility bills by year 2029 these increases come at our time when we're already facing inflation you know unaffordable homes and um insurance and so we really need to take action in making sure that we are building homes that are energy efficient um population growth is not only straining our utilities but our roadways we all live here in florida and have surely experienced the increase in traffic and lastly the state is quickly becoming the um hub for electric vehicles and so this is just to say that the city needs to continue investing in climate resilient energy efficient systems that protect both people and homes expanding clean and accessible public transportation systems and building out ev infrastructure across our city and so 32 of the 55 actions listed on our net zero plan are actually already in the pipeline some of them include home improvement programs through our home rehabilitation implementing the parks bond exploring green infrastructure for each features through our future projects providing curbside electronic recycling continuing to do community education around recycling and providing low-cost transportation across our community and so now we'll shift our focus to these next five years based on community focus actions two of which are budget items that will help us advance our net zero goals and so just to provide background on our greenhouse gas inventories not to get too technical um but 55 percent of the emissions from our community come from the energy sector and homes account for 38 of that and so like i mentioned briefly energy burden is already a pressing issue on our um our communities and if anybody is new to that term energy burden just means that a homeowner is spending more than 10 percent of their uh income gross income on energy bills and so um you know these findings really reinforce that need to continue prioritizing energy efficiency across our communities so as part of our efforts we've um collaborated with the housing and community development to explore strategies for um you know maximizing funds that are going on through cdbg we've also partnered with gis to develop a map and help identify neighborhoods uh most in need of these critical investments and as a next step uh we are seeking cities approval for the allocation of two hundred thousand dollars to support the development of a strategic plan which would guide the transition to cleaner energy efficient systems so really the plan would help us um identify which neighborhoods to do those energy efficiency upgrades um and target the neighborhoods that are in most need of um of that efficiency the next item is in relation to our transportation and so in 2019 our baseline greenhouse gas emissions inventory recorded that the transportation sector accounted for 40 percent of the community's emissions so again expanding clean transportation is one other powerful way that we can continue to reduce emissions um and also reduce traffic across our cities so in exploring opportunities we've um collaborated with transportation and mobility to kind of identify current projects and what we could do to support future projects and so the recommendation here that was made was to support the expansion of circuit service in the northwest service area that you see here in the map this is a community that could benefit from not just affordability but accessibility across the community and so we're requesting the initial allocation of two hundred thousand dollars to fund and the increase of this service which would just add two vehicles to that um already um current service and so with two hundred thousand dollars um we would be able to operate up to 11 months and uh provide 6 000 trips or 12 000 service miles over a peer a period of 11 months would you expand the geographical area or just i'm sorry would you expand the geographical area or just add more vehicles so when we spoke with transportation and mobility this was um a service unit that had only two vehicles servicing that community and the expansion of that um same service area would be the ideal um target if we had more funding i'm sure that that would be something that it would be open to all right so this is just to add more vehicles to the existing service area correct yeah okay thank you quick quick question so in our earlier budget presentation there was a line item for using county surtax funds for micromobility so help me understand so in and milos you you can speak to that a little bit more but um from what i understand is that the county um does not provide enough service in that area that i'm speaking about and so um i know i know up to this point they had they have not but i was my takeaway from looking at the budget presentation was that they are now agreeing that we can use a surtax fund so milos if you can kind of talk to that good afternoon commissioner so the evette matthews acting director of the office of management and budget so um the local the interlocal agreement that is being adjusted for the use of surtax will allow the city to fund micro transit services directly from surtax funding this is a transition from how we've done it historically we are including in the budget maintaining the same level of service that was previously included in the general funds but transitioning the funding source associated with it right so so then how does this relate to so how do these two things interrelate i believe this is an expansion of the existing service so there's an expansion of the existing availability of funds for the service but the question being asked is does it have to come out of general funds or are we applying for a grant through the city's surtax money so we plan to apply surtax money to the existing micro mobility program and what's being presented here today is an expansion of that which would require additional funding all right so we have a dollar for dollar substitution of surtax for existing general fund dollars and now you're asking them so basically we're going to take the general fund dollars that were freed up by the county surtax and reinvest them back in the program is that sort of a roundabout way of getting to where we are okay thank you and just for clarification all of the dollar figures in this presentation reflect potential future expenditures so it's not something that's being requested for the upcoming fiscal year note that we have included a pilot program for solar panels in the fiscal year 26 budget uh to the tune of a hundred thousand dollars but everything that's being presented here today is for a future fiscal year beyond 26 and if my if i might add millers my story is acting director for transportation and mobility so the service area that we're seeing here on the screen is uh the service area that we started serving in february of this year we were able to secure fdot grant for about six hundred thousand dollars that 100 funds this service over the next three years so again what luce is pursuing in here is simply adding additional vehicles to this service area that is normally funded by fdot grant and so now we're going to pivot towards the internal government focus actions one of which city manager pointed which is the existing capital improvement project on solar for fiscal year 2026 and one other policy modification of our existing vehicle policies and so just to give you a background the um government greenhouse gas inventory accounted that 15 of our emissions for the municipal greenhouse gas are coming from the energy use in our buildings uh so to help reduce the emissions and also just to account for the utility rate increases which now reflect 13 by year 2029 um we're seeking your support to fund 100 000 per year uh for the next five years to expand and um put solar across our city facilities we've been collaborating with fire and parks and rec to identify sites um and so that is the ask for this um action um and then vehicle fleet accounted for for uh a quarter of our municipal greenhouse gas emissions in year 2019 so again to help reduce emissions in our transportation sector um and even to help reduce costs on maintenance and fuel we've um we've decided that it would be great if we could formalize a fleet electrification policy you heard earlier today uh from our sab board member um in support of electrifying our non-emergency vehicles to um be evs by 2035 and so just to provide background our light duty fleet is made up of 12 000 vehicles what you see here listed are the ones tagged for um electrification and that would be 630 vehicles again non-emergency vehicles the chart on the right really models a gradual replacement of those vehicles so we're looking at 84 vehicles per year um so if the city began transitioning all non-emergency vehicles to be electric by fiscal year 2027 we would meet this goal can i ask a question about that of course so just doing my own kind of research on this and it says that going to electric vehicles because of the cost of production because of the rare earth minerals disposal of batteries and everything else that this doesn't really result in a net zero carbon footprint so i remember years ago when we first started talking about this probably oh god when john holzell was in charge of parking and mobility so maybe 15 16 years ago we ran an analysis of it and we were using ford escapes back then which we could buy for like 14 000 and we hung on to them for about 10 years and it was a lot more um it was a lot more beneficial to the environment than to keep these little four-cylinder cars around i got 40 miles to the gallon and run them into the ground than it was to go out and buy brand new vehicles which then had to be manufactured so we're contributing to the carbon footprint for manufacturing and then we're creating a tremendous amount of of waste associated with the batteries and not to mention the difficulties of where we get these uh rare earth minerals from so let's kind of talk about that a little bit because i'm not seeing in the research that i'm doing that going electric actually achieves anything remotely close to net zero glenn hadwin sustainability manager mayor commissioners uh thank you for having us here to talk about net zero as far as um the environmental impacts of vehicles go there are i've um from the research you know i've done there are studies that show that you know initially when you have the two vehicles there can be more environmental impacts with um electric vehicles but over time as you use them more you reach a threshold where that you have the benefit is there's more of a benefit and as a fleet policy in general regardless of gasoline and electric is that we replace our vehicles at seven years and if we go from gasoline from the slide we we haven't gotten into this slide yet but it shows you how much we can reduce the gasoline we are using as a city and you know we are looking at our net zero emissions of things we control and as the vehicles get more efficient and they're made more efficiently and and with more environmental benefits i think the um you know we'll we'll see more benefits from them is the battery life on electrical wheels electric vehicles seven years it's more than seven years and so we wouldn't have to be replacing the battery of those vehicles okay please proceed okay and so like glenn alluded to we did a very quick life cycle cost analysis comparing gasoline versus fleet um so if we just continue to replace gasoline vehicles we would spend 30 million dollars versus 26 million dollars and so the estimated savings here would be uh four million dollars and so the key findings were really that the city would realize um a 73 product 73 percent reduction on fuel cost and a 39 percent reduction in maintenance costs now we're pivoting towards the medium and long-term uh net zero initiatives that um that are hopefully in the pipeline um some of them include introducing a sustainable tourism program addressing the reduction and management of our construction and demolition waste supporting a green workforce development something that the city of miami has already implemented and other municipalities across florida and so um we're really here for uh your support in helping fund the proposed budget items that i spoke about um we're also here to ask that the city commission adopt the proposed net zero plan via resolution um as it's fully endorsed by the sustainability advisory board um through the march 4th commission meeting and that's anything anyone have any questions of no okay no no question just a comment i just as i'm sure it'll come as no surprise i've never supported this in all the years that i've been here i don't support it now okay um so what is what's the ask here at raquel as far as um this presentation is concerned so i think we wanted to gauge your support for certain initiatives that are included as part of the the plan and to identify potential next steps for staff to take action on those uh initiatives okay so some of the initiatives that are being sought for our finance financials starting with circuit the additional hundred uh two hundred thousand dollars um um any comments on that so it's not that we would uh necessarily need the funding at this time but wanted to understand if the commission was interested in moving forward from a policy all right and in pursuing it yes yeah um as far as uh vehicle replacement and putting solar panels on buildings i think i don't i don't think the solar panels on buildings are controversial they've always been shown to be very cost effective so um what do the folks think about uh uh the vehicle replacement with electric vehicles is there a consensus here to move forward with that uh the vice mayor is against it what is the rest of you what are the rest of you think anyone have any questions ben you have any questions yeah yeah um go ahead yeah thanks man i think you're doing it mayor i just wanted to kind of sum up to make sure i'm tracking um the suggestions here so um i just want to kind of make sure i'm understanding so is page six community energy strategic plan is that the first kind of suggestion you're making uh so the timeline here is not um in order so the first one would be which is already part of our cip budget ask is the solar installation across government facilities uh the community energy strategic plan would ideally be for the 2027 fiscal year budget request um the fleet policy again something that we can work internally i'm not sure on the process of that and how what the timeline would look like um okay so maybe so just a suggestion maybe let's just kind of mayor just so i'm understanding it if we could just go one by one so community energy strategic plan so are you asking us do we support this this initiative is that the ask to the commission right now is that one of the the asks that's the that's the ask to support the initiative and the efforts and the and the components that comprise that initiative okay well i just want to go component by component make sure i'm tracking these because some components we might object to so community energy strategic plan transitioning to energy efficient electrical system so that makes sense to me is that one of the things you're and what's your name sorry lose ramirez lose lose okay so that's one thing you're asking us do we support that is that right correct okay so i like that i'm all for that mayors is everyone else good with that or no yeah i think i think i think we get consensus on that yes okay great then circuit microtransit expansion i'm all i like that that's another thing i think we're in favor of that too yes we're all we're all in favor of that okay great yes it's the fleet policy that is the only one that that the vice was objecting to and i just oh he's just objecting to that one not everything right okay so the question is does is there a majority on the commission that supports the replace when we do replace vehicles that they'd be replaced with the electric vehicles got it i i support that so okay thanks all right so we have a majority commissioner beasley pitman yes i agree as well okay so there's a there's a majority that agrees with that policy as well great thanks mayor and then the last one i think if i'm just reading everything right the solar panel installation which i think you already mentioned mayor which i agree yeah thank you okay yeah all right we'll use that feedback as we build the budget for future years as we go after grants and as we leverage our existing resources yeah and any new buildings that we build like city hall and so forth there's showing um you know that the construction being a net zero building and a lead certified building that would be very important all right very good thank you luce thank you we really appreciate your presentation thank you finally uh business five we have the mayor's appointments to the election board to certify the results the election of the employees recommended appointee to the civil service board now i understand what is the time commitment on that time commitment will entail about a one half hour of time by the two commissioners to come to human resources and help us count ballots and certify the election is that half an hour to count ballots okay how come it takes the supervisor all night uh uh that's a half hour per election correct yes we only have the one election okay all right raise your hand who wants to do this just curious do we have to notice that since it's two commissioners dwayne that's public meeting if if you're going to discuss matters that will foresee will they come before the commission well if we have two commissioners and we're counting ballots about something that's going to put somebody in a seat it sounds like shitty business just curious we we can uh research what we've done in the past and whether you know what i don't know how you certify the election by doing that but i might be able to help out in this i i was here during the last election from the employees uh nomination and we did notice the meeting nobody showed up but we did notice it nobody nobody from the public nobody from the public exactly we barely get people to come to these so i'm not surprised well i i would think that it should be people who are term limited who have no no uh interest in the outcome of the next election and that would be me and uh commissioner glassman can you handle it it is this time sensitive it's not urgent but it does need to be done within the next month or so all right see look at your cruise schedule i might not i might not be around if there's anyone else that's really eager to do it i'll defer to that person and as a reminder it is a one-time meeting i don't anticipate it last more than 20 minutes to a half an hour at most yeah and it's and and i do think it might be most appropriate for people who are term limited who are not running for re-election to be who don't have an interest in the outcome i thought this is just the civil service people it's to count votes let me give you a little background there are actually three members of the civil service board one is nominated by the mayor one's nominated by the city manager and a third one's nominated by the employees who are in the the um certified or the the um classified status in the in the city okay we have we have run the election we've got the ballots we just need somebody to to certify them by the charter all right so it'd be one person there from the commission then i would appoint that person no the charter requires two members of the city commission sit on the okay that's what i thought okay okay just all right so just leave put that out um i i would i will recommend myself and and um i guess we'll wait another month for it can't wait a month we only have one more meeting this when do you have to do this within a month we would like to get it done before the end of the month yes i could tell that commissioner beasley pittman really wants to do this i could see she's she's asking a lot of questions good questions and i i sense that she really wants to do this i could look i see yeah but she's she's if she runs for reelection she'll have an interest in the outcome but i don't think that's appropriate are we mixing up two different things here yes yeah i don't think this is this is really about who is this mayor the civil service so the the classified employees elect a representative to represent them on the civil service board you select two commissioners the mayor appoints two commissioners to review their election results and certify their appointment to the civil service board this has nothing to do with the elections man nothing to do and that's the whole responsibility there's nothing that's the whole responsibility that's beautiful i i i second that okay we'll have the city clerk put those names forward tonight lord did you have something to do with this okay um it's now it's now 10 minutes to five approximately so we have city commission reports uh so let us move ahead and do that so vice mayor do you have any report okay i have a question i i have um what i think is a little lengthy could i submit some of them just for the records and just give one as a um example okay all right okay we'll do that i'm gonna take up a uh okay there's yes let's put it in the congressional okay there are um three items that i want to share i'm gonna ask um i had given to the city clerk a video that i would like to have played hello i'm mary lu tai executive director of the broward league of cities it's my pleasure to share a little about who we are what we do and the impact we've made across our beloved broward county the broward league of cities was founded over 60 years ago with a simple but powerful mission to bring together all 31 municipalities in broward county and establish a unified voice our mission is rooted in collaboration advocacy and education working to strengthen local governance and ensure the highest quality of life for our residents the one broward theme is the heart of our work one broward is more than just a slogan it's a mindset a belief that if we work together with a shared vision we can continue to make broward the best place it can possibly be for all of us over the last nine years one broward has guided and inspired our efforts through this lens we've built connected empowered engaged united energized embraced innovated and experienced our work program to help our cities develop strong public policies that serve every resident one of our notable achievements was securing 102 million dollars in cares act funding for broward's 31 municipalities during the height of the covet 19 pandemic this critical funding supported our cities in providing additional revenue to cover covet 19 costs as well as essential services such as emergency housing assistance and enhanced public health measures another example of our advocacy in action was negotiating a higher reimbursement rate for school resource officers ensuring the safety of our children and educators remains a top priority and these officers play a key role in solidifying a more secure learning environment we also played a vital role in creating the solid waste authority of broward county a landmark achievement to develop a comprehensive and sustainable approach to waste management by bringing together stakeholders from across the county we've established a system that will benefit our one broward environment and communities most recently our focus has shifted to promoting civility and municipal government through fostering respectful dialogue and collaboration among our leaders we're helping them work more effectively to serve the people of broward county the broward league of cities is more than just an organization it's a partnership a commitment and a voice for every city in our county thank you for your support together and through the guiding principles of one broward we're building a brighter stronger and more united broward for generations to come we look forward to working with you to make our shared vision a reality thank you um wanting to highlight that video i um i'm really excited that i've been given the opportunity to continue to represent our city as a part of the um broward league of cities board and i wanted to share on um thursday june 5th we did have a board of directors meeting that particular meeting was hosted by the city of hollywood and during that meeting there was a presentation that was um presented by um resilient broward and it was giving the county-wide resistant plan for 2025 it was delivered by dr jenny um junaro gerardo and she went into real details about the plan that is highlighted the presentation went over the overview for the resistant plan that's being has been put together by broward county it has some key action um benefits that included reducing flood risks strong equality um strong economies improving public health environmental preservation and also community preparation um during this address of course um it had two tiers that it referred to tier one to be completed by the year of 2020 um 2050 excuse me um done by 2050 it's preparing two feet of preparing for two feet of rise and sea levels by the year 2050 with the strategies including construction of the seawalls up to five feet and to mitigate the floodings that we are being subject to enhancing draining systems to manage heavy rainfalls and also adding pumping stations tier two it will address the projection for the increase of 3.3 feet in rise of sea levels with additional um strategy for sea raws to be erected up to seven feet and this is also um this is to be completed by the year of 2070. i have um the plan that was given to us and i want to give it to city manager i haven't had an opportunity to speak with her but the details that are listed in the plan um i do believe that um our team that's working on resilience uh regarding climate change i don't know if we are in conversation and been in conversation with the county but i do believe that we need to have that conversation so we are in alignment with what is being presented and that's going to happen over these next um years to come so let me respond to that yes um we are our staff is in in regular communication uh dr gassman our public works department our resiliency uh folks yes we are uh we walk uh together with um with their their resiliency folks perfect but but but the thing you just mentioned really it just becomes at what point are we going to build walls around our cities um seven feet is a tall wall understood right now i believe it's five feet and we enacted that ordinance before the county did and then the county came around and and and pretty much copied what we did um but but to say by 2070 we need seven feet you know imagine what that's going to look like and imagine the cost involved and where is this world going uh i mean will it be would it be 10 feet by the end of the century is it going to be 20 feet you know at what point do we do we say to ourselves that you know the coastal communities are going to be at risk and we need to change how we live here in fort lauderdale i want you know i don't expect to be around in 2070 but uh um where are you going yeah i'm going under not over uh but the point is that you know we talk about resiliency we talk about net zero you know we talk about trying to participate and be good neighbors in this world to try to reduce our our carbon footprint um which is really the only solution it's not building walls it's it's re it's you know reducing our contribution to the to the um to the um impact that you know that fossil fuels have on our atmosphere so um you know she's great you know miss uh giardo is really wonderful um i've worked with her in the past but the point is we there has to be a point in time where we have to be realistic about what we can really do to prevent rising sea levels seven feet seven foot walls are huge i can't imagine our city being built you know to that extent but well this is the i just said it was a presentation i know a discussion that was brought forward and um understanding that we are in conversation which is what i wanted to make sure and the other part of my um reason for bringing this forward whatever is being discussed i i i we need to be at the table and like you said seven feet that is a large tall wall and then also in the conversation it went into what the money looks like that financing and how much this will cost right us the county and and the municipalities so i brought the report to give to city manager so those who are addressing our resilience plan that we would have um that knowledge as well okay so that's the reason for that okay um also with that um since i'm talking about the broward league of cities i wanted to also share that on saturday the 7th it was the 64th excuse me 68th annual gala for the broward leagues um doing that gala um the board members which i am considered one of we were um sworn into oath to continue to represent our municipalities along with our ort um ordinance that were also identified but we had a great time and it was a privilege for me to have that opportunity to be sworn in taking the oath saying that i will represent our city being in place for those meetings when most available and bringing back information we appreciate that thank you so much for the opportunity okay moving on moving on moving on um i would like to also share um on friday june 6th um we held a dedication ceremony acknowledging and honoring the legacy of the late lieutenant bobby g glenn he was a firefighter for um broward county city of fort lauderdale actually he was the first african-american firefighter that was hired in briar county by the city of fort lauderdale so um with in conjunction with our fire department and our city we were able to acknowledge and celebrate his legacy the celebration was held at walker elementary which is also the grounds of the old dillard museum in the museum is where um the uniform of lieutenant glenn is on display um in attendance i was so excited to see um commissioner hurts as well as commissioner sorenson they were there to honor us in this opportunity along with city manager and many of our assistant um city um assistant city managers were in the house as well this was a great opportunity to recognize mr glenn's legacy his wife miss iola glenn and many family members who traveled throughout the state and outside of the state came to witness um this opportunity of mr glenn's uniform being placed in the museum for all to see and for his legacy to be continued i also wanted to thank um stratcom for the helping plan and put a beautiful event together thank you to um chief gongolan and his staff they did a beautiful opportunity they made it a beautiful event and i'm very proud um that we as a city committed to honoring mr glenn okay and with that being said that's all the time i want to take today okay great thank you so much uh commissioner glassman yes thank you mayor uh wednesday june 4th i wanted to thank our transportation and mobility department um we had a really good session over at art serve uh broward county is proposing improvements to andrews avenue between sunrise boulevard and oakland park boulevard um and this was another meeting in that series of getting the the residents together uh from that neighborhood and also uh from wilton manor so we were also joined uh by residents from wilton manors in that effort as well so looking forward to that uh and also to the work that's going to actually go uh on on andrews between sunrise and oakland um also attended that day the 2025 marine industries annual meeting and awards always a a really good gathering a packed room and uh just to see a lot of the young people that are coming up in the ranks uh and really taking part in our second largest industry in uh after tourism so that's always a great event and congratulations um to everyone involved in in that program uh as well tuesday june 10th um had the pleasure of convening our quarterly district 2 neighborhood association presidents round table uh and i wanted to thank raquel for taking time from her busy day um to meet with the 20 neighborhood presidents who were in attendance that day uh a very dedicated group very knowledgeable group very passionate uh and raquel thank you for taking the time to be with all of them um last tuesday that evening i had the pleasure of joining the council of fort lauderdale civic associations at their social uh held at mcsorley's on the beach uh in district two and again another great gathering and an opportunity to say thank you uh to all of the folks that volunteer their time uh and very much do a great job in representing um their their neighborhoods at that council so again thank you uh thank you to president bill brown for bringing everyone together uh for that as well um wednesday june 11th it was a pleasure to take that quote first stroll unquote at hyzinga park uh and see the reimagining of that on the river walk uh and what that's going to be when it's completed i think it's going to be an absolute jewel downtown um and a really uh well attended green space uh in our city uh and i wanted to thank the downtown development authority uh for that event uh and for bringing everyone together uh tonight i don't have to remind everyone go cats uh lord stanley will be in the house i understand uh because there's a chance that that cup will uh be claimed this evening so i wanted to wish our florida panthers uh all the very best uh this evening uh tomorrow evening um i will have the pleasure of attending the take pride event at the galleria mall this is sponsored by uh our history fort lauderdale the western hotel resort on the beach and the galleria mall itself um and it really is uh a very proud time for me i'm very humbled to be among the honorees that evening uh so i look forward to joining all of those really outstanding folks um tomorrow evening um at the galleria uh on a note i did want to say a very big thank you to the western hotel um on the galleria and also history fort lauderdale um i'm sure people have been reading in the news that this is a time when many corporations especially large corporations have been pulling back on their sponsorship of anything to do with any lgbtq plus events uh so i wanted to say a specific thank you uh to these folks who are still doing that work uh and still showing that support uh and still creating an event uh for the community to celebrate uh and to rejoice uh thursday june 19th i'll be uh joining the central beach alliance at their uh meeting i guess that's the last one before the summer break uh so i'll look forward to attending that as well uh friday june 20th we have another ribbon cutting in district 2 at a place called through the vine on northeast 7th street right across from parlor donuts uh so i look forward to that in flagler village uh tuesday june 24th uh fdot is doing another outreach meeting uh for we have some crosswalks going on um a1a uh at northeast 27th street and also uh 14th court uh one will be just pedestrian signal uh one will be a full uh a full signal so i'm really looking forward to that um that will be i believe at embassy towers on the beach uh we expect summer construction to start uh for that so i also wanted to thank uh transportation and mobility for the coordination of that as well with fdot uh thursday june 26th i cannot believe it's been 30 years but it has been 30 years um i had the privilege of being one of the founding members of the broward trust for historic preservation and thursday june 26th the trust will be celebrating 30 years at house on the river um i look forward to attending that event as well uh friday june 28th congratulations to the dolphin democrats uh and holding their gala uh at the western over at cypress creek um i did just have a couple of comments um i hope everyone had a chance to see forbes magazine this article uh that came out last week uh it was entitled florida spring break capital is now its newest luxury real estate and financial hot spot it was a rather lengthy article but an excellent article all about what's happening in fort waterdale it was very comprehensive uh i've been hearing from a lot of folks that have seen it i actually posted it on some of my social media pages uh but i will tell you that it's gained a lot of attention uh and it was extremely positive uh and a really nice nice representation of what's happening um in our city i also wanted to thank the police department um as most people probably are aware uh this past saturday um at a1a and sunrise uh in district two uh we had a uh no kings protest so there was some apprehension before that event uh we didn't quite know what was going to happen but i think the police did such an excellent job i also want to thank the folks that did show up and express themselves uh because it was such a a well-organized and well-behaved protest uh estimates have it at about 2 000 people at that intersection of a1a and sunrise i drove by at the very beginning and i saw that it was uh just such a a good example of how folks can express themselves in an orderly uh in a well-behaved way uh we had the barricades on the sidewalk um i didn't see any example of folks going into the streets traffic was not impeded on a1a or else coming west on sunrise from a1a uh so i really wanted to thank not just the police department uh but also the folks uh that did find their way to that protest i think the only thing that was a negative was that there were some folks that suffered uh from some heat exhaustion but other than that uh i think everybody really conducted themselves in a very professional way uh and i wanted to say thank you city staff for being prepared for that our police department and again to the folks that were uh participating in that protest that's it for me mayor thanks okay great uh commissioner sorenson do you have any report to make yeah i do thank you mayor appreciate it um i want to thank city staff we had a public meeting about lake sylvian or lake sylvia uh anchor limitation area which is really making great progress and so um really good community support for that and uh city staff did a great job there um commissioner beasley pitman yeah it was great being there celebrating bobby glenn um and having his um his uh widow there was really special i thought his uh family was really great um raquel uh got your memo about 17th southeast 17th ave so what do you need to move forward with uh the pilot there so this was discussed at a prior conference meeting and we just wanted to give some background information as requested and milos will go through the process good afternoon milos maristovic acting director for city transportation and mobility department so back um on may 6th uh commissioner sorenson requested the support from the city commission on uh temporarily closing uh the southeast 17th avenue and the city commission requested some additional information from us uh we issued the commission memo 25081 um and uh basically looked at the traffic conditions in there based on the traffic counts that were collected in september of 2024 uh we did notice very minimal uh traffic counts there were some illegal movements as well along southbound southeast 17th avenue and again southeast 17th avenue connecting to las solas really allows only for southbound to westbound movement so southbound right turn movement we discussed this with our police department fire department neither one of the two entities have any concerns with the closure we do not have any concerns with the closure and we did receive a letter of support from coli hammock to proceed with a temporary closure if we do receive a direction from city commission we can proceed with the installation of temporary closure within the next six to eight weeks i would say and evaluate if there is any any any feedback whether positive or negative we can communicate that back to you can i comment on that um you know i understand that the people that live on that street want to want to stop all traffic on the street um and i i guess i would support it um on a uh on a temporary basis to see how it will impact the traffic flow but i would not want this to become a pattern throughout the city where people try to close off their streets um for privacy or for safety reasons because we already have enough traffic on our roads and to limit the number of roadways in which traffic can travel throughout our city is not helping so um so let's see if this has a detrimental effect on you know 15th avenue 14th avenue 13th and so forth um because uh you know i i spoke with jackie scott and on she represents uh coley hammock but um i'm just concerned how you know limiting the number of pathways we have getting in and around the city will become a a an ask for many different neighborhoods and i just want to make sure that you know this is not going to be the beginning of a of a pattern of of requests that we would receive from other parts of the city as well and and so like i said i would when it comes up i'll be happy to support it but on a on a um on a just to test it out and see how it works maybe a six month basis or something thank you very much mr mayor we completely agree and uh before if we if we do receive a direction and proceed with temporary closure we'll come back to you and we'll communicate any any findings after that is implemented okay great i'm fine with it also mayor okay please continue then okay great thank thank you all for uh giving that a a try and thank you milos so you have what you need milos for that yes he says yes he says yes okay great thank you um i did not i did not receive any we did not receive any opposition right we're all in agreement i think the majority is agreement thank you very much great um next up had a great meeting with broward county staff specifically the broward county aviation department and um city staff uh about um broward fort lauderdale hollywood international airport and drainage and impact on especially our southern neighborhoods edgewood and river oaks and so this is going to be the first of many meetings i don't know if we've ever had a meeting where we bring all these stakeholders together actually we have uh with the city commissioner yeah uh after the after the flood uh alan dodd uh convened a meeting with the county with fdot um and with a number of different stakeholders sat around the table and said hey we can't have this happen again and um he's not with us now but that conversation has been going on for a little while i don't think anything has resulted from it but you know what happened to uh edgewood it was was a not just a travesty but a sin when we find that the systems are designed to dump all their water into that neighborhood where you have the you have the the sewer drains from 595 dumping into that neighborhood where you have the the counties the counties runoff systems dumping into that neighborhood i mean it just makes no sense whatsoever it was inevitable that they would be flooded because the because the uh the canal alone cannot sustain the outflow that ultimately was imposed upon it during that during that um that flood now needless to say 26 inches of rain in five hours we hope we never see again and i wouldn't wish that on any city and in any neighborhood anywhere in the country but i just want you to know going into this ben i we really appreciate your pursuing that because the county needs to be pushed to install pumps so that the drains the drainage system is enhanced through a pump system not just a gravity system as the northern runway continues to collect water in a in a rainstorm such as the one we experience so i just want i appreciate your efforts yeah thanks merida i appreciate your support on it and and basically so you know good education for me and learning more about the specifics but more or less the basin that drains into edgewood from the airport is about a third or half the size of edgewood yeah so this is a significant land mass yeah but it's a gravity system and and when i'm aware and the water can't drain out fast enough and that's what happened to edgewood right they so there's this there there are plans they have plans they have designs for a pump system but they never funded it and that's what needs to be done they need to fund their their own plans to to drain what's the name of the canal the um osceola canal they need to they need to implement that drainage system and that that would further protect uh not just edgewood but also river oaks right so we're working on all that and obviously we don't want them pumping more into our neighborhoods we want them uh mitigating in other places so yeah so we're working on that we're working on we've dredged as you all know uh the city's dredged the southern portion of the osceola canal um we need to dredge the northern portion to actually make it an effective uh water retention uh pathway which hasn't been done yet so we're working on that um we're working uh with broward county one things i'm interested in is really limiting the flow of water north from the airport into our neighborhood so um a lot of work to do but it was a good uh a good get together to really um start digging into the details uh nancy gassman and and anthony farro and others were there and really helpful and and moving that forward so uh i'll keep you updated on that mayor uh and commissioners so um we'll continue to make progress there um also mayor i know this will especially appeal to you wanted to welcome ethos greek restaurants george pappas the owner opened their third location which happens to be in district four on 17th street uh so i want to celebrate that what's the name of the restaurant ethos oh ethos opened on 17th street absolutely wow uh yeah we're on 17th street it's 17th the panera plaza so it's if you know that plaza where like ross is and um oh in that in that shopping center okay yeah yeah so go by okay you know since you're what do you what do you call yourself the first openly greek mayor i'll meet you there deal all right great together there you go um so that's exciting that's great um wanted to uh commemorate juneteenth coming up um celebrate that important historic day in our nation's history and go cats go to the ice plex tonight watch the panthers take the cup um amazing amazing turnaround of a franchise over the years and just all the kudos to the panthers leadership the vast majority of which are united states military veterans uh that lead that organization so from the owner uh to to matt caldwell to bryce and just proud of all they're doing so thank you mayor all right thank you ben um just a few things uh we uh had the opportunity on june 14th this past saturday commissioner beasley pitman and myself uh participated in the juneteenth celebration at carter park um and uh tonight we'll hear a resolution on that as well uh the uh yesterday we had uh a great opportunity to host along with the county uh a number of council generals from throughout south florida they represented countries as far away as sierra leone japan uh bangladesh uh israel uh and quite a few other nations so we're very proud to have hosted that event yesterday it was really it was really very nice here at the pier 66 um tomorrow i'll be leaving uh to go to tampa excuse me to attend the u.s conference of mayors and hope to uh meet with a number of mayors on quite a few topics that will be presented over the week um and uh let me see some of the things that have not been mentioned on june 26 we're going to be doing the grand opening of the mount herman apartments that's 11 a.m at 750 northwest 4th street um inviting everyone to attend there um another restaurant um i think it's in district four sakana uh 6 p.m at 400 southwest first avenue and um finally at the museum of discovery and science uh at 11 a.m at 11 a.m and i will be reading to small kids a family pride event again that's uh june 28th at the museum of what's that the museum of just i can't hear you so please don't yell from the audience um at the museum of discovery and science so uh that being said that's really uh all i have to say and uh raquel thank you mayor i do want to echo the sentiments in terms of our staff participation in various events over the last couple of weeks i want to particularly highlight our parks and recreation department we held our second monthly sandbag giveaway or distribution and we saw a 70 increase in the number of bags that were distributed uh thanks also to parks for the juneteenth event which was the first time that we've hosted such an event and we're looking forward to seeing that event grow in future years i also want to thank our public safety professionals and police and fire for their activity over the weekend and making sure that the demonstration was safe and that the city functioned appropriately we're also looking at opportunities to promote the city hall unsolicited proposal although it was noticed or advertised in the florida administrative uh register and in the sun sentinel perhaps there's an opportunity for us to promote it otherwise so that we can get a more robust response and and have a greater opportunity to identify the appropriate partner so that's it we are planning for the panthers to be successful tonight and we will see what comes after that thank you uh duane do you have any report to make i actually do um so earlier today this morning i sent you an email with regards to ph1 um advising the commission that according to section 8.21 the because portions of that property are zoned park that it would require a unanimous vote of the entire city commission um fortunately our current resolution resolution 2525 that governs remote participation precludes participation of commission members on quasi-judicial items and public hearing items so what i'm proposing to do is provide a walk-on resolution for this evening to be heard prior to ph1 so that commissioner sorenton can participate and that uh what we would be doing with that resolution is striking the provision that excludes his participation for quasi-judicial and public hearing items that provision was inserted in our original resolution that was adopted in 2014 and was based on uh guidance from the judiciary the judiciary and in terms of how it dealt with the rules of uh general practice and judicial administration that rule specifically 2.530 has been was amended in 2022 and the judiciary now allows remote participation as part of their evidentiary hearings and so i see no um reason to preclude uh or to keep this provision in our policy with regards to remote participation so we'll have a cam and a resolution that will be provided to you shortly all right great thank you mayor if i may do when i just need some clarification because yesterday when we met with pre-agenda you said it would need a uh a super majority vote so that it no longer needs a super majority it needs unanimous unanimous vote of the entire commission but i did hear you correctly yesterday right yesterday you said super majority correctly yes okay because i had a note about that all right so now it's not super majority it's unanimous in court accordance with the charter provision okay thank you okay um and that concludes our conference meeting we'll resume at six o'clock thank you you