City Commission Conference Meeting on 2026-07-02 1:00 PM - Jul 02, 2026

Okay. Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to the City Commission meeting this June 6th, excuse me, January, July 2nd. I'm dyslexic. Okay. July 2nd, 2026. Thank you all for being here today. We have just a few items on the afternoon agenda, but it's going to be filled with a lot of information, so really looking forward to moving ahead and getting this forward. I want to thank the Vice Mayor for taking over the chair at the last meeting. Thank you so much for conducting the meeting. I appreciate it. Welcome, Mayor. Thank you. So let's move ahead. We have a communication to the City Commission from the Central City Redevelopment Advisory Board. City Manager? Thank you, Mayor. Yes, we have reviewed that communication, and we do feel that we're able to address those concerns. Is there anyone here from the Central City Redevelopment? You want to speak? How are you? Yes, please. Yeah. I can't see. I can't see. I couldn't see whether. I can't see the podium, so go ahead. Mr. Mayor, Commissioners, City Manager, City Staff, my name is Nicola Stahn. I have been a member of the Advisory Board for three years now, and signed up for another three years. I live in the CRA boundaries. I am on the Fifth Terrace, 1125 Northeast Street. I wanted to talk about this communication. The communication is a recommendation to accept proceeding with the land use amendment program as it's presented to you, with the reduction in scope to only the rezoned areas, which is what was approved at the board meeting. What was discussed over the previous years when rezoning was discussed, there was a lot of meetings and back and forth. Consensus has been established on the areas that were proposed for rezoning, not for the entire CRA area. So that's one thing, and the second thing is... So before you go on, so this is an issue that's been bounced around since I was a commissioner. So is our CRA manager here? Can we talk about what the timetable is about implementing those changes and when it's going to come before the commission? Good afternoon, Vanessa Martin, CRA manager. So we are at a stage where we're actually trying to bring forth the land use plan amendment consultant on board. We have that coming before you on August 18th. As far as the rezoning is concerned, that was, of course, on a whole through September, October of this year through the Senate Bill 180. So we're working through all of those parameters to make sure that everything is addressed in a timely manner. Once we can bring that consultant, we're going through the negotiation contracting periods right now for the land use plan amendment. And once we can get that sorted out, we will bring that to you on August 18th. But we do understand the urgency, and we are working with city departments to address those concerns. So when you say you're putting out to bid for the consultant, what consultants have we been using up to now, and why aren't they part of this process already? So that part of it has been done already. Procurement has already gone through the CCNA, and they have identified a firm. And that firm right now is actually in the negotiating contracting process. We're also working with legal to come up with other decisions in order for us to, before we can draw a conclusion to the contract. So would you say it's coming to the commission in August, what exactly would be coming to the commission in August then? The land use plan amendment consultant hiring that firm to come to help the Central City CRA. So we don't have the firm on board yet? No, we're actually going through the negotiations. Procurement did select a firm, but we're currently going through the negotiation part of that process right now. And so this is not something that we are actually discussing today, because we're still in the process of that. We were actually discussing the master plan consultant, and so that's what we're bringing before you today. Okay. District Commissioner, do you have any questions? Not so much of a question, but just as a concern also, because I do echo what I'm reading in terms of the communication. There is always that message that I get that things are just moving slowly, that when questions are asked about why are things moving slowly, it's always in the hands of another city department or someone else is working on it or CRA is working for something to come back, waiting for something to come back. So are we cognizant of that issue as a concern so that we can see these projects move a lot quicker, even when we go ahead and hopefully we'll ratify the consultants that you're talking about and the plans that we're talking about? Can we set a maximum time on that so that these things happen within a reasonable amount of time, you know, six months, nine months, and we move forward, just so that we get off the dime? It just seems that everything just sort of gets stuck a little, if you know what I mean. I do agree, and in working with legal, we're trying to come up with a notice to proceed and adding some type of time frame where there's a notice to proceed plus like five days to complete a task. So we are working through those negotiations right now to make sure that that is in the contract, and we do hold the consultant accountable to make sure that the deliverables are achieved at a certain amount of time. That would be excellent, and I'm happy to hear that because I think it's really needed. We just need to expedite these projects and just move. They just seem to languish. Yes. So thank you for recognizing the concern, and hopefully we'll see an improvement in that. Yes. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Great. Thank you. What's point two? Well, I think we're mixed up a little bit. This was the concern about, I first talked about the Lupa consultant coming on board, and just to summarize, it is reduction in scope only to the re-zone proposed areas, not the entire CRA. Right. That's the recommendation. And if possible, in any way, in light of a state bill, to proceed with. What is that Senate bill? 180. Senate bill 180. What is the impact of that bill? Mayor, that was the Senate bill that preempted our ability to change zonings in certain respects that contradicted what the state was requiring. And we thought that they might have killed it this session, but they did not. They've extended it a little further, so it's kind of holding up some of our attempts to change some code. So we're not allowed to change our zoning? In some aspects, yes. There's certain things that we cannot do if they are preempted by the Senate bill 180, and it should sunset. I believe it's in July of next year, I believe, but it's about a year away. Okay. Thank you. Mayor, I think Chris Cooper can add a little bit more color if you'd like. Okay. Yes. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, City Manager. Chris Cooper, Deputy City Manager. I just wanted to mention we did send an LTC, I think, a couple months ago that we worked on in conjunction with the City Attorney's Office that includes a really great summary of Senate Bill 180, but as well it includes a table of projects and zoning initiatives that are affected by the Senate bill. So we can recirculate that after this meeting so you have that for your awareness, but it really gives a good summary of everything that the bill has an effect on. Okay, great. That would be very helpful. Thank you. Chris, could you stay there a second? I want you to help address Nicola's concern about the land use plan amendment, because I did notice that was the second motion that came to us, communication from the board, and it passed 6-3, so there was some disagreement there, obviously. But maybe if you could just go through that really quickly, because I want to make sure we address his concerns as well. But as the vote stood, 6-3, they are saying just focus on what they are looking at in terms of what's being rezoned and not the entire district, correct? Yeah, and that's typically what we would do. So the central city area has a variety of zoning districts, everything from residential uses all the way through to commercial uses. So what the land use plan amendment would apply to are those areas that the zoning district was created for, which are primarily along 4th, 13th, and that area in between, because that is where we were attempting to add a mixed use component to the area. So the land use plan amendment already really only takes into account that area that the zoning was going to be applied to. I'm assuming that the three that opposed that wanted it to be broader? I would have to go back and check the minutes. I don't know today why the three opposed it. There was some debate over the zoning overall, that whole effort, and so I don't think everybody was aligned on that. So that may be why there was some opposition to the land use plan amendment, but I'd have to go back and look at the minutes to know for sure why those three were concerned with the amendment itself. I don't remember seeing a lot of the detail, though, in the minutes why the three were opposed in terms of – because obviously this is just limiting it to the areas proposed for rezoning, so I was assuming that the three wanted it to be much broader in scope than just that limited area. But maybe someone from the board can help me understand what happened. And certainly we can go back to the board and have that conversation, but it's just not really how land use and zoning works. So the zoning is what allows for the specific uses and the types of things that can be done on those properties. The land use assigns the intensity and entitlements to those. So a land use plan amendment would create a pool of units for that area or create a density for the properties. It would create transportation standards and things like that to make sure that those uses and future developments were accommodated. So, again, the land use plan, the land use that underlies the zoning really only applies to those areas that are rezoned for that zoning district. The zoning district allows you to do the things you want to do. The land use provides the basis for those uses. Okay. Thank you, Chris. Did you want to add to your comments? I did. So if this is the case, then the scope of the proposed contract with the land use consultant should be changed to what was just said because that's not what was communicated to us. Okay. And that's why the communication is as it is. Okay. And the second topic about frustration with long delays, I think that was already addressed appropriately. So we are just looking to communicate a need for your help to identify what in the process is causing such long delays. There is a clear disparity between what's promised and what actually happens. And with such a big transiency in the board memberships, it's hard for advisory board to really function cohesively because new board members take time to get up to speed on the projects. And the projects really lasts for years. And a comment on why some of these board members, the three board members voted against. One member asked to abstain previously. That board member asked to get quickly familiarized with the rezoning. She only joined, I want to say, a couple of months before. So that's an example of why these projects that last so long cause friction in decision-making like this. All right. Great. Thank you. I have a question for the city attorney. City attorney, are board members or committee members permitted to abstain if it's not a financial conflict of interest? Can someone abstain just because they don't feel up to speed? No, commissioner. They must vote. They must vote. So we should make sure that we take care of that. That's why there was a third against, because that person could not abstain. That's what he said. Oh, okay. Thank you. Okay. Troy, did you want to speak? Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of the commission. First, I think we've clarified about the land use amendment. As long as it's only the areas we rezoning, the neighborhood is fine. The neighborhood endorsed that communication and what's communicated. The second issue is what I want to touch on briefly, and that's on the delays. I hope you realize the extraordinary position that this Crab Board is in and its frustrations. There are a lot of nice words in their communication to you, but note that they voted unanimously about the delays in general with CRA projects. I hope you take that seriously. We really don't feel like anyone in the city is. We met with the city manager last August, and we talked about three issues of concern. Number one is urgency. Almost a year ago, she was new. She was figuring it out. Number one is urgency. There hasn't been a project started since 2019 that has finished. The 4th Avenue sidewalks, the dead-end street lights, this capital plan, everything is still pending. They haven't been able to pay to finish two blocks of sidewalks since they got the million dollars in 2019. When I met with the city manager, we talked about transparency. This issue that you're facing tonight with land use, about what does it apply to? Like, at the last meeting, they couldn't answer that question, and they told us, you've known this all along. And they're like, no, we didn't. So that's why they made the communication to you to make it clear. Transparency is a problem. The third point is engagement. When we met with the city manager in August, we were like, please, help us with the communication. It would help tremendously with all of these issues. One thing we suggested was that someone from the CRA come to our meetings. You may remember, Ms. City Manager, you turn to Vanessa, who's now the acting director. Like, can you guys do that? The police take the time out to come every month. Code comes just for a few minutes so we can answer questions. That was in August. They came in April. At the following meeting with Chris Cooper, we're like, can't you have a community forum? They do this in Sistrunk, in Commissioner Beasley-Pittman's district, in that area, and Commissioner Glassman's. They hold community forums on what's going on with the CRA regularly. I think last year there was a whole series of them, what was happening in that area. We're like, can we have one in our meeting with Chris Cooper? He turned to Vanessa. We'll see what we can do. At the December Crab meeting, staff said, we're going to do that in the first quarter of 2026. And I went back, and people came away happy. They're going to do that. It's July. All right. So that's my point. That's my communication. Thank you very much. Okay, thank you. Kimber? Good afternoon, Commissioner, Mayor, staff. My name's Kimber White. I reside at 1112 Northeast 2nd Avenue. I live in the CRA, but I'm also chair of the Central City Redevelopment Advisory Board for the past two years. All the concerns that Nicola and everyone has said is true as far as communication. One of the most recent communications that we had is the zoning. We've been asking for months and months and months what's going on with zoning, only to finally get a call after I made a phone call, oh, we're delaying it because of Senate Bill 180. That's not the type of communication that we need to have. In December, I will say that we had asked the CRA to have a meeting, a working meeting with everyone. It is the second quarter, and we don't have that yet. So we haven't made those directives. But at the same time, the staff tries. I think a lot of the issue is communication between city, contractors, things that don't. I'm in the finance business, 40 years. I understand contractors, finance, building. So it takes a while. But it also takes full communication. And I feel like at times that's not what we get. I want to go back to the lupa. The reason that I think that people voted for and against is when we first started this, there are properties that back up to properties in the CRA. If you do land use that is separate, you may not be able to zone because of the depth of the other properties or properties that are backing up to it. So that is one of the reasons that we had initially talked about doing outside of the CRA because of where those properties are, the land use and the zoning. But we did agree that all we wanted to do was inside that zoning area for now. The other question I'm having is when there was a vote by the Planning and Zoning Commission, 100% all agreed to move the plan forward. And two, at that time, the city attorney said that we can do a bubble, which they voted on, to put that district. And everyone that was a builder and developer agreed that they would drop down to 80 feet. They would have a problem with it. And we were moving forward to city council, even with Senate Bill 180. Since that time, I understand that the city attorney's office has changed their mind. I, we were never communicated that. We went to the meetings. We all discussed it. We're moving it forward. Now we're here in another year. You have a redevelopment advisory area. You have an area. I've been in this city for 20 years. Central City is one of the last areas to be redeveloped. Central City has lost two booms. You're getting ready to lose another one if you're waiting two years. That's what's going to happen. Central City is like that snaggle tooth. That's missing. Another year and a half, and I've been in finance, like I said, 40 years, is a long time to wait. I would hope we could figure out a way to make that work and move it forward and put all the efforts that the CRA has put into it. Thank you. Anyone else wish to speak on this item? Okay. All right. All right. So, city manager, those are the directions that the neighborhood is requesting, and if we can work with our manager, the CRA manager, and the advisory board, as well as with the district commissioner, it does seem like a lot of these projects just seem to linger. So, glad to hear from the neighborhood. Thank you. Okay. Moving on to the city commissioner's reports. District 1, John Herbst. You have none. Okay. More time for me. How you doing, John? Good afternoon, everyone. I'm always grateful for this time to share what we're doing and also to bring up discussions as possible. So, I wanted to give congratulations to our Fort Lauderdale Police and our Explorer Program. One of our explorers, Danico Zepeda, has been, through the Florida Association of Police Explorers, has been recognized for being the outstanding new explorer for the year. So, let's give Danico a hand. And also, with that being said, recognizing Officer Fairburn for his leadership with our explorers. I'm really excited to see the movement with the explorers because we do know that during the pandemic, there was a time where we were not able to have our explorers in action. And they are, again, working and representing and learning leadership. And also, within this month, they had a great graduation for the explorers. So, again, thank you for what you're doing through the program. It encourages our young people to take a look at what our law enforcement is doing, giving them an opportunity to be hands-on, learning about public safety hands-on. So, I wanted to share that. Also, I wanted to bring to our attention and have a conversation in regards to our group violence intervention program. I'm going to read the statement because I want to make sure I hit all my points. I get so emotional sometimes when I say things, so I do not want to miss anything. I want to cover everything. So, if you would give me the privilege of hearing me out, it's not that long of a statement, but it is detailed. It's in regards to our commitment with our police regarding the group violence intervention program. This is a public safety program. This June, it was strategically rolled out. It was an interaction rollout that gave GBI introduction to the city of Fort Lauderdale. As you know, I've been working with the PD, and we did launch this program in District 3. And that was because that's where the data took us first. But GBI addresses a Fort Lauderdale problem. What we are seeing pertaining to violent incidents is a Fort Lauderdale problem. Offenders, they don't check district lines. Neither should we. Neither can we as a commission. We cannot do that. This is not a call. This is a call in. This is not a call out to what we have been doing, but I'm calling us as a commission in to take part and be proactive with this program. I'm asking us, as a commission, to work together as one body because the residents who elected us expect a united front. We show up unitedly for Tortuga. We hold press conferences advocating for safety during spring break. And as we should, we should do that. But when it's time to show up for generational families and neighborhoods throughout the city, we are not there. But we can fix this, and now is the time to fix it. This means standing together in unity, not stopping at the invisible lines where we think it doesn't matter. We are a whole city. As far as I know, we're not just 25% of a city, these four of us that represent. We are a whole city. Here's a fact. The Fort Lauderdale violent crime, this problem affects all four districts. Violent crimes are shootings, stabbings, assaults, sexual assaults, and they don't stop at the boundaries. Yes, this is all of our backyards on the east and on the west side of our city. The principles of GBI are sound, and our police department knows it. I sat down with our chief, as well as with our major, XO Stephen Shefflow, and also Captain Will August. They didn't guess. They did the research, they pulled the data, and they came up with the plan. And the plan is GBI, group violence intervention. And this is where the chief and I agree. This cannot be perceived as a solo or silo police initiative, nor a silo District 3 initiative. This must be city-driven. That means that this commission, the PD, the city manager's office, along with strategic communications, all working together with a dedicated project manager to coordinate all of this. GBI, it's devised from a proven model, refined by John Jay College, the institution of criminal justice, who we have already partnered with. We're following their curriculum, building trust on every block, creating relationships, and hosting events that will bridge gaps. Mayor, you represent the whole city, not only four selected districts, the whole city, all four. We know we don't have a strong mayor, but what it does pertain is violent crimes. You have to address that. It doesn't mean that you have to be a silent mayor when it comes to violent crimes. What I'm asking of this commission is one commitment overall, is that we own GBI together, and that the commitment looks like these four specific items. One, showing up consistently. We got to commit. Each of us are committed. If each of us are committed to GBI events, that will look like us moving forward in the next 12 months, being committed and moving beyond the 12 months. What we have seen and why this matters, GBI had four events this month, and the commission has not been present. Do you want to know who has been present? We've had both federal and state representatives, pastors, chaplains from our very own police department, the neighbors, they're showing up. If federal and state representatives show up and we don't, what is the message we're sending? Number two, we need to fund GBI permanently. We can look into, for fiscal 27, for GBI's project manager and outreach, where it could be sustainable for the next three-year plan. And that is something that we have part of our priorities, but I want to make sure that we understand the necessity and the urgency of this. This includes strategic communications, again, between PD, city manager, and the strategic communications. Number three, we need to institutionalize this. We need a resolution making GBI permanent, part of the permanent city policy, integrated and within the Fort Lauderdale PD's violent reduction strategy, with quarterly reports back to this body. This should outlive all of us on this dais. Number four, reporting publicly quarterly. Rent mandating, quarterly, GIV progress reports at commission meetings, datas, outcomes, which commissioners show up, and we'll be able to own this. No more, I don't know, after a shooting. We want to know what's going on. We want to be here as a whole, doing what's necessary to make sure that our city is whole. We stand united for tourists. At times, we stand united for the families that built our cities. Again, offenders do not check district lines. As a committee, excuse me, as commissioners, neither can we. Mayor, again, I'm asking that we have an agreement to have a resolution to make sure that GBI is a part of the blue plant for the city of Fort Lauderdale. Okay, thank you. Does anyone have any comments with regard to that? I would just request that we can get some information. I haven't really read much about it, and I just like to be a little bit more educated. If we can get the information, I'd be happy to read it and understand it better. Okay, can we also at this time just to, if we can have our chief and some of those who are here with, who represents GBI, give us verbal again, because this is not the first time we've had this conversation. I've been ringing this bell since last year, and we can do more about incorporating everyone in the conversation. But again, this is not District 3. This should have been something that sparked an interest among each one of us on this dais, because violent crime is not just in one part of our city. We've seen it everywhere. Commissioner, as Chief Schultz prepares to speak, I just want to highlight that we shared a letter to the commission yesterday detailing our efforts with the GBI program and what the next steps could be. Thank you for that. And before the chief speaks, so just a couple of thoughts on this. I think GBI is probably one of the better programs out there from what I've seen. You know, my questions are somewhat specific about it. Is it implementation assistance only, or is it funding permanent staff? One of the things that I bring up over and over and over again, I'm sure you've all heard me talk about it before, is what kind of performance metrics are we going to be reporting, how frequently, and, again, who's going to be evaluating these outcomes? And, again, whenever I talk about it, and I had this conversation with Yvette yesterday, we talk about outcome measures, not just inputs, not just activity. So what I'd really like to see is what kind of outcomes are we looking at and also what happens if these targets are not being met. So as we think about a program and programmatic funding, again, from what I know of this program, I think it's a very good one. I think it's probably one of the best violence prevention programs that is accessible for communities to use. So I'm generally supportive of it, but I'd like to understand what it is that we are doing, what our expectations of the program are, and what happens if those expectations are not met. So kind of think about that. Thank you, John. That is also, you know, I did notate that those are the outcomes data that I'm looking for as well. So we are in agreement regarding how we're going to see the quarterly reports. So, Chief, please. Okay. Good afternoon, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Commission Chief of Police, Bill Schultz. Yes, to go directly to answer some of those questions. We will be reporting directly via a letter to Commission, and I will be here. Excuse me, Chief. Before you begin, give the Commission, tell us a little bit about the genesis of this project and what its intentions are. Well, actually, what I'll do is I also prepared a statement, just like you, Commissioner, just to make sure I got it all correct. So I'll go ahead and read that, and then I'll answer the specific questions. GBI is a nationally recognized, evidence-based strategy reducing violent crime by focused law enforcement, community leader involvement, and service providers coming to the table for a small number of individuals, offenders, or victims responsible for the majority of serious crimes. The goal, reduce violence through focused accountability, meaningful intervention, and strong community partnerships. So that's the overall basis for the program, and the program is proven, as noted by the commissioners. It's already been proven nationally for many years. This is our first go at it, and already we're seeing very, very strong interest from our community. So, so far, our key accomplishments thus far during phase one, which did complete on July 1st. We've successfully launched our impact patrol team, which is a volunteer ancillary team of officers who are concentrating on intelligence-led, dedicated policing to support our violent crime reduction. And that's already seen results. Those are some of the results you'll get in the quarterly reports. We expanded our investigative capabilities through advanced crime analysis technology, including some software programs. Conducted six community engagement events throughout this past six months. Partnered with John Jay College to deliver the four GBI educational workshops, training more than a hundred police personnel, community leaders, service providers, and residents for their very specific roles in this collaborative effort. And we built a GBI coalition of more than 65 community participants and service providers who have dedicated their time to the program. So now, as of July 2nd, we move into the second phase of the program, which will include conducting direct outreach to individuals, especially in highest risk areas and those who are in highest risk of committing or repeating gun violence. Connecting the individuals with coordinated support services and holding violent offenders accountable, also a very important part of the program. Measuring our success through our reductions in violent crime, our reductions in recidivism is going to be very important. We're going to very much so be looking at firearm-related crimes throughout it as well. And with that, I will take any further questions you may have. And I do have a couple answers for Commissioner Herbst as well. Before you do that, so I have a question. So Commissioner Beasley-Pittman said, you know, it's important that the mayor and the commissioners get more involved. What role would we play in getting involved when it's really a law enforcement initiative that's taking place here? So that's where we want to make sure, and I am very passionate about the fact that I want it to be a community-based initiative with support from the police department. I definitely don't want this to be seen as only a police initiative or program, but what you can do. So as we begin to reach out to your offices, we're going to come to you with the areas, the data-driven areas in your specific districts that we would like to start to focus on. And then we'll plan events in the public, and we'll invite you to attend those events to stand side-by-side with us in addressing them. For instance, this past weekend, we did a crime walk. We're taking the Tim Smith crime walk. It was a crime walk. Very similar to back to what we used to do with Tim. So that's just one initiative. And we do front porch briefings and other such initiatives. So we'll be reaching out to your offices to schedule those. So that's what she was referring to. And if I can elaborate a little bit more as far as what I see as collaboration and cooperation and standing in unity, we represent this city 100%. And if there's anything going on anywhere in the city, we should be there, united, standing and saying, we see this, we are addressing this. Again, we had a peace walk on last Saturday. Again, we had state and federal representation. Representation, I was there, not knowing, not saying that, you know, people weren't there because of their scheduling. But at the same time, people are asking, where's the mayor? Where are the other commissioners if this is a city-driven event? Do they not care about District 3? Those are the words. Well, that would be really unfair since this mayor attended the Juneteenth event in Carter Park and was there talking with neighbors and showing my presence. So it would be very unfair for anyone to say that the mayor doesn't care and doesn't do anything in District 3 when I spent time doing there specifically in District 3. But this is what's being said. Well, Mayor, listen. That's not fair. A lot of things are not fair. Okay, let's put it on the table. Many things are not fair, but they're factual. They're being said. Okay. And perception and what people are experiencing, I have learned, it's not what you say, it's how you make people feel. Yes, you were at Juneteenth. Thank you. We all were there, and we know you were there. But also, that was a celebration. At a time, we are declaring that we have had enough, and enough is enough of violence, and we don't have representation by this dais that is concerning to the community, and it should be concerning to the whole city. Well, let me just say this. You know, I think this commission has been very aggressive in responding to acts of violence, regardless of where they take place in the city. You may recall how that young boy was killed in a spray of fire. That was extremely tragic. The families are still impacted by that, and I commend our police department for finding who the culprit or culprits were. And your mayor had a press conference to bring attention to the community of what happened and ultimately how we were able to achieve what I thought was justice in bringing those people to justice. So, you know, for those that want to demean me or any member of the commission because we don't pay attention to violent crime, okay, I'll admit that I can't be everywhere. But I do try to be as many places as possible, and I have to say that as I look at members of this commission, I think everyone does their best to try to get to as many things as possible, regardless of which district it's in, and we'll just have to do better if that's the perception. Yes, that's the word. And demean is not the intent. This is a call in for all of us to look and see what more we can do. Okay. That's the line. And demean is not the attempt. And I believe that my colleagues, you all know who I am and how I operate. I'm not one who stirs up mess. My goal while I'm here working in this capacity is to see unity across this city. And to be honest, that's not something we have. You can, it's a fact. It's something that we don't have. But it's something we could attain. Okay. And I believe we can do that before 2028. Okay. Commissioner, or Mayor, if I can jump in there. Commissioner of the East Amendment. Yeah. I just want to say thank you. I think this is a very important initiative, and I will pledge to participate and support to the best of my abilities and appreciate, Chief, your work on this. I'm very familiar with the stats and the outcomes of these initiatives, not only in the city, but when you look countrywide at some of the cities that have been very successful, this is one of the key driving forces to really lower violence. And so I'm loving that we're doing this, and I'm all in to support. So thank you. Okay. Anyone else have any responses or comments? I do. I think it's an amazing program, and I think we should definitely move forward with this. I just want to make a comment about process and the way we run our business meetings and when we have conference meetings. You know, we moved our conference meetings to 1 o'clock because we found that we were just getting really backed up. So this is a very important conversation. I think it's a conversation that the public should have a chance to read back up, should be on an agenda. I'm finding that more and more we're doing things either by just referencing letters to the commission under a manager's report or we're just doing things because one of us brings something up at a commissioner's report, and I think that does a real injustice to the community. I think it does an injustice to us because we don't have really a lot of reference. Like, we could have had that statement from the chief. We could have had the statement from Commissioner Beasley-Pittman. We could have had backup. We could have had a really thorough discussion and plan for this accordingly as part of our agenda. But I'm just finding that more and more we're conducting business where no one really knows what's coming. It's not noticed to the public, and it's taking up a long period of time from the meeting. So I'm just saying that going forward, I would just appreciate if we could just streamline the way we do business in terms of how we conduct the meetings and make sure that we have an agenda that has items listed so it's not just happening and people don't even have a clue about it. So, again, this is nothing negative about what I'm hearing today. I think it's wonderful. I think it should be buy-in from all of us. I'm just talking about process and the way we discuss business. That's all. I agree with you, Commissioner, and my goal and the reason why I brought this up was to start the process, not to have a full open discussion about the plan of what we're going to do, but to get the buy-in from the commission so we can have exactly that type of a process. So I'm believing I am following the process, introduction, opening a conversation from us deciding to give directive to city manager to move in a process where we can follow the process at hand. Okay, thank you. Can I kind of weigh in on that? Yeah, go ahead. So that's actually a very good point. So I'm going to try and thread the needle here a little bit. So historically what we've used the conference meeting for is to introduce topics and then say, I would like this to come back at a future conference meeting for a larger discussion. So I think it's kind of in between. So, Pam, the idea of bringing it up that this is something that I want to talk about is great, but I also, along the lines with Commissioner Glassman, say this is not yet appropriate for us to be giving direction to the city manager because I don't think we're necessarily informed or educated enough where the public is. So I think it's somewhere in the middle between the two to say the conference meeting is best used as an opportunity for each of us to bring forward issues that we're concerned about that we would like then to have a future discussion on, a scheduled discussion with the public engaged and the supporting documentation that everybody then has had an opportunity to review and is ready to discuss. So I think it's kind of in the middle. Thank you. Do you have any further matters you'd like to bring up? That's the only matter that I'm bringing up today. And just saying to everyone, thank you for listening to my introduction of the GBI that's already in process. Thank you to our PD who's doing an amazing job already with what's being done. And then my other comment I want to make to all of us, we know that we are in this summer season. I encourage us all, please, please stay hydrated. This is very serious. Please walk with your water bottles if you need to, wear a cap, wear a cap. But please, where we can take care of self, hydrate, hydrate. And thank you for the time, Mayor. Okay, great. Thank you. Commissioner Glassman. I just need to hydrate for a second and then I'm going to be right with you. Hold on one second. Okay, thank you. I feel much better. Thank you. Okay. I was actually thirsty, so it was perfect timing. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Commission. Good afternoon, everyone. It's our last day of school. This is so exciting. June 19th, I had the pleasure of speaking at the Broward Workshop, an excellent discussion. That was basically the Urban Corps. We talked about every issue that you can imagine in terms of what impacts the city, what impacts business, and I thank them for the invitation to speak to that group on the 19th. June 20th, we had a great event. Vice Mayor was there. Mayor was there as we showed to the public the circle of love by the Celine. I want to thank Celine. I want to thank staff. I want to thank anyone that had anything to do with it, everyone that attended. That was a really nice community event, and I think in terms of happening during Pride Month, that was really great. I'm sure the mayor will talk about this a little bit more in his report, but that was a really nice event. So thank you to everyone that had something to do with putting that circle of love together by Sebastian Beach. Really appreciated it. June 22nd, again, I want to thank DSD. Thank you to everyone that had anything to do with the vendors with the Sailboat Bend Master Plan community meeting. As you know, last year in the budget, we had the funding to move forward with the vision plan for Sailboat Bend. Sailboat Bend is our oldest neighborhood in Fort Lauderdale. It is also our only historically designated neighborhood, a residential neighborhood in the city of Fort Lauderdale. And we've moved from the vision plan to now a master plan for that neighborhood. So I'm excited about that work moving forward. Again, thank you to staff for putting that together. And to all of those who gave their input both in person and also virtually. I'm really looking forward to how we are going to be able to make that neighborhood even better than it already is. June 24th, I had the pleasure of attending the Middle River Terrace Neighborhood Association meeting. City manager was there. A great number of staff was there. We covered a lot of topics. It was a really cool area that we were in also called The Space. The business was called The Space off of 13th Street. Again, I wanted to thank everyone for that meeting as well and the opportunity to be with everyone that night. That night also we had the Sailboat Bend Master Plan results were presented. And again, looking forward to that moving forward. June 25th, we convened the District 2 Presidents' Roundtable meeting. We had a really nice lunch together to wish everyone a good summer. I want to thank Colette Satchel for appearing with us and taking time from her busy day to talk about the work that she does. One thing I find when we get all of the presidents together in District 2, it's not a shy bunch, and yet it's a very passionate bunch. And I appreciate that. And we learn so much from each other, and each of those people do so much sharing. And it really is very helpful to see what each of those presidents learns from the other presidents that have gone through very much the same issues. And the sharing of the knowledge that takes place is excellent. We also try to make sure that they get to meet new staff that they haven't met yet to understand what staff does on a daily basis. It was a really nice meeting, and it was a pleasure being with everybody. And, again, really hearing from each of those presidents what's happening in each of those neighborhoods in real time is very helpful to the rest of the group. So I wanted to say thank you. And, again, Colette, thank you so much for being with us that day. That evening, Mayor, you and I attended the Axios launch. Axios, as many of you know, is a news media outlet. They actually have a newsletter and a presence in Miami. This was a launch to actually extend their reach into the cities of Hollywood and Fort Lauderdale. That was a really well-attended meeting and actually very interesting to meet the players that are going to be talking about and reporting on the city of Fort Lauderdale. I found my conversations with these journalists to be very interesting. Many of them felt that, and I know this is going to come as a big surprise to people, that our local newspapers maybe don't always cover everything so positively in the city of Fort Lauderdale, nor do they actually praise a lot of the work that we do as a commission, as a city, all of the neighborhoods. And these folks from Axios seemed to understand that. And that was a joy to have those conversations with them and to hear what it is they wanted to be able to tell to the world about what is happening in both the cities of Hollywood and Fort Lauderdale. So I welcome them to town, and I welcome their knowledge and the work that they're going to do covering our amazing city. Upcoming, again, I wanted to wish everyone a really happy summer recess and a safe summer recess. Just a couple of comments, Mayor, that I wanted to get some answers to from CitySAP, if that's okay. We all did receive a letter that was dated June 26th that was signed jointly by many of our union presidents, the FOP, firefighters, Teamsters, and Federation of Public Employees. I wanted to ask the city manager. I was a little concerned when I read this letter about the procurement process and how long this has been languishing. This is regarding our completion of the Event 330, the Employee Plan Administration, which really seems that it could save a good deal of money for folks. I wanted to just find out if we are going to get to the bottom of why this would take so long and what we are doing about that in terms of moving this a little bit quicker and what the direction was with this, because it just seems that it's just been hanging there way, way too long. Thank you, Commissioner. I'm going to have Glenn Marcos, our procurement director, share some insights. To my knowledge, this solicitation process has been going on since 2024, and I think Glenn can provide some details. As of right now, I believe that staff is currently working with the city attorney to try to bring this to completion, but I'll allow Glenn to talk through some of the milestones over the past two years. Before we get into that, so, Commissioner Glassman, I began raising questions about the 401 and 457 plans. I'm looking at my emails now because I have every one going back to 2006. So I first raised this issue in 2012, 2012. So I can't even count how many administrations this has been a problem. We last had a solicitation to bring in new fund managers back in 2019. We actually did a solicitation to bring on a consultant to develop an RFP to bring on new fund managers. And then the selection committee met, and I think it was in 2020, and rejected all bids, and I don't know why. And so I've been trying to get this back up for consideration. My finance director knows that I regularly harass her about the current status of the 457 plan. So this is, again, I have been working on this issue since 2012. And by the way, so for everybody that says that government moves slowly, this is slow. Glenn, do you want to respond? Yes, sir. Thank you. Glenn Markholz, Chief Procurement Officer, consistent with what the city manager went ahead and shared. Currently, the agreement is with the city attorney's office. We've been working with the city's attorney's office since April. We do have an agenda item ready to be. April of 2012? No, just kidding. No, April of this year. And we're currently, we do have a drafted cam ready to go. So hopefully this item comes before you in August. Help me understand something, Glenn. So this process, this procurement began in January, I believe, of 2025, correct? So let me go back and give you highlights of the timeframes. Going back to July of 2024, the drafting of the scope happened then. That process happened to be approximately a 16-month process. So from July of 2024 to November of 2024, we worked with finance and the finance consultant in drafting the specifications. The RFP was issued and responses received. That was received in November of, I'm sorry, November of 2024. We issued the RFP. Responses were received in January of 2025. That was one and a half months that that occurred. The next phase was the proposal review, responsiveness, review of the firm's responsibility. And then we got together with the evaluation committee to make a recommendation. That process was approximately eight months from January 2025 to September of 2025. Negotiations then occur. Those negotiations were roughly a month between September of 2025 and October. The drafting of the contract was taken upon thereafter. So that drafting of the contract and reviewing of the red line, approximately nine months between October 2025 to June of 2026. So as of right now, going back to what I just said earlier, we are working with the city attorney's office, right now the city attorney's office is working with the firm. There are some exceptions that were taken to the agreement. Terms and conditions are being somewhat spoken to back and forth between the attorneys within the city attorney's office and Corbridge. And that's the current, that's the current status. And I appreciate that. Thank you. I just think that it's just been too long. I, I, and I, I really hope that we're going to be able to expedite whatever's left to do in this process. It just, again, uh, you've mentioned 2024, it's 2026 now. It's like, I, I don't know. I, I mean, this is not my lane. This is your lane. But I, from just watching this and reading about this, it just seems that it's way too long of a process. So the longest process that took place, commissioner, happened outside of procurement. That was the drafting of the scope. Um, that drafting of the scope happened. That was a 16th, a 16 month time spent right there. So that was almost, almost a year and a half. A year and a half to draft a scope. Yes, sir. Okay. And that's something I cannot speak about. Um, we don't draft scopes in the, in the procurement department. That is, um, the end user that's responsible for that. Uh, the procurement starts once we receive a complete, uh, a complete set of, uh, specifications. How, how typical is 16 months for, to draft a scope? Well, it all, it all depends on the, on the actual procurement. Um, it's the level of sophistication. I'm sure that we're dealing with people's money, monies here. So I'm not really equipped to kind of answer that. But understanding the delicate nature of the accounts that we're dealing with here, and we're talking about millions of dollars. I'm sure that it is, uh, critical and vital for us to get the, the scope correct. But I do know that the finance department was working with their consultant in drafting the scope. Okay. Well, again, I'm, I'm hoping that we're going to be able to bring some relief to all of these employees and to be able to move forward in a, you know, an expeditious fashion and a judicious fashion. But again, I, I was just concerned when I read the letter and I said, wow. Um, so hopefully everyone's on top of this now and we'll be able to get to a conclusion. Commissioner, the, uh, the concern is shared. This impacts all employees, not just police and police and fire. No, I understand. Glenn, can I back you up on that? So we paid a consultant to develop the first scope. Why did it take us 16, 16 months? You said to develop another scope. Yes, sir. I don't know the answer to that. Perhaps maybe, I don't know if Linda wants to share. I, I, I didn't realize that we were developing a whole new scope. There was no, we, we literally paid somebody a lot of money to develop the first scope. And commissioner, you, you, you stated 2020. I wasn't here in 2020. Yeah. I think we started it in 2019. The selection committee met in 2020. If I recall, I can pull up my emails and tell you exactly, but that's sort of my recollection. Okay. Yeah. I know. I'm going to defer to Linda knows this is my favorite topic. Like I said, at least, at least every quarter I ask her the same question. Good afternoon, mayor and commissioners. So, um, it, I can tell you that I was here for the whole process. We went through it together. This is our dance. Yes. A hundred percent. Um, so the first RFP process to develop the scope fell apart. We ended up canceling the contract. What started the glass, the window that Glenn is talking about for a 16 month window was not developing the scope was to hire a new consultant, but as a contract we had originally, um, was not good anymore. So we had to do a new RFP to bring on a new consultant. The consultant who won it the first time did not win it the second time. So the second person who we awarded it to then developed the scope. So we had to go through the process of selecting a vendor and then redefining the scope. So what was wrong with the scope the first time? I, I, I, I remember the scope of work the first time. It was pretty, actually it was overly exhaustive was the problem. It was, um, I think the first time I fell apart because of the fact that the RFP, when we went on the streets, didn't allow for us to select certain type of investments. And I remember the unions like it is with this particular RFP. We have a member of the, the selection committee includes a member of every union, every bargaining unit, and one person from general employees. And so the bargaining unit did not feel at that time, the evaluation committee did not feel that the scope was properly drafted. And so we weren't ready for award. So when we went through the process again of selecting a new vendor and we worked with the unions again to make sure the scope covered everything when you're dealing with that type of thing where you have so many different groups with opinions, the, the drafting of it sometimes take a little longer. So it turned basically into a camel. It was a design by a committee. Right. It's a horse design by a committee. We decided by a committee. We want to make sure everybody's concerns were represented since the first time when we did it on our own, they had issues with how it was drafted. Right. And you may recall, I had issues with the selection committee at the time. I know. I berated them quite a bit. I remember. All right. Yeah. Okay. So no, I think it was a much thorough process this time, which, which made it a little elongated, unfortunately. Okay. Thank you. Mm-hmm. I really want this done before I leave. Again, I've been working on it since 2012. I've won it since 2020. I'm trying to get there. I'm with you. It affects everybody, including myself. And I only have one more item, Mayor. Okay. Thank you. And I just would like to know, I know that we've been waiting for a long time for the mural to begin in Peter Feldman Park. And we did get a letter to the commission that said it was supposed to... This is on the pump station wall. Yes, correct. And it was supposed to begin, I think the latest was June 30th. So can someone tell me if the artist did start on June 30th? I was showing renderings that it was done. No, no. It's still not done? It wasn't started. We previously shared renderings of the mural applied to the pump station wall, but that work had not started at that time. I think there's preparation work going on at this moment to make sure that the wall will receive the paint. And so I think there's cleaning, scraping, and some prep work. But I just want to know for sure, because the last notice that we got said that he was going to begin on June 30th. So I just want to know, that was like two days ago, three days ago, did he begin on June 30th? This has been delayed for years. Brad? Our assistant director of community services is coming forward. It's funny how graffiti artists don't seem to have to prepare the service, and their projects stay there forever. What are your thoughts? What's happening? Good afternoon, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Commissioner, City Manager. The artist is here in the city of Fort Lauderdale and has begun the prep work. Of course, due to the rain, it has not progressed very far, but he is on site daily trying to get the work started. Great. Excellent. Thank you. So what's the timetable? I think it said three weeks, four weeks? It's three weeks. Yeah. Okay. It should be very lovely when it's finished. It's nice. We've seen all the drawings, and it looks nice. So I'm happy to hear that he's here. He's here, returned from Italy and ready to go and prepping. It's good news. It's good news. This is a wall, not a ceiling. Well, you never know. One thing can lead to another. Okay. I'm going to just make sure that he stays hydrated. Thank you. In the letter to the commission, we shared four to six weeks. Three weeks is ideal, but depending on the weather, we just wanted to give some cushion. No. That's good news. Thank you very much. And that's it for me, Mayor. Thank you. Okay. Vice Mayor. Thank you, Mayor. First topic is I wanted to touch on temporary protected status, which is a humanitarian immigration program used when a country's in turmoil and to allow it to nationals that are in other places to stay, and we have, there's a couple, there's a House bill that's looking at supporting and allowing for extended temporary protected status for Haitian nationals, which, as you all know, there's a significant turmoil in Haiti, and we have many members of our community who work here, live here, who are protected by TPS. Well, do we have the authority to intervene with the federal directives in this regard? I'd like to know that question, because we have a huge Haitian community in our city, and I don't know if we have the authority, or are we circumvented from getting involved in that? Good afternoon, Mayor, Commissioners, Toronto Post, Human Resources Director. What we have the ability... Love the bow tie. Yeah, good looking. It's my P chart, my 4th of July bow tie. It's so 4th of July. I'm sorry. What we do have authority for is to verify the work authorization, which is impacted by the ability to reside within the United States. So we've been keeping a very close eye on the certifications of those who are of Haitian-born citizenship that are residing in the United States that are working for the city. We have had to take action on one employee whose work authorization expired on the 30th of June. So that person, unfortunately, had to end their employment with the city. They were separated. They do have the ability to return to employment if their paperwork is updated, and they regain their work authorization. Then we have two other employees, one full-time, one part-time, who do have work authorization, but they are also impacted by the TPS status. And the TPS status, we learned at close to 4 o'clock yesterday, was extended to July 10th. So they are able to continue working until the 10th, at which time we'll wait and hear from the federal government as to whether they will extend it again or if they will have to go into an unpaid status pending the resolution of their immigration status. Thank you, Jerome. So I think, Mayor, we could, what I'm asking is if there's interest to support a resolution or statement of support for extending TPS for the Haitian nationals, and that could be, we could send that to members of Congress, we could send that to Department of Homeland Security just as a statement. I don't know, I'm just concerned about interfering with the federal prerogative on this and whether or not decisions have already been made. What, didn't the Supreme Court recently rule about temporary protective status? Yes, it did. So where does that leave cities in getting involved in something like this? Do you have any thoughts on this, Sherry? Mayor, this is clearly a federal issue. Yeah. So there isn't much the city could do in that regard. And even if we were to send a resolution to our Congress people, isn't that an executive branch decision? I'm trying to figure out the different... I don't know if that would be helpful, and then there's considerations about jumping into that at this juncture anyway. I don't want to have a fight with the federal government. I'm not going to win. We're not going to win. But I do am very concerned about the situation in which a lot of our folks who have been living here for months or years are now facing. You know, people from Nicaragua, Haiti, a lot of affected countries are impacted, and they're part of our community. They've been part of our community for a very, very long time. And upstanding individuals, you know, they have jobs, they go to church, they're part of our community. But despite our sympathies, I don't know, Vice Mayor, what it is that we can do to change the executive policy on this. I'm just concerned about backlash from the federal government. That's all. Okay. I mean, other cities have just supported these bills. Have they? Have they? That's all right, Mayor. We'll move on. I have a comment. I have a comment with that. Um, when we decided to stand as a commission to, um, go against the state government regarding the opportunities where our streets are paid representing flags, I stood with that because I believe that was something worth fighting for. And this is worth fighting for. This is human life opportunity. Even though we may not have an opportunity to win, I don't think it will be, um, detrimental if we make a statement. I understand. So with that part of it. But has it already been decided is my question. Has the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has ruled, Mayor. Yes. And, and the Supreme Court's ruled and Congress is considering legislation. Are they? Yes. Right now. So now, so there is a, there is a place for us there. Okay. So, um, uh, I would personally support a resolution encouraging our members of Congress in the, uh, in both the House and the Senate to, um, to allow, you know, to be, I don't know what, I don't know what the resolution is going to say. Did you want to propose that at some future time? We could, yeah, Mayor, exactly. I think maybe we can, we can look at what other municipalities have done. Yeah. What members of Congress, I'm, I'm sure there are some members of Congress that, that are supporting it that we're familiar with. So kind of get some of the language. It's still an opportunity. Okay. Yes, Mayor. So if there's still an opportunity, I think it makes sense. Um, um, because, you know, these folks are very much a part of our community and I'd hate to see their, um, uh, their place in our community compromised because of, uh, uh, for, you know, for, you know, when they go back to their own countries, they, they came here for a reason. They came here to, to, uh, get away from violence and to get, get away from conditions that were insufferable in the lands that they, that they escaped from. So, um, whatever we can do to encourage Congress to try to come up with a more understanding and sympathetic approach to those that are here on temporary status, I think we should be able to do that. I agree with you. Thank you, Mayor. So if you can come up with something and then give it to, uh, our, give it to our city attorney and try to put together some kind of resolution for, I guess it's going to have to wait till August. That's right. Is that right? It would come up to recess anyway. They're not. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much. City manager. If I could just share, I know Jerome mentioned three employees, but we also have five additional employees, uh, with a work authorization that will expire years out, but just want to put it on the radar, uh, that in total, we have about eight employees that may be impacted. Okay. Thank you, city manager. Thank you, Jerome. Thank you, mayor. Next topic. Um, something I've been learning a little bit more about, which is, um, uh, type of glass type of building glass that is bird safe, mayor. And this is, uh, as, as you may know, uh, many birds hit glass in buildings, uh, believing it's not there and so forth. And so there's some real, uh, opportunity to have glass that has some minor adjustments to it to, uh, be termed what's called bird safe glass. And this is something neighbors have brought up to me. And so I just want to see if that's something we could explore as we think about city buildings, new city buildings. Um, so, all right. So like that, there are folks who, who are advocates in this regard who have approached me over the years, um, and have indicated that, you know, dozens of birds are dying every day or every week. Um, there's no evidence of that, but, um, um, we don't see birds lying on the ground everywhere, but I do understand, uh, the possibility that, uh, protecting, uh, wildlife, uh, um, such as birds from smashing into buildings because they see their reflection and there is a coding that can be applied. I don't know what the cost of that coding is. Um, but we could explore it. Okay. Especially if we're looking to build a new city hall, then certainly that's something we can consider. I don't know what the extra costs would be, but, um, but, you know, trying to, maintain a balance in our environment and trying to respect wildlife in our community. Um, you know, it's, um, uh, at the time I was first approached, we weren't building anything, but, um, uh, and it's not something we can impose on private developers, but we can, any, any municipal buildings, it's something we can, we should consider. I agree. Great. Thanks. Chris Cooper, you and I have talked about that. Is that sufficient kind of guidance or feedback? Okay, great. Thank you, mayor. That's all I have. Thank you. Okay, great. Thank you. I just have a couple of things. Um, first of all, I want to compliment our city staff, um, and, um, uh, starting with, uh, Daphne Samville and our lobbyists and our manager's office and everybody who's involved in advocating for the state allocations that we applied for this, um, legislative session. Um, I do not recall a year in which we have received so much of what we've asked for. So, uh, uh, uh, city manager, I want to thank you. So, uh, city manager, I want to thank you. I want to thank everyone who's involved with that. I want to thank, again, our lobbyists who were, um, uh, really fighting for us. I want to thank Chip Lamarca, our state representative, who, um, was up there advocating for a number of financial obligations. Now, in the Sun Sentinel today, for those that still read it, I know you don't, but, uh, uh, uh, for those of us that still read it, um, all we heard was negativity. All it talked about was how, uh, the governor vetoed this and vetoed that. But they don't talk about all the things that he did not veto and all the, um, the grant money that we, that will help advance so many of the projects in our city. Uh, so I want to thank the governor and I want to thank, uh, the legislature and I want to thank all those involved in making that happen. Um, and, uh, and I appreciate these, uh, city attorney, uh, Sherry McCartney for bringing to a resolution our dispute with FDOT regarding street markings. And having brought that to, I feel, a win-win situation, which was, I think, a precursor before we would have ever seen a positive result. But we, we made it, we made it work. We, our team, made it work. And I want to thank you and everybody for having accomplished that. And now our city can continue to move forward with a lot of the projects that we had, that we still have planned. Um, I also want to thank the, uh, I understand five members of our fire department, uh, were deployed. To Venezuela to help assist in the, uh, urban, in the rescue efforts for the, the two major earthquakes that took place there. For those of you who saw the images, uh, either in print or on television, um, uh, it's just unbelievable. The amount of devastation that took place there and the hundreds of people that have died as a result, uh, whether or not, uh, you know, they'll recover someday, but how many years it's going to take to get people back to where they were. Uh, and I want to thank, uh, our fire chief for, uh, allowing that to happen. And thank you, uh, Chief Golan for participating in that rescue effort. We really appreciate it. And, uh, it shows a tremendous amount of honor that we as a city, uh, can, can share, uh, in knowing that our, uh, our members of the fire department were there to help others. Um, also I want to mention, uh, July 28th, uh, national night out. It's going to be at 4 p.m. at Carter Park. We do this every year. Uh, the, the goal here is to bring attention, uh, to the importance of crime prevention. Uh, and I hope everyone from the city will take a, take time out of their, their schedules. It's at 4 o'clock p.m. Begins at 4 o'clock. It continues for several hours and it brings the neighbors together along with our, uh, enforcement police department to get to know one another. Uh, not to be afraid of police department, but to know that members of our police department are there to protect you and to ensure your safety and your day-to-day life. So again, it's July 28th, national night out. Begins at 4 p.m. at Carter Park, but it will also continue through the early evening. Uh, and of course we have our 4th of July event, uh, and, uh, that begins at 12 noon on Fort Lauderdale Beach and continues through 9 15, I think it is, when we have both our fireworks and our drone show. So very excited about, uh, what we're able to do there. Uh, I want to thank everybody on city staff who was able to pull together that event and also, um, and I don't know who's the fellow that's going to be singing that Walker Hayes. Right. I forgot. I'm sorry. Yeah. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Um, and, uh, and looking forward to, uh, his entertaining us, uh, that, that afternoon and evening. What time is he coming on? Do we know? Is it? I believe it's about 7 30. Is it 7 30? Yes. 7 30. Okay. And, uh, uh, uh, so again, city of Fort Lauderdale stepping up and, uh, showing its great appreciation for the, uh, for the 4th of July. And of course this year is especially notable because it's our 250th anniversary. Um, I confess, I remember the 200th anniversary. I was living, uh, in New England at the time. I think I, I saw the tall ships coming to Newport that year. I was 10 there. Yeah. Thanks. Yeah. He was here for the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Thank you. Thank you. The reenactment. Yeah. I loved your wig. Yeah. Thank you. It's in my closet. Thank you. So, uh, anyway, looking forward to Saturday night. Pray that it doesn't rain. So, uh, uh, yeah, no, but, uh, uh, we're looking forward to it and, uh, uh, and I hope everyone from the community comes, uh, to Fort Lauderdale beach, get there early and, uh, bring the family. It's going to be a great time for everyone in our community and that's it. So, uh, we can now begin our afternoon discussion on, uh, Wait, Mayor, I have comments. Yes. I wanted, I was going to get to you. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. City manager's report. M MGR one. Yes. Please proceed. Thank you, Mayor. I just want to highlight our finance department. Uh, this week we were able to submit our annual comprehensive financial report to the state timely, and this is a significant accomplishment made possible, not only by our director of finance, Ms. Linda short and her team, but this truly is a reflection of the commitment of the city commission in last year's budget. We requested two additional accountants to support that department, and that has helped tremendously with being able to, uh, submit our report on time. We want to thank our auditors, but just truly, we appreciate the support in doing so we haven't been timely since the 2021 report, and I'm just really proud of Ms. Short and the entire finance team. Uh, in addition, you mentioned, uh, supporting Venezuela and the earthquake relief efforts, as we did with Hurricane Melissa with Jamaica and, uh, Cuba. We are collecting donations in partnership with Food for the Poor. We have several donation sites, uh, at fire stations throughout the city, and so we want to make sure that we're promoting that to our neighbors and stakeholders. We'd love to get as much support for that program as possible. If someone wants to donate money, is there a, uh, website or something? Is it through the American Red Cross? Do you know any, do you have any information on that? Food for the Poor, which is a non-profit, will accept financial donations as well. Okay, foodforthepoor.com. Let's be careful about soliciting from the dais. Well, I know that. Well, just, it's informational. I know that's what you... Yes, thank you so much. And that concludes my report. That concludes your report? Okay. Um, well, as part of your report, you, uh, you have, uh, three pages of, uh, status on the, on the follow-up items that the commission has requested. So, does anyone have any questions of the manager with regard to the attachment to her report? If not, I mean, you can always meet with her separately and discuss this, but I just want to make sure that, uh, if there's anything that's particularly salient that, uh, you were able to bring it up now. Okay, so, um, city attorney, do you have a report? No, Mayor, I do not. Okay, thank you. All right, so moving on to business one, this is a city hall update, uh, project history, building evaluations, revised interim agreement, and financial overview. City manager. We have three people who signed up to speak, and I assume these are from Jacobs, right? There you are. This isn't church. You don't sit in the back of the room. Thank you very much. Jonathan, Kevin, and David all signed up to speak. Thank you very much, Mayor. 212 days ago, on December 2nd, the city commission asked staff to negotiate an interim agreement for development of a city hall. 140 days later, on April 21st, the city commission also asked staff to explore the feasibility of three existing sites and buildings that could house our city hall. We're now 72 days later since that time, and we're here to share not only our findings, but also the progress on the interim agreement since the last time it was on the agenda. As promised, appraisals have been completed. Staff has provided a detailed list of funding mechanisms to support a city hall project, whether new or renovation. That funding approach also contemplates property tax reform, should it be approved by voters. We wanted to ensure that we could outline a roadmap, no matter what outcome and no matter what decision by the city commission would be revealed to us. Staff has completed every single task that the commission has given us. It has taken a significant team. We have outside counsel, we have our owner's rep, we have appraisers. Of course, we have been working diligently with the developer, and today we want to ensure that we lay out all of the due diligence and all of the efforts to bring to the commission viable options to move forward with the city hall project. So, our guiding principles, as established by the infrastructure task force. Before you, before you, yeah. They're not showing on the screen. They're not showing on these screens. Okay, there we go. The commission asked that we incorporate the guiding principles in our assessment of the opportunities for the city hall site. I just wanted to remind the commission, as well as our viewers, as to what those guiding principles were. Accessibility and security, a major priority. History and arts, cost effectiveness, a site that's welcoming and engaging, functional and efficient, amenable for the public and for staff, resilient and innovative. All of these factors were contemplated in reviewing not only the opportunity for a new city hall through a new build, but also the existing buildings based on any potential renovation. This slide provides a snapshot of our review of those existing buildings. Each building was appraised by two independent appraisers, and you see the average appraisal as is. The renovation costs reflect a swing of about 30% below and up to 50% above, and it contemplates renovations that would bring the buildings more in line with a new build project. The total estimate is provided, as well, including the annual impact. In addition, we have been working diligently. Can you back up a second? Yes, sure. Where it says annual impact, does that also include operation and maintenance on a yearly basis? It does not, and there's a little footnote at the bottom of that slide. It does not include operations and maintenance. Right. I just want to point that out. Okay, thank you. The interim agreement has changed significantly since April 21st. We heard the feedback from the commission, and we sat down with the developer, and we began to contemplate what we could do to make the project more viable and more acceptable to the commission. To deliver the project, we have now reduced by about $50 million the cost to bring that project to life. Our annual impact has reduced from $24.1 million to $15.8 million, which reflects an $8.3 million decrease. But that includes operation and maintenance. Correct. Right? Correct. What is the number for operation and maintenance for the other buildings? Do we have that number set aside? We have some estimates, and we tried to back into it based on the square footage of each building. As you know, if there is a renovation that is significant, the likelihood that operations and maintenance would be significantly high, I think that that is rather unlikely. However, as those buildings get older, those costs may go up. So what we tried to do is take a cost per square foot approach for each building and estimate what the operations and maintenance costs would be. We have Jacobs available, our owner's rep. They will be speaking about that in greater detail. We also have Quentin Pugh, our assistant city manager, who will go into those details as well. Okay. Thank you. On April 21st, the interim agreement included developer equity. That developer equity is no longer a part of the project. There is no developer fee as part of the project. The developer has also been able to do a redesign of the project and has provided two options, option B and C, which is a part of the agenda package. And those design options include a building that is 215,000 square feet. We're also looking at milestone payments should the city commission decide to move forward with the interim agreement. All in all, our team has worked to be responsive to the requests of the commission. We have internalized the feedback. And our hope is that after going through this presentation, that the city commission may provide direction to us to move this project forward. Several members of our team will be presenting today. Yvette Matthews, assistant city manager, she will open with a brief overview of the project history. And I know it's a long history, and she will go through it as quickly as she can. Quentin Pugh and Jacobs will go through the building due diligence. We have assistant city manager Ben Rogers, who will talk about some of the terms of the interim agreement. We also have Eric Singer, outside counsel with Bills and Sundberg, who has been with us for the entirety of this project negotiation. We will then close with assistant city manager Matthews with a discussion on the budget approach for the project. There are various opportunities for the commission to weigh in on. And all of these are subject to your feedback as we contemplate developing the fiscal year 2027 budget and as we look ahead to fiscal year 2028 and 2029. So I'm going to turn it over to Ms. Matthews at this time. Thank you, city manager. As the city manager mentioned, the city conducted a very robust public outreach engagement effort before embarking on creating a vision for the new city hall. The city conducted five workshops, each with a focus on a different topic across the city in conjunction with the infrastructure task force. The feedback is included in this slide, which shows the efforts that were put in. And as you can see, the number one priority was accessibility. And that came from both the infrastructure task force as well as the public outreach efforts that were completed. It was also reflected in our neighbor survey results. The city also had an opportunity to engage a leadership cohort from the Urban Land Institute, which focused on turning the city hall into a central meeting place for our local government. This is a timeline of those public outreach efforts, which started in 2023 and continued through 2024. In May of 2025, the city received an unsolicited proposal for the city hall project, which led us to the conversations that we're having today. In 2026, really, this project had tremendous effort and progress. And as you can see, we're now here in July 2020 or June 2026, July 2026 in preparation for a decision by the city commission. With that, I'll turn it over to Quentin Pugh, who will talk about the appraisals that were received on the project. Thank you, Ms. Matthews. Good afternoon, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Commissioners. Quentin Pugh, Assistant City Manager. City staff coordinated both building appraisals and condition assessments for three existing buildings. The purpose of this effort is to provide the commission with two key pieces of information, each building's estimated open market value based on independent appraisals, an evaluation on each building's current condition, suitability for city hall reuse, and rough order costs for major improvements based on identified deficiencies by Jacobs Project Management. Together, this information is intended to help the city commission evaluate whether any of the following buildings could serve as a viable alternative to new construction. Due diligence was conducted on the following three buildings. The Ivy Tower 101 is approximately 231,000 square feet and consists of two office buildings. The main tower is 19 stories and was constructed in 2001. Above an eight-level parking garage. The property also includes an adjacent six-story mid-rise office building, known as the Center, which was constructed in 1987. One East Broward building is a 19-story tower constructed in 1983 with roughly 350,000 square feet of space. The building is also connected by a pedestrian bridge to the city-owned parking garage. The federal courthouse was constructed in 1978 and is a four-story building with roughly 170,000 square feet of space. The city used two independent appraisal firms, Callaway & Price and Walter Duke & Partners. This was done in accordance with Florida law, which requires two independent appraisals when a municipality is considering acquisition of a property valued at more than $500,000. Both firms have extensive experience in commercial and real estate valuation, including complex office and institutional properties. Representatives from both firms are here today and available to respond to any questions from the city commission. Both appraisal firms use standard real estate valuation methods, including comparable sales, income potential, lease information, market rents, and operating costs. They looked at what similar properties are selling for and what income the buildings could reasonably generate. The far right column shows the average appraised value for each building, approximately $69.5 million for Tower 101, $80.5 million for One East Broward, and $28.3 million for the federal courthouse, which value rests on the sales comparison approach only. This next slide puts the asking price next to the appraised values. The independent appraisals tell us what each building is estimated to be worth in today's market. It also established an important valuation baseline to inform any future negotiations. For Tower 101, the asking price is approximately $16.5 million higher than the average appraised value. For One East Broward, the gap is larger, roughly $42 million above the average appraised value. Acquisition of the federal courthouse will run through a different process and not a private listing. Pivoting from property valuation to condition, under task order number four, Jacobs Project Management conducted a phase one assessment of all three buildings. In summary, their tasks were to perform a high-level review of each building's ability to support city hall functions, including a commission chambers, assess each building's current condition, including its major building systems, and complete a structural evaluation, prepare near-term and life cycle cost analyses, and develop a database comparison to inform the city's build versus buy-and-renovate decision. I will now turn it over to Kevin Regalato, principal architect with Jacobs Management, to walk through their findings. Also joining him from Jacobs is David Feet, senior project manager, and Jonathan Jordan, project engineer and business leader. Quentin, before you leave, can I just ask you one question? Yes, sir. When did Ivy, I think that was the first time someone reached out to us about selling a building to us. Do you remember when that was exactly? I wasn't here around that time. I don't have the exact month, but I believe it was sometime in summer 2025 that they may have reached out. I think Ben Rogers could speak to that. Good afternoon, Commissioner Ben Rogers, Assistant City Manager. Commissioner Glassman, yeah, it was sometime in the summer of 2025 when we were talking about our lease extensions and what the future city needs are for the space. Summer of 2025. Okay, thank you. And also just one last question for you while you're there. Thank you, Ben. So at the last commission meeting, I asked about why we're considering the development team we selected in conjunction with two buildings that approached us to sell their buildings when the development team had to pay the $25,000. The two buildings did not, and I think there was consensus among the commission to go back and say, yes, you should be paying that $25,000. So where are we with the two buildings paying that $25,000 to have that skin in the game and be considered on this equal level as the development team that we're moving forward with? So we met with representatives from both buildings last week to speak about that. They were open and amenable to submitting the $25,000. Since that time, we submitted invoices to them and payment instructions. To our understanding, both of them are going to be making the payment, but to date, we have not received any. Was there a due date on that invoice, or was it just left open-ended in terms of an invoice? I think that it's been more in real time, Commissioner. So the one is process the payment now. They've committed to make the payment. The other one was going to be dropping it off either yesterday or today, but I don't believe we received it at this point. Okay. Thank you, Ben. I'll now turn it over to Kevin Regalado from Jacobs Project Management. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner, for letting us speak to you today and give you a brief synopsis of the report and kind of our findings throughout the process. Our assessment and methodology, the limitations we had, our standard approach was a non-invasive assessment based on ACME 2018. That was the main project. In May, we were out on the site. We had about six weeks to conduct the site visits and put the report together. This phase one was just a screening of each of the three properties and not so much an in-depth diagnosis of each of the facilities. It was more to inform the commission whether the direction was to build a new facility or purchase one of these three facilities and renovate. The cost estimates that you're going to see later on in the presentation were based on a Class 5 ECE recommendation for the feasibility level, and it has a range of a plus 50 and a minus 30. And, again, all the numbers you're going to see include all soft costs, social costs, and markups as well. I want to thank both two of the three facilities and their team for providing us all the information. The one that would not get too much information just because it's an operating courthouse, and due to security reasons, we're unable to provide us a lot of information as far as plans and information, but we did have a walkthrough of the entire facility with them. We'll be going over the three different projects. I just wanted to make sure that this is the same format for all three. This will be a quick rundown. The first column, the system condition, this kind of gives you an idea of the main systems, the structure, envelope, MEP systems, FirelightSafe.com, and site flood, the prone to site and flooding for each of the sites. Red being it's probably not as good, green is really good, and the yellow is kind of in the middle. So that's kind of the color coding. You'll see that, and you'll see that throughout the rest of the presentation with the matrices that we're going to show. Strengths and opportunities, we'll talk about key considerations for each of the three, and then the suitability for City Hall for each one of these three. The first one we're going to talk about a little bit is the Tower 101. We did look at the strengths and opportunities for this one. The first one, durability, it's a concrete frame structure, concrete slabs as well on each of the buildings. This one's comprised of two, a tower and a smaller building just to the east. The tall tower, the skin on that building is all precast with glazing, and then the smaller building is more of an EFIS component system with steel framing on the exterior and glazing as well. It has a large garage podium. That's the only one of the three that has a really large garage component, and this one's good because it has about 423 spaces, and that will be in addition to the existing parking garage that's county-owned just to the west of it. 630 staff is more than ample space to accommodate, and as well it's a compact in downtown just like the other two buildings are. Key considerations for this one was the glazing on the exterior. We need to be replaced as far as the windows on the tower and then on the small building. It will be the entire skin just because of the year that it was built back in the early to mid-'80s. Can I stop you right there because I read through all this, and you probably heard the comments that I made to staff yesterday. Why do we have to replace the windows? And by the way, these windows made it through Wilma and Katrina and every other Heather Kane when all the windows in the school board's Crystal Palace blew out. I happened to move here in 06, and I used to look at them every day from my building over there. Nothing happened over here. So tell me why we've got to replace windows that are perfectly good. In my house, I don't rip stuff out until it fails. I don't just come along and, like, replace my roof 10 years into a 30-year roof. I don't rip out perfectly good windows and put in new windows until the insurance company tells me they're not going to insure because they're not, you know, hurricane-proof. So I reject the entire premise of this entire study. I'm not faulting the work you did. I'm faulting the underlying premise that says we have to do a study about how we bring a 20-year-old building up to brand-new, you know, Cat 5 status. That was not the direction that I heard from the commission. So tell me why we're replacing windows that are perfectly good. Commissioner Hurst, what about bird glass, though? You know that's a very good point. Well, I just want to bring that up. I think that's absolutely a very good point. All right, thank you. I can't live with the thought of birds dying on a daily basis all around the city. I just needed to mention that. Thank you. And by the way, bird glass adds about 10% to the cost, especially with an all-glass building. So if we're building an all-glass building, adding bird-friendly glass is a horrible idea. Unless we only do the first three floors, which is what they do in New York City. They only put bird glass at the height of trees. I've looked into bird glass before. Thank you. Thanks for the comments on bird glass. Appreciate it. And, you know, part of what we do here is we represent the people of Fort Lauderdale. And when they come to ideas, with ideas to us, like bird glass, are there initiatives that are fair and reasonable and worthy of consideration? I think it's appropriate to consider it, have a discussion, and, you know, act accordingly. So appreciate the bringing up bird glass, and glad we're continuing to look into bird glass as an option. Thank you. Go ahead, Kevin. Sorry. Go ahead with your response to Commissioner Herbst. No, so the building was, especially the small building, was built in the mid-'80s, just before the Florida Building Code came into effect, and the wind requirements, and all the, you know, the pressures and everything else. My first office in 2006, by the way, was in the small building on the third floor. Very familiar. You want to fix that one up? Go for it. So the idea is always to bring the building up to code, especially with the Florida Building Code, and we'll get into a little bit of that in another slide. If you renovate more than 50% of the building, then you have to bring the whole building up to code. Stop right there. If you renovate more than 50% of the building. So where are we renovating more than 50% of the building is my starting point. If we're not ripping out the windows and all this other stuff, we're not renovating more than 50% of the building. And the way we're doing it, the way we look at the assessment, the way we're tasked to do is to look at the building, and both buildings, right, in this case they're combined, small building and the tower, and looking at the floor plates, each of the floor plates, whether it's, in this case, in the small building case, that's where the county commissioners, the commission will be at. So that, they were doing some major renovations to the first two floors. And the upper floors, the idea is to bring in new restrooms because they don't need code, bring up to code, and then go ahead and to the current code. So my office is in that building and has been for the last 15 years. I haven't noticed a problem with the bathrooms. So what's the bathroom issue? The bathroom issue is that you have a city commission, you have an assembly use, so the number of fixtures are a lot more that you need to provide for the chambers. So you have to provide more restrooms. Throughout the entire tower? Throughout the ground floor and wherever the public is going to be. Okay. So if we keep the public out of the rest of the building, then I don't need to worry about upgrading the bathrooms? Some of them meet code and some of them don't. So depending on what floor you're in, we need to go in and provide upgrades to meet the current code. So if we don't put a commission chamber in there, we don't have any of these problems. If we continue to use the rather overpriced community center at the new police station, and by the way, I don't know why we have a community center and a police station, but that's a whole other question. But if we use the community center that's going to be a police station that we're going to be occupying for the next couple of years, then we don't need to build chambers in the building. Is that an accurate statement? No, that's not. Yeah, we weren't. No, I'm not asking you, Mayor. Thank you. I don't need support. I'm asking the professionals. Yeah, that wasn't part of our task. Okay. I'm not sure what the task was because it's certainly the task that you guys executed, and this is, again, my question zero here. It doesn't sound like the task that we discussed up here at the commission. So go ahead. I'll let you continue. Yeah, and I'll keep peppering you with more stuff as we go along. I like doing that, so go ahead. And, Commissioner, if I could jump in there. Yeah, I was at the police station this morning, actually, in the community room, and this is going to serve us well as a commission chamber in the short term, definitely. And I think it's worthy of consideration as we explore all options, which is what we should do for the people of Fort Lauderdale, explore options, to consider that that could be a commission chamber as we think about these possibilities. And, Kevin, so as you did this analysis, the totality of the renovations, the totality of renovations you're suggesting are required to bring it to a like-new standard. Is that right? A like-new standard to meet the current code to meet city hall requirements, a typical city hall requirements for all the amenities that it should have at the city hall. So does code require us, when we buy a building, to immediately move everything up to set it by code? No. If you don't do any work on it, you bought it, and you could use it. So we could buy it, use it, use it. Depending on the use, right? Depending on the use. And if you want different amenities or if you don't want amenities within your city hall. Yep. Correct. So we use it right now, for example, a couple of these buildings as office spaces, my offices. Which is nice. Right. So we have not required any significant upgrades to the building. And why have we not needed to do upgrades? Because it's an existing space use for office space, for that use that you're currently using it. Great. So once you bring in different amenities, public space, public functions, you have the submission chambers, the really big one in this case. Sure. Then those trigger different upgrade requirements. Sure. So I have public functions in and around my office space right now. Mm-hmm. Right? So I have public meetings. That's fine. I have large HOA gatherings. We do a host of things in those existing buildings without bringing it up to code. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And that's fine in your installation. That's fine. Because that's all accessory use to an office building. It's all accessory uses. Okay. The only thing that would not be accessory use, everything we're talking about is. The only thing that would trigger, it would be the commission chambers. The commission chambers. And that's why on some of the buildings you're probably have been seeing being presented to you from the developers, they usually have a separate little building or a separate little area for the commission chambers because they want to separate that from the tower. Yep. Because it's two totally different requirements. Yep. So in this case, you know, we do have the, with Tower 101, we have a little building that we call the little building on the east side that we could do that function. Yep. And the tower could potentially stay the same. Great. So, and I think that's an important point. So in other words, if I'm hearing you right, continuing to use either 1 East Broward or 101 in the current use as we use it, we can continue with operating as we're operating without massive renovations. If you're using it for office space, that's correct. Which is what we're doing right now. And you could live with the way it's all laid out. Yep. And if it meets your current standards and your requirements, then yes. Okay. Great. If we wanted to put a commission chamber in one of those buildings within, then that would possibly change or require this $160 million renovation of totality. However, if I heard you just right, if, for example, in Tower 101, Tower 101 is actually two buildings, right? That's correct. So there's the smaller building. So if we wanted, we could renovate that smaller building to create a commission chamber. Mm-hmm. Is that fair? Mm-hmm. And not have the exorbitant $160 million renovation. It would just be a much smaller dollar amount renovation to the much smaller building. Mm-hmm. Is that fair? Yeah. David, please. David, me. Yeah, come on up. Speak up. Speak in the microphone. David Viet. I'm the project manager who was involved with the project as well. General contractor, certified construction manager. In addition to the commission chambers, the scope that we considered was as you are moving in your various departments and looking at adjacencies between the various departments, what that might mean on a floor-by-floor basis as far as a renovation. And if you need to go in and take an office space that is currently all individual small offices and want to make an open office space to fit your program, that also counts towards your 50%. And I just wanted to make sure you were aware of that. Yeah. Thank you. That helps, David. Appreciate it. And where are you – and Vice Mayor, where are you getting $160 million in renovations? I've never seen that number anywhere. Yeah. Let's see here. I'm going to page – let me go up there. So I'm looking at page – let's see. It's page 4. Maybe if you want to bring that up, Quinn, if you're able to – Actually, I see it on page 30. Page 4. Page 30. We'll go to – $157.9 million to renovate Tower 101. Okay. So, yeah, but if you go to page 4 because I think that's a little easier. Quinn, please. Thank you. Just it sums it up. So here's what I'm looking at, Mayor. There's – for Tower 101, their total estimated renovation, 157.9. So that's what I'm looking at, their suggestion. Okay. Great. Thanks. And then the other option, if I heard you right, was you could continue to use Tower 101 or 1 each per hour in its existing office space use, negating the need to have massive renovations, and you could use – for example, we could build a commission chamber on the land that is now where the previous city commission city hall was, right? So you could build, in other words, a two- or three-story chamber there and negate the need to do massive renovations to either of these buildings if we bought them. Is that another option? Yeah, that's another option. Okay. And then a final option, as has been mentioned, is continue to use 1 East Broward or 101 Tower for the existing current uses, negating the need for significant renovation, and use the police station as a chamber if we want it. But again, just another option. Yeah, that could be an option. I don't know the size of that police. Yeah. As long as it's about 13,000 square feet and you can have 300 people, then yes. Okay. I just want us looking at all options as we're weighing good possibilities. Okay. Thank you. So for Tower 101 – Kevin, before you move on, can I ask you a question? Because I'm looking at the key considerations here. So one of my concerns about Tower 101, and you tell me if this is best practice, you mentioned that this is above an eight-story parking garage. Is that best practice for a governmental center, a governmental building, to have a building of a government functioning above an eight-story parking garage? Or is that to me – and I'm mentioning this because if we looked at the first slide, we saw that the – what were those? Seven principles of whatever – what was that called? I'm sorry. Seven – The guiding principles. Thank you. The guiding principles told us that safety and security is one of those guiding principles. I don't find – and I'm not an expert, that's why I'm asking you – I do not find that a governmental center should function above an eight-story parking garage for the obvious reasons. I want to hear your take on that. So typically, we don't. What we do, we don't recommend that. But typically, with those parking spaces within that garage space of 423 spaces, those will be limited to staff, you know, secured staff, and also the commissioners. So that would be a parking, a secured parking area, not – it won't be open to the public. The public will still need to park on the existing city garage adjacent to it and walk over to the building. But for those 423 spaces, it will be only for staff that's been screened. So that's typically – if it is in the building, that's the way we resolve it. It's not open to the public. It's only staff. So that would still be okay in terms of best practices for a governmental center? It's not ideal, but it's been done before. Okay. Thank you. How's it been done recently, though? One timeline. There is a – I believe there was a time when we nationwide stopped doing that, right? What year did that go into effect? Well, a couple of examples that we'll show a little bit later, the parking garages are adjacent to the building and not under the building, so they're connected horizontally. So we haven't been doing those lately. So the city hall we did in Cogo Beach was the same thing with a separate parking garage, not within the building. So we're starting to get away from that. An example of that also is the new federal courthouse on Southeast 3rd Avenue, where it was specifically designed without a parking garage incorporated in the main building for security reasons. And all that parking is secure parking. But even still, the architects told me that even if it's secure parking, you still should not have parking underneath the building for security reasons, a la 9-11. Right. A lot of things. Thank you. Or – and one of the – the federal – we'll get into the federal courthouse building as well. That has parking underneath, and that's one of the reasons why they're kind of moving, besides the fact that the building's a little bit older. Okay. Please proceed. Thank you. Thank you. So on the Tower 101, key considerations are listed there. The main thing we talked about was the envelope, the elevators in the garage has not been modernized. The building – the towers have. So we're good with that. And then the right-hand side is kind of our scale for suitability for City Hall, overall conditions, about average, capacity it meets, the capacity, commission chambers. There's a way to do it. There's a way to do it on the smaller building to the east, so there is space there. Welcoming and engaging is a little bit lower, just because it's kind of difficult to find the entrance on that building, and it's off 1st Street, and it's kind of tucked in, not really inviting to the public. And then resilient and innovative, as you'll see in the other buildings, they're all pretty much 1 of 5, that has to do with the buildings wanting to be LEED certified, as far as some of the initial findings on the task force they wanted, and ULI as well. They want it to be resilient and LEED certified and bringing in new technology and security. With your color code, my monitor, I can't tell the difference between red and orange. Could you just go down each one of these system conditions and identify what the suitability is? Yes. So on the system condition, the structure, it's a sound structure. It's all concrete. And so that one was good. That's green. That one is green. I can see that. The follow-up was red, that with a little bit of discussion we talked about with bringing the whole exterior cladding to code, to current code, based on the 50% if we get there. MEP systems, this building had really good electrical systems were very well designed and maintained. The only one that had a little bit of issue was the mechanical. They're going to have to replace the chiller and the pump and the AC unit on the roof structure, which serves about 70% of the building. Okay. I'm going to interrupt you because I still don't know. Envelope, is that red or orange? What? Sorry. That's orange. Sorry. That's four out of five. So envelope is orange. Is that red? Red. Sorry. It's red. There's only three colors. Red, green, and yellow. And then also, I don't know if welcoming, engaging is red or resistance is red. I can't tell. I don't know if you're colorblind. It's red. It's red. So, all right. So let's start with that. So overall conditions is orange? Orange, correct. Okay. Three out of five. Okay. And then the green? Staff. Staff. Staff, yep. Commission, chambers? Three out of five. What color is that? That's yellow. Yellow. And welcoming again? Was red. Red. Two out of five. And resilient and innovative was one out of five. Okay. Also red. All right. So when we go through structure, if you can go down there and tell me color to what it equals. Okay. And I can't tell the difference. So structure was green. Mm-hmm. The envelope was red. Mm-hmm. MEP systems was yellow. Yes. Fire life safety was red. There's some upgrades that need to be done there. Telecom and security was red. And site and flood was red. And that's in the site and flood, it's right now, the 6.25 is the finished floor of the ground level. And requirements of the city of Fort Lauderdale is 7.4 above at the NVAD, which is the finished floor elevation. Okay. On East Broward, I'll go down that list for you. Before you get to one East Broward, I don't know if you mentioned this, isn't this below the NAVD flood level? Yes. The Tower 101 is. Right now, the requirement is 7.5, and right now, it's 6.25. So it's about a foot and three inches below what's required. And we can't move that. My current code. We can't. How do you mitigate that? It'll take a lot of... There is a good clear height on the first floor, so we have to either raise the whole floor and the ground level, redo the site work, and bring it up to that level, or provide flood panels, which we don't want to do that, right? So that's a whole different... Okay. So I'm going to weigh in once again. So we just went through a thousand-year flood in 2023, which took away City Hall. Last time I checked, I think 101 was fine. So are we expecting any more thousand-year floods, or is it going to get even worse? Is it going to be a 2,000-year flood? Is Noah coming with the ark, and we're going to have, like, how high is the water going to be? Here's the thing. We just had a real-world test of how that building performs in the worst storm that we've ever seen in this country in the last hundred years. And guess what? It came through great. I'm not worried about flooding. It's a facetious argument to say that that building is at risk of flooding when City Hall drowned, and the building right next to it performed stellar. Well, the difference was that City Hall was at even a lower level than this building, and also... City Hall wasn't at a lower level. It's at a higher level. You go up steps to get into City Hall, Mayor, respectfully. I spent a lot of time in that building. I worked there every day. It was not at a lower level than the building down the block. There was a basement, yes, but that entire street was underwater. All of Broward Boulevard was underwater. What was not underwater? The 101 building. Okay. I'm not going to debate it with you, but go ahead. Do you want me to answer that question? No, just go ahead. Okay, go ahead. I mean... East Broward. Let's get there. So I want to go through this for the commissioner, just to make sure. System conditions on East Broward structures green. This is an all-steel structure, which is easier to renovate and bring up to code if needed. So that's one thing that we wanted to ensure there. It's all steel frame, metal decking, and concrete flooring. The envelope is red. This one, again, similar to the small building over at 101. The envelope and the glass will need to replace. It's not impact-resistant. MEP system is yellow. This one, the mechanical systems were really good. It was going to be the opposite of our one. In good shape. But the electrical system needed a little bit of work on some of the electrical rooms and clearances to meet code. Firelight safety was red. Telecom security were red. And then site flood on this one was yellow. This one, the actual elevation, this one was 7.83, 7.4 being the minimum. There is the existing FPNL vault, which is below the 7.4, which will need to be mitigated. And that's why it's showing only as a yellow. Some strength on this one. The wind loads do meet the risk category three. It has a double height volume on the little building on the southeast corner. There's a little two-story structure there. So it already has the volume and the height. There's no need to do a lot of major structural revisions there. So that was good. And that has enough space there to hold the 13,000-square-foot space as well as the staff. And then key consideration, again, the biggest expense here is the current wall impact. And there are some ADA upgrades that we need to do on the building, as well as replacing the roof on the connector bridge to your existing parking garage. The overall suitability for the city hall, it's yellow for the overall condition. Green for staff capacity, commission chambers, and welcoming and engaging. This is a really interesting building because it has a really big plaza on Broward Boulevard. It has a nice plaza on 1st, and it has a plaza a little bit smaller, but it does have one on Andrews, too. So it's more welcoming than any of the three buildings, in our opinion. And then red was resilient and innovative, so you have that one. This was the building that was built in 1980 what? 1983. 1983, okay. And the last building we looked at was a federal courthouse. On that one, the structure was yellow, just because of the lack of information we had, but it's kind of built like a bunker. It is a federal courthouse. Envelope was red. MEP systems were red. Fire safety was red. You can stop right now. It's all red. Yeah, so this one had a lot of challenges, so that was a cool stuff. Thanks, Kevin. And I don't even think this can even be considered, right, city manager? Because this doesn't fall in one of the GSA city hall use. It doesn't even fall in one of their categories. So this would not be a practical use for this building based on the categories that they've shared with us. And we've moved in the direction that the city commission shared with us for the educational or museum use, and we've indicated that to GSA, and we'll follow up with the commission on that. Right. So, yeah, you can just skip this. You don't need to. Thank you. So we're going to ignore the column on the right. So this is a comparative matrix. We graded it one through five, equally weighted on some of the key components that we spoke about when we went through each one of them. So this will give you a good idea of the scoring. Tower 101 and East Brower, they were pretty close. And then, obviously, the federal courthouse was way off. But those two were pretty close. Some had better ratings than others. So that's kind of what comparative matrix is. The task force, we looked at the seven main guiding principles that was discussed a little bit earlier, and we scored those, how these correspond to those, with East 1 Broward being probably the highest scoring, followed by 101. The floor building code and the risk category, anything we're thinking to bring these projects up to where it needs to be for City Hall, we're looking at a level three alteration, which if it's 50% more of the area, then we'll have to bring everything up to code. And also, if it exceeds 50% of the appraised value, you'll have to bring it up to the base flood elevation. So you'll have to raise the floor on the one building. The risk category, typically for an office, it's risk category two, 170 miles per hour. We are doing some buildings now that are City Halls that are risk category three. There's a little bit more just because they don't want to do the baseline, which brings it up to about 180 miles per hour. But for our case, we're assuming we're leaving it at 170 just because the buildings are older. And to get it to 180, it's going to require another level of funding to get there. And again, the base flood elevation at the bottom, 7.4 is what's required. Flood exposure and resiliency, this is we talked about before, which ones are not compliant on the East Broward is and Tower 101, it's a little bit below. And then an assessment summary 101, structurally sound, sufficient capacity, and it has the space that it needed, just the envelope needs to be replaced. East Broward is part of the strongest for adaptive reuse candidate out of all three. So that's one that just because of the plazas and the way it has a civic presence on three of the roads, adjacent roads, and the federal courthouse. Commission chambers fit up. We were asked to do a little analysis on the commission chambers and what the cost would be for each one of them. We'll focus on Tower 101, it is a concrete structure, so there'll have to be more demolition and structural modification on that one. The price is a little bit more, about $4.48 million. On East Broward, about $3.93 million, just because there is no structural issues there with the two-story height that's already in place. That's really the only difference there between one and the other. Renovation costs, this is the slide that we talked about a little bit earlier, that Quinton talked about with the three numbers. Tower 101, about $1.57 million, and the 208 for East Broward for the tunnel renovation. Some of the main components are listed on the first column and some of those associated costs. Again, we'll leave out the federal courthouse. This gives you a good idea. And the ROMs that are here, again, they can go up 50% or below 30% as the design moves forward. This is just a preliminary feasibility study, so that's where those numbers are coming in at. Kevin, question on that. With 101 or 1 East Broward, if we kept it just as an office building without a chamber, is there any immediate renovation requirement that has to happen to 101 or 1 East Broward if it doesn't have a chamber in it? If it does not have a chamber and you're leaving everything the way it is, you're using the same use, office use, the way it's being major renovations. But again, if you're renovating a floor, let's say you're renovating the 13th floor, that's a bad example, 14th floor. You're renovating the 14th floor, and you want to go in and make that open office space, then that floor, at a minimum, that floor needs to meet the current. But nothing like safety? There's no major issue? There's no major issues. With either building? Correct. But you'll have to also bring it up with a whole security and a security system, because you have to have a new security system in either of the two buildings. Sure. Thanks. Kevin? Could you speak into the microphone? I'd like to also add that in looking at the IT infrastructure, certainly with newer, forward-looking technology, technology, our recommendation would be to certainly replace that immediately, and then there are certain pieces of equipment, whether they be mechanical, electrical, that are at the end of their life cycle, and it would be our recommendation that you start looking at changing those out immediately so that they don't become a problem and break down on you. Sure. Thank you. Kevin, when you just said there, no, I'm sorry. Go ahead, Commissioner. I'm sorry. Go ahead. In regards to, I didn't say anything about the life expectancy of the buildings. We're talking about buildings that are multiple years old, 25-plus more. How much more life do these buildings have? I didn't hear that in the report. You want to talk a little bit about that, David? Or it's kind of tough? Yeah, that is tough. General? Can you just speak into the microphone, please? Sure, sorry. Because we can't pick you up on the recording. The reason I'm asking the question, the building that we lost was 60 years old, and both of these buildings that we were talking about are basically halfway point. So what I'm trying to figure out, you know, is there any estimate when you're looking at these business buildings, do you give us an estimate of how much longer of the life expectancy for those two buildings? That would be very hard to do. You know, certainly the structures are sound, but, you know, as you look at the various pieces of equipment, you know, that was what was reflected in our report. If we felt that a piece of equipment was going to need to be replaced in the next 10 years, you know, that ended up being a piece of equipment that was carried in our estimate. Well, like electrical, all the electrical, the plumbing, the IT connections, things like that. We're not talking about just the brick and mortar, talking about the… I'm sorry, Mayor, I'm talking about brick and mortar. Because when we look at condos, we have a 40-year inspection, and they tell us what's going on. So is that not a fair question? It's a very fair question. Not based on the level of, you know, just an observation without doing more extensive testing. So that type, well, we did not do that type of inspection. Analysis. Analysis. From observation on the outside, what we could see, the structures appear sound. So that's all I can share at this point without any more evaluation. Well, but that's of concern to us in this environment. You know, to the commissioner's point, you know, in this environment, we're seeing a lot of the structures being compromised and having… You know, we don't want another Champlain on any of these buildings, right? And if a life expectancy of the structure of a building has a, you know, has a shelf life of a certain number of years, taking over an older building, say it's at a lesser price, but you have fewer years left remaining in it, right? So, anyway, that's just… Could I offer some comments on that, Mayor? Yeah, go ahead. So you bring up Champlain. So I don't know if you've read the after-action report that just came out. I did, extensively. And so let me tell you about Champlain. Do you know why the building fell down? And I'm sure that you guys have read it, and you know. It wasn't built to code, and it wasn't even built to the plans that were not built to code. It didn't fall down because of any other reason except for the fact that it was poorly constructed in the first place. It's not about it's in Florida. There has never been another building that fell down except that one. And now that we've done the after-action, we know why. It wasn't built to code, it wasn't built to the plans. So I don't think we could use Champlain as an example of either of these two buildings potentially falling down anytime soon. And I'll offer up another thought as well, having spent a long time in government and a long time in the private sector. It has been my experience that professional investors and real estate companies that they hire to manage their property do a much better job of maintaining their buildings than government does. There's a reason for that. We don't invest in our properties. We like to cut ribbons. We don't like to do maintenance. And that has been historically true for government buildings going back forever. So the deteriorating conditions that we experience in a 60-year-old building that we occupied is not reflective of office towers. I worked in office towers in New York City that are over 100 years old. And do you know how much and how valuable those are? I worked in the Empire State Building. I worked in the Chrysler Building on the 42nd floor, deep back to the 1930s. Great buildings. Why? Because they're maintained. They're kept up. As long as a building is well built and is kept up, it will last for hundreds of years. So, again, I take exception to the idea that a 20-year-old building is somehow going to collapse anytime soon. Not going to happen. I don't think anyone's saying it's going to collapse anytime soon. But I think Commissioner Beasley Pittman was saying there's a life expectancy. There's a life expectancy of mechanicals. I agree with you. There's a life expectancy of everything. Everything has a life expectancy. I was in buildings, by the way, in England this past summer, and they're 700 years old. I was in a church that's 1,000-year-old. And do you know how much it has cost them over those 700 years to restore and maintain? Maintenance is. They don't just put a slop of paint on it every year and call it quits. These buildings, if you know anything about restoration. I do. Okay. Then you know that restoration is very expensive. If you look at the government buildings in Washington, D.C., when they go to renovate a government building, it's hundreds of millions of dollars just to renovate and restore. So every building has a life expectancy, and when you start from zero, your life expectancy is much greater. When you start from year 30 or 40, your life expectancy is much shorter. So your building costs may be less, but overall, the value that you get on return of your investment is far less than if you build new. And how old, by the way, are those buildings in Washington, D.C.? They all date back to roughly about the Depression. A lot of them were built by the Works Projects Administration. And so they're 100 years old, and it costs money to maintain and keep up a building. It costs money to do upkeep on my house, and I budget for that. And there's, again, a reason that government buildings run into the issue you're talking about. It's because we don't budget money for maintenance because it comes out of our operating budget. We budget money for capital projects because it comes out of the capital budget, not our operating budget. And when we're making decisions about allocating resources among police and fire and parks and all the other stuff that we allocate our general fund money to, taking money out for maintenance is usually the last thing on the list and the first thing to get cut when budgets get tight. Okay. And, Commissioner Herbst, if I can jump in, the good news, too, with Tower 101 and 1 East Broward, as we've seen in the backup and analysis is the owners of these buildings have been investing in the infrastructure of the building and the systems of the building, thus we're not going from ground zero. These are properties that have upgraded in many ways the systems that oftentimes, Mayor, require significant investment. So that's other good news about the buildings themselves. But the bad news is there's still so much more work to do, and there will be so much more work to do in the future. I saw a sign the other day in 1 East Broward that said, Do not use the microwave and the toaster at the same time. Now, is that what we want for City Hall? Do not use the microwave and the toaster at the same time. So I'm just throwing that out as well. But I want to just piggyback on some of the comments that Commissioner Herbst made. Yes, there are also buildings that are older in other places, but, you know, conditions are different in Florida. Also, look at what's happening now with so many of our condominium buildings. So many people are being forced to leave these condominiums, sell their units. They cannot even afford to pay for all the work that has to happen. And I'm not talking about just with mechanical systems. I'm talking about the actual structures. I'm talking about after they all were mandated to do those structural integrity reserve studies by the state, they are all finding themselves in real trouble now not being able to afford the assessments that are coming their way, again, for concrete restoration, things like that, rebar, mechanical. I'm not even talking about mechanical, electrical. I'm talking about structural. And, yes, the buildings are not in danger of falling down, but it's very costly to keep them up, and those are the ones that are 30, 40, 50 years old and more, like along the Gulf and some places on the beach in my district as well. So they are facing that. I just want to ask you one other question that we didn't hear much about. Correct me if I'm wrong, but maybe this city staff can help me. Didn't we just have to go through a vulnerability assessment on our buildings in terms of things like the floodplains? I know you mentioned current, but what about the future? What about sea level rise and how that might impact these older buildings? Was that a consideration at all in terms of future floodplain? Well, I think the 7.4 that's in there, that already takes into account the sea level, the future, the new FEMA guidelines to make sure that that's incorporated now for the future. So some of that is in there already, resiliency for the future and the 7.4 requirements. Okay, good. Thank you. I forgot to mention, besides not being able to use the toaster and the microwave at the same time, there was a piece of red tape over the electrical outlet below it. To me, that's a little bit unnerving. I don't know. Is that what I want in a city hall for the city of Fort Lauderdale? I'm not sure. I don't know. Do you think they have those issues in the brand-new city hall in Oakland Park, in the brand-new city hall in Sunrise, in the brand-new city in Pompano Beach, in the brand-new city hall they're building in Miami? I guess, I don't know, maybe you tell me. Thanks. Well, you know, I'd like to comment on that, because I think we're having similar problems in our brand-new police station. I understand there's all kinds of ventilation problems. There's leaks. There's cracks. So, yeah, brand-new buildings have a lot of problems. I think some of that is misinformation, actually. I think some of that is exaggeration. No, no, not misinformation. Well, I've been told. Not misinformation, Commissioner. Well, I think some of it is misinformation. And, yes, actually, that is still under warranty, but that's okay. I'm talking about that's a brand-new building under warranty where that will be taken care of and fixed. These are 30-year-old, 40-, 50-, 60-year-old buildings. One is proud is how old? 80, 80, 70. 80, 70, so 40 years old. 80, 80, 80. Yeah. So there's more concern, because those warranties, Commissioner Herbst, have expired. The one in the police headquarters has not expired yet. Well, in 10 years, we'll be in trouble then when the warranty runs out. But to your point, and I'm glad you brought it up, because it reaffirms actually what I said. So all these older condos that are going through these 40-year research and are experiencing these substantial assessments all share one thing in common, deferred maintenance, because particularly along the Galt and some of the areas you represent, there tends to be a population in there that doesn't want to fund repairs and maintenance, and they vote to keep their HOA fees as low as possible. That's why there's no money in reserves. That's why they neglect to do repairs and maintenance on a timely basis, and that's why all these things are now being brought to light. So the one thing that we did get out of the Champlain collapse is that we're finally forcing these condos to actually pay for it. Because, you know, when I talk to a lot of these folks and I talk to the residents in there, you know, they're in their 80s, and we're like, I don't care. I'm not going to be here 20 years from now, so I don't care about a 20-year repair, because my kids will worry about that when they inherit it from me. If you do maintenance and you do upkeep on a structure that is built to code and well-built, it will last hundreds of years. Neglected maintenance, if it's brand new, it'll fall down too, or it'll need substantial repairs regardless. It all comes down to whether you reinvest in your property on a regular basis and do the necessary repairs and maintenance to keep it in a first-class condition. And I don't care if it's a brand-new building or if it's an old building. If you neglect it, it falls apart. Yes, but if you look at the reserve studies of all of these buildings, you'll notice that there's also something called that reserve study will have the useful life. And a lot of the things that we're talking about today, it's not the fault of the lack of maintenance or operation on these older buildings. There's a useful life to everything. And, of course, we're going to have these expenses. It's just natural. I mean, of course, can we just move in and occupy the spaces and, say, call it a day? Sure. But, you know, again, there's so much more. That's a very simplified look at how we would deal with if had any of these older buildings as our city hall. It's just, I mean, I actually think that your estimates on what the repairs would cost are actually low. I have a feeling that we would be going down a rabbit hole that would be even more expensive than what you've actually projected. That's just my own opinion, although I'm glad to see, you know, the numbers that you threw out there. But I just know that, again, a lot of this doesn't even have to do with how people are maintaining and operating their structures. It's just the useful life. It's the useful life of the structure. It's the useful life of all of those mechanicals, the HVAC, the electrical, the finishes, all of that. So I'm good. Thanks. Okay. Is there anything further in your presentation? A couple more slides. Okay, good. Mayor, if I could just correct the record really quickly. The one East Broward building is 43 years old, not 47 or 48, as was mentioned earlier. Okay. Thank you. Please proceed. And so the next one is the path comparison options. That includes the appraisal value as well as the rough order of magnitude cost that you saw in there, a total. And that gives you a kind of cost per square foot for the renovations. So that's what this one is. And just back to the 40-year recertification, we did get a lot of information from 101 Tower, which was good, which one of them was the 40-year recertification, which just happened. So we looked at those documents, and they look good. Remember, 40-year recertification is only structural and electrical and life safety. It's life safety. They don't touch mechanical, IT, or anything else. And which building received that? 101. Okay. And, Kevin, can you give the definition of useful life? So, okay, useful life. Here's an example I'm going to give you of one that we just did about 10 years ago. So the useful life, and this is like extreme project because it's an F-dot project, right? And F-dot, usually you design a little bit for longer term. So when we designed the Port Miami Tunnel, that was designed for an 80-year life. So we designed it for 80 years. So hopefully in 80 years, we don't have to go under that tunnel, right? Or it'll get replaced. Same thing when you do roadways and bridges, a lot of the life, the life flow of 50 or 60 years is what we designed to. Buildings, typically a building, if it's when you design it, the structure, design everything, usually between 40 and 50 years is a useful life for the building until you have to do major renovations. We're currently doing that at the Mamie-Dade County C&P Clark Center where we're going floor by floor, and we're doing renovating a floor, bringing it up to code, including the restrooms, redoing the restrooms, redoing all the office space, finishing that. People move down, then we go to the next floor. So we're going floor by floor, pathetically, bringing the whole building up to standards, and then we're going to have a new building. So that's kind of what we're working on. Which building is this? Saving Plea Clark Center, Mamie-Dade County. So we're currently doing that for them. Great. And it's a great example because your point is well taken, which is useful life is the estimated time at which substantive, significant renovations may be needed to be done. Is that fair? That's fair. Right. Those renovations might be needed, might not be needed, might be desired, might not be desired, right? So I just want everyone to understand when we're talking about useful life, that's the definition of useful life. I disagree with you entirely. That's not the definition. So you disagree with that? Useful life means life expectancy. Dean Trantellis has a useful life of whatever it's going to be. Say, I'm 73 this year. It's going to be 73. So what was the useful life of Brooklyn? Everybody has a useful life. A car has a useful life, right? Everything has a useful life. It's intended to last only a certain amount of time, right? At which time either you invest in it or you get something new, right? So if you buy a used car, okay, it's seven years old or five years old, right? You can anticipate having to put money into it because while you've got it on the cheap, you're going to end up putting money into it to keep it running and to make it efficient. Would you agree with that statement? Yes. Okay. So useful life is not so much an elective choice of whether or not you want to invest in it or not to keep it operational. It's a necessity that you would have to invest in it in order to keep it operational and functional as you intend to use it. Is that more accurate? Yes, and a lot of these useful life years that they put in buildings when you design them, they anticipate a normal maintenance schedule for all the equipment and the building and the fenestrations, going back, re-caulking. I mean, it's all new roofing systems, right? So the useful life of the building also has to do with maintenance, right? And let me ask you this. Now, the city manager presented numbers to us early in her presentation on page four in which the annual impact of the various buildings was presented, $14.1 million for 101 and $17.9 million for 101 East Broward. But it did not include operation and maintenance costs, yet she included operation and maintenance costs in the new building, which brought it to $15.8 million. Do you have an estimate as to what operation and maintenance costs for 101 and 1 East Broward might be, or was that not part of the scope of your employment? No, that's not part of our scope. That was not part of our scope. Now, with the operation and maintenance... I'm sorry, Ben, did you want to say something? We do have a one-page document that sort of summarizes the operations and maintenance across all of the alternatives, so the new build options as well as the renovation options. Again, I mentioned it was based on the price per square foot, and, you know, these are just estimates at this time. We do not have an official number, and so we can share that information via the clerk. Well, so to answer my question, then, the scope of your employment, the scope of your engagement was not to include operation and maintenance, correct? Not for those two buildings, correct. Okay, so what is this? Why was this not included in our backup? We're just getting this now? This document was prepared after publishing of the agenda. Typically, when we've had city hall discussions, we've created a one-page sort of cheat sheet and dispersed that to the commission on the dais. Okay, so now an updated annual impact for 101 is $17,100,000 versus the new construction is $15,800,000. Am I reading that correctly, Manager? Yes, Mayor. Okay, thank you. And, Mayor, if I can just point out on the operation maintenance, because there's a lot of assumptions and factors that go into this, the numbers that you see on that one-page summary are just taking the cost per square foot of a new build, taking that dollar figure, and then multiplying it by the number of square feet in the existing building. And that's with the assumption that all the renovations that the Jacob Report is recommending would be made, and so that way it would be an apples-to-apples operation and maintenance. Should the city pursue one of the existing buildings and not make all the renovations, obviously the operation and maintenance costs would be significantly more than what's on your sheet of paper. Great. Thank you so much. So going back to that useful life question, you said a bridge has a useful life of 60 years? That's what you're designed to? They're designed to that. So the Brooklyn Bridge is about 80 years past its useful life. What do you think? They could keep it, or they could build a new one, but usually they keep them. They maintain them. They usually keep them. If you maintain them, the useful life actually is an irrelevant thing. It's kind of like the sell-by date, you know, when you're in a supermarket. You know, water actually has a sell-by date on it. Last time I checked, water doesn't actually go bad. So useful life is sort of a suggestion because there's – and you mentioned cars, Mayor. That's really good. My first car was a 68 Cougar. Guess what? Still running. Got it. I routinely work with people who drive much older cars. Have you put any money into it? I'm sorry? Yeah, yeah, I did. I put a new paint job on it. That's it? You just put new paint on it? I did a little body work on it. Yeah, it runs great. Okay. The thing is, it goes back to what I said before, if you maintain it, you extend the useful life. The useful life is not that – it is not, Mayor, like your useful life, which has a terminal date. None of us here get out alive. We all end the same way. It's just a matter of when, okay? That's not true with buildings or mechanical systems. Airline I used to work for is still flying the oldest DC-3 in commercial operation, okay? We are routinely flying planes that are 75, 80 years old, routinely. Okay? These are in use every single day. Again, it comes down to maintenance. If you ignore something, I don't care how new it is. I haven't taken my boat out in a couple of weeks, and I went to go start it, and guess what? It wouldn't start. But you sat there. Can I ask you a question about – you said bridges are designed to have a useful life of 60 years. You're designed to that, correct. Right. And what was the tunnel life expectancy? We had 80. 80. Okay. Good to know. We may need you. It's a little bit harder to design one of those. And by the way, you know how old the Holland Tunnel is in New York? Okay? So well past its useful life. Last time I checked, still in use every day. There's – can I tell you hundreds of millions of dollars they've spent to keep it up? Just one more question before the gentleman sends down. Yes. Yes. One more question. Come back. Come back. Come back. In regards to that useful life, in regards to the useful life of the buildings, you indicated that buildings are usually designed with an intent. Do we know what that original intent, useful life are for those two buildings? Do we have documentation or can we get documentation? No. Because if we built it for 40 years and we're already at the expiration date, what are we getting into? Exactly. Yeah, we don't have that information. Is there any way to get that information? All we could do is kind of do an assessment of the structure, do the next step, the next phase, look at the structure. Because we're talking structural because we do have the systems already in our report. But to do a structural analysis of the building, that would take another step. And we could probably tell you it's probably fine if you keep maintaining it. It could last another 20 years, another 30 years. Okay. So we just have to look. We have to do an assessment. I'm still hovering over my question. Yeah. Is there anywhere that someone said, I'm going to build this building with the expectancy of it lasting 80 years? You gave me an example with the tunnel. Yeah. So someone's doing that somewhere. So typically, if it's FDOT or a government building, federal government, they have that in their standards. They have it in the standards. But for developer work, but there is nothing in writing. But you design, as a professional engineer or architect, you design the buildings for typically a lifespan between 40 and 50 years. That's kind of the average that you design for. Because if you design a developer building for 100 years, no developer will hire you, right? Because you have no building to build. It'll be three times as much. Yes. Question. On those documents that the architect put together, there's nothing there. There won't be anything there? There won't be anything there. Thank you. There won't be anything there. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Is Cynthia Rich here? Are you Cynthia? You had signed up to speak. Would you like to speak? Mayor, I just want to confirm that- There's only one. Yeah, go ahead. I just want to share that we still have some sections of the presentation to go through. I wasn't- Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't know that. Yes. All right. We have the revised interim agreement. We have the budgetary considerations. Yep. Thank you. Go ahead. I'm sorry. So, Mayor, the last thing on this section was just Jake was tasked with looking at existing or some other city hall projects, his reference points, and so that information has been provided in the presentation. What page is that? 32? Yes. I did see that. Let's see. As we close that section out and move into the interim agreement, I just want to remind the city commission, and I know the manager did some opening comments about April 21st and the proposed interim agreement at that point, and the city commission had a lot of feedback and concerns that were related to the staff and to the project team about the cost of the project, the equity, developer fees, the long-term financial viability of it. There was also the request to do the building assessments, which we just did the update on. And so, really, I'm just going to touch base on some of the changes that the new proposed interim agreement has in it. You've seen the slide before. The manager opened up with it, but, again, almost $50 million, over $50 million in reduced project delivery cost from April to July. You can see the developer equity, a major expense, and the last one is completely removed, as well as a developer fee of $12 million. As I progress through this presentation, we'll talk a little bit about the building design, seek city commission feedback, and then one of the bigger changes in this one is that we'll be paying the project team in milestone payments, so as they reach certain deliverables along the interim agreement, we'll be paying for those services at that time. City Hall, what's going to be in City Hall? It's the same as it was in April of 2026, with the addition of bringing back some more customer service functions, utility billing, parking customer service would be added probably into the lobby space or into a public function area, so that way there's more transactional experience for bills and customer needs. The space for it would be, again, around 215,000 square feet. The chambers was about 12,500, focused on about 300-person capacity, with some back-of-office space for support services, breakout rooms, things like that. And the expected staff headcount would be somewhere around 625. As we talk about the building design options, this is three renderings, option A, option B, and option C. Option A is what you've seen throughout the proposal period. It's what you saw in April of 2026. Since that time, with the focus of driving down some of the costs, we've worked with the development team to come up with two different options for consideration. Option B and option C both have about a $200 million project delivery cost, which is what we established in the interim agreement for the target price for the project. So if I can, Mayor, take a pause and ask for any feedback on design building considerations. So we don't have to make a decision on design today, do we? It's up to the commission. Again, the interim agreement does have a target cost of $200 million. Right. And so that's in there right now, and if there's any feedback, it would be greatly appreciated. All right. You would anticipate the timeline between the IA and the CA to be how many months? I want to say it was close to 12 months. So in that 12-month period? 18 months. I believe it was 18. I'd have to double-check. Well, hopefully not 18. Yeah, let me go. I can double-check that number. But I do want to say that in the interim agreement, there is a 100-day period that we've created that we would finalize the building design, work through the space program that we already worked with the developer on over the last couple months, and be able to deliver the ultimate space program. So we still have between three and four months to finalize what design we would want. Yeah, I believe there's still time. The only caveat is the interim agreement has financial considerations in it. Right. So if those are going to be modified or changed based on the design, so there's a kind of a push and a pull relationship between the design and the financial impact. Understood. Thank you. Could I get some clarity on that, though? Because I thought there was some difference in price between B and C. This has got them both rounded off at $200 million, but I thought it was my understanding that C is actually the cheaper one to build. So picking one today seems kind of important to me. Yeah. So we did round up, Commissioner, based off of just unknowns as we've been working with the development team. This is just a point in time and a reference that both B and C can be delivered at that estimated $200 million. We did ask the developer to back into that budget of $200 million, and so they've committed to being able to do so at the square footage presented. I think the biggest distinctions between option B and option C are the commission chambers and how soon it could be delivered based on its connectivity to the main tower. Everything else pretty much would be in line. And I think the only benefit to expeditiously determining the design option, if the city commission were to go in this direction, would be to socialize this design with the public as well as to identify a potential timeline for the construction based on the chambers being included as part of the overall building or as a separate building with a connectivity point. Well, I hope we can come up with an option today. I don't want to approve an agreement when I don't know what I'm approving. So if that's what we're being faced with, then I think it's a disservice. So I hope we can at least settle on which option we're entering into an agreement for before we enter into an agreement. And if you could go back to, I think it's 35. Okay, so just touching on this. So this is the interim agreement as it stood April 21st and now as it stands today. So this is a significant difference. If we were to go in this build option, the total cost of project delivery when we put it out 30 years, which includes the financing and so forth, I think the April 21, it was around $720 million. Is that right? It sounds familiar. $724 million. $724 million. $724 million. Now, July 2nd, when you finance that out over 30 years, what's the total cost there? $474. $474 million versus $720 million. So that is a significant delta. And I think I just want to acknowledge that because we've engaged in this communication, this ongoing discussion, and have looked at options, and the builder has been willing to, you know, continue that negotiation, continue that discussion, we are now, this option at least, is going from a $720 million to $470, this is a $250 million reduction in this option because we've considered options, we've explored possibilities, we've committed to ongoing negotiation. The developer, the builder, has been a very helpful part of that. So that's what happens when we evaluate options, do analysis, we get better value for the people of the city of Fort Lauderdale, and this is just one example of that. And I just want to highlight the success in city staff in engaging with that, the builder engaging with that, so that it makes this build option, as one of the many options we consider, a more approachable possibility. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Please continue, city manager. I think Ben had a few more slides. Okay. And just to confirm on the timeline, that timeline I did give earlier of 16 to 18 months is accurate, and it includes the whole site plan, DRC approval permitting process. And ribbon cutting? Not quite ribbon cutting there. And so as we head into the interim agreement, I'm going to turn it over to Eric Singer from Bills & Sundberg to talk a little bit about the legal content of the agreement, but just again to talk about the financial commitment with the interim agreement. The April 21st version had an $18.8 million financial commitment that would be paid at the conclusion or at the close of the interim agreement phase and as you entered in the comprehensive agreement, which included the developer fee and others. This version has a $10.9 million commitment to go through it. It does have a $4 million payment that would be associated in July that got us to this point in time, including the preliminary site assessments, designs, the space programming, which included the developer meeting with all the department heads. I believe they met with all the elected officials to talk about the needs of the City Hall building and how it functions. And then there will be a remaining series of milestone payments that I referred to earlier that as they deliver and progress to the project, we would be paying them for their efforts. And so with that, I'm going to turn it over to Eric to talk through some of the legal points. Beck. Thank you. Good afternoon. Eric Singer with Bills & Sundberg. I'm your outside legal counsel for this project. So most of the changes to the interim agreement from the April version are changes to the business terms that Assistant City Manager Rogers just walked you through. With respect to the legal terms, I'm happy to answer any questions you have, but there are really just four changes to the legal terms that I wanted to focus on. First, you may recall from the April version, there was an exhibit that included pre-negotiated terms for the comprehensive agreement. That's been removed from this interim agreement. So the city has full flexibility to negotiate the best possible terms for the city over the course of the interim agreement. And so there's no pre-commitment to enter into a comprehensive agreement at all or to enter into any particular terms for the comprehensive agreement. Second, there is a 100-day scope finalization period built into this agreement. In the April version, there was a particular design, a particular program, sort of baked into the agreement. This gives the city and the developer up to 100 days to finalize the design, the program, and sort of the scope before the developer starts doing the more detailed designs. Third, this agreement remains exclusive in that the city is agreeing not to negotiate with a different developer for this project during the term of the interim agreement. But we clarified that the city would still be able to pursue or explore purchasing an existing building or any other alternative to the project, and that wouldn't violate the agreement. And finally, the city retains the right to termination for convenience for no reason at all. The city could end the agreement without any obligation to the developer other than paying for the work already completed that the city will own and be able to use. But this agreement also adds essentially a pause button. So if for any reason the city wants to reevaluate where it stands, it doesn't need to terminate the agreement. I mean, it can just tell the developer to put its pencil down, stop incurring additional expenses for the city while the city decides how it wants to proceed. So those are really the main changes to the legal terms. Happen to answer any questions that you may have. All right. Okay. Thank you so much. So much easier this time, huh, Allie? So we've already talked a lot about the financial components of this project, but there are a few things that we wanted to touch on as we move through the discussion. The first thing we wanted to touch on is the major changes, which you've noted with the design and construction, as well as the removal of the 5% developer fee, which is that $12 million obligation. As we look at the total project budget, we also noted the change in the developer equity, which was about $3 million a year. There's also lower operation and maintenance costs associated with this version of the proposal based on the information that we've received. As we look at the funding snapshot, the general fund makes up about 70% of the space utilization of the building, with the other funds using about 30%. That's about $4.7 million a year in the annual contribution towards the building. These are just very preliminary numbers. As we go through the space programming, as well as a final space allocation, we'll continue to refine these numbers. The last time we were here, the commission asked us to look at what does the budget look like. When Stantec was here, we included the city hall costs in the Stantec model, and that included a projected $8.9 million deficit in fiscal year 2028 with the inclusion of city hall. At the end of that meeting, our fantastic budget director stood up and shared some of the cost-cutting measures that we anticipate in the fiscal year 2027 budget to help prepare us for fiscal year 2028. We had Stantec actually incorporate that information into a projected model, and really, we're just about balanced in fiscal year 2028 with those changes that have already been shared. Most of them are on the screen, but there are a couple of additional levers that we can pull in fiscal year 2028 just to make sure that we're well-positioned to incorporate the budget for this project. Property tax reform continues to be front and center on our minds, and so we wanted to make sure we were also including what the budget plan would look like in the event that property tax reform passed. What you will see here are a myriad of options, and of course, we would decide as we get closer to that year in that situation exactly what we would do, but a few of the main options would be looking at our contribution to capital. Right now, in 2029 and outwards, we plan for about $27 million a year in capital costs. We could look at capping that and reducing our contribution by about $7 million a year. Another big one that we wanted to make sure that we shared with the City Commission is the option of using cash funding for a portion of this project. So if we were to use $40 million from our general fund reserves in order to support this project, it would reduce our annual obligation by about $2.4 million a year. And just as a note, we're currently about $9 million over our 25% threshold as of the release of the ACPR. So we will be making some adjustments to how we use those amounts over the 25% cap anyway, but this would provide some additional options on using funds to support the City Hall project. The other options are really just a myriad of either program adjustments, looking at the way that we do business and the organizations that we support. Again, we would seek the City Commission's feedback with the development of the fiscal year 2028 budget to ensure that we're pulling the levers that are most agreeable to the City Commission and our neighbors. We're not just planning for fiscal year 2028, but we know if property tax reform passes, we will see a bigger impact in fiscal year 2029. And we wanted to make sure we were sharing with the Commission some of the things that we would look at, including position control, staffing realignment. One of the items that the Commission decided was every two-year review of the Community Redevelopment Agency, Northwest Progresso, just to determine whether or not we would continue to make a contribution to the CRA. And what we could do is decide to sunset that contribution, but still dedicate a portion of that $6.5 million obligation to those initiatives. Again, this would be something that the Commission would have an opportunity to weigh in on and provide guidance on. But we wanted to make sure we were sharing with you all some preliminary ideas of things that could go into the fiscal year 2029 budget in the event that we had a City Hall project as well as property tax reform, which has a $27.3 million impact in that year. That question. Yes, sir. Thank you. This is very helpful. As you're looking at budgetary impact and analysis, first question is when we look at City Hall square footage, so I think the build option is 215,000 square feet. Correct. So if we were to buy instead, have you done any analysis on how to monetize that additional square footage? So, for example, the 1 East Broward is, I think, 349,000 square feet. 101 is 231,000 square feet. So could there be revenue sources with that extra square footage? Absolutely. So both buildings have existing tenants, and we could look at those lease agreements to determine which tenants would still be something that would be aligned with what city would want in those buildings. During the Reimagining City Hall effort, that was also something that was discussed, the opportunity for either nonprofits or other elected officials to rent space within our city facilities. And so if we had extra space, we would look at capitalizing on some of those opportunities as well. We don't have a dollar amount associated with them because it would really depend on what the City Commission would like to see in terms of other partners in a building. Okay. Thanks. Thanks. That's helpful. Because 1 East Broward, for example, 349,706 gross square footage. So if we need 215,000, that leaves, you know, more or less 135,000 square feet, which is a lot for a possibility. Okay. Thank you. And then, again, just as we explore all options, if we were to buy instead of build, have you done any analysis on the value of the City Hall, the previous City Hall lot that could be, again, monetized, sold, leased, a P3 partnership? Any kind of sense there? I think Benjamin Rogers has a sense on that. Great. Thank you. She called me by my full name. There you go. So that's when I'm in trouble, when I'm going to get called Benjamin. I need to go pull an email, but I think we did an appraisal a couple years ago, and it's somewhere in the mid $20 million range for the parcel. Okay. $20 million. Yeah, if you give me a few minutes, I'll give you. Yeah, that's fine. Thank you. Yeah. So, in other words, could be sold for that around that $20, $25 million, which, again, revenue in. Okay. Thank you. Yvette, I'm sorry, before you move on. Yes, sir. So have we done any kind of exercise? By the way, that selling of that city land, that's public land. That might get us into trouble if the charter passes. We have to check on that. Yvette, I just want to make sure that we've done the exercise. If we purchase an older building and renovate it to the tune of what Jacobs has told us might be the cost of that total project, I would assume that we would be financing that as well as financing a new building. Have we done an exercise that shows us what that might cost over the 30-year period? Yeah, so the sheet that Ben just passed out, which included all of the options, including the new build options, has some preliminary numbers at the bottom, which share not only the design and construction, which incorporated some of the renovation costs in it, and what it would cost in order to continue to finance those buildings. Right, but the question, you know, the vice mayor pointed out that there was a huge savings now that has been secured as we have gone through negotiations, and now we're in the $400 million range versus the $700 million range. The question that the commissioner is asking is, if we were to purchase, say, 101 or 1 East Broward, has that dollar figure been calculated to let us know what that total cost would be over 30 years? Because it's not part of this. Correct. I could do some quick math on it. As we look at the annual costs, we're looking at a difference between $15.8 million and ranging anywhere from $16.3 to $22 million a year for one of the purchases. So if you multiply that by 30, I don't have my phone up here with me. So that's how you arrive at that number? That's correct. Okay, so if we look at 1 East Broward, then 30 times $22 million is about $640 million. And what about 101? And 101 would be about $500 million. Yeah, and that's if you do the entirety of the renovations that are suggested, which, as they're saying, you only need to do if you have a chamber in it. But yeah, all at once. Yeah, Ben. Commissioner, in January of 2025, the City Hall site was appraised at $23.2 million. $23. Okay, thank you. And that really concludes my portion of the presentation. I think we're just seeking any feedback that the commission may have on the various options and direction on how you would like us to move forward. All right, okay. Does that complete the manager's presentation? It does. Thank you, Mayor. Okay. Let me just call up Cynthia Rich, who's from Ivy, from the 101 building. Give her a couple minutes to make comments. She's the only one that signed up to speak. No, press the button at the bottom of the speaker. Go ahead. So thank you, Mayor, Commissioners, City Manager, and staff. Appreciate the time. My name is Cynthia Rich. I'm a Senior Vice President at Ivy Realty, the owners of Tower 101. Candidly, we're disappointed by where things stand today. As you all know, on Friday, June 26th, each of you received a copy of a comprehensive report that Tower 101 put together. That report confirmed that the building was recently certified to be in sound condition. It also included approximately $23 million in pricing for voluntary upgrade, including the replacement or enhancement of properly functioning mechanical and electrical systems, all elevators, as well as hurricane-hardening of the building through new roofs and windows. On Tuesday, June 30th, we were asked to participate in an impromptu call by Mr. Ben Rogers with the city engineers from Jacobs. During that call, it became clear that the objective of the exercise had shifted. We spent several months and nearly $60,000 in parallel with the city to conduct an honest evaluation of Tower 101 as a cost-effective alternative to constructing a new building. Unfortunately, that's not the analysis that the city ended up conducting. Instead, the city spent the past several weeks, along with thousands of taxpayer dollars, evaluating what it would take to make Tower 101 equivalent to a new building. That approach doesn't appear to make sense, as it was not the directive given by the commission, at least our understanding of that. Of course, that analysis would be more expensive, and of course it would make new construction appear more feasible. The commissioners, you were being asked to make a major decision on behalf of the residents and the taxpayers. You deserve to know what it would cost to use Tower 101 as a modern, safe building that residents can be proud of. Unfortunately, that information has not been provided by your consultants. We urge you to insist on an accurate, relevant analysis before making such an important decision on behalf of your taxpayers and residents. I have a copy of the report that was submitted to all of you. I think we all have that, yeah. Okay, thank you so much. Thank you. Jordan, Paul, from One East Broward, what is your relationship with that building? I am the CEO of NAI Marin Hunter-Codman. We are the property manager, and we also manage an affiliate that has an investment interest in the property. Okay, please proceed. So first, I do want to thank the commission for considering One East Broward. We appreciate the city recognizing that we have a valid, well-maintained, high-quality building that could serve as the ideal choice for city hall if the city chose to acquire an existing property as opposed to developing a new property. If the city wants to and chooses to develop a new property, we think that they have chosen a strong team, you have a great design, and you have an ideal site. But if the city wants to save money by purchasing an already existing property, we do believe that we are the ideal alternative. As you know, the city is currently leasing approximately 20,000 square feet from us. We're in the process of having discussions for expanding an additional 5,000. I'm not sure what the problem is with the toaster and the microwave, but I can assure you that there are dozens of toasters and microwaves running all the time. We have two restaurants there. I really don't think that's an issue. I think it's a – I've got my chief engineer here. I think it's a circuit breaker issue. We'll get that corrected. We would be able to deliver almost 200,000 square feet to the city very quickly, and that would include ground floor space that would serve as an ideal city chambers. And I think even the Jacobs report showed that that could be converted quite easily. It's a separate building, and so some of the discussions we had about the percentage of renovation would apply there, and I really don't think you'd even have to do a whole lot of renovation there. In addition to delivering 200,000 square feet quickly to the city, which will minimize your costs over the next few years in leasing as well as provide certainty of execution, as stated previously by Commissioner Sorensen, we have approximately 150,000 square feet of additional space, high-quality space with high-quality tenants, that space that can be used for future expansion, and in the interim could generate, I believe, give or take $4 million a year, and I think that's an increasing trend. Our rental rates in the city are fortunately – our office rates are fortunately improving, so we're on the upswing. So I think that's a real revenue possibility. Our view of the Jacobs report is that it confirms that we have a building that is fundamentally sound and well-maintained, but we do also share the belief that the $200 million estimated renovation cost is grossly overstated. There's opportunities to significantly value engineer that, bring that down. Can you conclude your remarks? I'm just about done. Okay, good. If the goal is to have a quality, high-functioning, safe building, we believe that can be done for considerably less than $200 million, and we're happy to continue discussions with the city if that's the avenue you want to take. Thank you. Great. Thank you so much. Can I ask a question before you step away? So obviously you've had a chance to look at the report. You know, one thing that they did say is that your foot elevation is good. Again, I know I walk up several steps every time I have to go into the building, so I'm pretty sure it's up high enough. But talk a little bit about the MEP, right? So talk about the condition, mechanical, electrical, plumbing. Sure. We have actually, we've owned the building, I think, since 2018. We have invested heavily in the maintenance. As you mentioned, we're private owners. Our partner is a multibillion-dollar investment firm. We've totally replaced the elevators. We invested over $2 million on a brand-new, high-speed, highest-quality elevator system. We've replaced all the roofs. The chiller, which is probably your most expensive part of your mechanical system, chiller and cooling tower, are both less than 10 years old. The Jacobs Report acknowledges that they're in good shape. Really, the primary mechanical issue you have is over time you have to replace, I think we've got about 10 or 12 air handlers. They're about $150,000 each, and we replace those on a schedule. So that would be $1.5 million to $2 million that you could spread out over eight years. That was one of the things that really shocked us when we looked at that report. You know, that report, and I sent a letter to all of you on, I think it was Sunday evening, that outlined, we didn't have enough time to really dig in and, you know, value engineer point by point. But there were big-ticket items that jumped out. The concept of replacing the entire, you know, glass curtain wall with impact glass, that's a $72 million number that I don't think you need to do. There was, again, I think it was like $23 million in mechanical, even though they've acknowledged that, you know, our chiller and our cooling tower are in good shape. There was, I think, $20 to $30 million in electrical. We have major, you know, law firms in that building that we put new build-outs for recently. We have had no problems, again, notwithstanding the microwave and the toaster. We've had no problems with electrical capacity. The other big numbers that were there that, frankly, were shocking, I think it was roughly a $25 million number that I sort of, I think, was kind of an inflation factor. I mean, if you come in and you get this done and do this, we're not waiting three years. You know, we've had a lot of inflation. Hopefully it's coming down. I don't think you're going to have $25 million in inflation. I think there was also like a 10%-ish soft cost type of number. So big picture, those were the things I've seen. We've addressed all of our major systems. Are there things that you would want to do differently as a city? Sure. I think one of the advantages that was discussed today is a commission building has to have a different type of setup. And our chambers, or the chambers, I should say, our chambers, our ground floor, which is currently occupied by West Marine, and I think we can recapture that, is already basically set up as a public-facing area with it's an open area, high ceilings. It's got its own entrance. So I think, you know, if you really dig into it and take a different type of approach, you would find that it's going to be a lot less than $200 million to make that a good building for the city. Let me ask you, why are you trying to sell the building? You know, we have investors, and, you know, we're not a REIT. You know, we don't hold 100 buildings for 20 years. No, but I mean, you bought a building a few years ago. You spent a lot of money into it. Obviously, you've buried a lot of money into this building, and it sounds to me like you anticipate burying a lot more if you keep owning it. I mean, why are you trying to unload the building? I don't think we're trying to unload the building. You're not trying to unload it? We're not trying to unload the building. If you guys don't want to do this, we're fine. We were approached by you. We didn't approach you. Oh, we approached you. Who approached you? We understood that the city was interested in purchasing an existing building. Who approached you? I should say that when we learned that the city was interested in purchasing an existing building, we made ourselves available. So you approached us. That's true, yes. But the building's not for sale, and if you don't, we're going to continue with our current operations. Okay. Thank you, sir. And, Mayor, if I could probably add to that, and I think he's being delicate and not framing it, but the primary tenant whose name is on the building is currently in bankruptcy, and I imagine that's probably going to impact, you know, every bankruptcy usually involves some cancellation of leases and things like that. So, again, you don't have to comment on that. No, I do want to comment on that. Sure, go ahead. West Marine is not our tenant. Okay. Chemit is our tenant. Okay. Chemit is a multibillion-dollar publicly traded company. So they're a subtenant of? It's a sublease. Got it. So we have no risk at all. Okay, great. You know what? That's very interesting. So thanks for sharing that. I appreciate that. I just assumed since their name was up there in the building that that was probably going to be. Chemit had the right to the name, so when they sublease. Got it. So that's that situation. Got it. Okay. You know, you also brought up another point, though, that I think is kind of interesting. You talk about your air handlers. You know, one of the things that I struggle with a little bit from the Jacobs report is that it makes an assumption that all of this needs to be done right away. And, you know, as you mentioned, there's a schedule of maintenance for replacement of things that take place over a lengthy period of time. So over 10 years, you know, like you said, maybe you replace one every two years, and you have an identified need. You can start to plan in advance and budget money for that. And that's how, you know, a responsible property manager looks at their portfolio, and they says, okay, what are our financial needs? At what point do we need to start replacing these things? And you budget for them in advance, whereas we typically wait for things to break, and then we try and find money to do it. We use pay-as-you-go. We don't actually establish reserves like our condos have to do to replace mechanicals as we anticipate them failing in 20, 30, 40 years. So I think that's an important point. So I'm assuming that you said you've done a lot of upgrades and you're seeing the air handles. What other major expenses do you see on the horizon within, say, the next 10 to 20 years? You did the elevators, which is a big expense. Yeah, you know, we have a saying in the, you know, office business in Florida that, you know, you want to keep them cool, you want to keep them dry, and you want to keep them moving up and down, right? So cool. I would say that, you know, again, we're going to have to continue with the program of the air handlers we have been doing. We've owned it, I think, since 2018, and we've done, you know, some air handlers each year. The cooling tower and the chiller, I think they're both about 10 years old. Useful lives for those are typically 25. I've got my construction manager here who's a lot better versed in that than I am. But if you maintain those properly, as we do, they'll have another 15, maybe 20 years of useful life, so you will have that. The elevators should be good to go. I mean, that was when we went in, when we bought this, that was a problem there that we fixed. So, you know, we're keeping them cool, we're keeping them, you know, up and down, and you're keeping them dry. So over time, I think you're going to want to continue to, you know, make sure that you're caulking the building, and, you know, the roof is a major part of keeping them dry. So hopefully that answers your question. Thank you so much, sir. Thanks. We appreciate it. Okay, City Manager, what are next steps? That's what we'd like to find out from the Commission. If there are decisions that the Commission would like to make and direct staff to move forward in a particular direction, we would like to hear that feedback. As you know, there's also an evening item on the agenda related to the interim agreement that was deferred from first the April 21st meeting, then the June 2nd meeting. And so we're here today to glean from the Commission an approach for the City Hall project or any other related direction. Okay, so we've heard, first of all, I want to thank the Jacobs Group for an amazing presentation and doing such an in-depth analysis in such a short period of time. I want to thank you for your work, and we appreciate everything you've done to assist the City in making a decision tonight. You know, I'm of the belief that, and I want to hear what the appetite is of the Commission, I'm of the belief that we should move forward with new construction. I always am hesitant to buy something used because it's always going to anticipate unexpected expenses. And, again, I point out the example in Miami-Dade County when Miami-Dade purchased a building thinking it was going to cost a certain amount of money, and it turns out it costs significantly more once they got into the building. You just never know sometimes what your outside expenses are going to be, and with a new construction, I just feel that the life expectancy of a building, the dollars we're investing, the tax dollars that we're investing, are a better return on investment than if we were to go into a building that has been built 40, 30, 20 years old. I just, you know, you get what you pay for, and I really believe that, you know, that moving forward with new construction is the best foot forward. Now, I know, Commissioner Herbst, you've stated your opinion. You don't feel that that's what you want to do. Have you changed your mind at all tonight? No. And, you know, you made an interesting statement. You said that you prefer to buy things that are new and not used, and I'm just the opposite. I haven't bought a new car in years because I tend to buy late model used cars because you get most of the value out of the car, and somebody else takes a depreciation hit. So I'm frugal by nature. I'm a CPA, and that's how I approach things is what I consider to be the most appropriate use of the resources that we have from our taxpayers, and I don't think building a new building is it. I think buying an existing building that is in objectively very good shape, we've got two, 101 or 1 East Broward, both of which I think would make ideal city halls, and I think it would be the most prudent financial choice for our residents. Again, we're looking at a very challenging financial environment given the pending tax reform that I think is probably going to pass, and even without that, we were still looking at some struggles financially in the next couple of years, and so I think keeping the costs as low as possible is the absolute best cost for our residents, and I still think that that is the optimal solution. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Beasley-Pittman. Thank you, Mayor. I'm still in agreement for the new bill. I haven't been convinced that going with an older building would be cost-saving. I'm still seeing that what we have to put into the building as far as finances for the build-out, for the maintenance of it over the years, and I'm still uncomfortable that I can't get a definition of the life cycle of these buildings, and that's really important to me. Even with, you know, buying used cars, I'm a used car buyer as well, hurts, and my thing is, you know, I'm looking at the mileage on it. I'm looking at what has happened, how did the previous owner maintenance, as you said. But all of that plays into my decision as to if I would go into that used opportunity. And right now, with what's being presented, with the comparison of costs, I believe that the new build-out would be a better financial decision for us to preserve moving forward with the generations that are coming and how we're going to utilize the money. Okay, thank you. Commissioner Glassman? Yes, thank you, Mayor. I also wanted to echo your thank yous to Jacobs and to everyone who presented. I am very, very pleased with what staff did also in a reasonable amount of time, City Manager and the entire staff that put together all of this information from the times that we delayed and deferred this item. I think that tonight's presentation, today's afternoon's presentation, was so cohesive and so full of excellent detail. I will also echo the words of the Vice Mayor. I think as a team, we've done a really good job in taking the time to examine what we could possibly do in terms of bringing down that cost. If you remember, we as a commission voted at one point in time to accept a concept at about $300 million for this building. So to shave off over 30% of that and then you compound that with all of the interest, I just think that we've come a long way from that first concept that we all voted for, actually, at $300 million, to then look at what we could possibly do. So I just wanted to commend staff for that and all of our consultants who worked on this because I think that the exercise was a good one. We've come a long way, and I think I'm very confident that we're going to be able to move forward in a direction that's going to basically benefit the taxpayers in our city. I am also of the mind, as the Mayor has said and Commissioner Beasley-Pittman has said, that the unknowns are just too unknown. I think that our city is at a point in time where we are able to handle the expense. Staff has done a great job in showing us how we can pay that yearly amount, how we can do that within our budget. Again, and I've said this before, if the city of Oakland Park, if the city of Sunrise, if the city of Pompano Beach, if the city of Miami can all figure out a way to afford a brand new civil structure that basically is something that the city can take pride in, that the city can attend, that the city can say, yes, that is our city hall. Great cities have city halls. They have a place where the public can gather and call it their own. I'm not convinced that our two options here are that kind of a place where the city of Fort Lauderdale wants to sit. You mean the existing building options. Yes, I'm sorry, the existing building options. I'm sorry. Yes, the existing building options are not that place. They do not meet those guiding principles that the ULI and our own infrastructure task force identified over years of years of public input. They just don't fit that criteria. It's as simple as that. You look at that first slide and you see what those guiding principles were. Our city is at a point in time where this is something that we should do. It just makes common sense to me. I also am very fearful of going down that rabbit hole of opening up walls or just getting into kind of structural issues. Remember, Jacobs did a great job, but those were all non-evasive studies. I feel that if we got into an evasive study or that if we actually did have to make some changes to accommodate what our city needs in a city hall, it would be a very negative situation. So I'm not going to belabor the point. I just want to say that I agree with the mayor and Commissioner Beasley-Pittman. I think this is our option. I'm proud of the fact that we've shaved over 30% on the initial cost of what we first decided to talk about. I think we first talked about this at our goal-setting workshop in January, correct? And that's when we actually voted to say, yes, let's move forward with this idea. And then we went through the entire exercise of all of those teams presenting. We are definitely at the point where tonight we must approve the interim agreement, and then that gives us anywhere between 3 and 12 months to work out every single detail that we need to do so that when we come back with a comprehensive agreement, we are then ready to move forward in a way that makes sense for all of us. So that's what I would suggest, that we move forward tonight with the IA, and we take a look at those details that we still have to work out between the IA and the CA. Thanks, Mayor. Thank you. Vice Mayor? Thanks, Mayor, and thank you, Jacobs, and thank you, everyone, for being here and presenting. I thought you had a very good, compelling discussion with a lot of great facts, and I think the buy options are worth continuing to pursue and explore. You know, when you look at Tower 101 or 1 East, as we heard today, that you don't have to make these extensive renovations. They are incredibly well-built, sustainable buildings, and will continue to function for years ahead. And while we use those as primary office space for city staff, you know, there's a lot of great options for a city commission chamber. We're going to be in the police station, which is a great facility. Also, we can even explore building a new city commission chamber on the old city hall site. So that could be an option where you build a very cost-effective city commission chamber right there, one or two stories right on the existing city hall site, so that you have the, you know, all the functionalities we would want of a city commission chamber. So there's a lot of good options to, again, save our taxpayers' dollars in a very challenging time right now where we have tax reform coming down. We're facing budget deficits in the city. And so it's, I think, the best responsibility of us is to look at the most cost-effective options to explore those further. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. So, City Manager, I think we see a majority are in favor of entering into an interim agreement based on new construction. I appreciate the fact that you supplied this addendum to our backup, which shows us the differentials between the existing buildings and new construction in terms of the annual impact. So this is, to me, what you've told us is cheaper to build new. So, okay, so that's your direction. Is there any further business that we want to entertain this afternoon? Nothing from me. Thank you, Mayor. Okay, this meeting's concluded. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.