let us begin thank you so much this is the city commission of fort lauderdale conference meeting this june 2nd 2026 oh my god we're almost halfway through the year where is this where is it going right yes um we have quite a bit to uh get through today so uh let us begin with our conference agenda and we start with our we start with our communications to the city commission we have one communication from the central city cra it's a motion that was presented to the commission regarding temporary signage concerning safety for lane mergers on 13th street um this isn't something the commission needs to deal with this is just management issues okay yes we can handle that mayor okay but it's doable it is okay great thank you all righty um so city commission reports should we begin with commissioner pam beasley pittman yes good afternoon everyone happy tuesday um i'm not going to report anything today so i'm going to give my time to my fellow commissioners here on the day okay all right well commissioner glassman okay thank you mayor good afternoon everybody um good couple of weeks uh in district 2 may 20th um it was a pleasure to speak with and meet with the folks from the flagler village civic association um i do love that they always rotate into all the different buildings and everyone gets a chance to see all the different uh buildings that are in that district uh it's always very interesting to me also because it's always a very young crowd um as you know flagler village is uh just uh really really getting populated with a lot of young families and uh it's a pleasure to see all of those folks and see them engaged uh when we have their civic association meetings um may 22nd it was a pleasure i know that i was joined by several of you at the uh greater fort lauderdale alliance the mid-year event that they have at the hard rock always very positive information not just for the entire county but also for the city of fort lauderdale as well when it comes to business um may 23rd we had a good time vice mayor and i kicked it off at the great american beach party um and we had the walk of fame ceremony very well attended um a really nice day to celebrate the military celebrate the united states uh to celebrate memorial day and remember the true meaning of why we were all gathering so that was a really nice event thank you to parks and rec and everyone uh who put that together it's always such a well attended uh event throughout throughout the day uh may 28th it was a pleasure to honor four very well deserving folks at the riverwalk tribute uh the folks over at riverwalk always do such a nice job um with that event uh and mayor it was a pleasure to join you at that event as well um may 29th um finally we did kick off phase two of the holiday park improvements for the bond a lot of folks uh have been waiting for that to happen it's been a long time coming um and the folks were really pleased to be there and to see um that phase two now that we've done phase one and the jimmy evert tennis center is open and looking really good um it was a pleasure to kick off uh the phase two can i say something about that you know in for those that read the uh the local newspaper there's an article in the paper today about the fact that many of our projects have been delayed and i think we recognized it and we were we're taking ownership of that problem and we're trying to move forward city manager has hired new staff and trying to um accelerate the process we all understand that but the problem that i found with the articles they didn't talk about the things we did accomplish it almost looks as if the money was sitting in the bank and we've done nothing with it you know these many years later and uh i think it's important that the community understand and recognize the the money that has been spent the open space that we have secured um the um the various um activations that we have been able to undertake in our parks and i think you know to the credit of staff that over the last several years i know that it's been we've been dogged by by many distractions including covid um and i think that um a balanced report needs to somehow be put out there and i was a little disappointed that the article failed to recognize those accomplishments american can i add to that please yes i completely agree and i was and city manager this might be a quentin question or carl but i was trying to add up mayor the total acreage that the city has expanded in park space through the parks bond program in terms of purchasing land mayor and it's upwards almost eight acres of park space and and quentin i'll defer to you on specific numbers but i think it's about eight acres of park space that we've purchased to add to our park space in the city and there are pocket parks it adds to the enhancement of that particular location and we're not done yet absolutely and there's pocket parks there's big parks i know in district four we amazing parks that have been added i know in district two that have been added and then the number in district one i mean significant progress and then i don't know also and quentin this will be a question for you is the number of parks that have been completed in terms of the upgrades that we we wanted to make for park bond i mean there's a significant number of parks that have been completed uh as of right now or that are under construction is that it's all right quentin or if you want to give any numbers or addition info there thank you vice mayor uh good afternoon quentin pew assistant city manager uh to your first question um roughly about eight acres have been acquired over the last seven to eight years or so um and district one we got ball harbor and district two there was little lincoln park i'm sorry district three uh i'm two yes district three little lincoln you keep telling us um and in your district district four you know abeaca and you know what so forth so yeah roughly about eight acres and uh several uh parks have been completed through the parks bond improvements um at the i believe it was the may 5th meeting i had highlighted roughly about at least six different park improvement projects in each district that have been completed now some of those have been phased um over um maybe two or three different phases at a certain site but significant improvements have been made in each one of you all's district uh through the parks bond program and that's that's a minimum of six in each district times four so we're looking at like 24 yes yes like you know hey could we do be doing better and faster absolutely i think we're heading in that direction but that's mayor i just wanted to emphasize what the numbers show and and and and a lot of that park space has been acquired uh it probably could have done more but the availability of some of these uh spaces is not always there so you know we tried to take advantage of situations as they come up and so um anyway i just wanted to bring that to the attention i didn't mean to take up your time commissioner but uh uh but i thought it was it was um important to recognize the accomplishments that we have made no that's a good point and i and i agree i think we should always try to find the balance when we're reporting out on issues so um there's always good and there's always bad so thank you for that um anyway it was a a very good day and the folks in um victoria park were very very happy to see uh we also have some folks from flagler village across the street as well so that was very good um that night uh what a what a really up up event when we actually show the neighborhood uh and the beach area the fact that the las olas garage lighting was restored um i have received so many positive comments about that um in the neighborhoods and in the district um people are really thrilled they don't like when we leave things just hanging uh and in disrepair uh and the images that we saw that night were really really special and i'm looking forward to seeing all of our holidays all of our celebrations done uh on that garage i did get an email though city manager someone was complaining that one night it wasn't lit on all four sides have we checked out all those little glitches or i can have the team verify that it's operable no i just want to make sure because we did get an email about that that one night um not all four sides were working uh again that was a very up event and people were really happy uh that we have restored that uh again uh really really nice event and i wanted to thank everyone who put that together um as well what a beautiful setting there you know mayor and i know we've talked about this a lot but when you stand in that spot and you realize that that was nothing but an asphalt parking lot where the kids would come from the bars and crash beer bottles all night and make a ton of noise and now it's a mega yacht marina uh really fine dining uh we have that entire uh area for all of the captains to come and enjoy where we did the lighting ceremony um and then the garage uh it really has transformed that view uh and that experience when you come over the las olas bridge um to the barrier island and i and i think people really really appreciate it um i also wanted to congratulate and welcome i did a ribbon cutting for black jack's bar and grill in flagler village uh and i wanted to say congratulations it's a really nice nice establishment that was also that same day uh and they had a really nice crowd there and we cut the ribbon with the chamber of commerce uh again uh so many businesses are opening in and around the flagler village area so congratulations uh to all of them uh coming up we've got the port everglades association economic engine report uh on june 5th which is always very fascinating when you see those numbers you see that data and you realize the economic impact of what's happening in that port uh in our city so uh very looking forward to hearing what that is uh that evening congratulations um the dolphin democratic club is the oldest lgbtq uh club in the state of florida they will be celebrating their 44th anniversary uh june 5th as well so congratulations to them yes congratulations to them uh june 9th we have the marine industries annual event and luncheon which is always again a really good good data driven event where we get all of the numbers and we see the impact that our marine industry has on our city uh again looking forward to that as well um i just had one comment i'll ask the city manager of this so i was expecting to see because i've been following the agendas and we we've had this issue between uh motorola and ci in terms of uh what we were going to be doing with these communication systems uh i know we've had some hiccups i'd like to get just some final word of where we are with that and i'll tell you why i am concerned uh as you know for months and months and months now i've been bringing up the bda issue and the communication possibilities within our buildings uh in the city in particular in my district i've been hearing and i've said this a lot so forgive me for saying it again um but this has been an issue for buildings that have never had a problem never had a problem with communications uh for public safety uh and now they are getting these reports of course no one wants to see any kind of a compromise when it comes to public safety and our safety of our first responders or the buildings themselves uh but this has become an issue uh very touchy uh and it's kind of haphazard and kind of random in terms of what we're seeing on the data uh so my concern about the delay on this communication systems between motorola and ci is that this will affect going forward um that capability of our communication system so i want to know where we are with this and i want to know what we can expect in terms of the future uh again just to make sure that we're not compromising our communication systems uh and at the same time making sure that we're doing the right thing uh for the entire city uh when it comes to this particular issue so if i could just get some clarity city manager city attorney uh where we are and we're finding out why uh this item that was supposed to have come to us has not come to us and seems that it's being deferred again i would greatly appreciate that thank you thank you commissioner uh you may recall that on the last agenda there was an item that we intended to discuss that item was uh deferred or pulled from the agenda we did have several internal conversations among staff and the city attorney's office we've had conversations with the vendors that have proposed for that particular procurement uh based on my observations and what i've learned about the process i intend to bring forward a recommendation to reject all bids for that procurement and expeditiously go back out and come back to the commission within a very short window of time that's the recommendation that i intend to bring forward on june 16th i have conferred with the city attorney and i believe her office is supportive of going in that direction but i will ask yvette matthews to provide any additional details good afternoon commission yvette matthews assistant city manager um so everything that the city manager shared was accurate this is a very technical rfp and there were so many components that upon review of the technical components we did have some concerns and so we are going to pivot the good news is that the work that has been done thus far is not lost and we've already engaged a lot with all the vendors that proposed we had three proposers that submitted we heard a lot about their technical elements of their proposal with a um with a negotiation we're able to ensure that we're able to review all elements of their proposal they already have their data together and what we're hoping is they'll be really good partners in providing us with responses in a timely manner beginning the negotiation process and our procurement team is making this their highest priority over the next two months so it will be one of those uh it will take a few months before it comes back to you all but we already have a process in place to make sure that we're bringing back the reject all and then moving forward with the invitation to negotiate thank you for that i appreciate that so let me ask you a question um how does it work in terms of fairness because now everyone seems to know what the others are doing or proposing or they sort of get they're able to get into the weeds because everything's become transparent now public records requests have happened so how do we deal with that from a from a fairness situation right and you know fairness is of course very important to us and it's something that was considered as this decision was made and one of the things that's important to know is these vendors actually compete against each other on a regular basis so they're very aware of each other's technical specifications they're very aware of each other's routine proposals um and in this opportunity they heard more about the city this is our second time submitting uh solicitation for this item and so both proposers all three have already received a lot of information about the city's specifications and what we're looking for so the fairness element there it has already been a very transparent process they have already seen each other's data on a few time a few occasions and so making sure that we get it right from a procurement standpoint was really important and that's the reason we decided to go in this direction that makes some sense so city manager indulge me because i i know that this uh award was given to um to motorola and i i do see that ellen bognath is here i'd like to just hear her take very briefly on this before we move on to the next subject because this is very important to me and again because of the issues that i've been talking about for a long time i'd like to ask her to come up and just i want to hear her take on this um as brief as possible take on what well her take on the fact that motorola was awarded the uh she represents one of the vendors we need it would be unfair to start a debate is there anybody else and just to clarify they have not yet been awarded no i well the last the last item that i read was that it was they were going to be awarded and then that was pulled right correct right um just to clarify they were ranked the highest ranked proposer so the actual awarding is done by the city commission so they were ranked the highest ranked proposer but they had not yet been officially no i understand maybe i poor choice of words on my part if no one has an appetite for that i'm you know i'm sorry you don't have the patience for that i just would like to hear a little bit more because i'm i'm trying to gather as much information on this as possible if anyone else is here from any of the other two vendors i'm happy to listen to them well the problem is you're giving the platform to one of the vendors and none of the other vendors are here to to counter whatever statements are being made here i i mean obviously she's going to um whatever whatever ellen says is going to be uh very favorable towards her client and it's going to make it look like you know she should have you know her client should have been uh awarded the contract and i just don't honestly commissioner i just don't think it's it's a fair process i'm fine with that i the reason i requested that was because i've heard what staff has told me i would like to just hear the number one ranked firm what their take was i'm fine we're good let's move on okay i'm fine you could do it privately right i guess i could yes thank you and i will uh my last comment i would like to find out from the city attorney um i've been reading a lot about a lot of the new applications in terms of the live local law i think one of the most fascinating uh new pieces of information um is the fact that now the live local law can apply to city owned property public land uh do we have any concerns about that are we going to be okay do we still have an ability to protect those public lands uh i'm thinking in terms of oh well city hall site if we if we didn't do anything there would someone be able to come in with a live local project for the city hall site i'm just i just allay my fears if you can i'll allay your fears thank you uh so on public land it's intended that the public entity would be a participant if not the uh the one pursuing the the development so uh you might be familiar with what's happening in hollywood where it's on public land but the city is involved in that development because it's on public land and that's what the intention was that uh it's it's not so that a private developer could swoop in and and have the uh authority to take away the public and make it and develop on it the city would have to be involved in it we have to okay that's very good that's i'm just hoping to hear that so thank you i'm good mayor thank you okay vice mayor thank you mayor appreciate it um let's see several items here let's start off mayor here's a question we've um just in terms of timing of our commission meeting so you know traditionally our city conference meeting starts at 1 30 p.m like it did today and what at least recently we've been running into not being able to cover everything in the city conference meeting and then having to push some things to the city commission meeting which starts at six o'clock and not having much of a break between for executive session other things so i was wondering if there was any interest to maybe move the city commission conference meeting to maybe just like an hour earlier like 12 30 so that we could have more time to cover conference items and i give enough of the city want another hour of my life another hour of your life yes i know your hours are very valuable but uh yes just to give us a little bit more wiggle room when we need executive sessions when we so we don't delay the start of the six o'clock meeting anyway just a a just wondering if commission's interested in something like that i i mean i personally would maybe not 12 30 maybe just to one o'clock one o'clock give us an extra half hour yeah and maybe going forward we should consider how we should tailor our comments so that they're done within a reasonable amount of time rather than dragging into an hour or two like it i mean it depends today was going to be a short one right but yep but you never know because there are issues honestly vice mayor there are real issues that come up i agree to be fleshed out right i completely agree many other city commissions do not have this uh format right just do city meetings and there's and then they'll have they'll schedule a special workshop but i think this is one of the best formats because we're able to talk about things without having to vote on anything but i agree to talk things through i agree and that's why i love having commission comments especially the substantive things we talk about like this right now yeah you know having time for that um so all right so let's make sure let's sleep on that let us sleep on that um what do you think about i've i'm thinking also um more so one o'clock not a whole hour um and i do believe that there's some areas that we can from here kind of scale back on and you know i always talk about um how excited we get with our opportunities but our commission reports which is valid there's times we have things we really need to share but i think with management time management extra 30 minutes i believe we can do what we need to do great okay fantastic commissioner glassman is that all right with you one o'clock i think one o'clock i'm fine with that but there is it none of that's prescribed by the charter is it those times we're all good okay so city managers start at one see how it works start at one and see what see how it goes it also it does it will actually open up some time between the two meetings exactly that's what that's that's i'm thinking too mayor okay city manager is that good to start start at one sounds good going forward okay change stationary there you go yeah yeah let's update city clerk you good okay uh thank you um next mayor uh water quality testing so as as you all know we've been partnering with miami water keepers which has been a fantastic partnership they're testing i think it's 11 sites across the city and i think is is really going well even at some of the sites we're really seeing some improvements we also just started with them mst which is source tracing to identify not just bacteria levels but what is the origin of the bacteria levels is it human is it canine is it bird and so forth so that's just started so we've gotten some initial analysis of that so i'd love to hear city manager just just a brief kind of summary or uh about how that's going how that can be helpful maybe to just start that's right thank you and with the support of this commission we've expanded our testing through the miami water keeper i'm going to ask our deputy public works director todd to come forward and share some details thank you manager and i wish i spent more time in microbiology class um but we're actually uh our routine waterway samples at 15 sites so we're doing 15 sites regularly thank you for the enterococci bacteria so the one limiting factor for routine testing like vice maria mentioned doesn't contribute to source so that's what mst does or microbial source tracking so what we've done is for the five sites that's typically a fail 50 percent more of the time from the regular waterway sampling we conduct mst there so those sites are middle river dock sweding park anne beck park hemershi and tarpon so we collected our first or we got our first sample results back recently and i'll just highlight what what those kind of have alluded to so the human marker was picked up at all five sites um the dog dog the dog marker was picked up at tarpon river when you look closer and dive deeper into the human marker there was a threshold of 525 gene copies um this is this is not a regulatory standard it's more of a health-based guidance value so when you look at annie beck and tarpon although during that sample event they exceeded the enterococci bacteria threshold from the regular sampling um they were actually um they were actually higher or lower in the in the health human gene marker so and same thing with um um the other three sites they had numbers that were above the healthy beach standard but their human markers were less than the 5.5 number so that's a threshold that we're comparing this to so what does all this really mean for stars is challenging to draw systemic conclusions for one sampling event so that's why we want to look at the data over this whole year to try to then determine um applying these thresholds over a certain time period how that interacts with the enterococci we're seeing and then that will help us to come up with you know better data driven decisions um so that's kind of uh we're just starting this and we'll continue through the year then at the end of the year we'll have more guidance and more data to to make some decisions on great thanks and so so i think that's very helpful the obviously one of the things we can't determine i i think correct me if i'm wrong is is that human waste is that coming from you know uh could it be a possible uh sewer break or um or uh septic failure or is someone you know doing something in the canal or in that waterway themselves without yeah and i guess we can't figure that out that's that's correct so some sorts of obvious sources would be like sanctuary sewer overflows right you can easily see we can easily detect we can easily control and manage and and correct those issues other issues are a little bit more harder to to investigate if there's um leaking sanitary sewer lines um homelessness that could be a direct point source right um even a vessel discharge it just happens to that's another good one now list of cross connections or even failing sewer ladders coming from private property so all those like the underground infrastructure that may be leaking those will require significant investigations to in to to follow through on got it and that that data will hopefully give us more of an indication what it might be right is correct then thank you todd so mayor and commissioners my next question is so we're testing we're doing mst source tracing at todd correct me if i'm saying this wrong five sites that regularly uh fail or present over over 50 percent failure right correct right so my next question mayor and city manager commissioners is do we want to expand that testing at all to other sites in our districts and it might be no hey let's just focus on the ones that are regularly failing but i just wanted to have that conversation if we do want to expand that at all or there's interest mayor if i could um please and i i would want us to focus on those five um as you know um or we should know um sweeting that area we are our numbers are extremely high when it comes to bacteria we are part of those five who normally fail and i believe um over the years that we've been doing it we have a basically a 94 percent failure um for the bacteria so if we're going to do anything i see um us as a commission given directive to how we are going to clean it up yep don't add anyone else they seem to be um stable enough where um they're meeting the opportunity where the bacteria levels are sustainable they're not at a point where um for those for the record you know i'm usually seeing for sweeting 300 400 500 right and the number is what less than 70 is what's considered um is that correct 70 for the healthy beach standard once the 130 for the fdp okay all right so that's still a number that is out of control um i was very excited last couple times that i received a um report i even um the numbers came at 94 i was a little um like wait a minute was this a typo because i've never seen it at that level i was really excited to see that but at the same time having pause is that a accurate reading when for years we have seen three digit numbers and even um when i went back some years um i can't remember now what year but it was really four digits so the the numbers are really high when it comes to um sweeting area and the next question is what's next are we going to bring in those entities to help clean up that waterway um because it's my understanding in sweeting um there's really three entities that are um overseeing or have um authority in that area so um my question would be what can we do next not including other neighborhoods yep that sounds great that makes sense to me so city manager is it and todd maybe six months from now we could get have another check in to see okay what's the data showing us and then next steps or well i i think you're on the right track as far as testing but but um but to commissioner beasley pitman's point what are we testing it is not an end in itself right what are we doing to stop the inflow to stop the infiltration what are we doing to to now that we've identified hot spots you know some of those areas that the commissioner refers to we've been seeing the test results going on for years now but what are we doing to correct it so that's really the that's really the challenge right city manager i i agree i think the testing just shows us what is and i think we do need more strategies as to how to address it and i don't know the answer to that because him or she canal another one yeah it's that's an open sewer as far as i'm concerned you know and and and it's all because of inflow where is it coming from right you know uh all these you know over the over the decades you know the city has been um building layer upon layer and i don't know i mean i don't really know what the source is i don't think our staff knows what the source is someone's got to get in there and start feeling around where it's coming you know i agree mayor i mean testing i think is great expanding the testing zones is probably good too but um maybe moving away from some of the test sites where it's it's it comes in satisfactory so that we can continue to see where where these hot spots are but um i think we need a more aggressive program on a cleanup i'm i'm with you 100 so city manager would it be possible for those you know for these five sites for example where we're seeing the sites that we're seeing elevated levels to start putting together uh okay here's a strategy to address or i think we can work on that i'd love to see if we could get with a a partner maybe an academic partner uh that might be uh may have expertise in this area we're also going through the budgetary process right now so if there's something that we want to explore further i think we need to plan for that in six months time we'll already be at our our budget you know at the end of the budget process so and if i may ask um todd some of the um other entities that have um i'm gonna say authority on that waterway for sweeting area could you identify them for me i know so the primary partners for the north fork new river would be broward county south florida water manager district um you have state summer submerged lands which would be florida department environmental protection those those would be the main agencies okay so with um broward county if i may um broward county's um authorization and maybe if responsibility if i'm not using the wrong word what is their part in um maintaining um clean waterways in that area so broward county on the west side mostly the west side of the north fork so they would be responsible for the same things we're responsible for on east side maintaining their storm water infrastructure looking for sources of pollution looking for things like that to correct okay so do we know it today do we know their participation in that responsibility they have participated in the past they had they have gone through some exercise where we call walk the watershed we did we've done that with them um a few years ago so that's something that can be revisited to see to engage them city of lauder hill is another partner because they're on the north side of the canal swap shop area um so they're another partner so there are opportunities there to walk what we call walk the whip or walk the watershed with these agencies to kind of see if we can pick up any type type of sources the numbers we're seeing you just give us some context when you're seeing like a sanitary sewer overflow we'll get numbers of the terococci bacteria in tens of thousands 20s of thousands so when we're seeing numbers in the hundreds they're they're challenging because they're considered what we call low level exceedance so they're really kind of difficult to discern even sometimes you get into the thousands the fdp kind of categorizes those as hard sources to track down but the biggest opportunity i think is maybe engaging those agencies if you can walk the watershed on both sides and and collaborate to see what what potential there is to to eliminate any sources and that's the same with the um south florida waterways is that what they ultimately own the c and the c12s that's their they manage the conveyance um they typically have not participated in these events but we can reach out to them and see if they want to um also north fork right by law you have that control structure that flooding flood control structure so they really control the flow of water that's one of the challenges there is is a flow there's some studies that show flow doesn't matter but anytime you get any tidal interaction flushing of the waterway that does help that does help with the um improvement of it so by controlling that structure software water mansion district does control the flow into the north fork um if um city manager if we could do um all that we can to get these entities at the table to have the conversation because that area that we're talking about of course is um part of the mileage of water that we advertise here in the city 165 165 miles is included in that stretch um also there's we have families that live along the waterway children that are playing along the waterway and we want to have access as well to clean water to be able to take our kayaks out and and be out on our um and our canoes as well and then also um i'm not even sure if we're all aware that we have families of manatees that are living and having a uh a space there and the water is also yucky yeah okay so these are things it's not um it's something that we shouldn't just say okay it's something that's been going on for years it's something that we need to correct i'm sure that's also part of with this mst that we're doing it's an interesting dynamic it's like a sweding park i think terracock side number as you mentioned are in the hundreds you know above the standards but the the human marker is below that 525 number which so that's kind of an interesting dynamic which i think as we do this testing mst testing over time this year we'll hopefully be able to make some connections and come up with with you know maybe terracock is not the right number to utilize your standard that's one limiting factors in terracock doing this type of data you can fine tune what you should actually be testing for and what works best for that type of environment thank you todd thank you for allowing me to thank you commissioner and just what happens in one part of our waterway affects all our waterways so it's we need to take a holistic view and and i've been working with a couple um universities on this and so just with some parts of this so i think that's city manager i can that they might be helpful for other districts that might be interested in engaging with those those folks too okay thank you todd that's really really great um mayor this came up last night on my um agenda review is um having uh city communication in other languages other than just english so which i thought was a good point so they uh in in my agenda review they brought up yiddish yiddish yes exactly like how'd you guess that's right okay i vote yes very good all right we got one yes um yeah yiddish would be great in addition uh spanish and creole came up on my so i think so many more people speak yiddish yes yes good we'll prioritize uh but i thought that was a good comment i don't know you know uh anyway city manager i thought if there's interest i i thought commissioner beasley pittman wanted to say something just agreeing um um our demographics has you know really expanded so much and this language spanish and creole definitely um uh an opportunity that we should offer to all of our residents um because we we've in our office we have started to dissimulate in both spanish and in creole so there is a need for it yes we've just been doing yiddish in district two i apologize for that opportunity to improve maybe commissioner beasley pittman you'll be able to help me with that we'll expand our horizons thank you commissioners i'd like to work with our strategic communications office to do a little homework on that and determine what types of communications we would want to have in multiple languages we communicate in so many forms and fashions and i want to make sure that we're hitting the mark on the expectation so we can share a listing of what we're recommending and then get the feedback before we move forward you know i'm surprised we haven't done it before now i mean we have a large uh haitian uh population within our city and we have a growing hispanic population growing and you know happening in our city um it's a turnoff if you don't know the language i mean i know the state is trying to become more english only i mean i think they just changed the driver's license exams that they can only be in english i mean i don't want to be a city like that i think that we need to be more inclusive so i think it's a good point great thanks thanks everyone tell scott to convert our newsletters into three languages now get him on rosetta stone he can learn some creole and if i'm not incorrect i believe um previously we did have an option where you could choose from a dropbox what um language was available but i oh interesting i haven't seen it in a while but when i used to be on the site more so now you know but it was an idea before okay great i think that'd be great um okay thank you next and and mayor maybe you're going to already talk about this but um the what's happening in tallahassee property tax uh possibilities well not possibility the legislature just passed it exactly yeah yeah and so it's it's coming on the ballot so i just wanted so the free state of florida has now become the free city of fort lauderdale you can live here for free now everybody so i think um yeah go ahead and i'm sorry just had a thought yeah um are we able to um i don't want to put a statement from the city but is there something that we can prepare that is unified across the board explaining we should have a we should have a conference agenda item give the city attorney give the city attorney and the city manager's office the time to put together an analysis of the possible impact and what choices that we have as a commission going forward you know if this should happen what we can do if this the other things should have what are our options can we raise taxes if necessary or should we do we cut do we cut departments you know i think that's uh that should take one entire conference meeting because that i mean it may not may not even get voted on right it may lose right it's possible but i just think uh be prepared for the the possibilities and we need to start discussing it and it might help educate people in terms of making their decision and how they're going to vote in november but again just having something um that is represented from our our community our city saying what this looks like for us going forward if it does pass having a breakdown of what will be affected because um narratives i'm i'm sure everyone is hearing what i'm hearing you hear the part where um certain items will not be affected um first i should say certain area services would not be affected but we're hearing more and more of those services will be affected and then this narrative where um to me it's being pitched that people are going to get money back in their hands for having yeah you know it's like oh you're going to save all this money but you don't that money to me you don't naturally see because you're already in a process of paying through your property taxes but again just an opportunity to educate our residents if i may share mayor and commissioners we have developed an educational campaign now that it has passed and all the details are more solidified we will finalize that collateral to be shared with the commission and with the public we did share with you over the weekend some information as it relates to what was proposed at the time so we are fully prepared to engage in outreach and educational opportunities with the public we can certainly have a conference item to go into details about an approach and how we navigate the shortfall should it pass the timing of that i think is up to you i don't know if you'd like it after the recess or well may i just say this before we start educating the public i think that the commission should start coming up with options and let the public know what what policy that fort lauderdale will follow in response to the proposed constitutional amendment so i think before we go out to the public we need to have a robust discussion on exactly what the residents of fort lauderdale can look forward to because every city is going to be different every city is going to choose different options right so um so i know you've done a lot of work so far i know daphne has uh done uh has uh been watching this over uh for the last number of weeks so um but to answer your question do we want to do it in july or do we want to do it in august you know is august too late is july too soon i don't know i think if we wait to share any information until there's policy direction we probably miss a couple months of engagement the only thought i had on the initial outreach was just by the numbers you know what what does it mean not necessarily positions or functions but we can certainly wait i think august will still give us enough time to engage before the november election uh just wanting to know what we should do between now and then do you have a problem doing it in july it's our last one yeah whatever you think mayor i think i think we should we should have that discussion before we break yeah and city manager i know you released some letters to the commission i think this morning but fiscal impact projected i think you said 27 million is that that's what we did share over the weekend um i don't know if that's not sure exactly what passed today right right that was the projection that we had going into it is that okay and so that's 27 27 million for first year in the first year which would then increase i think mayor the following here right to you think 52 commissioner yeah i mean so these are big numbers sorry event hi just to clarify um year one at the 150 000 assumption would be 17 million dollars year two at the 250 000 would be the 27.3 million dollars okay in year three um so year three would be dependent upon cpi because the assumption would now go up with cpi so it would increase um over the 27 million and and what percent of our city of properties in the city of fort lateral our homestead oh gosh do you sense of that uh i'm gonna look at laura reese because we've looked at the numbers so many times i want to say 40 percent it's about that amount i figured it was about um well you'll see more right right exactly there'll be a rush because it's a five-year moratorium right if you don't do it by the november yeah there are some changes in the legislation so really right now you can become homestead exempted as long as you use that home as your primary residence this does change that so that you would have to be a resident of the state of florida for five years before you would be able to receive that exemption in the first five years you would still receive the 50 000 that is currently in place okay and again that just to go over those numbers again if this passes so this has to be passed by 60 percent of the voters in november of 2026 correct right if it passes that the which fiscal year are we having the first impact in fiscal year 2028 you would see a 17 million dollar impact that is about seven percent of our ad valorem revenue okay in fiscal year 29 that number would go up to about 27.3 percent which is about 11 of our ad valorem revenue there are provisions within the bill that limit how the general fund our ad valorem revenue can be used um and those are pretty much aligned with how the city of fort lauderdale is already using our ad valorem revenue so things like public safety um the provision of retirement let's have that conversation yeah let's not do it right now there's a lot to digest yeah commissioners mayor i just want to have you keep in mind that on july 2nd we're also planning to have some other robust conversations so i i want to make sure that we allocate enough time and we just plan to be very focused on that's why i said it should be the only item we will be discussing the city hall project on july 2nd on the conference agenda so we have the we plan to have the information on the due diligence of the existing properties to share with the commission that day i think that's most appropriate for a conference discussion but if you would prefer it in the evening we could do that as well i think we're going to make a decision we may even make a decision today why don't we let's not think about that right now let's let's just figure out what we're going to do just with regard to the property tax discussion and i think why don't we just focus on the conference agenda for july what day of the what day is it july 6th what is second july set what is it second july second i'm sorry i have a suggestion hear me out we have a joint meeting with the budget advisory board on june 16th why don't we just dedicate that entire conversation because that i think will be very helpful june 16th yeah because they could i won't be here as you know that's right oh yeah but you can have the discussion can you be remote can you be remote no okay it's a 12-hour time okay ahead of us or behind us well we have moved the meeting up to one o'clock haven't we yes okay i thought so so uh the reason i was suggesting that was because you know there's there are laws in place we cannot advocate and do that although there is a legislation now i don't know if they're going to pass it to allow uh the state to spend millions of dollars to push this property tax reform like they did with uh you know the last election even though whatever that was a mess but um there is that so i don't know if we would be able to do that if the state's able to do that to tell our story but maybe maybe that story our story can be told through the budget advisory board maybe because they're not elected officials i don't know i'm just throwing all these things out there their ideas but maybe it's a good conversation to have with the budget advisory board can't avoid it it's just a conversation i'm just recommending i think it's a good idea i mean maybe mayor we just have a discussion with them but don't take any action well yeah i can take any right it's just a discussion yeah right just wait till you come back for yes direct and so city manager so can we move that joint workshop then to because it would need to start at noon i think and then we commission conference meeting at one we can advise the members of the budget advisory board and hopefully they're all available to start a little earlier yeah okay okay great thank you thank you evette thank you there's a conflict we can what time we supposed to start now with them budget advisory 12 30. mayor and commission so typically we start the budget advisory board um joint meeting earlier and there was a conflict with someone that the clerk let us know so we had to start that meeting later okay we can um we can figure it out yeah um and also while i'm up here do you want to know about the residential properties oh yeah yeah so um 75.4 of the city's tax base comes from residential properties and 75 and of the residential properties 45 are homesteaded 45 percent of the residential properties are homesteaded and 25 are non-residential um yes so 25 of our tax base is not related to residential wow yeah okay now wait hold on hold on when you say non-residential you mean you mean people that own their property not renters um no so that means commercial so businesses so that would be commercial so a high rise in downtown fort laurel is considered commercial no that's considered residential but um if it's right if it's rental that would be non-homesteaded so that would represent the 55 or 55 that are not homesteaded so of residential i see what you're saying i see what you're saying it's a non-homestead okay i get it i get it okay great thank you laura thank you mary that's all i've got okay just quickly run through a few things um i want to say that uh uh it was great getting together for the hot dog appreciation event thank you city manager for reviving that event uh and um uh i thought that the memorial day ceremony this year was a stellar i want to thank everyone who participated in that parks and rec of course and uh the people many people came up to me afterwards and we're very thankful that we continue that tradition and that uh that particular event was the best they'd ever attended so very happy to uh to get that feedback from our community um let's see we had our cfo in town uh last week blaze in guglia he uh gave some pointers on how to prepare for hurricane season and uh he had a whole staff there with him he had the insurance commissioner so uh it was an opportunity to get to meet these folks uh the next day i was on a panel with uh two other mayors mayor of oakland park and the mayor of wilton mayors discussing economic opportunities in our cities um bunch of grand openings uh salutes um um in particular note riverwalk uh tribute i'd like to say that was another great event i want to again congratulate those to whom we had given proclamations that day uh thank you commissioner glassman for being there and uh i thought it was um just another way for us to uh appreciate people that do so do so many good things in our community that same night i participated in the asian american realtors association was very very well attended at the tower club and we have very robust asian american community here in our city so very happy to be able to participate in that as well um we had a on may 30th saturday morning we had a ceremony the fire rescue medals ceremony this was the day that we've been able to recognize those um men and women in our fire department who went above and beyond the call of duty to assist others in need and many medals were handed out that day and it was a great day for them their families um their friends and uh it was a very feel-good event and uh um and thank you to all the first responders who participated in that day um the next day we uh attended an event at the hard rock hotel there was an event honoring many people including our police chief chief schultz so uh um thanks again chief for all the great work you do and uh it was a wonderful event over 900 people attended and i'm sure it was because of you but uh uh but uh it was a great event and um and i think it was wonderful that the community came out and recognized them uh yesterday i did some welcoming remarks to uh fbi law enforcement executive conference here and that was being held in our city uh over 600 participants from around the country um came to fort lauderdale it was great that fort lauderdale was chosen for such a conference because the fbi can go anywhere they want and uh and i'm happy that we're able to provide that home for them uh this morning i gave welcoming remarks to the florida fire chiefs association they had their annual convention this is the first time it was held in fort lauderdale usually it's held at the casino and uh they have now moved it to our city and will probably continue to be here in the years ahead so um so i just have uh one thing i want to bring up um city manager you sent us a memo regarding the riverwalk garages you remember that was it a letter to the commission um was it a letter to the commission it was a memo let's see it was it's the 110 east broward parking agreement oh okay uh that's the riverwalk garage last night i forwarded an email from staff to the commission right i know there had been some uh feedback about uh real estate opportunities and so i want to make sure that uh while we're preparing a standard operating procedure that i inform the commission as soon as i'm aware of any activity or interest well all right so i have some interest uh to discuss a couple of elements to the to the backup to your email um you have uh my concern is this lease term to reset it for 50 years now it's never been 50 years and so um i have i want to make sure that we're not going to be tied into a 50-year lease without significant penalties should should a developer come to us you know we've been i personally and i don't know if the vice mayor has also but uh it's in his district but we have been talking to partners in our city about redeveloping that site as you know and um um and to be saddled with a parking agreement where we can't redevelop it i don't think it's the highest and best use of that real estate so just i just caution you not when whenever you come uh into negotiations and when you bring anything to the commission please keep in mind that we want to keep the door open for something like that without having to pay us you know us you know early withdrawal penalty so that so that we as a city can continue to move forward and redevelop our downtown and and the thing that's important is the is the fau connection the broward college connection both colleges have expressed strong interest in a in a much greater presence in our downtown and this is a wonderful opportunity to finally bring more college age students in our downtown to to uh uh and to enliven the downtown with an academic component so i just want to bring that to your attention thank you mayor and i think that document was sent to staff and i just forwarded it to the commission for awareness yeah mayor i i agree with you on the yeah being sensitive to that and being flexible something exciting i mean the way i've been hearing it like these there's a lot of people collaborating i know this president of uh fau i met with him a number of months ago uh i need to revisit those meetings and and and uh and see where we are i mean there's talk about taking down the building they have now and uh building a tower uh to incorporate more more administrative and classroom uh options there and um and also you know bringing a higher a retail element so it's just it's very exciting so i just wanted i just want to make sure we're not locked in okay uh that's it for me um do you have a report city manager it will be very brief today just be backing off of your sentiments regarding our fort lauderdale firefighters medals day and i want to highlight our deputy chief jermaine frazier who was awarded the firefighter of the year so please stand and i just want to thank uh chief golan and his team our union president keith costa it was a wonderful event and i'm very proud of all the honorees for their demonstrations of courage and bravery and we also acknowledged all of the members of fort lauderdale fire rescue who uh who got promoted over the past year so in various positions and so i'm very proud of them uh but in particular our deputy chief thank you that concludes my report okay city attorney thank you mayor i at this time i'd like to request a closed door meeting on the city of fort lauderdale versus fdot matters um specifically the the fourth district court of appeal matter the florida division of administrative hearing matter and the florida fourth district court of appeal other matter i'm asking that we have this closed door session between conference and regular meeting this evening at that meeting will be uh yourself uh vice mayor commissioners herbs glassman beasley pitman city manager williams myself deputy city attorney mr spence and attorneys external attorneys uh howard dubisar and jeremy rosner and we're seeking your input to resolve the litigation okay uh that's this afternoon correct okay all right so let's move on to our um our new business business one uh storm season preparedness city manager's office and fire rescue department are here to present thank you mayor we have assistant city manager ben rogers deputy chief jermaine fraser and sergeant eric peckrell uh good afternoon mayor vice mayor commissioner city manager residents and stakeholders i just want to start off by saying it's an honor to be standing before all of you i would have never thought that as a young marine in iraq that i'd be standing here addressing the commission of the city of fort lauderdale and i appreciate the opportunity but on a lighter note as a police diver i've spent years uh swimming in these canals and i think if there's a new strain of bacteria there's a decent chance that i've discovered it so but on that uh my name is sergeant eric peckrell and i serve as the emergency management coordinator for the fort lauderdale police department in that role actually let me back up i'm accompanied by uh my by chief jermaine fraser uh he's been pivotal in uh showing me the way with uh emergency management i'm grateful for everything that he's taught me up until this point so thank you chief um but in that role with my colleagues in the fire department i oversee the city city's emergency management program including uh emergency preparedness the uh training and exercises emergency operations center readiness disaster response coordination as well as the recovery planning that is entailed with that today i'm providing an overview of the city's preparedness efforts for the 2026 storm season this presentation highlights the proactive measures the city staff have taken ensure that we are ready to respond to severe weather events and support our residents before during and after a storm on that if we can just advance the slide thank you so preparation begins long before a storm appears on the forecast over the past year city departments have participated in emergency management training emergency operations center section training fema coursework continuity planning tabletop exercises and regional coordination efforts these activities ensure that staff across all departments understand their roles and can quickly transition into emergency operations when needed good afternoon mayor commission ben rogers assistant city manager uh so i'm going to talk about a little bit about what our operations teams are doing uh both on the public works and the uh the parks and transportation mobility side on the stormwater side i think it's very important to note that um we we hold back our our staff we schedule our staff accordingly to the weather forecasts and it's a double win for us because we use those staff to do additional inspections additional maintenance work uh while they're waiting for the storm to arrive once the conditions reach that magnitude they go out to calls and if there's a need for additional resources they make those calls in real time to provide additional resources i also want to note on the stormwater side you know we actively deploy four pumps historically this year we've uh procured five additional pumps uh that action's already taken place and we're waiting for those pumps to be delivered later this summer hopefully before the peak season of of uh the weather um the last item here is the routine inspections in the last 12 months we've done over 25 000 uh inspections on the stormwater system and over a thousand cleanings uh based on the findings during those inspections on the fortify side again we just want to remind the commission uh that we have a lot of major capital projects underway uh for the durst project that was 30 000 feet of pipe that was installed into the ground for dorsey riverbend over 21 000. these projects also include pump stations that are doing over 10 000 gallons per minute uh if you compare that to a small pool that's almost a pool per minute uh that is pumping uh we did have a ribbon cutting ceremony in dorsey riverbend not too long ago again you can see by the illustrations the heavy equipment the major infrastructure uh that's being delivered uh two active projects progressive village is expected to be completed by the end of 2026 uh and victoria park started earlier this year and has an estimated completion of the summer of 2027. i will note that victoria park we've been doing some stakeholder engagement we've done some walking tours with some neighbors uh and we are looking at doing some design modifications uh to include that feedback into the ultimate project delivery in addition the city commission created or approved a competition period for melrose and for riverland just as a reminder for the city commission that competition period closes later this week and we'll be bringing back some items uh before the summer recess sandbag distribution uh you know we really enhanced the methodology uh last year we went with a pre-packed sandbag so it expedited the process for the residents you can see on this slide that we're doing it the third week of each month uh compared to the first weekend of each month that we did last year uh and last month in may we had our first uh event uh which we did 450 sandbags were distributed if you compare that to a year ago it was under 300 so you can see there's more interest and more um impact that the sandbag program has had from a total uh aspect there was over 4 000 sandbags that were distributed last year i will note that again this is our pre uh packaged and our distribution dates we do have locations where there's self-service where we provide the sand and the residents would need to provide their shovel and their bags and that's open during park hours and in addition to those services we would be doing um storm as a storm approaches we would have special sessions to uh can complete sandbag distribution efforts ben question on that the um where it's self-service i've been i think maybe you and i had been working on this a while ago but the i forget the terminology but basically it's a sandbag kind of tool that helps you pack sandbags without having to do as much manual labor is that it's called a friend it's called a friend yeah it's called your yeah exactly so a lot of love we looked into that i thought but we do have some some assets uh the staff feedback has been that it's challenging because the amount of uh like you need a forklift to dump it into the machine so as it comes down you have to have additional resources you have to have more space to clear and by the time you add all of that kind of pre-work into it it makes it just as uh cumbersome to to deliver that uh however we did go up to the governor's hurricane conference last month uh myself and some staff we looked at different products that are available we talked to a lot of the vendors to understand how uh and ways that we could improve on our service delivery okay and i mean did they have there are there's products out there uh similar to what we have um their services as as well as um pre pre-filled bags that they deliver in in storm time um there were some equipment um not shovels but like hand devices that right that we looked at so staff's following up with those vendors to figure out uh if there's opportunity for us to proceed okay thanks uh on severe weather parking uh the city does have two parking facilities that we open up for no charge parking during flash flood watches and warnings these two locations are under complete control we do have a couple other venues that we can work with partners uh to see based on the storm conditions and the availability of their assets if they would be available or not and we communicate this as we roll out any kind of storm response project okay with external partners and resources our preparedness efforts extend beyond the city government we maintain strong partnerships with the county emergency management office over in plantation the florida division of emergency management the state level with florida power and light the national weather service and the american red cross as well as other organizations that play a really pivotal role in assisting us with operations one thing to note with fpl we're actually working on agreement with them to assist them with pre-staging some uh some of their assets ahead of time of a storm and we've selected two locations that are both co-located at the executive airport one is at the lockhart stadium the old lockhart stadium south parking lot in addition the fau parking lot again both are co-located in pretty much the same location and just to add those agreements are on tonight's agenda excellent so we're hoping to get that through that way they can provide us a restoration of power first before anybody else so that would be very beneficial um the next one okay so planning resources communication is one of our most important tools residents are encouraged to register for alert ftl and that provides them with emergency notifications by phone text email and we also communicate through the city's website through social media platforms email and distribution lists and through community outreach programs to ensure that timely and accurate information reaches the public you know through the website residents can expect to find emergency preparedness guides king tide information evacuation plans and a lot of other information that they would be looking for just so they can be prepared ahead of time regarding a storm uh recently over this past weekend we concluded the museum of discovery and science event it's the eye of the storm event uh it was a very well attended event every year we get a significant showing of families that come out to support the event and get a good idea of what's going on with hurricanes and things like that we always encourage residents to visit the city's hurricane preparedness website and participate in those community events such as the mods event and the resources that are provided will help them to better understand the storm risks and prepare their families before an emergency occurs so with emergency communications i'll say again with alert ftl the city utilizes that as a means for mass notification uh to provide the residents with that timely and accurate information before during and after any severe weather event alert ftl allows us to send target notifications by the text message phone call and email based on that resident's geographic location and the type of incident that is actually occurring this ensures that those residents receive residents receive that information that is relevant to them and to their individual neighborhoods in addition to the alert ftl we utilize the website and those social media platforms and all the other community or communications and outreach efforts just so we can keep them informed and we always encourage them to register for alert ftl ahead of time before there's actually a storm that way they they know the system in and out and can actually understand and uh and navigate through that system our objective is very simple it's to provide residents with accurate information quickly so that they can make informed decisions to protect themselves their families and their property in closing city staff all the city staff has been actively preparing for the 2026 storm season through training we've done a lot of infrastructure improvements which we've just heard about community outreach which is ongoing and continuous throughout the entire year and regional coordination with our partners both with neighboring jurisdictions the county state level and federal level while no community can eliminate the storm impacts entirely we're committed to ensuring that fort lauderdale is as prepared and resilient as possible with that i just wanted to say that we have trained we've invested we've coordinated and we're ready for anything that may be thrown at us with any storm all right i'll remind you of those words we got this anything further we're good okay anyone have any questions yeah mayor i've got a few questions what's um maybe this is for assistant chief but the our last major flooding the high water vehicles run by fire rescue were very important how remind me how many how many of those do we have in service right now i believe we have four total in service each one of our battalion vehicles are set up for high water vehicles and then we have one reserve uh a few of our ambulances as well but at least four at least four high water vehicles okay and is that i guess just my question is is that sufficient is that the right number and maybe i don't know but those were huge in rescuing folks from houses when nothing else could get into some of the really hard-hit areas no i defer to staff but i don't believe i've received a request through the budget process for an additional high water vehicle but i defer to the wg within public safety we have additional vehicles and police as well okay that are high water capable and how many is that i'm just trying to get vice mayor we have we have dozens of vehicles that are capable now uh oh good we have a lot of swat assets and we've been improving our fleet over the years uh we've transitioned away from a lot of those lower sedans to suvs and pickup trucks that have the ability to ford through some of that water in addition some of our pickup trucks are actually equipped with uh higher suspension better tires excuse me and they're more than capable of traversing through that water if needed okay we also have teams that are in place that are able to that are equipped properly with rescue equipment life jackets and things of that nature rescue lines that they can also assist with uh rescuing anybody from a water event okay fantastic that's great then city manager this might be more for public works but just want to get a sense of again in past flooding events vac trucks mobile generators um were helpful as well and just want to get a sense of how we're doing in that stock and ability to activate those resources i see our public works team coming forward but i will share with you that uh through the budget process the public works team was initially requesting some additional pumps and instead of waiting for the completion of the budget process i've asked that that be expedited which is why we're going through that procurement right now great and those are mobile yes okay yes vice mayor correct so there are they're portable pumps so we would have five more to supplement the four we have existing stock in addition to the vacuum trucks we have we also have capabilities through our stormwater contractors to utilize their assets through through to utilize them and put them on notice to provide relief necessary with pumps and other laborers type of equipment so we feel comfortable with the assets we have great and you said we have four portable pumps right now right now right now that we have now then we order ordering five more ordering five more so that bring it to nine yeah and what's the i don't know if you know offhand the the gallons per minute that those clear it's it's like 10 000 i mean something big don't have the specs but i know the ones we're ordering are i want to call them the cadillac of pumps yeah so they're the ones i think that when we utilize contractors in the past yeah so we're we're we're purchasing the they're those the same type of pump that they they utilize okay so they're going to be they're going to be very fast efficient yeah those are very important during our flood events so okay thank you thank you city manager okay thank you all anything else nothing else thank you thank you mayor thank you folks moving on to the next item business two uh limiting outdoor events on the barrier island uh city manager we are hoping to conclude this item we have carl williams our parks and recreation director good afternoon mayor and commissioners carl williams parks and recreation director i am here before you today to discuss uh limiting outdoor events on the barrier island as noted on the previous uh conversation that we had in april um commission did provide direction on moving forward with the impact fee matrix uh the signature and legacy designations and also the fee increases and so for this particular conversation we are focusing on just the the limitations that we have as far as suggestions for the barrier island so on this particular slide here provides a bit of an overview of how we segment the events that we have throughout the calendar year and as you will see and as i noted in previous conversations the uh items or the events that we have the most road closures are your walk and runs associated with our permitted events and on the barrier island i know that does tend to be a challenge especially when trying to navigate throughout the barrier island depending on the event and the event road closures and so from 2024 you'll notice here to 2025 we pretty much permit the same number of events that we have throughout the course of the year as you'll see here in 2026 we're halfway through the year so we're about on target to reach close to 200 events again here on the barrier island as we discuss here as the limitations of the events we've segmented four plausible and feasible outcomes or options to present to you today and those are restricting the number of road closures that we can put forth as far as a permitted event we can implement seasonal restrictions we also have a civic association acknowledgement form which we've kind of already initiated but if we were to kind of move forward with this we would put that city wide and also require for throughout the entire barrier island and then there's also the possibility of the establishment of a quiet weekend now to kind of dig in this a little bit more you'll see on this particular a graph here that and you'll see this on a couple of slides the number of road closures that we have itemized per month the items in red kind of indicate the months where we have most of the road closures and so when we talk about seasonal event restrictions we are referring to uh whether that's the holidays of christmas thanksgiving or spring break um those are the areas where we could have some level of impact or restrictions if you would want to impose that metrics here so carl there are road closures and there are road closures yes sir okay so if there's a marathon that's taking place at seven in the morning is over at nine it's not the same road closure as tortuga or or some other event that might be taking place um so how do we differentiate because i don't think that i think each one has different impacts you're absolutely correct not all road closures are the same right uh and in this particular case so and you mentioned tortuga so tortuga setups kind of mainly off the road so they don't have as much but for your 13.1 marathon your half marathon those have significant road closures which would be a part of what is impactful to that area but they they're over early aren't they so they all take place early but for those events and activations there's a setup time and there's a breakdown time and so to some extent um we have received phone calls from time and again of concerns with navigating now what we have done is work with our strategic communications department to share what those road closures are in advance we also have implemented our uh special event uh i'm gonna say a forum online where it kind of itemizes kind of where the impacted road closures and to win so that we are better educating our residents on where these impacts are all right just you know lumping them all together you know may not be no it's a valid point they're not all the same thank you yes sir so also um speaking of road closures um when we talk about the restriction of the number of road closures you know in this particular situation you know we recognize that there are times where our residents have challenges navigating throughout the barrier island if there is a road closure and so we recognize that having a road closure does provide some congestion um so if we're able to to identify or uh reduce or manage the number of road closures that we have that may be a plausible outcome for our residents now to that point though uh which is also a theme here is that if there's ever a time that commission deems event to be worthy to move forward considering that we've already had some limitations put on those can be brought forth to you all for consideration as i mentioned previously we do have a civic acknowledgement form that we have put together and that we've somewhat already started and as i mentioned before as well is that you know if this is something that the commission has an appetite to include we would expand it citywide so this would require the vendors or our event promoters and organizers to work with the civic associations that have an impact where their event is held carl on this which i think this is a great form the some neighbors brought up to me the road closure field could there be so what should go in there i guess in the road closure line so the event promoters themselves would share what the road closure impacts would be and now this is also included in the the packet that we have for our outdoor events that shares each specific road closure that we have taking place in the city and so for this particular form the event promoter would then uh disclose where those road closures are um for that now this form isn't necessarily to approve or disprove right event it's just really just to raise awareness to those civic associations that this is something that uh an organizer is interested in providing great that sounds good and this would uh in terms of which neighborhood associations would the city expect that this be completed with or by or communicated to yes so for every event that we have we do send out a mass email to our uh hoas and um civic associations that we have and so in a particular area we would then reach out or require the promoter to reach out to those specific ones that type of that area exactly so in other words all the hoas in that area that would be impacted that's correct the promoter would now have to complete this indicate their engagement communication with the association return that back to the city correct and that would be included in the packet that you all have as well great thank you and last but not least of the four uh items here for a suggestion is the quiet weekend designation now the the interesting portion about this one is that it could be confusing because we won't be able to provide the quiet weekend on a same week from on a on a monthly basis so you know one month it might be the first weekend the next month it might be the third and so forth and so on so there won't be consistency toward that however from our standpoint since we administrate these we would ensure that there would be one would there be a schedule provided like in advance say quarterly maybe so we will work on providing a an outlay of events that we have now we because we have an idea of reoccurring events we kind of can determine what events that we'll know and then we'll push out others uh if we were to move forward with this in that manner but there would be a way for us to kind of look at what events are available and kind of determine if we do have a quiet weekend what weekend that would be and quiet means zero activity as far as a event on the so uh quiet would mean no actual event now that all being said it doesn't account for an event set up so for example tortuga which takes place uh about three four weeks almost and so for them there wouldn't be that period but their actual event would be characterizing that carl if you could go back two slides to the acknowledgement form really quick i just want to highlight that not every civic association meets frequently or regularly and so if there's an association that takes off for the summer perhaps there may not be an opportunity for them to meet to discuss a particular event application and provide the form so we will make every attempt to encourage the event producer to get this form filled out by the association but that would be curtailed by their specific schedule for meetings and when we receive applications and the process for routing them for commission consideration thank you manager williams and city manager what my thought is there is even if they're not meeting collectively a representative of the association could you know engage communicate fill out represent you know so they're they're still part of the process but in a limited way thank you now as we move forward with the presentation here um you know there are going going to be impacts good or bad on both ends of the spectrum and so if the appetite is to include one or multiple or all of these here uh limitations there is an outlook as far as uh the generation of revenue that will decrease um of course which was the purpose is to limit the number of events that we have uh on the flip side you know we will ease congestion there will be some reduction in the noise a lot allowing for quieter neighborhoods and of course there's less wear and tear on our city inventory infrastructure now as i begin to close this presentation i am seeking some direction from commission if we want to adopt all of these here recommendations if we want to adopt selected portions of this of our limitations that we are recommending or if there's an appetite to continue as we have based on the previous direction given and identify the progress of where we are there and then if there is a need to come back to implement additional limitations that can be done at that time and so the the floor is essentially yours for discussion and ultimately we plan to come back at our next meeting to have a first reading and then a second reading shortly thereafter uh once we do receive direction we will be reaching out to our uh event promoters and organizers informing them of the changes that we are implementing and we'll do a full implementation at that point on october 1 so for your discussion so so let's ask the district commissioners um start with commissioner glassman what is your what are your feelings with regard to this yes thank you um call i'm getting really good feedback and and on all the recommendations like just let's move forward uh and just keep going i will tell you one thing that came up last night at my uh district pre-agenda meeting uh there was concern as you know uh right now fdot is doing extensive work on the las solas bridge and the sunrise bridge uh so it was requested last night at my district meeting that we not have we don't even entertain any new events events until all of this work is completed on the las solas bridge and the um sunrise bridges remind me commissioner of the duration of those like how well the las solas is a couple of months but i believe the sunrise because it's so extensive it goes from birch road on the barrier island all the way through to the middle river right along sunrise and it's a 40 million dollar project i believe that's a year you see milo's coming forward that's what i thought i thought yeah afternoon milo's my story transportation mobility department director so each one of these will last about a year or more so las solas is a little shorter but it's still around a year and sunrise is uh more closer to 18 months 18 months that's a year and a half yes 18 months equals a year yes i understood well first he said a year i was a little confused uh maybe that's croatian time um oh i'm sorry just a little a little a little levity a little levity serbia serbia serbia sorry sorry my apologies my apologies um so yes uh that's good but anyway that is the recommendation from the neighborhood associations and from the district uh to really be very cognizant of all of that work on uh las solas and sunrise and just don't even contemplate any additional uh events thank you thank you thank okay thank you merit just one other couple other comments mayor um let's see so okay so quiet weekend i think that all makes sense for us sounds like um so that's good civic association acknowledgement form okay so you so those two are good right civic association acknowledgement form quiet weekend designation um now for the road closures can we put a number on that so especially deferring to you commissioner glassman is um you know i think maybe two road closures a month is plenty um so could we aim for that is that is there a definite number now how we how are we averaging with road closures a month yes yes so uh typically on a normal year we have roughly 19 road closures 19 events with road closures and so november is the high month with four and then march and may has three and so um you know if the the thought was and not to kind of lead that but if you wanted to have one road closure per month or two max that could be an option if you i think though it's really going to depend because on these events some of these are significant events and i will tell you i would have considered that option uh a few years ago but police has done such a really excellent job we we've been talking about people getting on and off the barrier island for a long time and it's always been an issue but i'm getting very few complaints now uh the monitors that are out there on all of the key intersections um i just think that staff has done a great job police has done a great job fire has done a great job so i am not getting any uh complaints anymore about what road closures are doing in terms of egress and ingress onto the barrier island so i'm not that much concerned right now as i probably would have been a couple of years ago because people are really listening and really stepping it up again i would have to look at what those four in november were or those three in may and march were but the rest are all zero to two so that's okay yeah i i think i think we'd have to vice mayor look at the the events that we're talking about in terms of road closures yeah and real quick i also want to note that when we talk about the quiet weekend or quite yeah the quiet weekend option is that it would be a bit of a lead time because we do have events that we've committed to and so there'll be a period where that'll take time for us to implement but that is something that we can do as well thank you okay yeah i mean i get a lot of feedback about the impact road closures have at least on the southern part of the barrier island so i'm really interested in limiting the number of road closures um so if it's not by month i mean can we look for total or how can how can we again i would have to have a really good list in front of me in terms of what events we're talking about and what months those are impacting it's hard for me to do this right now without knowing exactly what we're looking at okay so i mean so i'd like to limit the number of road closures a year i mean i think this is just too many and these other i mean these events are going to have to find other times to space it out i mean four in november is a significant impact on our residents in in the barrier island but do you know what those four are in november i know a couple of them offhand but not the full list does that include the thanksgiving day parade i'm just kidding what event as you said earlier there are road closures and then there are road closures so again i think it really depends on the magnitude of the road closures that we're discussing before we say we're going to just eliminate it now what one thing that and i i hate to kind of complicate this but you know we could also look at um if once we implement the impact fee matrix there's also a portion on there that talks about uh road close number of road closures what if we also contemplated a number um since we associate numbers with our impact fee matrix maybe there's if you have a point total of eight i'm just throwing that out there or more then you know we won't allow that to take place or to that notion but to vice mayor to your point though from an administrative standpoint it would be easier for us to know the total amount per month as opposed to per year right exactly yeah that's right i think we need to cap it per month i think the next time we have this when are we planning on having this discussion again or further in the discussion uh hopefully not yeah i mean we keep going it'll go on the next meeting we want to have first we want to have first reading june 16th so that would be the next time first reading well again it's hard for me to just to know what those four yes i i can't just generalize now by saying oh no let's roll so without knowing what we're talking about when we have the first reading we'll know more about okay okay so just we need to move this forward okay so let's do your you know if you need to reach out to staff to get specifics on then what these events are you have time between now so then okay the 16th yeah i think carl is gathering the events okay so for the november one there is the jingle turkey trot there's a 13.1 marathon and i'm missing one other they sound like running two others two others no and how we're looking but those four um have historically been like long tenured um runs that take place in the city but uh we're so how would you reroute those runs if you we would then request that they would identify a new location off the barrier island but they they don't close the street down first of all and not all day and not all day usually they're done by 11 in the morning and then they just close half the street down and people are going to confess no matter oh did i use the addition i'm sorry oh people are going to complain all the time okay but that doesn't mean that the majority of people don't like to see these things happening on their beach a lot of people come to me and say i'm so happy i moved to the beach there's so much activity to watch to participate in every so often you get someone that says oh i had to spend an extra three minutes at the light because i had to wait to two light changes i mean come on when we can see young people old people families getting together you know using our beach in a way that you know really maximizes their experience in fort lauderdale we should encourage that not try to push them away and again i'm going to repeat i'm not getting the complaints that i did years ago we're doing a much better job of of mitigating any of the complaints because of the fact that we're just moving people a lot better we're moving cars a lot better we're moving we're letting people know exactly how to ingress and egress the barrier island um and people are so used to it now they do find their way around um and a lot of these runs they start like what six in the morning five in the morning they're done by eleven right eleven that's great so i again i'm not finding an issue all right we need to okay so okay so we'll move forward with the association form um we'll move forward with a quiet designation and then uh so do you want more events that have lane closures i mean can you cap the number that have lane closures do you just want this is where this is what they're proposing leaving it at that for now and then on a case-by-case basis the commission will can be asked to make any modifications but right now you want to you want to just set this as the standard so 19 is the max at this point yes for a year all right for a year yes and one other thing i want to mention which i couldn't think of the name but we've uh implemented the uh event um explorer that we use where it also informs our residents and also um event promoters of events that we have in the city so that's also an added level of kind of awareness that we're providing to our residents okay great great so 19 a year can we cap it at four a month like there's no more than four a month is that well that's what we have we have no we haven't indicated articulated a max but so but vice mayor this is the state this is the number of of road of events and activities are taking place to change that would take an act of the commission to change it so right now we are at four it just in november okay and three in march and three in may right there are caps for each one of those ones those aren't caps those are just how many events are happening but but but we're solidifying it by when when carl brings it to the commission on the 16th this is going to be what is allowed and nothing else these will be the max caps exactly for each month exactly okay great i wasn't clear yes because this is what we're doing right now so this would be we're not moving anything more above what we're doing great and have to come to the commission for special commission to change that that's it okay great thank you thank you for your work my pleasure thank you business three water and waste water comprehensive rate study presentation utility services department manager director albert carbon utility services as well as kyle stevens from stantec our long-time consultant good afternoon mayor and commissioner kyle stevens with stantec consulting be going through a presentation this afternoon to cover the recommendations and analysis being conducted the rate study as we've worked with staff over the last year uh presentations coming up here momentarily there we go so we have a number of items and i'll jump right in uh with the time we have today to cover them there are seven items on the agenda they will build on one another a rate analysis or a rate study like this essentially there's a number of steps we undertake investigations to come to conclusions and ultimately present these recommendations today to you for consideration with regards to your water and wastewater rates the financial plan i'm only going to take a minute on this you'll recognize this dashboard from the past this is from our annual sustainability activities where we on an annual basis look at the revenues and expenditures of the water and sewer utility forecast out five and ten years in order to ensure that the annual level of rate increases is adequate to provide fiscal sustainability the only part i'm going to mention on this for today all of the analysis from the slides from now on will include the commission adopted recommendation for fiscal year 2027 which is a nine percent increase in water revenues and a five percent increase in sewer revenue so those will be included in the numbers as i go forward the first part of the analysis that's different this year is a cost of service analysis and so with the cost of service analysis i've just put a map up on the screen here to talk about what was conducted this year and essentially the utility as it exists in fort lauderdale the enterprise fund has both water and sewer within the same enterprise fund so we need to go through an activity and meeting with staff and subject matter experts to split sewer from water so some things are very clear wastewater treatment wastewater collection is wastewater but there's going to be other items like administration where we need to come up with a relative factor between the two what we're trying to do is ensure that the revenues related to sewer match the underlying expenditures and the same on water that revenues match expenditures water there's also one additional step because we do have master metered our wholesale customers we need to break down the functions and you'll notice down there we're looking specifically at supply and treatment and transmission and distribution the distinction being when you're a wholesale customer you're not using the local distribution network you're only using the larger backbone uh components of the water system so i've got some good news on the cost allocation front this particular graphic shows the summary of the results what you're seeing in blue is the required revenue by service line for both water and sewer so 178 for water for sewer it's 106. what you'll notice is the expected rate revenues in fiscal year 27 so the fiscal year that's upcoming it's expected on both of these service lines to be within three million dollars of the expenditures i would consider that in our experience to be essentially dead on and so that's within the normal variation that you'll see in revenues um things like weather and customer demands will potentially move those around what we see is costs are substantially aligned with revenues uh no based on the increases that you and that that are that are pending for each year right correct for next year so we have the nine percent of water and the five percent in sewer but even well according to your yours your graph on the previous slide with a nine percent increase for water it's still going to result in a five dollar deficit in the cash flow it is yes it is so we had a five million dollar deficit in 2027 if you'll remember in 2027 there are a number of new expenditures that come online most of them are related to prospect late where they have the new availability payment and o and m costs and so we've been expecting for a number of years as those expenditures come on we won't have revenues balanced but by the next year they'll come back into balance i see so you went so even though the graph on page seven says that we're pretty much revenue neutral um you anticipate that deficit in your analysis for 2027 so i would think of these as two distinct analyses so one is the long-term sustainability and the level of overall requirements this is looking at the two service lines and saying we know we need an overall amount of revenue but already collecting that from the right sides of the the system the service water and wastewater and what i'm saying is the breakdown there is very much in alignment with the underlying expenditures so we don't see any action that's required right now and we would expect this or recommend to revisit this in the next rate study as i move to the third component rate design we have a number of recommendation as it relates to the underlying rates and so as we make these recommendations really uh two components as we start the analysis come into play one is the quantitative characteristics of the system so we get a lot of data related to how we're billing and how customers are utilizing the system but also we're listening to our customers and so we're taking that feedback uh that has been given to the city about uh how customers are perceiving the rates and and how they are currently configured and any changes that uh particularly that come to mind uh or come from that process uh this first slide shows the current fixed rates and so your rates are broken up into two components the fixed rates are a rate that a customer pays monthly before any usage oftentimes we refer to this as readiness to service the idea that there are a number of costs on the water and wastewater side that the city incurs regardless of usage i'm going to highlight a couple items here so one you'll notice as we go down in meter size uh the fixed charge increases that represents the increased potential demands that larger meters can place on the system additionally one of the items that we noted with regards to fixed charges is if we look at the overall composition of revenue that volume verse fix these charges currently represent only 15 percent of the overall revenue that we receive from the water side of the equation we're going to recommend that that increases across time additionally on the next slide i will talk through uh multi-family so one of the larger recommendations we have is associated with that customer class particularly right now multi-family receives fixed charges based on the meter size what we're going to recommend is that in the city has data related to this is fixed charges based on the number of units behind the meter that is the best determinant of potential demand on the water system and so here's that slide to just talk through an example real quickly about multi-family i put up a simple example here the first item on the top is how we charge fixed charges to a residential single family residential customer with a one inch meter it would be 2692 under the current fiscal year 26 charges and that scales for each home so if you think about another home with a one inch meter they would pay an additional 26.92 the current configuration for multi-family shown below that in this example there are eight units behind the meter so i've calculated off the side that represents three dollars and 37 cents behind the meter what we're recommending is effectively a charge per unit and it would be 55 percent of the five-eighths meter charge for single-family home that 55 percent as you'll remember has been in the rate structure on the volumetric side since the rate study in fiscal year 2018 it essentially represents the volumetric demands from multi-family when units are fully occupied during the season compared to single-family so condo units multi-family you tend to use a little bit less water than single-family homes what this would do is put everybody on the same even playing field additionally would enhance fixed cost recovery which goes into my next slide here what on this graphic i want you to pay attention to is on the right is the current composition of revenue and as i mentioned right now we have 15 percent of our revenue coming from fixed charges and the remainder is coming from volumetric charges a couple key points there so industry standard on the water side what you typically want to see is somewhere between 20 and 30 of revenue coming from fixed charges that does a couple things so it protects you from declines in volumes and so we can think about a particular year that's maybe very wet irrigation demands will be down overall revenue would likely be down for the utility higher fixed charges protect the utility from that additionally bond organizations agencies will look favorably among more fixed cost recovery i have compared this on the left side the left bar chart to the current composition of expenditures for the water utility and i'm particularly noting the debt service obligation so the payments that we need to make each year for money we've borrowed uh that be the principal and interest in 2027 i'm forecasting that at 36.7 and so we we know those payments have to be made there's no choices on those because they are a debt obligation the idea here and the recommendation i'm making is to slowly increase fixed cost recovery i would ideally like to see it in that 20 range or greater but it's not something that we want to do overnight it's something we're doing a very measured approach over a number of years so i'm recommending an increase of fixed cost recovery on the water side particularly of one percent a year moving up to that 20 level um the balancing act here is customer impacts because as you increase that you're increasing particularly the impact on low volume users and so we want to do that over a number of years to migrate or mitigate those customer impacts this is just an example i've put together a peer survey here of fixed cost recovery for five-eighths meters that typical base meter for residential homes this just shows a number of peer communities here and what they charge for that fixed cost recovery to put this into perspective as i mentioned uh fort lauderdale is currently on the left there in black at 1352 the recommendation is to move to 1432 you'll notice we're on the far left of this chart so our fixed cost recovery as you would expect at that 15 level is some of the lowest among the peer municipalities i'm showing on the screen here the average uh for these municipalities is somewhere right around 21 a month to give you that perspective and we're currently in the 13 range on the other side of the equation so leaving fixed charges and moving to volumetric i know there's a lot going on on this chart we're going to recommend one particular change in structure from the volumetric side of the equation and that really is going to be concentrated on the purple segment down on the bottom that's your irrigation customers so they currently have three tiers of consumption that have an inclining block price which means as they use more water they pay more for each unit of water right now goes to 12 000 gallons then 20 000 and then everything over 20 000 and that is linked fundamentally to the first set of tiers which is your single family residential uh what we did is we looked at this data and we're recommending an additional tier be added for irrigation customers the the fundamental data point here that i looked at in the analysis is the idea that at current efficiency standards so in fort lauderdale we have roughly 2.4 persons per household at 36 gallons per person that's the efficient standard right now for a new build house you can fit in all of your domestic requirements under 3 000 gallons meaning in that household there are some irrigation demands taking place in the second tier for single family what this does is aligns that reality with the irrigation tiers that are charged separately in the case of irrigation remember they have a standalone meter that's only meeting their irrigation demands and so this just provides some synchronization with the latest data available what this will fundamentally do is reduce the bills for those customers that are in an irrigation window that's relatively low so up to 14 000 gallons of usage above 14 000 you'll see it go up and i'll show you the bill impacts in a minute so quick rate recommendation recaps these rates are set for implementation for next fiscal year that would be october 1st 2026 they include the revenue uh adjustments that we've talked about for both water and wastewater nine percent and five percent i'm recommending in this first step moving from 15 fixed cost recovery up to 16 and then thereafter the recommendation would move up one percent each year until we achieve at a minimum 20 percent fixed cost recovery on the water utility then apply fixed charges for multi-family based on the units behind the meter using the data that the city already has and already applies for volumetric rates and then finally add one additional irrigation tier so there is good alignment between the current data and single-family usage characteristics so the quick slides here are just the calculated rates these rates now are the calculated one with the recommendations that i've mentioned for the fixed charges which would bring us up to 16 percent cost recovery you'll not see a separate rate on here for multi-family uh what the recommend recommendation is is it would be 55 percent of that 1432 that's in the first cell of the table in the top right or top left of the table in front of you with regards to irrigation what you'll see are with regards to the volumetric what you'll see now is at the bottom of this table in purple the fourth tier added for irrigation and pricing that tier importantly so it would go from zero to eight thousand gallons it would be at eleven dollars and sixty four cents which synchronizes with the single family tiers up above the tier two rate up above and then finally customer impacts related to these changes in rate and structure so what we would expect for single family bill impacts i'm showing right here the five eighths inch meter which is the most common for your single family customers and then as this table goes down we're increasing the level of monthly consumption shown in thousands of gallons on the left side of the table what you can expect for single family is relatively modest impacts these are mostly driven by the overall need for increased revenue on the water and sewer system the same can be said for commercial so i've chosen a two inch meter here which is a very common configuration for your commercial customers you will see the bill impacts range from four point three percent up to five point four percent in this case again mainly driven by the revenue needs of the utility now the next two you're going to see some very different bill impacts so on the irrigation as i mentioned if we extend a fourth tier from the three tiers we currently have what you'll see is a dip in the bills for those irrigation users from 2 000 gallons a month all the way up to 14 000 gallons a month and then once you get above 14 000 they would start to continue to increase i know that's not shown here on the screen but i just wanted to mention that's the tipping point where it goes back to positive increases and so it's the effect of that additional 8 000 gallons at a lower monthly rate than it is currently and then the next one here shows a sampling of multi-family bill impacts and the reason it's a sampling is because each multi-family property has its own characteristics with relation to two items one is the meter size and one is the number of units behind the meter now i've grouped using the colors here the different meter sizes on the left and then the number of units right next that and i've given you examples of ones that have a lot of units behind the meter so you can take your four inch there in the middle one that has 400 units behind and one that has 280 units behind and what you'll see is larger increases when we use uh this particular rate structure change to pick up the greater demands that are potentially behind the meter when there are a lot more units even at the same meter size you will also notice on the bottom of this uh uh chart that at larger meter sizes with smaller meters you'll even see some potential reductions here in bills because even though they have a very large meter they don't have that many units behind the meter and so they can't place the the amount of demand that we would otherwise expect from an eight inch meter given the way we currently charge it it's scaling up by the meter size and so of course each one is going to be a little bit unique here because each particular resident might have a different meter size or number of units behind the meter so i'm just giving you an example of the relative trends that are in play when we talk about this change next we'll talk about capital expansion fees uh capital expansion fees are going to be the one time charge that we charge new customers on the water and wastewater system it's a way for new development to pay its fair share of the investments that have been made over time by current customers in essentially reserving that capacity for growth there are three ways that we calculate capital expansion fees the buy-in method where we have existing capacity available to serve growth an incremental cost method where we have not only some capacity but we're also investing in new capacity in the near term uh and then the the well that was the combined the incremental as if we were using uh just looking at future costs we have selected the buy-in method because fort lateral does have existing capacity on both sides the water and the wastewater system to meet new growth and just a quick slide on how we calculate it this uh equation up at the very top it's very simple in the sense that you get the value of the system you minus off credits which would include uh donated assets as well as any assets we've paid for for debt service because that will be paid on the ongoing rates when the customer comes on and then we divide by system capacity and we do that for every single asset that the city owns for water and wastewater this next graphic shows you the results of that analysis for your consideration i'll start with sewer which is on the right side of your screen when we calculate the current capacity fee based on the best available data we have the calculated fee is eighteen hundred and ninety six dollars for one year you that's the base configuration or base meter size these do scale for larger meters the current fee is one thousand eight hundred and eighty eight dollars it's an eight dollar difference my recommendation is leave the wastewater fee as it is currently the data does not support increasing that fee by a margin that would do it matter long term it's a different story on the water capital expansion fee so on the water side of the equation when we calculate that fee we're currently showing a calculate fee of twenty three hundred and three dollars the current fee is nineteen hundred and seventy seven that's three hundred and twenty six dollars or sixteen percent the recommendation of course on this side would be to move to full cost recovery on the water capacity fee in order to ensure that your new development covers that full cost of extending water capacity our sixth item is miscellaneous fees and some miscellaneous fees are a little bit different than your ongoing rates for customers this is when a customer picks up the phone and calls the city it needs a specific type of service might be turn on turn off um what we have done as part of this analysis is gone through a number of fees that you charge and conducted interviews with staff to determine the current cost labor equipment and time that's associated with providing these services so that we could recommend fees to you today that would recover the full cost of providing those services and on this next table while there are a lot of fees off to the left here what we're showing is the current fee the full cost recovery fee is calculated in our analysis the cost percentage currently recovered and then the proposed fees which in that column we've just rounded to the nearest tenth a couple of trends stick out in my mind to highlight for you so first of all as the city has made a large investment in ami meters or automated metering infrastructure we don't currently have fees for those and so we've updated fees to reflect the cost of those new meters that's in the middle of this chart and then at the bottom we've got fire service tapping charges what we found through our analysis is the actual costs that are charged right now are higher than what it costs the city to provide those services so we recommend a reduction in those cases in all cases in the far right column the proposed is what we recommend as part of the study to move to full cost recovery across the board on the miscellaneous fees and then finally uh the last topic for today is leak credits indeed so as part of the analysis we were asked to look at the city's current policies as it relates to leaks and there are two different types of leaks so there's a leak and there's also unusual use and so leaks where you've got some verified a break in the system a leak uh the policy currently as it exists is a for a leak customer uh usage must exceed two times the 12 month average so that's a thrust threshold you need to meet in order for it to be considered a leak that would then potentially be credited under the program and for unusual use the distinction there is that it's a one-time lifetime credit for each customer account all right they can be credited for up to a maximum of two months and what happens here is for all usage above that 12 month average the when it's credited all usage will then be charged at the tier one rate for single family usage so it has an effect of reducing the overall bill down to that tier one rate times the amount of volume i've looked at 19 months of historical data that i'll provide analysis in the next slide here where we're looking at two different policy objectives one was uh extending the eligibility of the current program and then extending expanding the credit uh capacity essentially by capping to average bill i've also included off to the right a pie chart it just gives you an idea of the percentage over those 19 months of where the leak and unusual requests are coming from as you would expect the vast majority are residential however you do have irrigation and commercial customers that do request these adjustments as well question on that thanks this was for what year this is 2025 so this is actually for current date and moving backward 19 months okay what was the total number of requests i don't have the total right off the top of my head but i could get that in our data and follow up with it sounds like a vet yeah either event or linda linda there you go everyone's coming back um so the total number of requests over the period and you went back 19 months we did so there were a total of 1 800 requests over that 19 month period for leak adjustments okay and 411 for unusual consumption credits okay and out of those so we're looking at like a total of 2200 or so correct so out of those total what number or percent were given a credit those are the credits given okay then how many sought a credit good afternoon mayor commissioners linda short director of finance we do not track who applies for credits um when they call about a high water bill we will take a look at what their consumption is and unless they meet the criteria of the 200 percent we're not tracking just because they call we track only if they meet the criteria okay and they've submitted the application to receive the credit okay so how do you determine lifetime then lifetime of the house lifetime of the customer lifetime of the owner how long they've owned it so right so if they move down if they move it starts over again it starts over for the property right it's just for the property correct so it's not lifetime right okay lifetime for the property once they've owned it so if you own the property and you apply for it you get it but if you move somewhere else in the city and you apply again you can get it there so it's not by customers by property and who owns it at the time got it i think city manager we i think we wanted to change that at a past commission meeting we talked about changing that we talked about who's responsible for opening a new account and uh the commission has already made that change okay now i i thought we talked about changing the one-time lifetime credit because we said that that is pretty restrictive though we talked about that right that's just for the unusual so if you don't know what happened and we don't know what happened then we get that only once a lifetime but if you have a leak you can get a leak credit as many times you get a leak if you have a leak and then two months later you have another leak you can get another credit so you can get a leak credit if it's established and you've shown that the repair has happened we will give you a credit for it so it's only the unknown ones that we only do once a lifetime okay so we've never talked about that at the commission meeting i thought we had okay i recall us talking about uh the average two times the average and wanting to bring that down i think that was one of the concerns raised in the previous conversation okay okay so one point i i think it'd be helpful city manager if we tracked how many people are applying for credits like how many people are saying my water bills off something's wrong i should be credited i think that number matters because then we say to ourselves okay how many people are applying for credit or seeking credit is that more this month last month why is that is it year over year higher lower i think that number matters not just who we're approving understood and i don't know that we have a challenge with collecting that data well we um we have a customer service center just for utility billing that's opened from eight to five every day we get calls hundreds of calls thousands of calls on a monthly basis and everybody's questioning hey my bill is high this month what's going on so when we're answering those questions it could be a manual log for my team to track down well this person you know called about a issue we triaged what's going on we walked through the process have you checked this have you checked that have you checked this and then at that point in time would they ask for credit i mean i we can try and track it but it creates a manual log for someone to write down who is asking for credit and who's not so but if that's the direction we will move that way and we can try tracking it manually all right in in our call center i'm assuming we track what is the reason for the call do we do that we put notes on the customer accounts so when someone calls in we will log into their account as we're working with them and we create notes in the system when someone calls okay okay but we're not logging it other than just tracking that the person called we'll put the reason for the call and what why what we advise them and we'll put notes in on their accounts okay so i think city i think it'd be helpful and maybe this is a software adjustment we can work with our designer whoever it is to say okay when you get a call check one of the 12 boxes in terms of what's the reason for the call right is it elevated bill is it what what is it because i think that data would be helpful i think so too i don't know how manual we are with our system so linda can you share very manual it sounds like we may need our tech support 100 our system was put in back in 2009 we're currently implementing a new software system so what i can do is very much more robust we'll have a lot more information and so i would really like to dedicate staff time to getting that up and running and including these enhancements in it versus working with an outdated system that doesn't really give us the right reporting and we've been having issues getting data out of it to try and enhance that it will be a six-month project just for them to do it when in less than a year will be hopefully implemented with a new system okay no that sounds great i didn't know we're getting a new system we got i think we need it so that's great so okay good yeah you know you got a new system yeah new meter system no no not a new meter system i'm talking about a new intake system it's a customer service facing system it is and that's what you're talking about you guys approved that in january the contract so yes we are implementing a brand new cis system yeah that will have a work order system and it's tied to the ami project great okay which is going to be done in the year and hopefully it'll be done within the year yeah by next year not this year we're just starting it it's a summer 12 months yeah 2027 next year we'll hold you to that yes we're working on it now let's let's just look at the elite customers must succeed two times average 12 month usage levels and a credit maximum of two months so that credit might not cover the overage right so the credit the over so the way that our system works is that we cannot give away free water so we will never reduce the consumption we will always just build the consumption at the lowest tier but in order for us to do that calculation you have to be at least two times your average bill for us to even consider doing that reduction right so if my let's say my average usage is two hundred dollars a month and one month i got a four thousand dollar bill okay so the max credit i can get is four hundred dollars is that right no so it's not based upon dollar value it has to do with utilization how much has gone through the system so we look at thousands of gallons so on a two hundred dollar bill you're probably using about four thousand gallons three to four thousand gallons of water so if your bill is four thousand and you're probably using about thirty forty thousand gallons of water so what we would do is we would take the forty thousand gallons of water and and calculate it at the lowest rate that we can on the tear system which is four dollars and seventy something cents per gallon instead of the twenty six dollars per thousand gallons so we don't ever get rid of consumption we just bill it at the lowest tier okay the low bill that the lowest tier for everything anything above your normal range okay so what's the two month maximum then i'm not tracking that meaning that in order to qualify for that credit so if you normally did four thousand gallons a month and your bill now is ten thousand gallons you have to be more than your double your four thousand gallons four thousand gallons per month so it has to be over eight thousand gallons to even be considered for credit right but it says mac their credit a maximum of two months the what that means that we can only go back two months on your bill so if your bill is high and it's been six months and you finally realize you have a leak you can't i can't go back and do six months i can only do two months got you okay so it only will credit but the great so that makes sense and then the amount of credit there it seems like there's not a financial limit on the amount of credit other than the lowest the calculation of the rate okay great that's what i want to be clear on it's not great thank you so you're still you're still paying for the amount of usage just at a lower at a lower rate that's correct yep great yeah you know is that enough though well you know what there are arguments to be made either way um is it enough that's for you guys to decide um it is for us to decide that's what we're talking yeah so so if if if my bill comes in at 40 000 gallons right oh the next slide has recommendations so if all right so if my bill comes in at four that you know may came in at uh two hundred dollars and and those four thousand gallons and and april was two hundred dollars at four thousand gallons and then but in june it came in at forty thousand gallons okay but you're saying that i don't get a credit for the average of the two months prior which would be two hundred dollars right i'm the only credit i get is i'm still being charged for using forty thousand gallons but at the lower rate yes that's correct that's the way the current system works i don't know what i don't know how i don't know in terms of actual dollars i don't know what that number actually is right now it ends up probably being about a two thousand dollar credit if you build four thousand it'll be more than fifty percent of your bill will be still stuck with a two thousand dollar bill yes you're still probably fifty percent a little less than fifty percent is what there would be of the credit okay thank you and so that that's the question there i think is that's the right should there be any grace for someone who all of a sudden a lifetime grace right for all of a sudden someone has a well it happens it happens all the time in my your district district one i remember when uh when poor heather moraitis was first a commissioner she was bombarded with right complaints uh but um all right something we can think about but you have recommendations here i do so on this slide we have several policy recommendations we looked at and blue is what we were just discussing which is the current status quo you must have that two hundred percent of average bill when i looked over the last nineteen months well it has been mentioned each bill is a little bit unique in leak um the average reduction in bill from the full bill that was issued versus the credited bill was seventy three percent so they're seeing a seventy three percent reduction um what we looked at was two additional policy choices so one would be expanding the current uh policy by reducing the eligibility requirement so instead of two hundred percent of the average bill moving it down to a hundred and fifty percent of the average bill essentially opening the window for customers that may have a leak that was less drastic than the ones that get above two hundred percent that would in the data i analyzed uh so it was not only the nineteen months but then looking at the full utility billing system the reduction would be relatively the same i would expect seventy three percent but if you if you have a bill that spikes to 40 you know forty thousand gallons whether it's 150 percent or 200 percent is irrelevant agreed right so this is more on the other side of the equation smaller leaks yes well those are absorbable yes okay but it's the major spikes that are that that are chronically plaguing our community uh in in in very unpredictable and irrational ways i mean um and the only hope we have is this new meter system that we want to get implemented we've been talking about it for years so um but anyway uh all right please proceed absolutely uh one thing i forgot to mention about tier one billing the status quo i'm estimating that currently costs the city in terms of the revenue differential about 3.5 million dollars the expanded tier one so if you change the threshold down to 150 the eligible pool of customers would expand up to 6.7 million dollars annually and then finally in yellow is the last uh consideration we looked at which is to keep the same threshold so a bill that's 200 percent or above but change the mechanism to be capped at annual the annual bill so no longer billing at just the tier one but basically look over your 12 month history and you would for that leak period just be billed at that average bill what that will do is raise the level of the credit given uh and i calculate with the data i have a roughly 82 percent uh reduction in the bill that was issued for the credited period and that would also increase the cost slightly though so we'd move from 3.5 million up to 3.9 million dollars in credited revenue for that option just describe that difference if it's capped versus not capped yeah so what i mean by that is effectively uh when you have a leak your bill will be charged when the leaks process it'll be charged now at the annual usage right so essentially there's a cap on the total dollars you will pay as you were just mentioning a second ago vice mayor at the tier one there's no cap on it because you still use those 40 000 gallons just going to be billed at the tier one rate right yeah absolutely so this now locks it in the the other thing that this does as well is it treats all customers the same and the reason i mention that is you don't have inclining blocks on commercial and irrigation it's different inclining blocks their average usage profiles look a little bit different and so this provides the exact same credit to all customer classes regardless of what class they reside in okay and this so your analysis on tier one billing expanded that the estimated cost that's the pool that would be um available that the pool that would meet the criteria for this it's not necessarily the it's not an estimate of the people that would take advantage of this right so if any less than one person doesn't take it that number comes down is that right you're exactly right because you you could imagine just under normal use conditions uh seasonal use patterns your usage may rise 150 it's not a leak and you would still pay it i had to calculate though the whole universe if you will of customers that would have that criteria in that and if they potentially were to ask for a leak adjustment in a year it'd be roughly seven million dollars you're exactly right though i wouldn't expect it to reach that full maximum because there's only going to be a portion of them that truly have a leak that are calling in to get a credit on it and it's not normal use and and the if we combine these if we combine the expanded tier one billing with plus the cap at um the the bills capped and moved it down to 150 percent is that would we guess around you know again highest possible like a seven million dollar estimated cost around there because you're adding the delta between 3.5 and 3.9 plus i think it might be slightly higher okay than that i don't think it's quite additive like that i think it would actually i'd have to run the numbers but i think it would be higher okay okay great thanks okay please proceed please conclude no absolutely we gotta get going yeah so study recommendations uh you know consider the adoption of the recommendations for fiscal year 27 which is october 1st of this year i would strongly recommend the increase to the water capacity fee to full cost recovery so that development and growth pays for its fair share of capital extension costs and then consider adoption of those miscellaneous fees we've talked about at the uh current cost of providing those services and then of course the leak credits that we've just talked through and that that's the full presentation mayor okay wonderful excellent thank you a lot to consider and digest uh but you obviously did a very comprehensive review of everything we appreciate that and thank you linda thank you al you didn't get to say anything just sitting there looking pretty okay um did you want to add anything just one thing as we prepare to bring forth any ordinance changes that you all are recommending we just wanted to hear your feedback about moving towards full cost recovery on those fees that kyle mentioned as well as any changes that you all would like for the leak credit program and the thing that kyle was trying to drive home is that our leak credit program will likely change naturally as we bring on the ami program because people won't see leaks a month and a month and a half after the leak has occurred they're already starting to receive notifications for those ami customers if our utility billing team sees continuous usage we're already providing some of those notifications so we'll start seeing less people that have these really large leaks as ami is rolled out that do you have if you go back you go back to the leak credits that do you have recommendations or suggestions i don't have a personal recommendation i am recommending al's team gets the ami meters in very quickly i think that's my biggest recommendation which they are absolutely doing um but i know that the commission wanted to provide some additional relief and so as we hear from our neighbors about the the challenges they have what we hear a lot is they thought the credit would be higher yeah um and so if that's the direction that you're looking at really capping the average bill provides that um higher level credit that i think our neighbors were expecting it's what we've heard at some of the utility billing workshops where people receive a credit and they were anticipating that it would be more aligned with their average bill um but right now it's it could still be significantly higher than their average bill right in other words the third option absolutely yeah yeah i think that makes sense mayor i think that's the direction we should we should go is that fair okay so i think we have consensus there is that fair for the the third option third option okay great manager thank you for the feedback if that are we giving you everything else you need or d d d al you're good okay i just want to make sure we're going to make sure that's it we'll bring forth an ordinance that has all of those changes in them so thank you for your feedback okay thank you for your work we appreciate it so much always a pleasure uh moving on to business four um city manager we have katrina johnson assistant director of our community services department where is she i think behind the curtain behind the curtain ah wizard of oz good afternoon sorry good afternoon mayor vice mayor commissioners katrina johnson assistant director for the community services department today's presentation provides an overview of the city's current vacation rental enforcement program today i will begin by discussing the city's current vacation rental enforcement framework and the realities under which we operate pursuant to state law i will then highlight the city's enforcement strengths and challenges review prior commission actions and provide a comparison of neighboring municipalities finally i will present several proposed ordinance refinements intended to strengthen enforcement effectiveness while remaining within the authority granted to local governments to begin it is important to understand the legal framework governing vacation rentals in florida america vacation rentals are permitted under florida law and cannot be prohibited by the city of fort lauderdale in response to state preemption limitations the city adopted its vacation rental ordinance in 2015 while local governments cannot prohibit vacation rentals we retain authority to regulate operational standards such as registration occupancy noise parking and safety requirements enforcement responsibilities are shared between community enhancement and compliance division also known as code compliance and the police department when criminal activity occurs or when the code compliance team is unavailable although state law limits local authority in certain areas the city has developed a strong operational enforcement program fort lauderdale maintains one of the most structured vacation rental enforcement programs in the region the city currently provides code enforcement coverage seven days per week including dedicated nighttime enforcement thursday through sunday our registration process is designed to support voluntary compliance through clear requirements and accessible processes the city also utilizes the pneumo monitoring platform to proactively identify and track vacation rental activity residents have access to a 24-hour complaint hotline allowing concerns to be reported and routed for appropriate response finally enforcement efforts are strengthened through ongoing coordination between the code compliance division and the police department while the city has developed a robust enforcement program staff has identified several areas where additional clarification would improve enforcement effectiveness some of the recurring enforcement challenges include challenges involving operators attempting to avoid enforcement consequences through ownership changes or entity restructuring staff also identified the need for explicit ordinance language regarding daily penalties for unlawful operation additionally staff has experienced limitations investigating certain safety related complaints when access to the property is not voluntarily provided operationally resource constraints currently limit nighttime coverage for earlier in the week staff has encountered situations where suspended operators utilize long-term lease agreements while continuing to operate as short-term rentals many of those tools currently used to address these issues were implemented through prior commission action the city's ordinance has evolved significantly significantly since its adoption in 2015 in 2023 the commission approved several important amendments including mandatory noise monitoring devices increased suspension penalties and enhanced fines for serious violations in 2025 the commission approved a registration fee increase following staff's cost recovery analysis to ensure the program remain financially sustainable those prior actions support the enforcement framework currently currently utilized by our staff the city's framework begins with mandatory registration for all vacation rental properties and active monitoring staff utilizes a third party platform data inspections and complete investigations to identify violations code compliance performs inspections and follow-up activities while the police department addresses criminal activities and immediate disturbances when the code compliance team is unavailable violations penalties suspensions and revocations are ultimately reviewed through the special magistrate process and the the effectiveness of that framework can be seen in the violations most commonly encountered during the fiscal year of 2025 the most common violations involved properties operating with either an expired certificate of compliance or without a valid certificate of compliance altogether staff also routinely addresses violations involving noise parking responsible party requirements and advertising compliance the data demonstrates that unlawful operations continues to represent a significant portion of enforcement activity and these violations are addressed through the city's existing penalty structure the city's framework utilizes both civil citations and the special magistrate process penalties escalate based upon the frequency and severity of violations for serious nuisance activity including large parties and criminal conduct the ordinance authorizes fines of up to fifteen thousand dollars katrina can i just interrupt you for a second these fines are they are they are they are they um do they attach to the person or to the property to the property they do attach to the property i just want to verify that okay thank you all right this escalation and um structure promotes compliance while preserving due process protections and to better evaluate our framework staff reviewed how neighboring municipalities address similar issues as reflected on this slide fort lauderdale regulates significantly significantly more vacation rental properties than any of the municipalities reviewed this volume requires a more robust enforcement framework dedicated staffing resources proactive monitoring tools and ongoing compliance oversight in addition to comparing program size staff also reviewed how neighboring municipalities structure fines and penalties for vacation rental violations as previously shared fort lauderdale framework provides a structured escalation model that includes civil citations suspension authority and enhanced penalties the comparison also highlights that several municipalities expressly codify daily penalties for unlawful operations within their ordinances which informed staff's recommendation to clarify similar authority within fort lauderdale's ordinance beyond ordinance language and penalties staff also reviewed operational resources dedicated to the vacation rental enforcement program katrina sorry on the back what if you know do you know what informs hollywood's illegal vacation rental fine up to five thousand what shapes that determination of what that amount is i do not like how they can get up that high i do not know how it extends to five thousand dollars per day that information that was given to us by hollywood but i can find that out for okay that'd be great thanks i'd be interested to know what goes into that determination of how they get okay do really really bad yeah yeah yeah yeah okay thanks so as reflected on the slides uh fort lauderdale utilizes daytime dedicated code officers there's three code officers dedicated specifically to vacation rental enforcement along with a dedicated nighttime enforcement team operating thursday through sunday fort lauderdale also utilizes police reports body camera footage and officer testimony to support enforcement actions and special magistrate proceedings when appropriate this operational structure allows fort lauderdale to maintain a more proactive and coordinated enforcement approach based on the regional comparison staff concluded that fort lauderdale maintains a strong enforcement framework while identifying targeted opportunities for refinement the proposed recommendations focus on clarifying authority strengthening compliance and preventing circumvention of enforcement staff recommends correcting a scrivenless error relating to suspension periods staff also recommends prohibiting issuance or renewal of a certificate of compliance when unpaid fines exist additional recommendations include expressly authorizing daily penalties for unlawful operation defining a rolling 12-month violation period requiring access for safety related inspections and preventing operators from avoiding enforcement through ownership or entity restructuring collectively these recommendations strengthen consistency accountability and enforceability in addition to the ordinance recommendations staff also identified an operational consideration for future evaluation back on that the establish penalties one thousand dollars per day without for operation without valid certificate of compliance so will this start immediately as it did during spring break so so what we did during spring break was that we issued a five hundred dollar citation which was an immediate fine yeah and then we scheduled them from for a special magistrate to allow the special magistrate to impose the penalty of one thousand dollars per day great great so can we do that same thing year round yes great and that's what this will do that's going to give us the one thousand dollars per day and operationally we'll add the five hundred dollar citation love it fine fantastic thank you the city's manager the city manager's office has requested the evaluation of expanded night time enforcement coverage we are currently reviewing this request as a part of our fiscal year 2027 budget process and for yeah sorry thanks question city manager so until that's adopted thanks this all these are this is important in district four so it's just it may not be a big factor where you guys where you guys are um i represent district four okay good so you're well aware of it maybe non-district two but it's it's a big challenge here so sorry for the needed time here to talk through this okay appreciate it thanks we have all night okay thank you thank you see if we start at 9 a.m in the morning mayor yeah okay you can come in at night i'll come in at night for five hours and then we'll join you perfect that sounds good sounds good i can't when on this on the 16th when you take over i'm curious to see how you're going to manage the yes the debate yes i'll do my best i'll be watching yeah thank you at midnight yes i'm sure glass won't be absent um city manager until we have the permanent coverage monday tuesday wednesday what can we do to fill that gap until that's permanent in other words could we have inspectors on call or what what which stop gaps could we have we could take a look at our existing budget to see if we have any overtime funding available to expand the coverage it may not be for the three days where we have a gap right now but maybe based on data we could look at one of those three days to determine if we could augment our services uh in between now and budget approval if the commission were to go in that direction with expansion of our enforcement operation okay that'd be great if we could try to find some coverage okay great next question is um maybe for katrina have we discontinued the practice where um you know me would immediately call the responsible party notify them of the complaint that had come in before our inspectors arrive so the answer to the question is yes good it was it was discontinued um to allow staff the opportunity to reach out to responsible parties to ensure that they um appeared at the property as required by the ordinance so when numo would contact them they would make a phone call but not appear at the property so the ordinance requires that when staff calls that they are to come to the property within one hour of being notified by the city right and then does that can our inspectors immediately go out they do site the inspector goes out and then calls the property owner okay so the inspector is on site and then calls yes okay great because we want to if there's illegal activity we want to address that immediately right on the spot yes okay great um next question from a neighbor when the special magistrate imposes 180 or 365 day suspension for three or more violations why is the magistrate giving the vacation rental owner 45 to 60 days before the suspension starts does that make sense it does that is at the special magistrate's discretion the ordinance calls for them to do it um at the end of the current rental that's inside of the property or at a time that the special magistrate decides so typically there's a discussion between the special magistrate and the vacation rental owner or operator okay because the feedback i'm getting from neighbors which makes sense to me which is they've waited months for this to get to the special magistrate process and then it's there's more during that time there's more leeway where kind of anything can happen um so is there a way to looking to tighten things up yeah is there a way to is that a special magistrate that we need to talk to the special like well yeah i just don't know hello good afternoon don't you make me come out there exactly you want to upset portia yeah so what what we could do is modify the ordinance to include language that limits the amount of time the magistrate can provide yes or before a suspension is implemented so we can provide a time frame not to exceed a certain amount of days at the commission's direction yeah that'd be great what do you think would be the narrowest allowance for that like how many days i would say the narrowest should be somewhere between 14 and 30 days okay and i'm thinking from a perspective of if a transient guest has booked the book the vacation rental the notification by the operator would provide ample time for that guest to find other arrangements yep good so could we aim for 14 okay is that good okay great um next one is during their suspension owners are stating that they're renting property for 30 days or more but many just continue to rent short term what are we going to do to address this problem so typically any property that's under suspension the code officer does a monitoring of that property so they will check for different vehicles they will try to make contact with property on the occupants if they do find them to be operating during a suspension as what is being short term yeah of course then a violation would be issued for that which is also one thousand dollars per day okay so we're doing a good job you think monitoring that okay great and then in terms of penalty can can we have an equal penalty for not having a permit and for an expired permit in other words if you don't have if it's not if it's expired you don't have a permit you don't have a certificate so yeah we would i mean if that's if that is the recommendation of the commission then yes we could it would be a change that will be a change to the ordinance as well yeah i think it should because in effect an expired is operating without so i'd like to make this one comment sure the expiration of our certificate of compliance for vacation rentals is consistent with the big the business tax expiration so all vacation rental certificates would expire september 30th i would just ask for us then implement some language to allow any administrative delay like on the city's end that's fair not to result in a violation of the expired license i think that's fair okay great thank you thank you katrina does that conclude your comments does that conclude yes mayor thank you thank you does that conclude your presentation that concludes my presentation okay all right we have a few people sign up to speak um i'll call their names uh vanessas perduto uh lilia russo and brian donaldson are you all still here brian all right we don't no one wants to speak oh okay vanessa lilia and brian is vanessa and lilia are both from easy breezy bnb it's nice to see you again good morning commissioner um so before i get started i did have a couple questions that i wanted to ask um so we're not calling the responsible party anymore as soon as we get a call because that's can i just say can i just say something if you have questions you're perfectly welcome to sit on the side of the room and talk to them because this is not a back and forth kind of question kind of thing you're certainly welcome to do that if there are comments you'd like to make that you're hoping that the commission can be guided in this decision making that's a whole other thing well yeah that's kind of where i was going because the intent of that uh hotline was to make sure that the responsible party gets contacted immediately right in an effort to make sure that we are eliminate the nuisance that is plaguing the neighborhood at the moment so a good example of that is a few weeks ago we had a complaint called in and we didn't get the call till two hours after the complaint got called in we got there within 15 minutes but this neighborhood had to suffer through this party for two whole extra hours in the middle of the night when they didn't have to was just one of your guests correct okay yes so what was what was the cause of the delay do you know well i was confused about that because normally they're really good with that hotline so when i reached out to the city i got different answers um one staff member told me that calling was just a courtesy and policy is to arrive on site first make sure the violation exists and then call the host um i've never seen that policy i've been here for six years i've never seen that policy play out like that it's always been call the host immediately um to try to get the situation under control so another staff member told me oh that's a mistake they are supposed to call you and that person said they were going to reach out so why don't you why don't you have that conversation with them then right now or yeah you can yeah no not at the podium but go sit there separately yeah cool no already okay great is and um and uh yeah so go ahead you can have that conversation with them thank you to get clarity on it i appreciate that all right so my name is vanessa i've been hosting here for more than six years as someone committed to hosting responsibly i spend a lot of time networking with local hosts i help them get registered i share best practice safety tips with them and i listen to struggles and i have to ask one question that i think is fundamental to whether any of these proposed changes will actually work at any point during this preparation did the city solicit feedback from vacation rental operators slide three list code compliance and police as the two enforcement mechanisms but there's a third pillar the city is not acknowledging hosts themselves we're on the front line of enforcement we manage guests respond to complaints navigate the registration process and deal directly with the situations this presentation is trying to address and yet to my knowledge we were never consulted treating hosts purely as subjects of enforcement rather than partners in it is both deeply inaccurate and a missed opportunity effective enforcement doesn't happen despite hosts it happens with us here's what we would have said had we been consulted slide four describes the registration process as streamlined i'd ask the commission to look at the city's own vacation rental enforcement web page which currently states that operators caught without a license can simply deactivate register and immediately resume operation with no mention of penalty for the period they operated illegally that message is not consistent with the strict enforcement framework being proposed here today new mo is credited for identifying unregistered vacation rentals but whether new mo is finding them is not the question what's happening after there are multiple properties reported by new mo from more than a year ago that have not been cited and are still actively listed on airbnb identifying a violation and resolving it are two different things i would also like to point out to the commission that while there are 1500 and however many registered airbnbs um our data our data tools for the market show that there's actually over 5000 unregistered airbnb there's 5000 airbnbs listed on airbnb right now so that 1500 number only shows what is compliant um it does not show the true problem that the city has and that number has jumped in significantly over the last two months it started it was three months at yeah two months ago it was 3000 i checked this morning because i wanted to have my data accurate and it's at it's over 5000 today and these are all active listings that you can click directly on um we talked about the hotline already so i will skip over that um another thing is the registered vacation rentals we're already undergoing an initial inspection before we can even operate and in my inspect um experience code is really really good about flagging any unpermitted work and they will make you get it permitted prior to um giving out that license and then we have an initial we have a renewal inspection every year so i would like to ask if we could get an example if i'm allowed i was curious what safety situations are not able to be addressed during you know that annual inspection that's that's coming up um because again the city is really good about catching unlicensed stuff during my inspections i've i've been there and i've seen it happen um i also wanted to make a comment about the data the way the data is presented it's showing each violation as one item but it's really important if we want to solve the problem that we look at those violations and clusters did operating without a license get caught on its own or did it get caught with vacation with a party parking and a bunch of other stuff happening that tells us is newmo working or are we catching these people because they got caught during a party all of that is really really important in my opinion in us assessing what the city needs moving forward to really gain control of the situation so i would just like to ask today if the commission would be willing to um sitting down with vacation rental host compliant vacation rental host in fort lauderdale um and getting some feedback before moving forward with this ordinance so katrina what uh what methodology has been employed by you and your staff in order to garner the uh data that you basing your recommendations on today so we have utilized our platform host which is newmo um to the tune of we have looked at each individual violation we looked at the properties the neighborhoods by hoa by district and we were listening to the community as well as the host as we've had meetings with several vacation rental hosts um there was no not there was not a mass meeting but we have met with vacation rental hosts when they've reached out we've also been met with the community and what we've heard is that the properties that are operating with audience which are big of compliance are the biggest issue and so our our enforcement right now is to focus on getting people registered and then we can then monitor them and keep them compliant with the rest of the vacation rental ordinance well apparently there's a gap according to um what we just heard there's a big gap between the amount of people registered and the amount of people that aren't registered so that's that's something that i know it's hard to keep up with that but what are your thoughts on that so when it comes to an actual just looking at data from a platform typically when you put in fort lauderdale it is greater fort lauderdale so it includes lauderdale lakes pompano plantation lauderdale all those different places we have had meetings with up to 10 vacation rental host platforms and when they give us the data typically we have others municipalities initially um added to our data and also understanding that there are single properties that list multiple different ways so one property can have five different listings on a platform so that would count as five listings okay and not five properties okay i would like to be clear though um the data the the tools that i use that i got my five thousand dollar number from i mean not five thousand dollars five thousand dollar listing um it is very specifically within the boundaries of fort lauderdale because i am familiar with what um miss katrina johnson was saying it is within those boundaries i do believe that that significant jump happened because the world cup and people are just trying to like you know catch some dollars um but that number is within the fort lauderdale boundaries and there is an active listing linked to each single property address that takes you to airbnb with a calendar that you're able to click into and book so it is a hundred percent those numbers are within the fort city of fort lauderdale boundaries okay all right well it could i ask you to sit with them and uh so i have sat with them and because of some of the limitations that are in the ordinance language it's been a little bit difficult to get things moving forward and i think that that's why everybody is here today okay all right all right well thank you for coming to vanessa we appreciate it uh lily is with you i assume you have did you want to add any additional comments or additional comment i would like to add to that is how much money we're losing by not having like if you were to find those houses instead it's and say we did it at 250 000 how many i think i was right under a million if we were able to find all of those people the idea of having these rules is not to collect money for fines it's to enforce compliance making sure that they're operating properly i agree 100 yeah and i'm only bringing that up only because because we are compliant it sometimes feels like oh these are the people that are compliant so let's go after them it's like whoa it's for sure we get more trouble than anybody else but also i mean none of these things are even addressing what the actual problem is with the nuisances these are all applying penalties to the host but the reality could you speak into the microphone so i can hear you the reality is i've hosted over 4 000 stays in the last five years and i talked to tons of hosts out of all of my stays and anytime i've ever had a nuisance problem the only demographic i don't know if demographic is the right word but the only group of people that are causing these nuisance problems are the locals and it's like the locals book we tell them hey these are our house rules i make them sign multiple forms they give me a copy of their id i verify their phone number we check the history of their account they show up disregard the rules throw the party i'll show up and kick them out i'll call the cops do what i have to do but none of that matters i still get in trouble i'll call the cops i'll be the first one on site i'll be the first call that went in no other neighbor has called before i called the cops are on site prior to the neighbors even calling the party gets shut down and we still get in trouble but meanwhile the guests that signed all of these rules that acknowledged what's going on walks away scot-free and it's it's common knowledge like at this point that you don't get in trouble for throwing a raging party at an airbnb good to know no i'm just kidding i mean it's it's been really difficult because it's like we try so hard but then we're held responsible for somebody else's entire okay so what behavior what penalty should we put on the people who are in that so the city of hollywood actually has a really progressive um and wilton manners as well they're both doing it they have actually started penalizing the guests themselves and and wilton manners specifically they even took that a step further and the guests can get a repeat violation okay um and it's love it it's as simple as they the cop is on site they collect the ids give them the tickets and keep it pushing okay yeah i'm all in favor of penalizing guests that are misbehaving i would love that and i honestly and i think also another thing is if the city would be willing to do like a psa to locals a lot of times these locals a lot of times they are trying to be not nice and throw parties but a lot of times they're just genuinely confused we'll get comments like well the neighbor has a car parked on the grass why can't i or one time a halloween party there the neighbor was throwing a party and we're here trying to kick them out and they were like are you they literally thought we were being racist trying to kick them out and i'm like we're not the thing is you know i just the neighbor the neighbor does not have a vacation rental license they don't operate by these same rules and they don't get in trouble like i do mayor maybe they can talk about this offline i don't want to yeah yeah i think it's good it's worth exploring is that fair i mean i would love to talk more with you guys yeah if you want possible portion you know portion katrina and looks like ronda has some feedback too so let's explore it thank you it's good feedback they do yeah brian do you want to talk where else you can have your rave party you're not gonna have in your own house i should good afternoon mayor vice mayor commission um you know i think over the past uh 13 years i've been the poster child of vacation rentals and was very instrumental in the ordinance when it came out in 2015 and all of the revision sense and i'm here as the president of the neighborhood that probably has the highest concentration of vacation rentals in the city at 30 of our single family homes at the beach are vacation rentals 30 30 okay and so swinging neighborhood pardon it's a swinging neighborhood it's an expensive neighborhood so a lot of people utilize that but i i want to say that um in looking at a couple of things that are in the ordinance changes recommended which i do support um it's also onus on other i was a vacation rental owner as well um and as the president of the neighborhood it's really up to the other owners and i understand her frustration of the ones that are non-compliant but we have to help monitor each other so in our neighborhood which i've worked with other neighborhood presidents we take the city's website and this is the example for my neighborhood that was just updated this month we update monthly and we put it onto our website and it gives the address the license number if they're a member of the hoa which most of the good operators were 80 are members of the hoa and then who's the person to call the call and the email so in my instructions to the hoa first person you call hotline second person you call them this manager which we put out there and there's only staff this week when i sent them the new list they found one new that i didn't have on the list that i knew was advertised and they gave them a violation and they'll be at it um and then we called we call the person then they call me but don't call me first at three in the morning you call the person that's assigned and we advertise this and everyone knows it so every one of my vacation rentals in my neighborhood is logged in and when we find one and if another so they'll tattle-tattle on each other whatever so we don't get the so if you know that there's one that is next to you that isn't tournament so you know because the bad apples are making a bad apple for everyone um the one thing that i just wanted to to mention the biggest thing that um from their suggestions that is missing is we need some additional support on parking enforcement the first thing that any neighbor is going to see are the cars starting to arrive and part of the ordinance in 2015 if people don't know no vacation rental are allowed to park on any street in fort lauderdale none other guys aren't your streets restricted anyway mine are yeah so in addition we should be able to call and then have them ticketed right we don't get that reaction so we've had instances where and the 1-800 number for the vacation rental i'll call and say there's 22 people cars on the street and i counted them um we can't get down to the industry so i can't get an ems i need people out here to ticket police can't ticket and code enforcement was somewhere else because they're dealing with i'm not the only problem in the city at that moment so what i wanted to recommend was versus code enforcement monday tuesday wednesday which we really only need during the peak parts of the year i don't need to put um financial impact on the budget for july august september unless it's fourth of july week etc but i think we should ebb and flow with that but we're having a big disconnect with and i know from beverly heights i know from other neighborhoods talking to other presidents who know that our neighborhood is is quite actively helping to enforce this this thing um the biggest thing they are talking about is parking so i know we've had some conversations um personally over that and i'll text anyone including city manager and say here are the cars and they've been very responsive but when looking at the presentation and i happen to be in town today i wanted to come and say that's the one recommendation that i think there's a disconnect because police come they know that we're an a um a big a um residential permit parking program and so even if there was no party and it's just all the meter dodgers um that you should be able to get those cars ticketed and they're parking so that's the one suggestion let me ask a question with that because just looking at this ed on the flip side of that um someone's at event they're at this um airbnb they're ticketed they're not going to move their car they're just going to ride out the ticket they've already been ticketed can they be ticketed twice three times no well here what you're saying we we we can't however all right wait i can't hear from back there um the so what the procedure is is that then they will come back through if you're in a residential permit parking program um which is my neighborhood colihama beverly heights and some others okay so those are part of the the big issue my other issue is is that we have so we've had 20 homes in my historic neighborhood bulldozed in the past few years so i have 11 empty lots right now so we have a couple vacation rental owners that tell them yeah we have eight under construction 11 still empty so because we we we lost 25 homes in the last five years so um and so they're telling their guests to go ahead and park so what i found out was when there was 22 cars on someone's private property i had to get a hold of the private owner to tell police to then file because police can't tell them to get off of somebody's yard um so we have some of those things that we need to work but that's a separate thing um but really we we we're having a disconnect with the police will come and they can't ticket the cars and we can't get the parking enforcement and i think that would really help because there are a couple new operators but we're actively coaching them on how they should not be allowing one nights if they allow one night two night three night you're getting local parties if you have a four night minimum it has cleaned up my neighborhood okay all right thank you very good thank you is there anyone else who wishes to speak on this item okay there being no one all right so i think you've given we've given some direction so i appreciate your work on this and we'll see how we can move this thing forward thank you for your work uh business five uh this is regarding the city of fort lauderdale lean amnesty program portia good afternoon mayor vice mayor commissioners portia garcia director of community services department with this presentation is organized into four primary discussion areas we're going to discuss an overview of the city's lean amnesty program which we adopted during fiscal year 23 and we're going to also discuss the program's operational framework performance outcomes will provide a municipal comparison and also some recommendation for policy considerations as we move forward with the program as a background to this program the lean amnesty program was established as an administrative tool to resolve outstanding code enforcement liens in a more efficient and structured manner prior to lean amnesty the city handled its lean reductions through a special magistrate process which often resulted in varying outcomes as well as lengthy case resolution timelines the amnesty program introduced a more predictable and standardized process for addressing code enforcement liens in addition to providing a standardized standardized lien resolution process the program was designed around several operational compliance focused goals at its core lean amnesty reduces outstanding lien balances owed to the city while promoting voluntary compliance and accelerating case resolution when we initially began looking at lean amnesty the city had around 63 million dollars in outstanding liens at the time our budget advisory board as well as our audit advisory board had policy recommendations around how code enforcement could be more aggressive in its attempt to collect outstanding lien debt and so as a result of that inquiry the staff we recommended adopting a lien amnesty program the program supports administrative efficiencies by reducing the number of cases requiring prolonged litigation through the special magistrate process or repeated hearings as well as ongoing enforcement activity this allows staff to focus our resources on active compliance efforts and higher priority nuisance concerns throughout the community from an outreach perspective staff recognizes that any type of lien collection efforts require staff to do considerable community outreach typically at our special magistrate hearings we provide the public with information on how to apply for lien amnesty so that we could have higher collection this slide provides an overview of our programs of evolution since 2023 the initial framework was very straightforward for this program our goal was simply to encourage participation in amnesty resolve long-standing cases and create an administrative path for settlement at the time that we initially adopted this program we provided a 90 percent discount that was focused primarily on incentivizing compliance and payment because as i mentioned we have the 63 million dollars in outstanding liens as the program has matured staff encountered circumstances where additional flexibility was necessary in 2025 the city expanded the lien amnesty program to allow hardship-based review and consideration of cases where balances substantially exceeded property values in those instances when applicants supply for lien amnesty if they need additional relief they explain why they require additional relief staff conducts an administrative review where we look at things such as the value of the property the value of the liens any financial documents provided by the applicant and we provide the city manager with a staff recommendation that she can use in making a decision on whether or not to grant additional lien amnesty relief most recently the fiscal year 2026 program framework increased or decreased the discount from 90 percent to 85 percent this established greater emphasis on consistency documentation and eligibility for the reduction to the 85 percent discount staff wanted to further incentivize compliance by reducing how much of the lien would be waived overall the progression of the program reflects the city's effort to balance compliance fairness operational efficiency and responsible financial recovery this slide provides an overview of our lien reduction efforts prior to lien amnesty this includes the special magistrates reduced amounts so between fiscal years 2025 and 2023 prior to amnesty more than 1021 properties applied for a lien reduction through the special magistrate process that resulted in 106 million dollars in in total liens being reduced to about five million dollars that five million dollars represented under the magistrates process a 95 percent waiver of liens so one of the things i really want to highlight with comparing lien reductions in the magistrate process to lien amnesty as we went from a model where the magistrate was reducing collectively around 95 percent and this is over a period of seven fiscal years to standardizing the amount that we are reducing which is now at 85 percent since implementing the lien amnesty program in fiscal year 24 we had 120 properties applied for amnesty the city collected almost 800 thousand dollars in revenue in fiscal year 25 we had 139 properties applied for amnesty the city collected nearly 900 000 in revenue in fiscal year 26 to date we have had 87 properties apply for lien amnesty and to date we've collected a little over 600 000 in revenue these figures demonstrate that the program has become an effective administrative tool for resolving outstanding liens and generating revenue as well as encouraging compliance through voluntary participation one thing i would highlight is that amnesty provides the applicant with a determined discounted rate as opposed to lien reduction before the magistrate there is no set standard on what the magistrate can decide so applicants go through the lien reduction process with the magistrate and it's truly a gamble in terms of what amount the magistrate will decide to discount the lien at the same time with the program's growth there is continued utilization in highlighted areas where we as staff believe that there can be additional policy refinement okay this slide provides a broader financial overview overview of the lien amnesty program by comparing total lien values assessed against the volume of wave through mitigation a thing i would highlight is that the program's value is not solely measured by the percentage of liens recovered by the city but also our ability to bring properties into compliance so in order to receive lien amnesty an applicant must be in full compliance not just with the property that they're applying for amnesty for but with any property that they own within the city of fort lauderdale what i would also highlight is that when staff reviews photos of properties where they're applying for amnesty or other properties owned in fort lauderdale staff reviews all violations so even if a violation is not cited staff will require the property owner applicant to comply that violation in order to be considered for amnesty so when the commission hears me mentioning that this is a tool that allows staff in the city to receive greater compliance is compliance of things that have not been cited so we are able to do that through this program as a comparison a municipal comparison we have evaluated several cities throughout the county and compared them with fort lauderdale this slide highlights that comparison you'll notice that there are significant variations in the reduction thresholds used by varying municipalities as well as the eligibility requirements the cost of the applications fluctuate and the level of administrative discretion also fluctuates throughout the county several municipalities impose stricter limitations for repeat or distinguish between residential and commercial properties when determining eligibility or reduction amounts these analysis are used to demonstrate that fort lauderdale's current framework is among the more flexible and broadly accessible programs within our regional comparison this also provides a benchmark for staff to provide a recommendation for for the commission to exercise important operational insight and to make an informed decision on whether or not the program should continue or expire on september 30th or if the program does continue if there needs to be additional modifications to our current program based on the regional comparison and what we've determined through our current program we have several operational operational recommendations and key policy updates our first is staff recommends to modify our current discount from 85 percent and reduce it to a 50 percent discount during the most recent amnesty modification which was f5 2026 when we made the change to 85 percent we also included a change where certain violation types specifically nuisance violations repeat violations noise violations and vacation rental violations would only be eligible for a 50 percent discount instead of an 85 percent discount we are at this time recommending that all all violations be eligible for a 50 percent discount instead of 85 for this 85 percent discount a reason for us making this recommendation is we've heard several concerns from the community regarding amnesty making enforcement invalid because if people recognize that they can violate the code accrue fines or liens and then have a majority of that fine or lien waived it does not incentivize compliance and so we're recommending a lesser discount we also recommend the exclusion of certain violation types which we've listed here um that these violation types not be eligible for for a um reduction at all so the nuisance repeat noise and vacation rental violations as well as irreparable or irreversible violations um commercial industrial and income producing property so income producing property would look like a property that's held out to a tenant um we already have an exception built in for vacation rental so this is more of our long-term lease and then we would still recommend that if we continue this prop program to continue to allow for hardship consideration so if an applicant believes that they have a hardship and they would like the city to look into further review we may we recommend that we maintain that in our current program at this time my presentation has concluded and i'm open to any questions or direction from the commission um okay thank you very very much um uh i before i open it up i just want to say i i agree with your 50 percent reduction i think the 85 was much too generous uh if they want more they could i know in some cities they give 50 percent and if they want more they can come to the commission and ask for more i assume that's what you're doing here why did you single out commercial properties why can't they be eligible for amnesty so that is some feedback that we heard from the public or from the community when we receive feedback about amnesty is that when there are commercial properties that accrue very large liens and are unresponsive to code enforcement that allowing amnesty sometimes reduces the effectiveness of code code enforcement and that same that same practice doesn't apply in residential i could say that it is what i would say professionally is sometimes the financial means may differ between a residential property owner compared to a commercial property owner and depending on the type of violation the commercial property may have a greater impact on the residential neighborhood so can can an owner of commercial or industrial property still apply for amnesty it's just not automatically given so that's somewhat of the direction that we're seeking we can have it where any of these that we are recommending exclusion for can apply and receive like a review to determine if they should be eligible administratively correct or we can make it where they are ineligible um for for amnesty through this program um mayor yes um to piggyback on what you're saying about um commercial not to um name a a business that's in my district um that we had a large issue with um a name brand um nationally named um company in the community that continued to violate um code issues and again you know that you would think um you know you have the funds to take care of it and it was more of a hands-off what are you going to do type of situation so i can understand on on one stance the reason for um excluding commercial when you've had um experience and repeat experience with um some commercial businesses so i can understand the reason why that is so you said a name brand but you know some of these mom and pop businesses you know like you know i don't know plumbers or you know electricians or you know um you know building contractors there's small operations sometimes they're they're a place of business i i i think that we should exclude them i agree with you but i think we should also have an we should also give them the opportunity to state their case if there's a particular um uh if there's a if there's a viable reason for for maybe making some sort of uh justification for a reduction but i do agree with your recommendation that they should that they should they should be a presumption that they not be given amnesty and that they should be able to at least state their case to allow for some opportunity there that's my opinion so vice mayor yeah i agree with you i like that opportunity for all commercial residential being able to appeal to the commission which i think is what you're saying right yeah well appeal to administratively and then they can come to us yeah yeah i agree um so porsche i think this is great i think we're heading in a very good direction when we look at the municipal comparison i mean even at 50 percent we're incredibly forgiving i mean look at coral springs miami gardens sunrise i mean it's just up to 15 percent reduction what what about the possibility of going more aligned with them 20 25 percent reduction it's up to us yeah i mean is that hollywood's the meaning no percent no hollywood's yeah it gives you it gives it away yeah yeah i mean so is that possible i mean could we is that possible or is there a big downside i guess what i'm asking is it is there a big downside that you see if we're more stringent than 50 so this is my experience so i do recall a point in time where this program did not reside in amnesty whenever there is too little of a discount provided we typically get a lot of applicants to petition to the city commission for additional relief and so years ago when i initially started with the city that was the case a lot of the um lean applicants were requesting amnesty or lean reductions before the city commission i won't say good or bad it really is the discretion of the commission but if there is not some mechanism to provide a substantial some incentive incentive for absolutely and things i would just mention is typically people are applying for amnesty when they may be trying to refinance the home or if they're doing a sale of a property and so there are times when they're um in a crunch for time so having the review go before the commission can extend the time that they're looking to refinance or sell the property okay mayor yes i think you want to um be careful about um having the appeal come beyond the administrative review into the commission because that that could be voluminous that could be um um perceived to be discretionary or arbitrary i don't know that you'd want to do well i agree at least you're okay i get it but at least if they have some level of of appeal even if it's at the administrative level or the magistrate level but at least there's some yeah but i do think there should be a presumption of no no eligibility in the in these categories but um but but that they'd be given an opportunity to plead their case yeah yeah i'm good with that i also i do think that the 50 is a good number i mean it wasn't that long ago we were doing 90 reduction yeah 50 and we went to 85 i felt very comfortable with 50. that's a significant that's a significant change and i i i agree with that thank you thank you okay good very good thank you so much we appreciate it yeah we do uh troy you had you wanted to speak mr mayor members of the commission is probably the last person here i'll be very quick i promise i just wanted to provide some real life experience on what what you're talking about mr mayor on commercial properties uh i first want to thank bill brown who's probably listening or watching um because he put this on the agenda is he still with us he watches something i thought you were looking up at heaven i thought maybe something happened i wasn't aware of from ohio he's in ohio which is why he's not ohio would be like sideways that would be sideways uh anyway he put this on the agenda of the cfl ca meeting i know commissioner sores had happened to be there and there was a great conversation about the problems with commercial property and i will briefly share my experience with two properties in middle river terrace where i'm the president of the neighbor association um when the neighbor the neighborhood has had issues with two properties one is a vacant lot owned by some llc represented by a real estate attorney in west palm uh who rented it out to one of the companies who does road repairs in fort waterdale it's just off of 13th street and they literally made it their junkyard there were a dozen abandoned vehicles there were piles of old fort waterdale city uh signs in it there was trash they didn't do anything we reported it it took two years in the process and multiple inspections and warnings from the city before it made it to the fine process and i'm like why why are they ignoring this why are they why did they let 26 000 worth of fines rack up over two years um and it's my conclusion it's because they knew there was this lean amnesty program and they could end up with three thousand nine hundred dollars worth of fines when they were probably renting the lots for a couple thousand dollars a month to this company um i think my hunch was confirmed when in february we had a separate property um it is bought by a developer it's now used as a it's a former i'll be very quick uh it was a former gas station they just don't cut their grass or do their landscaping it's on fourth avenue they never do anything to keep up the property it took uh a year and two months to make it to the special magistrate a process and my conclusion when they didn't show up for the hearing i was at the special magistrate hearing and the special people were complaining about the fines and they wanted some relief from the fines and he said look i'm a real estate attorney don't worry about the fines all you got to do is whenever you clean it up go in fill out this application and you'll get almost all of them forgiven and it seems like it's baked into the real estate it's the cost of doing business so all right we thank you i i we hear you so yeah we appreciate that thank you troy anyone else wish to speak on this item all right is there anything further in your presentation no okay i think you have some direction from us then right okay great thank you do you have any further business for the conference meeting i just wanted to share that we could come back to the commission maybe a year after this is implemented to check in and let you know how it's going as to how effective it's been yeah okay all right conference meeting is now included we'll return at six o'clock mayor mayor you have to read the uh oh i'm sorry i have a i have a okay uh at this time the city commission shall meet privately to conduct discussions between the city manager the city attorney and the city commission relative to pending litigation pursuant to section 286.011 parentheses eight florida statutes in connection with the following uh three matters city of fort laurel versus fdot uh case number 4d 2025 2783 city of fort laurel versus fdot 25-004856 r u and city of fort laurel versus fdot um for case number 4d 2026 0271 present at the attorney client session will be myself vice mayor commissioner uh ben sorenson commissioner steve glassman commissioner pan bleasley pitman city manager raquel williams city attorney sherry mccartney deputy city attorney d wayne spence outside counsel howard uh dubosar outside counsel jeremy rosner and certified court reporter from bailey enton court reporting this will take approximately one hour in length we'll see you back at six