City Commission CRA Board Meeting and Conference Meeting on 2026-10-06 1:00 PM - Oct 06, 2026

hey good afternoon everybody welcome to city commission meeting this uh october 6th right yeah uh 2026 thank you all for being here a couple of preliminary announcements uh commissioner herps will not be here for the afternoon meeting but he will be here for the evening meeting and uh vice mayor ben sorensen uh will not be here until about two o'clock oh i always say it's quality versus quantity thank you wow it's okay so okay um all right so let us begin our meeting beautiful day out there today right to our agenda someone sabotaged my uh computer okay all right um so let us begin with the uh uh the cra board meeting um mr clerk please call the roll commissioner herps is not present commissioner glassman here commissioner beasley-pittman here vice chair sorensen is not present chair turn towels here so um start out with m1 motion approving minutes for september 15 2026 community redevelopment agency board meeting do i hear a motion to approve so moved second the moving seconded please call the roll commissioner glassman yes commissioner beasley-pittman yes chair turn towels yes um moving on to r1 this is a resolution accepting the instruments of conveyance for property located at 1306 northwest 6th street sister on boulevard from the city of fort lauderdale for public purposes subject to the city authorizing the conveyance authorizing contracts with companies for appraisal title survey site cleanup maintenance related services authorizing the issuance of requests for development redevelopment authorizing the executive director to execute any and all related instruments um no one is signed up to speak any questions regarding this there being none someone like to move uh introduce the resolution yes ma'am question yes um good afternoon again um in regards to this i am definitely in agreement for the conveyance i just want to make sure some of the things that we spoke about um i think that was um maybe a june meeting um where um commissioner i'm grassman and i we talked about making sure that the two districts are i'm on the right one i'm on the wrong one i'm sorry next one next one move on okay um would someone like to introduce a resolution introduce resolution has been introduced uh please call the roll a resolution of the board of commissioners of the fort lauderdale community redevelopment agency accepting conveyance of real property located at 1306 northwest 6th street in the northwest progresso flagler heights community redevelopment area authorizing the executive director to engage in appropriate due diligence authorizing the executive director to contract with vendors for appraisals title survey environmental services maintenance and related services and to issue a request for proposals for development of the parcel delegating authority to the executive director to execute any and all related instruments related to conveyance due diligence and maintenance of the parcel and providing for an effective date commissioner glassman yes commissioner beasley pitman yes and chair trentals yes r1 is now uh approved r2 this is a resolution accepting the instruments of conveyance for property located at 400 northwest 7th avenue known as the sylvia h aldridge station post office in the northwest progresso flagler heights community redevelopment area in the city of fort lauderdale um several people have signed up to speak is the director here hi there you want to give the commission and the community a little bit of a heads up as to what we're doing here today good afternoon vanessa martin so you know back in the day you know the cdbg funds were used to acquire the property for about 1.8 million dollars since that time you know we have been utilizing those funds back to the city about i think about 160 000 annually in lease payments so we're about to end that lease next year december 2027 and so we should be done with that so the the goal here is just to make sure that whoever receives it as far as development is concerned really comes back into the cra to provide affordable housing in the neighborhood so so the money that we were that we secured in order to purchase this land um is by by um by uh making this conveyance is that going to trigger any requirement that we pay back any money so no not at that time no it won't okay so it's not it's not an issue here no okay all right um um all right so we have a few people to sign up to speak and uh why don't we begin with um robert washington from invest uh fort lauderdale and uh uh is it tosia drummond from invest fort lauderdale jacqueline reed stills from invest fort lauderdale those will be the first three that will be asked to speak so is robert washington here hello robert now do me a favor and press the button at the bottom of the speaker okay there you go thank you this first time i spoke up here but uh i'm new to this board but um what we're asking before it goes for rfp we believe that it should go out to the communities and to see what their voices say for the community and to be heard exactly why i think that's it right what voices should be heard on the project and what community benefits that will take place behind the project so you're thinking now the director indicated that there was an intent to uh utilize this for affordable housing so you're saying that we should uh open up the options for what their property could be used for well i would suggest that the community know some kind of communication about the property because it's the first time i heard anything about it myself before i joined this board and i would like to know what can we do as a partnership to create an opportunity for the community okay is this in progresso no well actually yes technically it is i'm sorry so it's a district two it's progressive village yes the district two okay have you had any meetings uh with regard to the utilization of this site yet well actually i was waiting for us to take a little bit more action we had that conversation if you remember that a meeting that commissioner beasley pittman was talking about where we wanted to make sure that we were going to get involved make sure that all of the surrounding neighborhoods were involved input um in fact i was going to wait till it but i i have not had that meeting yet because we have not decided as a commission what we were doing with this whether we were conveying it i have some questions about conveyance i have some questions about but i'll i'll wait until the public input um but right now i've actually been meeting uh i've had i guess it's a three or four presentations um with folks that want to do something on this site and i'll i'll address all of that when uh we talk as a commissioner okay thank you very good does that conclude your remarks for now for now yes well being your first they were eloquent and and and and educational thank you so much uh is it tasha drummond tasha yes tasha i don't know why that keeps going off good afternoon i am a board member i'm not turning your mic off just oh okay no that's fine that's fine okay i'm here you're good all right i'm tasha drummond board member of invest fort lauderdale and i'm here in support of the initiative we support the conveyance of the ulrich site to the cra and we strongly believe that the community should have a voice in shaping its future before the rfp is issued and that's fort lauderdale stands ready to partner in that process thank you okay great thank you jacqueline i guess you've got all of invest fort lauderdale here today cheryl dickey bernadette i thought you came here to see us but i guess not that is us jacqueline reed steels how are you today i'm good how are you all great thank you great to be here in your presence um i wear a couple of hats and you're not wearing any hats it's there invisible but uh for one um i represent a neighborhood as um and i represent the invest fort lauderdale and one of the things that we greatly would like to see is the cra this land be conveyed to the cra however the neighbors of this community would really like to take a part in affordable housing addressing whatever goes there and as a member of uh the board of invest fort lauderdale we would have like to have a part in that picking out the whatever goes there you know making helping to make decisions with the cra okay thank you cheryl cheryl dickey i'm sorry oh the aisles are too narrow good afternoon mayor commission thank you so much my name is cheryl dickey business owner on sistrunk boulevard and board member of invest fort lauderdale of course knowing the history i came here in 1992 and knowing the history of this property um uh realizing that uh the hill hotel was there i know there was a monument there at one point um that this property was purchased with community development block grant and of course surrounding community the udag money displacing obviously many uh residences and uh in the community that were now many of them in district three but of course district two and district three all of that community was really just one neighborhood where people resided so with that said realizing that many of the people are still around and or their relatives uh would like to see a robust community involvement and community engagement process as we uh the city looks at the development of the property um obviously if the conveyance occurs with the cra i invest fort lauderdale would like to be a part of all of that uh to ensure that clearly there is an engagement process i know with all of the cra's both at the beach and a northwest that there have always been a community engagement process before development occurs so we are asking that that occur thank you okay thank you um and bernadette norris weeks thank you mayor vice mayor commissioners thank you for this opportunity i was here when this was this issue was discussed um a few months back and one of the things that you last left off with is that all of you wanted to see a robust community involvement and engagement process that was said it was stated we're still doing it was also stated that you that commissioner glassman would be working with commissioner um beasley pitman to accomplish that goal in the community um our executive director jim karis i don't know if he's here right now but i can tell you that jim has already reached out with that understanding that that's what you all wanted to see to local universities that have engaged with us and are prepared to uh help with a robust community engagement prior to the rfp being issued now i am here not only as a as a business owner whose businesses directly across the street from that location and can throw a rock at it but also i'm here and today i feel like i'm speaking on behalf of ancestors who can't speak here one of the last holdouts from the eminent domain process was my grandfather's sister idella williams who lived in that area in that very community where she and her family were eventually displaced and because of this deep history and my knowledge of the sea of fort lauderdale and knowing that this site represents a site where at one point um it was the only site where black people could stay in the fort lauderdale area in terms of a hotel it was the hill hotel uh your staff did a wonderful job when they made the presentation um when it was before you the last time about the historical aspects mentioning uh miss aldridge and um which the post office is named after and and all of the historical issues uh that come into play with this site so we're not necessarily against um in fact i wrote support because i support the conveyance however um the your director did say something about affordable housing and i think that that is even jumping the gun because it's cdbg dollars would require a community um a community benefit basically and so and we don't know what the community wants to see we do know that a lot of housing has gone up in the area um some of it affordable most of it not and we do know that the community um this is a huge piece of property for this area which used to be in district three for a very long time and um through redistricting and politics and everything else it's no longer there but the community still feels very associated engaged connected with this site in that area and so i would ask that before this goes out for an rfp process which we do not um disagree with uh i would ask as the chair of invest fort lauderdale that we are allowed to participate in the process and what that looks like to hear from the community and have that rfp be taken and have that engagement be taken into consideration in what eventually is published as um an rfp that goes out from the city and so that's what we're asking for we want to be heard we want to participate in what goes there um and um we hope that you all will hear us most of the members of the board are here um some could not make it today but i do know that mr karras feels very strongly about this and if he were here he would um certainly echo the same sentiments thank you for your time okay thank you is there anyone else who wishes to speak on this item okay uh city attorney can i ask you a couple questions um this property was paid for with cbg cdbg money right so and we and our director said there are no strings attached if we were to sell it to the cra and that's correct are you conveying it well transferring it yeah we may give it to another public entity i'm sorry you may transfer it to another public entity right um transferring it to invest fort lauderdale would not be a public entity no mayor right um if we were to sell it to the cra is that is that an option for the city of fort lauderdale uh i believe you could if they had the funds to do that i don't know i'm just i'm just trying to see how you know like like could the city of fort lauderdale sell it to the cra and then the city use some of that money to to invest with invest fort lauderdale not that i need an answer right now but you know i'm trying to i'm trying to give some teeth to invest fort lauderdale and to fund it and some of the uh initiatives that we've always contemplated for that or for that entity um so uh i don't know if we have any money in in the coffers for the cra but knowing that the mission of invest fort lauderdale is the same as as the cra um it's just something i was thinking about as i was reading through the paperwork you know might this be something that we should consider in order to in order to provide some kind of funding for invest fort lauderdale in any case um uh commissioners you have any questions commissioner beasley pitman you had started to talk about yes i was really excited to be able to talk about this so i jumped the gun by one um agenda item however um as i was beginning to say i am in agreement for the conveyance um wanting to see that happen but again as it's been said and we discussed a couple months back um that we do need to make sure that we are including the communities together um to have a conversation that we are um bringing to that property um what will benefit and what the communities are in agreement with um also um at this point um making sure we step back to make sure we engage in that process do not want to run forward and go oh we forgot to do this part so we want to make sure we're strategic and moving forward again wanting to be um working alongside is what we can do with district two to make this um a project that is beneficial for the city so was the cra uh advisory board did they ever participate in any of the discussion regarding this yes they did so they've already entertained this issue yes okay so so what are we looking at then when we talk about you know community engagement that's to me that's the first level of community engagement where would we go from there so from there as been stated we're going to bring it out to the community we typically would have community engagement meetings we do have something scheduled that's coming up in the early part of the year to discuss to discuss this so is this just anyone can come kind of meeting or is it is it like a neighborhood association hoa that you're targeting or would tell me explain to us what you who your audience is going to be for this community engagement well typically we do an email blast and that's for the community overall okay so that's what we would typically do that that's what we have done in the past okay so mayor if i may so when i think about this project moving forward if it were to transfer to the cra any future development of that site through the cra would one need to meet the the goals and objectives of the cra redevelopment plan so those are things like affordable housing economic development safety those sorts of things well only those things well it needs to include those components it can include but the cra has a defined mission right so so any redevelopment would need to include that when you look at the cdbg commitment if there's not a way to buy out or be relieved of that commitment the development would also need to meet a cdbg national objective so that's affordable housing economic development there's a couple but they're all kind of in that same scope as the cra redevelopment plan obviously include i think not only input from the civic association the projects in but also the neighboring civic associations that's the main corridor of our city we want to make sure we get it right whoever our development partner is and so that would really help craft whatever the request for proposals might be from the cra to put out on the street to make sure that we get responses that are aligned with those objectives but also the will of the community and the commission okay okay great thank you commissioner glassman yes thank you mayor uh first i want to thank all of the speakers today for showing up and taking the time and expressing your concerns i'm in a hundred percent agreement with you uh so as i said earlier mayor i i've been approached by maybe three four possibly and i think more on the way this is a very pivotal piece of land uh over three acres right downtown with an amazing history uh i think later tonight we are the evening agenda we're actually going to make sure that we're preserving the monument the hill monument that's later this evening so this is important on so many aspects um i'm going to actually recommend that we table this item and not take any action right now uh i feel that with all of the interest that's out there plus the fact that we need to coordinate uh with invest fort lauderdale we need to coordinate with uh several neighborhoods we have a lot of work to do before we i think take this next step uh tabling this agenda item remember the lease we have all the way through december of 2027 so we have some time it's not like urgent it's not right now of course we want to give it a few months in advance of that but we still have plenty of time uh so i'm going to recommend that we actually table this issue uh we listen to all of the folks that are going to be coming to us and i'm sure they will be coming to us as i said uh there's a lot of interest in this site uh but more importantly we have to gauge uh the interest of all of those neighborhoods we have to do much more in terms of public participation uh city manager i would ask you to make sure that we're coordinating all of this uh with the invest fort lauderdale board uh and the neighborhoods and we have to just make sure that everyone's at the table so that there's no surprises when we do take any kind of action uh i'm not even sure we have to convey anything at this point remember one of the interested parties is the housing authority and the housing authority was established by the city of fort lauderdale so uh i just think we have a lot of work to do i don't see the rush to take action on this item now uh and i'm actually going to move that we uh that we table this item until city staff is able uh to bring all of the interested parties together all right thank you commissioner easley pittman did you want to respond um i'm i'm not sure i want to table it um but if we could i want to hear from invest fort lauderdale and theirs how they feel about tabling because if we table i would definitely want to do a time certain what how we're going to move i don't want this to become something that's just hanging in the wind yeah well um before you speak uh burned it so uh city manager um if we convey it to the uh the cra um it doesn't compromise our choices it doesn't interfere with our outreach it's just this is a formality as i'm seeing it so that now the jurisdiction of the of the use of the property falls within the cra advisory board and the cra board right right it conveys ownership all right and the lease for the post office does um i think miss martin mentioned run through december of 2027 so in terms of timing and and the current use of the property there's some time left on that as well okay well that's but again i'm not even sure that we need to convey to the cra before we decide as the city what exactly does we want to do i just think it's premature both to convey uh and also premature to take any action uh city attorney you can weigh in what's the benefit of not what's the benefit of postponing this again well because there's still so much work to do i mean i i'm not sure there might be a cleaner way help me city attorney i think there might be a cleaner way if we do not convey to cra aren't we then able to just take any kind of action that the city wants to do or we can uh partner with anyone and then if that doesn't work out we can still have the choice of listening to other proposals you tell me but i think i think it gives us more options as a city you can do that with the cra it's got because it's cbgd whatever cbdgb cd we are restricted as to how you know we can't just i understand put it out to the private sector and say we want to build a shopping center right but what if we decided for instance i'm just throwing this out there what if we decided that the partner that we wanted was the housing authority what if uh and the fact that we actually do that i know but then if it was the housing authority correct me if i'm wrong we would not have to convey to the cra as another public entity you could convey directly to the housing authority and then that would that would ensure that we don't have any issues at all with all of the obligations with hud i'm still not convinced that we are totally in the clear with obligations from hud until i i mean that's just my own opinion but i just want to make sure that we are again i don't see any problem in just making sure that we're speaking to all of the parties that are involved speaking to all of the neighborhoods that are involved as i said we have um 14 months still left on the lease again uh tabling is probably to to your point commissioner beasley-pittman tabling is a little bit more indefinite deferring would be a bit more of a time certain correct that's correct so again um all right so if we table it to commissioner beasley-pittman's point it has to be to a date certain so if you want to do it for 30 days well that would be a deferral not a tabling tabling would be no time certain i think well i think we need a time cert okay i don't want this to drag on either okay but before we make the decision i still want to hear um from um the chair invest support a lot of this chair thank you um commissioner the position of um i think my board is that we would like for you to convey it and this is consistent with what commissioner glassman said at the last meeting he noted how this can go very quickly and before you know it uh december of 2027 will be here and so i agree with that and i think the sooner you make the steps and take the steps to move forward the better i think that if you um transferred it to for instance as the commission to the housing authority that presupposes that you're going to have a certain type of development there and i don't think that really deals with the or even jives with the engagement piece that you all say you wanted to have not just at this meeting but the previous one and so we would um ask respectfully um to the extent that you are going to do this anyway that you move forward and help us to start a robust process for engagement thank you so move forward and and do make the move forward and make the conveyance yes mr mayor okay so there's a motion on the floor i'm going to withdraw the motion okay so commissioner do you want to make a motion um yes i'll make the motion that we move forward with the conveyance to move forward with the conveyance yes all right is there a second second okay it's been moved and seconded any further questions or comments there being none please call the roll so just to confirm uh commissioner beasley pittman introduced the resolution yes okay thank you a resolution of the board of commissioners of the fort lauderdale community redevelopment agency accepting conveyance of real property located 400 northwest 7th avenue in the northwest progressive flagler heights community redevelopment area authorizing the executive director to engage in appropriate due diligence authorizing the executive director to contract with vendors for appraisals title survey environmental services maintenance and related services and to issue a request for proposals for development of the parcel delegating authority to the executive director to execute any and all related instruments related to conveyance due diligence and maintenance of the parcel and providing for an effective date commissioner glassman yes commissioner beasley pittman chair turn tell us yes and that resolution is now approved thank you all okay um is there any further business of the cra none there being none that meeting is now concluded now we move on to our conference meeting agenda uh we start with communications to the city commission um we have uh a number of them oh the audit advisory board uh is anyone here from the audit advisory board uh city manager you want to tell us what this is about yes uh linda short's coming up to share that communication oh i'm sorry i didn't see you linda how can i miss you with all your pink i'm proud to pink pink everywhere um good afternoon mayor vice mayor and commissioners um the auditor the audit advisory board uh as a part of their function serves as a selection they used to serve as the selection committee for auditors in 2019 state statute changed which requires a formal process which includes an auditor selection committee in 2022 we did our first one and um district three commissioner served on it and helped us to select our current auditors that audit contracts expiring in june of next year in order to get enough time to select an auditor we're looking to stand the committee up to start the work in november so we can have an rfp ready for commission award in may are we looking to change the auditor that we have now we have to yes so the contract expires and the statute requires us to do this process to onboard a new auditor it could be the same auditor it could be the same auditor okay yes okay all right so part of this action is to bring this communication to you and my goal is with the october 20th meeting to appoint a member of the commission to serve on it so i'm hoping that through this communication with you guys will spur some some some desire to serve on on the committee for me spur it let's go pat are you on it are you on this committee um i'm not on the on the selection committee um in the past i used to be as a like non-voting member and and i would like to observe the process yeah this time but i wouldn't be a voting member for you would be a voting member okay no all right okay does that decision have to be made now not to be made now because we don't have a full complement of commissioners i understand so when we bring the come see us in november yeah when we we're hoping to start the work in november so we can get the rfp ready but what i would like to do is that commit the uh resolution will come blank at the next commission meeting and you guys can just vote on who would serve well in november and no you want to bring it in november five commissioners okay november got it because commissioner herps would not be eligible because he's got it so whoever his replacement would be would be one of the people will insist that they serve no problem i will i will go ahead i will move it to november for the november uh we'll pick that person now we can pick that person now if they're not here yeah we have three votes we could select anyone we want right now no all right okay just a thought so i will bring it to the november meeting then the first meeting in november okay by the way you're on the audience yeah thank you thank you all right thank you uh-huh that's how it works that's how commissioner glassman get on the uh the uh solid waste commission and i thank you for that you were absent that day thank you okay um sustainability advisory board we have a communication a very long communication is there someone here representing suzy how have you been a long time no see i know i haven't been up here in a while this is beautiful by the way really nice guys great job gypsies we're going from room to room to room hopefully we'll have a permanent place soon soon right oh well good afternoon uh mayor dean uh and uh the commission as you most of you know i'm suzy bailey and i'll be speaking on behalf of the city of for a lotto deal sustainability advisory board or sab as i might be referring it to uh regarding our communication and recommendations on synthetic turf and what's best for our community for the record i'm speaking solely in my capacity as an sab member not on behalf of residents for resilience um i hope you've had time to read the communications because rather than read that to you i was asked to summarize um what our board considered but most importantly what we're asking you to consider um the city's use of synthetic turf synthetic turf has expanded rapidly throughout the city more than half of the playing fields across our park systems now have synthetic turf along with a growing number of recreational spaces and more projects are on the pipeline to explain why there is this increase in synthetic turf being used our board heard from enrique sanchez on parks and from parks and rec and from chris wedge of field turf one of the city's synthetic turf vendors one key reason is that there is a tremendous demand on our parks and playing fields and that properly designed synthetic turf can tolerate more intensive year-round use than grass after their presentation the board requested to hear from independent specialists on this topic and to address the health and environmental concerns raised by our board we heard from a dr sarah evans from new york she's from the icon school of medicine of mount sinai and she addressed artificial turf concerns with children's health we also heard from susan chapnick from boston who is now retired but was president and uh principal scientist of the new environmental horizons she and she addressed environmental impacts our board acknowledges that the city is choosing synthetic turf to accommodate the high demand for sports fields but nonetheless we believe that the city commission should consider the potential health and environmental effects of synthetic turf and has identified three main concerns one being runoff chemicals and microplastics which can leach from synthetic turf in surrounding natural areas and into waterways wildlife the loss of soil habitat and living landscapes in an already heavily developed urban development and environment and most importantly heat synthetic turf absorbs and retains heat it reaches much higher surface temperatures than grass which can also contribute to the hurt the urban heat island effect on hot days it offers no reprieve excuse me no reprieve we saw an alarming example in the nfl this uh past september 20th at nissan stadium in nashville when the titans played the eagles the air temperature was about 95 degrees but uh according to fox broadcast they showed it on air the artificial turf actually went up to 157 degrees uh it was so hot that some of the players shoes were melting she's hot yeah um so that was tennessee and we're down here in south florida so in consideration of the uh the information we received the sav would like to share these four recommendations first we recommend that the commission receive a holistic presentation on the pros and cons of synthetic turf by holistic we mean just simply hear the full picture you've heard the city's perspective and some at one of your june meetings you also heard from a representative from the edsa um another city vendor so just as our board sought independent health and environmental expertise we believe the commission should have that same opportunity second we recommend that the city review all options before selecting synthetic turf for future installations thirdly we recommend that the city limit expansion of synthetic turf on non-athletic fields those heavily used athletic fields have a very different need from passive parks those parks that we use for walking relaxing and just to get one just to get in touch with nature and finally we recommend signage whatever y'all decide ultimately we believe people using these fields should have important information about the potential health concerns particularly when it comes to extreme heat so that they can make informed decisions for themselves and their families this isn't about one solution for every park or playing field it's about looking at the full picture inform the people using it hear the full range of expertise consider the alternatives and be thoughtful about where synthetic turf is really truly needed and finally i'm really happy to um share with you that one of the experts that advised us susan chapnik is actually here today she was visiting her mother that's in uh uh hospice in uh boyton beach and she came down so it's rather serendipitous as i stated she was the one that gave was one of the independent experts um that we invited to help us better understand these issues she's even brought samples of synthetic turf and rubber infill so that you can actually see and feel the materials if you're interested susan would be pleased to would you please join me up here if it's okay she did sign up to speak uh i think yes i think it's especially valuable for everyone to have the opportunity to hear directly from one of the independent experts who helped inform our board's discussion susan our board our board susan our commission excuse me right thank you for um well i have to lower that welcome to fort lauderdale thank you thank you for the opportunity our trees aren't turning as nicely as your trees are in arlington oh i know it's beautiful up there actually the fall is the best season if you ever get up there um but i do appreciate you giving me a chance to speak briefly um i know i'm not a resident so that's an unusual request to have me present here um we're the free state of florida everyone can speak all right there you go um just to give you my background very briefly i'm an environmental chemist um i had my own company up to a year or so ago when i retired but i'm busier than ever i i work a lot of pro bono helping communities understand potential environmental impacts of large projects in their communities including putting artificial turf down which is a plastic carpet that goes down over acres of land for um for sports fields so i have some show and tell because it's always interesting to see what is what is this substance um many of you are are familiar with it um this is this is what the grass looks like well let me before you before you do show and tell here um aren't there different types of artificial turf absolutely okay and different qualities and different uh impacts that these have so what you have here may not necessarily be what we're using in our city true except they all have the same basic components but some of the chemicals that come off them especially for the infill which i'll explain can be different because you can have different infill but the plastic blades and the backing and the shock pads are pretty much all the same um from field turf and sprint turf and there's a brock pad which is what this is so they have the same general components they could have slightly different chemicals coming off of them that is true yeah so these are the general general components so you have you have the plastic grass it's attached to a backing which is also plastic underneath that is what's called a shock pad and this one um happens to be made by brockfill um it's a shock pad that goes underneath which helps with the um impact they call it gmax right yeah the impact of the athletes um this is also you can see is made of of um synthetic materials then what goes to help keep these blades of grass up that's the infill and i don't know if any of you can see this i could i'm i'm happy to give it to you if you want to pass it around this is tire crumb rubber so what this is made of is used tires um that are ground up in little tiny pellets and you've probably all seen that or if you see when when athletes play on the field and they run and something shoots up that's those those little plastic pellets now what is that used for these are made um these are used as the infill it's called an infill so they put it between the gaps between the blades of grass exactly and actually they use 20 percent of tire crumb rubber and approximately 20 to 30 percent of tire crumb rubber and the rest is sand silica sand okay and that's the combination that's generally used in these fields now there are organic alternatives to this crumb rubber and um that's what some communities up where i live are using now they're instead of the crumb rubber because the crumb rubber has some hazardous chemicals that come off including lead zinc is it petroleum it's petroleum it's a petroleum product right and um because tires are made with zinc as an antioxidant and this other chemical that was recently discovered called six ppd quinone which is also intentionally added to the tires six ppd is intentionally added to the tires as an antioxidant when the tires are used the uv light converts this six ppd to six ppd quinone why is that important i'm you know giving you kind of an alphabet soup here of a chemical the reason it's important is it's acutely acutely toxic to aquatic organisms fresh water and um salt water the freshwater organisms mainly fish but other organisms as well when i say acute i mean that the epa has set a level of 11 parts per trillion as the safe level of this compound for aquatic organisms now to give you an example what is 11 parts per trillion that's 11 drops of water in 20 20 olympic swimming pools and that's a minute amount so so this is this is very toxic when so what happened you're not you you're assuming we're using that right well you may most fields are using this some of the new fields are going to an organic infill like cork or um pine mulch um it's called brock fill is is one of the vendor names um that doesn't use this that is true okay so i just want to explain so rainwater goes through here it goes through the infill it goes through here it goes through the plastic it goes through this um underneath and then there's another geo fabric which i don't have which is also made of petroleum so the rain water filters through all that and it can capture the chemicals that come off there are third party data reports in the public realm that show that lead comes off zinc comes off the six ppd quinone some other chemicals come off and those chemicals end up in the water all right so so we need to wrap this up so okay so um uh we we thank you for your instruction and we appreciate the warning and we'll direct hopefully direct staff to not include these components in any artificial turf that we you know ultimately choose to install keeping in mind that artificial turf is not our not our first choice in any ground cover it's always a natural grass but if in situations where grass cannot grow right or in a place where it's worn out so quickly that it doesn't make sense to to use natural grass those are the options that we often are faced with so um so we you want to conclude your comments so that we can move on sure i understand and i appreciate your time and i appreciate that you would consider national grass first before these we always do yeah thank you yeah um uh and trisha daly trisha halliday is trish here did you want to speak i can't hear a word you're saying hi everybody thank you for letting us speak about that and if you are seriously going to be taking the information that the good doctor just gave you um then i i really don't have anything to say because as a resident here for 40 years and having raised my four children on real grass and having them play play on um all of the city fields and now having well having said that two of my kids have the plastic grass and i've seen what has happened in their homes you know the little bits that they have i've seen the black on the mike my grandkids feet i've seen them getting burned i've seen all of this and i really would like you to take to heart what what susan has to say so please do the best you can for the rest of the children and everybody else thank you does anyone else wish to speak on this item there being none okay so may i just ask a couple of questions of staff because i think it's important for us to have that discussion first of all thank you on to the sustainability advisory board for all the work that you do susie for your leadership there and also uh with residents for resilience thank you and thank you to the guest speaker today as well i just want to make sure that we're clear what we're doing as a city when it comes to synthetic turf so um city manager i know that we did have i think it was in may when we talked about the uh fort lordo beach park amenities we had a very thorough discussion i went through a lot of questions with the representative from edsa i wanted to make sure that we had the facts i wanted to make sure that we were not using some of the materials that were presented today as possibilities and that we had actually pivoted to organic materials we had pivoted to using synthetic turf that was not your grandfather's synthetic turf so i really just want to make sure that that is what's happening i want to make sure how is the decision made when we are looking at whether to use natural grass or synthetic turf and i want to know what science is because it was interesting also reading the minutes of the sustainability advisory board there was not a unanimous unanimous vote on this particular communication to us uh one of the representatives actually on that board said that he found the research to be inconclusive so there's always going to be this debate and i want to make sure that we're dealing with the latest facts and knowing how we are operating as a city uh just so that we know how we're moving forward thank you yeah so i'll start so um we do use synthetic turf both in our athletic fields and some other city property applications miss bailey did articulate very well the reasons why we use them maintenance is one of the key reasons um these of chemicals and we heard about some of the things that could be in some forms of synthetic turf but we also if we are using it aren't doing things like pesticides and fertilizers in those turf areas and then it's sometimes a more more preferable playing surface for some of our from some of our athletic programs um you did hear a presentation on the fort lauderdale beach park from edsa a few months ago and in that presentation they did talk about using a more plant-based synthetic turf material with an organic fill so we are paying attention to those changes in the market and the technologies and we'll continue to do so i'm going to turn it over to quentin pew assistant city manager to talk about how we make those decisions on the applications of those turf types thank you manager good afternoon quentin pew assistant city manager in addition to what the manager just said um edsa or the selected contractor or prime we'll also look at sand coated infill so there's multiple plant-based options out there and how we make that decision is once we have the available options we'll bring that forth to the sab board as well as the parks recreation and beaches advisory boards probably show them the top two um options or alternatives available um get their feedback and ultimately if it's the desire of this commission we'll bring that forward to you uh for that final approval perfect thank you so much no thank you i i appreciate the information okay uh moving on to the final communications from the marine advisory board um fairly lengthy letter that we were were given is there someone from the marine advisory board here good afternoon good afternoon mr mayor city commissioners and staff yes sir good to see you again my name is uh ted morelli i'm the current chair of the marine advisory board for the city of fault lauderdale uh quickly introducing the communication to you uh regarding the north fork of the new river and some environmental issues that are up there uh this uh communication is really the end result of a probably a two-year process we've had on the marine on the marine advisory board this uh communication was unanimously voted for 12 to zero so that's that's an important note to make here and it really revolves around the historic and endemic issues on the north fork of the new river how they affect not only district three but also downstream to districts two and districts four so we are here to answer any questions or uh anything we can do to further okay anyone have any questions on the commission um okay well no one else has signed up to speak and we appreciate you know the amount of time and commitment that the the board has made towards this issue so thank you so much and uh and clearly our staff will uh make sure that we take everything that you said here and there's a lot in here into consideration as we make our decisions going forward thank you mr mayor appreciate that sir and also um thank you to the marine advisory board for um the efforts that you put forward to bring this before the whole commission that we can address something that is affecting not only one part of our city but the city overall so thank you for your efforts and i'm looking forward to working towards a resolve of some of the things that are listed here in the communications well thank you commissioner uh we do actually have a member of the marine advisory board from your district mr sam mitchell here today who was uh one of the champions of this effort over the past couple of years so it's been a been a huge effort so thank you all very much thank you thank you for your work thank you okay moving on to reports from the city commissioners so commissioner beasley pittman you're on let's start with starting with friday september 18th um being able to that's that's not the right date but september 18th um attended the boys and girls club um annual board retreat um doing the retreat um got opportunity to talk a little bit more with the newly appointed ceo which is chris um gentel um gentel um they're doing some amazing things over at the boys and girls club and i was invited to sit on a panel alongside um commissioners from the city of oakland park and also west park um in attendance was also our senator dr rosalyn osgood um she shared an amazing story um how much of an impact the boys and girls club was um with her family um was an opportunity um for me to share how impactful the boys and girls club has been with in our city and then also giving um some um insight and suggestions of um what would be also beneficial with their services and programs to continue with the city so it was truly an honor to be there an honor to be able to share ideas um and then just being able to engage for alignment for continuous growth then on saturday september 26th team summit we were blessed to have a team summit within district three it was an opportunity for interactive experience for our young neighbors those middle schoolers in high schoolers it was opportunity for them to learn of our civic process they were able to ask questions with community advocates as well as elected officials that were in attendance we had local electives and also state levels in attendance this was a non-partisan event it was truly an opportunity where our young people were able to engage and meet some of our electives in that room we had the pleasure of having um state senator chevron jones dr osgood also um lisa dunkley and also locally was also lauder hills commissioner melissa dunn we had some advocates in the room as well that really poured into our young people they had some amazing questions and it was really um a breath air fresh fresh air in the room the young people wanting to know more about how this process worked many times we think our our young people aren't listening or they're not paying attention but they really are and it was a room um a young people who are interested and want to have engagement and the overall theme of that that conversation was that your voice can be heard now there's no reason to wait till you're older and that um summit was entitled my my block my ballot and encouraging them to get involved with our civic associations um civic process now also sharing that um on saturday september 26th along with um commissioner glassman um city manager chris cooper we attended the urban leagues um the urban league of broward county derby to dust gala it was a great event um honorees um were um also given i know um commissioner glassman has all the breakdowns so i'm going to leave that for him but we had a um amazing time and um again on the broward league is doing amazing things here um in our city as well so it was an honor to be able to attend their gala and hear the things that they are accomplishing also would like to um give reference to tuesday september 29th for district three um we had our quarterly civic association presidents meeting um we had a great turnout and that particular night it was the night that we had a you know it had been raining so and it seemed like the sky just opened but we had a great turnout that night and then also at that meeting we had representatives from our cfl ca which also reminded the president's the importance of being a part of our council of civic associations so it was a great meeting great um opportunity um to hear and share and and give the information what's going on within the district and the city also i want to thank um parks and recs and also um those who were able to attend on saturday october 3rd that was the call to be more friends and family day um it's held at oswald park it was my understanding a great event once again and to parks and recs thank you for all that you do city manager for attending in my stead um unfortunately i was unable to attend due to a memorial service but this is an event that i'm um glad that we as a city has um committed to being a part of and making sure that we continue to um lift up and the legacy of carlton moore um is um able to continue and live on now the next item before you go on yes yes can we um i mean the legacy of carlton moore i believe is important it is to establish but we've never really found a tangible way in which to recognize him being a city commissioner on this commission for 20 years yes having been one of the authors of the cra and having really pushed for so much uh improvement in his district over the years um it would be great if we could you know form a committee or something to to really come up with something um that would appropriately recognize his legacy so i'm just bring that to your attention if we could do something like that that would be great um i agree with you and um yes let's do that i know um previously before i started in this in this capacity there was some conversation i don't know where it you know went and landed but we do know nothing has tangible been established in honor of him so yes i agree with that so okay i agree all right i didn't mean to interrupt you no you're fine this is good i i appreciate that thank you um the next item i wanted to talk about um i'm asking that we as a commission to um submit a resolution to our school board briarwood county school board in regards to um the school closings that are affecting our city um with the redesign we the city of fort launder in briarwood county we are the school that the city the municipality that has experienced the most schools being closed and that should be alarming to us you know i understand that there's some things that the school board um are deeming necessary but it needs to be a little bit more balanced um right now with what we have experienced in district three we have actually um experienced three i say three and a half schools that are being have been closed we've had um north fork most recently we had arthur ash which was converted to uh with dillard to be a six plus um six through 12 sun sunland academy was a full of um elementary is now k through third and now we're talking about closing what we know to be a legacy school as well um william dandy and when we think about community and building community and inviting people to move to our city most people want a community school and our community schools are being um shut down and we need to draw the line somewhere because if it doesn't stop here we start looking at other schools with will stranahan fort lauderdale bayview or any other schools are going to be on that list well isn't it based on attendance i mean the the the population of the students in each of the schools has diminished significantly i don't see that happening in fort laudale high or stranahan but isn't that really the the uh the bottom line to a lot of these school closures um i don't know necessarily i would stick with only the bottom line but that is part of the equation but also with that i believe that there's an opportunity to um look at the metrics a little differently because if you have one school that's overcrowded in the same area how do you adjust the numbers really yeah okay so um so there's more conversation but where i'm going with this i believe that we need to take a make a statement that we are witnessing what's going on but at the same time this is something that we don't want to see in our city if we are the the face of close school closers have you participated in any of the workshops that the school board is i have you have i have yeah i have and you know they have um you know they have their reasons they have um some data that i think could be um even um investigate a little bit deeper you know we all have points that we are making but you still have the fact that we the city of fort lauderdale is the city that is experiencing the most schools closure so if we could um agree to make a statement that we see what you're doing we understand but also we need you to consider a different metric when it comes to the city of fort lauderdale is it within our is it within our possibilities that you know we have joint meetings all the time with our boards and advisory committees and maybe even just to sit down with the school board or at least some of the members is that even a possibility i mean a resolution is fine but you know they're going to look at that or maybe not look at it and it is what it is but is it not better to maybe actually have a face-to-face conversation with the school board members to understand the you know the reason for all of this and what the possibilities might be going forward i'm just throwing that out there we we meet with folks all the time as a commission is that even a possibility or is it even design why don't we ask um this is the city manager as uh preliminarily to that could we ask you to inquire with the school board to get uh like a white paper as to the statistics as to what what are what were the the metrics that were applied towards the closing of any of the schools and any future schools that we can we can maybe amongst ourselves you know have a conversation and then then maybe have a face-to-face workshop with the uh with the school board yeah we can make that request okay that makes sense yes but i still want us to say something because um i believe there's a meeting maybe in the next five to ten days um just letting them know we we are um we're not aware we're not happy with it um you know it is their warehouse but at the same time we want them to know that hey we see what's going on we need to have a conversation about something different but i i don't think it would do um it would be right for us not to say anything to our neighbors because again it's a pattern and where where does it continue but where does it stop i should say and they did meet today um but they did not come to any decision on dandy or potentially compressing the grades at dillard high right that's good too so can i i'm still i'm still on this page can we get a can we get a resolution can we agree to a resolution and bring it forward as a walk-on tonight what would the resolution say oh we can we can we can bring it together now we want to make sure that um we have um a legacy school um we want to talk about um resolution saying our concerns about what is being with schools schools being closed in our city and even how we can um come to um a table of agreement to sit to have a conversation um with that we have a new educational advisor right tina is tina with us today she's not here she was at the school board meeting today and i think she may still be there okay all right but with i believe with with her um being able to add to the conversation um what we need to address we can move we can have that component added to it but i think we need to say something i don't think we need to just go okay so is that enough is that enough for you to maybe um scribe compose a uh a resolution expressing the interests of the city commission and wanting more information on the basis for the school closures and and how we can continue how we can participate going forward in in the decision making process so let me read back my notes to see whether it hits the items that you would want in such a resolution um it would be addressing uh that the legacy schools in the city we're concerned about the closures relating to those legacy schools we would like some more information and perhaps some participation in the decision making of closure yes and then also um just flat out we don't want to see any more schools closed in our city if we could you know avoid that do we have a list of detailed list of how many have been closed and how many are proposed for closing on the next school year august uh 2027 do we know how many that actually is district-wide or just in the city city okay i'll get that for you i know we had two last cycle and i and i think one is is being discussed for a closure now and one being discussed for a uh condensing of the grades that are part of that school thank you we'll have something drafted for you this evening thank you does that conclude your remarks thank you mayor it does okay very good uh commissioners uh glassman yes thank you mayor um september 16th it was a pleasure to participate in the tourism and focus conference at the omni hotel uh that was put on by the florida restaurant and lodging association i always find all of these organizations that are working so hard every day uh in our community when they put together these uh these fact sheets and the data it's all very impressive the numbers look good um there's a real positive attitude and spirit and uh a lot of hope for the future so again i i enjoyed learning at these and i just wanted to say thank you to the florida restaurant and lodging association for that conference uh september 17th had the pleasure to join the uh this is an amazing support committee that's uh chaired by pat du mont she and the committee for the uss fort lauderdale uh do just a bang-up job in support of that ship and the captain and the crew uh and we get annual reviews and updates and uh it's always a great evening i wanted to thank her and that entire support committee uh for the work that they do uh september 20th it was an absolute pleasure to uh be at sanctuary church on federal highway one actually one of my favorite structures in the city of fort lauderdale it's such a cool architecture uh celebrating their 75th anniversary this year uh vice mayor joined me uh was able to present a proclamation in honor uh of that occasion for them um great great spirit in that church they do amazing work um very welcoming inclusive church uh really all about uh social justice and it was a pleasure to be with them uh september 22nd i want to thank parks and recreation staff and everyone else that had something to do uh with the peter feldman playground uh ribbon cutting uh park looks great uh the public artwork looks great uh around the pump station uh the new children's playground area is already so popular um you know it's always uh very pleasurable to spend time in flagler village uh to see how we have actually lived up to the master plan that was a plan that did not just sit on a shelf that was actually a master plan and i want to thank dsd folks as well uh we did re we created a a village within the city uh that was exactly what it was supposed to be um and when you spend time in flagler village and when you walk around or you attend a ribbon cutting ceremony like at peter feldman park and you see the number of young families and children uh it really is very very uplifting because uh it really is the future uh of our city and those folks are uh thrilled to live in flagler village uh they are thrilled uh for all of the benefits all the amenities that we're providing for them uh and it's a it's a great group of people so i also want to thank the flagler village civic association for all of the support and input when it came to um preparing that park uh and making sure that the ribbon cutting ceremony went off without a hitch uh september 23rd thank you the council of fort loyal civic association spends a lot of time not just uh dealing with issues in our city but they are very civic minded uh it was a pleasure to be at the fort loyal beach community center uh when the council did host the district one candidate forum so i wanted to thank them for that civic engagement as well um september 24th and 25th i took a little trip to tampa i was invited to sit on a panel uh for florida's water reuse future technology delivery and partnership uh and i will tell you that this conference uh very well attended from folks in the utilities sector uh especially dealing with water use and reuse and what the florida future looks like when it comes to water um the amount of interest when i one of the things i like to do when i when we leave our city it's always fascinating to see the reaction that we get from other cities other places um you know we often are just in our little bubble here uh but when we go outside of our bubble uh and you hear the comments from these people and the questions that they ask and the enthusiasm obviously the focus of the panel that i was on was our public private partnership in creating our water treatment plant uh so the interest was so intense uh and the feedback was so positive uh from these folks uh from throughout the state uh and it really is very refreshing to see that and to hear the positivity uh from folks and how they view fort lauderdale and the work that we are doing the projects that we are doing uh and what we have accomplished in these last bunch of years uh again thank you to everyone uh thank you very much for the invitation for that i heard that the panel was such a hit that we might be invited to recreate it at a larger conference in new york city we'll keep you posted um but we did i'm sorry i'm sorry before you move on was there any discussion about um what they call gray water recycling uh actually there was there was it was a whole day on on the friday so i'll send you the agenda but there was a lot of discussions about anything to do with water everything to do with water and the experts that were there were really uh were really very informed but i will get you all of that information thank you uh my pleasure as the commissioner mentioned uh commissioner beasley pitman it was an absolute pleasure to be with the urban league on september 26th you know i don't know how many of you are aware but jermaine smith ball has led that organization for over 30 years i believe uh and her dedication to the city and to the county uh is incredible and when you see the work uh that they have accomplished over the years it really is very impressive so i want to thank the urban league uh for that and for putting together such a great uh a ceremony uh for the awards um isa mcgibbs juliette roolac and latania bembrow were some of the honorees that uh we did honor um and uh uh i'm glad i did write it down especially after that pressure from commissioner beasley pitman to come up with that information uh so yes congratulations to them um also had the pleasure of joining the fifth annual awards from the broward democratic senior caucus out in plantation uh congratulations to our city's very own michael albetta for being uh awarded a community award and uh mayor you were there as was uh vice mayor sorensen uh september 30th congratulations mayor on the state of the city uh i've been hearing nothing but positivity about that people uh really understand when they see it all in one evening uh the amount of work that has been done in our city uh the accomplishments in our city do we have challenges of course we do what city does not um but we should all be very proud so thank you for what you put together can i can i add to that um sure in and all the states of the city addresses that i have attended or participated in we've never had so much positive response as we've had this past event and i want to thank um strategic communications i want to thank all the departments that contributed to the information that was necessary to pull all that together i want to thank um you city manager for leading that effort i want to thank the city attorney for uh for keeping our nose clean on all these issues that we didn't overstep boundaries um and uh and i want to thank the commission the commission who uh over the course of the past year um you know pushed the city forward and getting so many of these projects accomplished and uh and it's a testament to the the good work that the hard work that all of you put in but but even on next door we got positive response which is yes i know so i mean yeah i know right i think it was one no but seriously i just think that um it's it's a city that we could continue to be proud of and uh and as the commissioner uh mentioned that his visit to tampa uh you know our city continues to be recognized by so many of the other municipalities here in our state and our country as being so forward-thinking and and one of the few willing to invest in generational change that uh that we're we're able to accomplish so um so to your point in bringing that up i just wanted to add to it uh and the and i think that uh um it just gives us more incentive to try to keep going and to continue the job that we started yes thank you thank you i i like to reclaim my time now thank you very much i'm sorry i'll shut up your mic it's okay it's okay thank you uh i want to say congratulations to the dda and to anyone that had anything to do with the opening uh of the sweet waters uh restaurant uh this week right well actually they've had five days of uh of uh well there was an event on saturday uh they had three events before that and i think uh we have a ribbon cutting on october 13th the official ribbon cutting um i see jenny's here with us today uh that restaurant and i know i i know it's surprising that there was some pushback when we heard we might have a restaurant in the park i know but i will tell you that the way that restaurant sits in the park is absolutely stunning when you're in the restaurant when you're on the patios you you are part of the park it's a beautiful addition to the park uh again i'm hearing nothing but positive comments about how that is placed and situated in the park and how very connected it is to the park uh and i will tell you that uh the building itself and the interior is stunning uh anyone that had anything to do with that project congratulations uh it really is a beautiful addition as is the entire park uh so thank you to the dda thank you to the folks from uh rusty pelican sweetwaters whatever uh anyone who had anything to do with it uh it really is a welcome addition and i think it will be very very successful uh we'll look forward to the ribbon cutting on october 13th on october 2nd it was a pleasure to be at the bonnet house again another one of my favorite sites in fort lauderdale and we celebrated the 40th anniversary of chenmore uh that is an amazing uh company uh architectural planning engineering uh they do great work they've been a great partner for the city of fort lauderdale i want to say congratulations to them on their 40th um anniversary october 3rd uh again it was a pleasure to join the mayor and vice mayor sorenson at the 55th anniversary of the sunshine cathedral uh at the coral ridge yacht club again very much like sanctuary church uh this is a church that is all about uh inclusivity and social justice uh they do amazing outreach they do amazing work congratulations to the two bishops who have been there for 20 years uh it was a really joyous celebration for not just the cathedral but also for the bishops as well this past saturday evening uh again congratulations to the ymca i'm very excited about the new facility that's coming in holiday park i drive by it just about every day it's really moving quickly uh looking forward to it very much looking forward to it because as soon as it's completed we can knock down the community center and build those additional nine pickleball courts i get pressure well i get pressure about that every day from the folks but carl's laughing uh you have no idea every day the folks that play pickleball at holiday park ask me when are the new courts coming and i tell them we have to wait till the y is finished so then we can knock down that building and we can it's that little community community center is the recreation center right near the war memorial auditorium uh it has to come down for the uh and then we need the place to move have we agreed on that yet oh yeah we've agreed a long time uh the yeah yeah i'll get you the minutes so the um the the thing is that they want those courts but we have to find a home for those people that are working in the building in the city and they need to work in the ymca so i i try to explain to everyone that that's how that's going to work anyway congratulations to the ymca they had over a thousand people uh at the hard rock saturday evening an incredible incredible gathering of folks and the generosity of the folks in that room uh for all of the swim programs all of the really good programs that they do at the y uh to make sure that our children are safe and and uh have a future where they are able to swim uh congratulations to all of them uh very briefly october 8th i'll be speaking at the neighborhood leadership academy also celebrating the new season at batch uh on federal highway uh and then october 14th we have the alliance um i'm sorry they call it now the greater fort lauderdale alliance uh meeting dinner meeting uh october 15th it'll be a pleasure to be speaking and attending the lake ridge civic association meeting also that night is the central beach alliance meeting uh and i just want to mention one quick thing uh three years ago on october 10th i introduced a resolution that our city commission passed uh condemning the awful atrocity on october 7th 2023 uh when there was a series of coordinated armed incursions from gaza into israel and we all know what happened on that day uh with the murder of just thousands of people uh i want to just mention that tomorrow is the three-year anniversary of that horrific day uh and i just wanted to make sure that folks think of what happened on that day uh when we saw that uh thousands of people that were slaughtered uh and obviously we have seen uh what has happened since then and the repercussions so it's just been an awful situation uh but i do want to make sure uh that we are remembering that tomorrow uh at least remembering the 1200 people that were slaughtered many of them just even in their beds children included uh as we uh enter into tomorrow which is october 7th again um that is the three-year anniversary of that um of that attack uh in israel thank you mayor i'm good okay thank you um you covered quite a bit both of you covered quite a bit of what i was going to talk about but let me just add a few things then we can move on with our regular meeting um uh on thursday september um uh september 18th i was invited to cambridge massachusetts to participate in a forum discussion on homelessness the harvard school of public health held a forum and they recognized fort lauderdale as being um a a city that has taken on novel approaches to to to uh trying to combat homelessness recognizing that we still have a problem every city many cities still have the homelessness homeless problem but they they talked a lot about our our uh cleaning up the uh the encampment in front of the county library and collaborating with the business community in trying to accomplish that and so it was a very robust discussion it was a two-day uh for uh symposium uh and i attended uh just the one uh the one panel discussion they had on the set on the 18th on september 23rd uh i represented the city and wlrn sunshine economy forum i was on the stage with uh miami-dade mayor um uh levine kava and tom hudson from the station on uh moderated and we talked mostly about amendment three in fact um i was given this button to wear educate on three uh make make sure everyone's aware of the issue and the pros and the cons to uh whether or not we should um we should support or not support amendment three um let's see uh i uh participated on september 24th at the arts serve this is where i congratulate congratulate congratulated the graduates of the latest startup ftl cohort cohort we handed out certificates of of completion there there were quite a few folks there it's very very good to see so many young people who are participating in the growth of our city on september 25th um we hosted a luncheon united arab emirates representatives from a one of the emirates called uh ras al kimon uh they um they came here their economic development division came to our city looking for opportunities uh and um we had quite a few people from our city staff i want to thank um daphne sandville who helped organize that i don't think daphne's here right now but daphne um organized that it was just amazing what she was able to put together with city staff and representatives from from from their um their delegation that uh met with our city as well as the county representatives in talking about uh similarities and opportunities for economic development um on september 25th that same day i uh drove over to uh to uh uh naples attending the florida league of cities mayor's uh conference uh talked about a number of things uh certainly most importantly was the amendment three and strategies in determining how best to educate the public uh as to uh what that amendment is about on the the september 29th i was invited to speak to uh folks that were um uh that were uh clients i guess you can say a bdo uh one of the top 10 accounting firms in the world they have they enlarged their their space here in downtown fort lauderdale taking out a lot more square footage and they asked me to speak to their group and uh i attended that event um september 30th uh county commissioner lamar fisher who's our county commissioner he convened a a quarterly uh meeting that both the city manager and myself attended uh to discuss issues relating to the county and uh and county city relationships um you mentioned it's october 13th sweetwater's grand opening uh the alliance dinner i don't know if anyone from the commission is planning to go to the alliance dinner that's my birthday so i really don't want to spend my birthday at another dinner so i think i am going to be yeah yeah i think i'm going to be there are you going to be there yeah okay i don't know if you were planning to be there commissioner but uh it's the greater fort laudale alliance at some point um commissioners we have to have a an honest discussion about whether or not we want to continue our relationship with the greater fort lauderdale alliance i know they adopted our name but i don't know if they've adopted any any effort really to promote business in our city i don't know do you know off the top of your head chris how much we contribute to that organization i don't know off the top of my head but i can share that information it's not cheap um off top of my head i think it was um in in um advertising and um contributions and attending luncheons and things it was about um over a three-year period about um 500 000 500 000 i believe so 500 000 portia yeah our lady in pink good afternoon mayor vice mayor commissioners um i do not believe it's the 500 000 for the greater fort lauderdale alliance so i can only speak to this fiscal or fiscal year 26 yeah um we had less than ten thousand dollars collectively towards the alliance that money was for things such as marketing in their source book as well as a sponsorship or a membership so that the team could attend sponsorship activities so we had limited investment during this current fiscal year but that doesn't speak to the previous years uh right that's correct at some point can you get that information to us because i really feel that we need to beef up our own uh our own economic development department and really take on the opportunities i've been speaking with other members of the alliance who are also considering or reconsidering what their what their return on investment has been for them and uh i've always advocated the city of fort lauderdale having their own economic development department um having strong players reaching out to businesses to expand their existing business or to bring other businesses you know to the area um you know obviously we're not ken griffith who can bring carnegie mellon with a check for three billion dollars but um but certainly uh on a smaller scale but it's equally important you know bringing new businesses helping to diversify our economy and uh and and creating a sustainable economic base going forward so um something to think about at some future conference meeting as we have more information regarding what our our participation has been and what uh results we have seen over the last a few years all right well the mayor great thank you so much mayor i do i do want to um since i was going off the top of my head was your decimal point off of point i was including um the um comparative costs that we have in-house for um looking for the you know businesses to um come to fort lauderdale so i was i was adding these these the salaries of the department that we have in there that was i believe around closer to three hundred thousand and the rest was travel and um the um attending uh functions with the um greater alliance lions the fly-ins they have and and the the advertising for the the magazine so that was about 180 get a more accurate breakdown of what that is i could get i think we need a a reckoning as to what we really want to do going forward i just don't feel over the years that i've been on this commission i've never seen a true return on investment and i think it it we we short change ourselves by thinking someone else is looking out for our best interests when in fact um while they they are a positive you know they are a positive element in our community i don't know how much is really directed towards fort lauderdale itself so if we can if we can have a more serious discussion about that in the future that would be great um october 17th uh imperial point is having its annual fall festival um always great there betty shelley 97 years old god bless her um and uh let's see on monday october 19th las solas magazine's having a charity luncheon featuring actor gary sinise who was lieutenant dan and forrest gump so he'll be there uh and uh did you mention the ribbon cutting on prospect lake no october 15th that's something for you october 15th no finally the ribbon cutting now already it must be operational because already people are coming to me and saying oh my god my water is clear you know it's like these are little things in life for 700 million dollars it was worth it it's 666 okay whatever you're welcome um no but this is important these are these are generational milestones that we are able to achieve that you know bring fort lauderdale to a point where we can you know uh feel good about the growth that we we experience here in our in our communities and and to be able to you know make it a healthier environment by sifting out all the you know forever chemicals and the and the plastics that are that make their way into our water system so this is really a great milestone so i'm very proud of our of our staff and our community and of course the commission for uh having the foresight to move forward on that and that's it for me so mayor yes may i just say one additional thing yes um you um reminded me when you spoke of daphne sanville and the florida league um of cities um daphne was recognized through the florida league of cities um as a hometown hero right so congratulations to daphne on everything that she's doing yeah she does an amazing job as you mentioned um but just wanted to echo that and and let everyone know that um daphne has been recognized as a hometown hero through the florida league of cities thank you very good uh city manager yeah i have one item i just wanted to update the commission on conversations with lauderdale by the sea about the city providing uh fire services for that town for us to provide services that's right so do they want to become part of fort lauderdale when they lose their tax base you never know we're here we're here for them so um about a year ago they approached us about providing fire services um since that time we've been in conversations with them we've continued to update the commission with the latest update on september 22nd via memo to the commission um the day after that we were at the lauderdale by the sea meeting and they gave their town manager direction to begin negotiations with us for that contract so as we continue to go throughout that process we'll continue to provide the commission updates but i did want to share that very significant update on those talks with lauderdale by the sea so we already provide don't we do that for wilton manners now we do is there any other city besides wilton manners that we currently service with our fire services yeah not oakland park they have their own fire department i think that's that's it chief golden is it lazy lake lazy lakes that's right that lazy lake they're so lazy no but how many houses are there like 15 or something 14 yeah yeah yeah okay so we do we service lazy lake in wilson manners and and now the possibility of lauderdale by the sea that's right so we're looking at a number starting in april of 2027 that's just a projection but again we'll continue to update the commission but that's a significant step in that direction that i wanted to share with the okay great thank you city attorney nothing mayor you have nothing okay great okay so let's move on to our regular agenda thank you all for your patience and listening to all the great activities that your commission has been engaged in this past couple of weeks moving on to uh cf1 the audit of the print shop and mailroom operations pat you can have the rest patrick reilly city auditor good afternoon mayor and commissioners the city all auditor's office completed an audit of the print shop and mailroom operations the objective the city auditor's office set out to determine whether the city's print shop and mail operations are managed to in a cost effective and efficient manner and with sufficient internal controls the focus was specifically on controls related to pricing billing and safeguarding supplies and equipment background the print shop and the mailroom operates together under information technology services operations print shop and mailroom are set up as an internal service fund they are located at southeast 21st street facility they're originally in the city hall building the print shop produces essential city materials like event signage letterheads business cards brochures and major publications the mailroom handles volume of outgoing mail including billing and compliance notices in fiscal year 2025 the expenses were approximately 393 000 and general and the revenues generated were around 434 000 with a small portion coming from external customers the mailroom expenses were approximately 350 000 operations are managed by publishing service administrators supported by two full-time staff and two part-time couriers both functions play a key role in supporting the city's communication and service delivery scoop the scope and methodology for this audit we reviewed the print shop's mailroom operations thoroughly mainly through early 2026 what began is a look at cost effectiveness expanded once we identified gaps in internal controls our work focused on how these operations are governed and how pricing and billing are handled how supplies and equipment are safeguarded and how services are delivered to complete the audit we examined cities policies ordinances uh review vendor contracts walkthroughs and key processes to assess the city's uh the operations internal controls and other audits procedures the conclusion the can the audit concludes that the print shop and mailroom need stronger internal controls and clear policy direction pricing is not based on documented cost recovery model and interest rates have been not formally established and regularly updated external services are being provided without traditional city commission authorization and external pricing lacks a formally approved methodology presently the print shop is operating as a hybrid it's an internal service fund and in a small capacity is running as an enterprise fund we feel management should evaluate operations to determine if they want to proceed in providing printing services to external customers during the audit we identified opportunities to enhance some of the areas that we looked at first one the audit reported that the print shops pricing lacks a formal documented cost recovery model creating risk and of inaccurate inconsistent charges and the audit recommends establishing a formal model approving rates and strengthening controls over pricing and decisions the audit reported that the print shop has been providing service to external customers without formal city commission as i mentioned and uh this could increase um workload pricing and control risk you know we recommend that we take a make sure we take a look at at this if we want to continue to provide services to external um nonprofits and businesses to make sure that we have a uh a pricing that's a little different than the cost recovery that we charge different departments as uh internal service fund the audit reported that the print shop lacks uh formal inventory controls no document tracking counts or written procedures creating risk of loss and incorrect records uh you know we recommend that we have some procedures to make sure that where there's regular inventory counts value the inventory and have procedures for any write-off of materials the audit reported that the city continues to print publications already available online creating avoidable workload and production costs and the audit recommends shifting reoccurring materials to a digital distribution and establishing guidance for when printed copies are truly necessary and we do have a policy relating to sustainability for green purchasing policy that recommends using distribution of electronic versions when possible the audit um reported that accounts receivable processes like proper reconciliation and communication and sales tax controls and resulting in inaccurate balances and misapplied payments and again we we recommend improving uh coordination with finance and properly applying the payments uh and monitoring this process a little stronger the audit reported that the city lacks a formal process to govern outsource printing decisions leading to inconsistent choices and avoidable costs the audit recommends that establishing standard practice both operating procedures and requiring departments to consult with print shop before outsourcing any uh work and the audit reported that the print shop standard operating procedures lack essential internal controls for job processing documentation procurement billing and check handling and again that creates risk of errors and consistent practices and weak accountability and and we basically believe that can be corrected with improving the standard operating procedures that that will be through all the operations of the uh print shop um could be improved and and some of the things in the mailroom too like on handling checks and so forth there should be better standard procedures on how we handle um that process when checks come in and in in the process of securing and proper payment um transfer for deposit management concurred with our findings and recommendations and is implementing an action plan to address them this completes my audit presentation i would like to thank the print shop staff in it services for assisting us with our audit and also our audit staff that worked on it if there's any questions i'll be glad to address them now well pat it sounds like it's it's a little messy in there i think it needs some work i don't i don't really think um it's um it's been audited in a very long time and it's i think um they just need some uh improvements on how to uh procedurally handle certain things i mean inventory control um uh cost uh you know i mean everything you've mentioned is not a good thing i mean so who's who's in charge of chris your comments yeah so first i'd like to thank pat riley and his team for the audit they did on the print shop these are one of the ways that we we improve our performance and improve our services so again thank you for your work on this audit so you'll see in the background that we um on the management side do concur and acknowledge uh what the auditor's office has identified as deficiencies and areas for improvement in our print shop um it's important to remember this is an internal service department primarily so we're doing work in the print shop on behalf of other city departments and collecting chargebacks for the work that we do from those departments are we collecting are and are so that's part of the finding right yeah i mean the finding is that none of this is very so right so let's make sure the money gets from one area of the city to the other area of the city the other thing is that you know we have done work on behalf of mainly civic associations so our neighbor recognition program and so one of the things mr riley's team identified was the need to formalize not just that offering um it's been acknowledged through a couple different items that came before the commission in the past but it was never formally adopted as a service to offer so we want to bring that back to the commission to get that clear direction but also to establish a a consistent and reasonable fee schedule for those services being offered to those groups so that there's a clear expectation and equity among those that are accessing that service i think the sops and the standard controls that mr riley mentioned are important and we do acknowledge that those are things we need to implement quickly and our it team is diligently working on making sure that those are already underway and that we're making those corrections okay anyone else from the commission have any comments all right well thank you thank you for your work and uh keep their nose clean okay uh moving on okay business one this is regarding the uh a5 sanitary sewer lift station update um so we're going to turn this over to o'neil rodriguez for a brief presentation we presented to the commission a couple months ago some ideas that we have a staff for the location for the much needed a5 lift station in our downtown at that time we were asked to go back and work with the dda and some property owners to see if there were alternatives to the sites that we had proposed we've done that work um we've come back with the results of that work and our recommendation on where we'd like the commission to give us that guidance on to cite this lift station all right so has have so commissioners you've all read the backup right and the and the bottom line is that they're saying that the least uh impactful alternative is the uh the southern edge of the uh one-stop shop um is that a correct conclusion that is correct okay so i'll save you a little time having to go through all that all right uh i think we you did a great analysis a very simple and plain for people as simple as me to understand so we have a few people sign up to speak um mr millage and uh jenny morihan thank you mayor john millage general council downtown the zone authority with me jenny morihan uh president ceo of the dda uh we've been working with the staff you know looking for alternative locations it looks like it's headed towards the one stop um as you know we have an mou with the city where we're planning and ultimately um hopeful that we'll do the design and construction of one stop um hopefully this the same standards that we've done with heisting a park a timetable on that yeah i'll defer to jenny when she gets up uh mayor um but i guess what i'm just just say quickly i've talked to the city manager since it's setting uh headed towards the one stop we just asked since we're working on the planning that we have a sign off on the with you on the design i think the city manager has no objection to that um so that we just want to put that on the record and working with the city okay great good afternoon mayor commissioners um thank you again for giving us an opportunity earlier this year to work with staff and come up with some alternative proposals but recognizing that one stop is the most efficient and that this lift station is needed so we can advance important projects and continue development um we are looking forward to continuing to work together on the final design solution for that much like we did on the recent riverwalk seawall project and how we make projects better together um regarding what did you have a question before i'm just saying i mean just looking at the footprint for the lift station and the size of the one stop it shouldn't be too impactful to anything that you would design right no it's a small footprint i mean we see how compatible lift stations are with parks through peter philman yeah just paint a pretty picture around it no one will notice but that was after the park okay this is gonna be before this is actually easier for us we'll do a good job ensuring that that's camouflaged or integrated into whatever designs come about so you asked about scheduling timing uh mou was approved right before summer break it is an 18 month term on the mou but we were waiting to wrap up and seal the deal on heisinger park which we did now that the restaurant was completed we had to finish construction around that and thank you for those comments earlier um so we are moving forward matter of fact tomorrow night i have a preliminary conversation with leadership at flagler village we'll start some um specific stakeholder engagement some key targeted landowners and electeds around the area and then move into public outreach towards the end of this calendar year we are looking to engage multiple design firms to bring unique ideas to the table um before we engage in a official design process which will happen after we present concepts and ideas through community input back to you all working with our dda board so we're looking before the end of spring next year to have ideas recommendations and a path forward to move into phase two which we think would be ultimate a financial plan as well as formal design studies so okay looking looking forward to this very excited thank you anyone have any questions just some comments actually so uh city manager again this is such a pivotal site um in flagler village and for the whole city uh i really want to make sure that what we just heard is going to happen uh and that dda is very much involved you know i will tell you mayor and and commissioner that most folks don't even realize that we have a sanitary sewer lift station at the las solas marina it's so well done in terms of mitigation strategies that were used to make sure that number one i know some people always thought about odor but that's really not an issue uh and then just the fact that it cannot be seen and it was really done just because of where it was placed and because of the landscaping uh and again when i ask people and i do you realize that there's a a sewer lift station at the las solas marina they go no where is it and then i tell them and then they you know they check it out like oh wow so we can do it uh and as you said mayor uh there's enough land here three acres or so uh we should see if we can is there any possibility that we don't need 50 by 50 or do we need 50 by 50 i think 50 by 50 is is about the limit of what we can do in terms of not going any smaller there's a lot of underground components to that so not not the entirety of that will be above ground but we will need to secure that 50 by 50 site okay again with with the work of dda as our partner i think that will be really beneficial i really want to make sure that they do have a voice at the table when it comes to where this is going to happen uh it's just that important of a site for us i'm looking forward to making a beautiful park there i think people are going to really appreciate it but we definitely again like i just mentioned earlier we're fortunate in that unlike peter feldman park we're going to have the option of a total blank slate here yeah we didn't have that um with peter feldman park right i think a lot of similarities to las olas marina where we were starting from just an open site to be able to cite these things and as jenny said i think we do work better together so i look forward to working with her on this project excellent and the sooner the better okay great thank you thank you thank you folks um moving on to business two south regional activity center vision plan presentation who will be doing the vision oh hello good afternoon mayor commissioners um ella parker deputy director development services so the presentation today is on the south regional activity center vision plan um and this plan will help to guide future growth and development in the area it was developed in collaboration with um a lot of our stakeholders including broward health and point sienna before you start um is commissioner sorensen going to be here he's supposed to be here too this is his district and i hate to have this presentation without him i can check on i can check on his cta i did have a conversation intelligence have they called in right i did have a conversation with him about this may come up ahead of him being here so i think we're okay but we can check if you is anyone from the staff here yes where oh hi can you just make a quick call find out right now because um ella if you could just wait a second absolutely yeah yeah he said two he said two yeah three martini lunch you know you want to take a break let's take a 10 minute break okay five minutes yeah okay folks let's settle down let's get back to business ella it appears that the commissioner the vice mayor is not going to be here so why don't we just proceed and uh this this is just a presentation we're not really voting on anything anyway so uh and we do have some neighbors that are here who wanted to speak so i want to respect their having come here today so please continue okay no problem and there is actually a related item on tonight's agenda that's um under r4 a resolution accepting the plan so there'll be more opportunities for input um so again good afternoon mayor commissioners ella parker deputy director development services um today's presentation is on the south regional activity center vision plan this plan will help to guide future growth and development in the area it was produced in collaboration with a multitude of stakeholders some of which are some of whom are here tonight um we also worked with broward health and the point sienna park civic association in particular as well as our consultant uh collective inspire place making collective um so the initiative has two phases this is phase one setting that vision and then phase two will be the implementation through a more comprehensive master plan which will include um subsequent code amendments as well as um land and plan land use plan amendment to make sure that the entire regional activity center under is under the same land use designation um and to take us through the details i'm pleased to introduce nakesha smith from inspire placemaking collective and also our project lead adam chanel is here so he can help address any questions that you might have and without further ado thank you okay great thank you good afternoon mayor and commissioners my name is nakesha smith and i'm with inspire place making collective it's my pleasure to be here this evening to present to you this um srac vision plan we've spent most of this this last year working on the plan with uh staff and with the community to craft this um so i really do want to thank thank uh staff for their guidance as well as the community for bringing their local perspective to the plan for those of you not familiar with the area this is the srac study area boundary if you look to the north you'll see the tarpon river it is located to the west of us one uh and then it goes as far south as marina mile and then the westernmost boundary is the uh train the train tracks and where we have uh most of our industrial within the srac so the northern boundary is tarpon river correct and so that is pretty much davy boulevard what's the what's the street that tarpon river it's not quite davy it's just south that is north of davy i believe is it like 10th 10th uh 7th street okay 7th street thank you you're welcome so the purpose and intent of this vision plan was to create some targeted recommendations for the area that covered different elements so that ranged from housing to transportation we also looked at resiliency and infrastructure along with the public realm and the built environment and you will see housing located at the top of that list because that was actually one of the areas that we wanted to emphasize a key feature of the plan is to um kind of bring back that residential feel to the area and i also wanted to state that we did not start from scratch as part of this effort it did build on some of the previous plans for the area which includes the south andrews avenue master plan and the south andrews extract design standards we held several meetings there were two community meetings and an open house as part of this effort so the plan is grounded in neighborhood engagement and what we did is we took along with our assessments and research of the area we also combined that with the feedback from our residents and stakeholders and from that we identified some future goals values and priorities that are outlined within the plan just a quick overview of some of the feedback that we received the key takeaways focused on areas such as affordability also safety and walkability there was also some concerns regarding parking and then there's a lot of zoning districts so it creates many inconsistencies in terms of how persons are able to use their properties and so from that feedback and input uh we generated some recommendations for each of those focus areas and how we could begin to address those that were identified beginning with housing uh one of one of the things that we heard a lot of not surprisingly is affordability and so many recommendations for housing focused on diversifying the types of housing density mix and also supporting aging in place because we do have um broward health um as part of the fabric of that area and so there's an opportunity there for uh like our seniors to have easy access to any services that they might need there so that portion of housing that's dedicated for seniors and aging in place was an important part of the recommendations also we also already have incentives within the s-rack for housing such as high bonuses but one of the recommendations is to expand that to the entire uh s-rack area and then moving on to transportation recommendations one of the key things that we heard is this need for safety um speeding uh pedestrians feel vulnerable they don't often feel that it's safe to walk throughout the area and so that generated recommendations that focused on traffic calming on our primary streets along with there are issues regarding parking in the swale so ensuring that um we can alleviate uh swale parking looking at potentially garages when you say um when you say traffic calming on our primary streets yes are you talking like speed bumps on davie boulevard i mean what does that what does that translate into i wouldn't say primary streets most likely secondary interior streets okay that's what i thought okay thank you and then in terms of transit we want to make sure that our transit stops are very inviting we live in florida so looking at protection from heat um shade uh protection from from the rain and a big part of addressing some of those uh transportation issues that were identified is obviously improving our streetscape and improving the the public realm um so one of the signature features of this area are the beautiful uh tree medians so they not only add character to the ash rack but they can also um serve as a sense of of pride and then they also can provide uh you know shade and comfort so they definitely contribute to enhancing our public realm throughout the ash rack the plan also calls for providing green spaces in different scales different sizes throughout the district that was uh very important for a lot of our residents and stakeholders and then also improving what we already have so looking at uh potential programming at uh point sienna park and how that could could be approved improved in terms of resiliency and infrastructure those recommendations focused on ensuring that there's a balance between development and stormwater management and ensuring that all the systems that we have within the district that they work together to manage the stormwater so from our swales to our open spaces and then again the median the medians that we have throughout the sr lastly looking at the built environment one of the things that jumped out was that within the ash rack we have 15 zoning districts and if you don't know that's a lot of zoning districts for such a small area um so one of the key recommendations was to look at how we could begin to consolidate those zoning districts while um ensuring the continuity and reinforcement of the character that exists throughout the srack so looking to uh whittle those down from 15 zoning districts to six zoning districts um this also makes it easier to administer the code um as well as having users of the code have it be easier for them to navigate it and hand in hand with that with looking at consolidating some of the zoning districts is that we also want to take a look at the land use there's three right now so looking at bringing that down to one so you just have one future land use uh category for the srack in closing i just want to go quickly over what that would look like if we have these uh six consolidated zoning districts um so first of all some of them would be existing and then some of them would be new so looking at the srack sae and the srack saw those are zoning districts that already exist we're not looking to change much with these two zoning districts except that um we want to change the boundaries slightly so that we accommodate um broward health which you'll see that's going to be its own dedicated uh zoning district later on in this presentation so so yes in doing that are you looking to create the density in this area is that is that the bottom line here i think i see that creeping towards that direction is that what you're looking to do so it's really to match the underlying land use designation of regional activity center right now we have a lot of that mix of residential office and i understand we want to maintain the character and create districts that are still respective of the the village kind of character you know think about flagler village for example it's very similar in context directly south of yeah but in flag i'm sorry ella but flagler village we tore down all the single family homes and we built mid and high rises right so this would happen over time nobody you know obviously as the land use the underlying land use supports a mix of different uses so we want to be very respectful of how it happens and where it happens we're primarily focused on kind of bringing more of the intensity along the us-1 corridor as well as south andrews avenue just like they do today um but that internal parts of the neighborhood would be more transitional and we would take extra caution to make sure that the character is maintained so for example the larger medians you know the things that really make it special bring that tree canopy part um that that is taken into consideration and then obviously a good transition from where the broward health is so that they have their own campus and a district that um is successful and is also you know kind of fits into the overall character of the community so that every everything is more seamless okay all right thank you okay and then moving on from there the uh third district would be the s-rack b3 and again this is already an existing zoning district this is that area um just uh to the west of the rail line so it's more of an an industrial feel there so uh the zoning focus there would be um recommendations focusing on uh boosting you know street standards sidewalk kind of more the the streetscape uh in that area and then this would be a new zoning district so we talked a lot about broward health um and this would encapsulate their campus um we would provide a transition that feels uh a transition to the residential um i'm sorry skip this way this would uh this would be intended to support the um health care use that's existing there um health care housing that i had talked about earlier that the housing for seniors and being able to age in place was very important um and then also there's an opportunity in this district to again kind of get that clustered garage instead of having people park all over the swills and everywhere um there's an opportunity to do that here on this on this campus so that would again be a new zoning district and it would just encapsulate the the broward health campus area uh the other new zone would be the srack mf and this is really the epicenter of the srack uh zoning district so um it would be residential would be in that area that kind of supports and complements the local office and commercial use so providing that transitional area the principal use here the emphasis is on maintaining that as as residential with commercial being secondary secondary um so this is also a location where the vision plan recommends um missing middle uh which was supported by the community the other new zone is the srack bc so this is along the us-1 corridor uh we're not changing height the main goal with this new zoning district is to align the uses it focuses on activity obviously that's a major commercial uh corridor within the srack and ensuring that there's appropriate transitions there from that corridor uh into the interior of the srack and the residential area that we discussed previously and so with with that and the uh completion of the vision plan that this was kind of like the first phase so obviously in order to um you know implement the zoning implement the the land use that would kind of be a phase two so looking at adopting a srack master plan in the future and then uh from their drafting uh any future land use amendments and adopting any uh zoning amendments as as proposed and that ends my presentation and i thank you very much for your time okay great thank you so much we really appreciate it we have a couple of people sign up to speak um uh john barranco followed by ray dettman followed by ted and sarah ray you want to do it first yes um my name is ray dettman a president of point santa park and uh also a resident for lauderdale um i saw i want to give you an overview of the of the neighborhood over the years um i moved in in 1980 and uh the civic association was formed in 87 uh and uh you know we've had different problems over the years and and it's improved and by the way i want to say that the city of fort lauderdale has always been there and and able to help us and heard heard our concerns so thank you um what what's happening now is uh the speaking for the members a majority of the members want development smart development because what we see in the neighborhood currently is properties that uh because of the price the taxes the overhead and all that that we've had some bad actors we've had vacation rentals that weren't you know handled right uh i've been told we even had halfway houses in the neighborhood so uh uh we want to avoid that and we want to get the smart development in we still want a sense of place we still want our neighborhood we don't want to i don't personally i don't want to become flag village i but i i know it's a give and take here you know if you want change you got to work with the developers so the neighborhood over the years when we've had development uh this sometimes it's a fight we don't we want to avoid that we want to roadmap a vision that the developers and the neighborhood knows what to expect that what we may get you know the quality of life stays up and we we get so a nice neighborhood and you know one of the concerns uh as you know federal highway is developing and the corridor and andrews is developing we we just had a it's about to open the 400 apartment unit on 22nd street uh and uh andrews so you know those quarters are going to develop we don't want to become in the neighborhood as something forgotten you know we don't want the the trash being picked up in the back you know and then parking all over our neighborhood so you know we want some kind of what do you want what do you want you want your cake and eat it well i mean in some ways you're right i agree that we need to do something to dissuade the vacation rentals that are taking place in these single-family homes and these these three and four unit complexes because that brings the neighborhood down so you're saying you're willing to compromise for some kind of more intense multi-family development to kind of uh push that out of the neighborhood i kind of get i'm hearing that yeah and and and and draw and have responsible owners you know uh like i say the cost of the property the taxes and everything we've had owners that have bought in there for an investment and they they're just not making it and they and they do things that are not what should be done so you know with a plan it gives the developers a way you know to see this is what the neighborhood wants let's work together instead of working against each other so uh well that's what the neighborhood outreach is about and i believe that uh some of that already took place um based on this based on the schedule that we see in front of us um um but you've been part of that right yes yeah so you are you comfortable with the reception that the city staff has given you and they understand what you're looking for yes okay so when they come back to us with our vision plan then there'll be another time for you to come and comment and we appreciate you know you having the sensitivity of what's right and what's what should go in there okay thank you very much you're very welcome john good afternoon mayor commissioners uh city staff uh john baronco baronco gonzalez architecture i was going to say you have to be an architect with with that kind of that's when they taught us that kind of stuff so yeah we are part of the neighborhood association uh been there for about 19 years now i've seen a lot of growth in the neighborhood i've seen the city help us out a lot with you know some of our smaller projects and that's always appreciated um very happy to see that we've gotten as far as we have with this study a lot of what was said by this consultants very true as an architect not only as you know somebody who is there in the neighborhood but as an architect i've had many developers come to me interested in redeveloping in the area and because of the patchwork of zoning districts in there it makes it very difficult that in the ro roa roc they're very antiquated um as a matter of fact i own two structures on my property i wouldn't be able to join them they're two small homes that are converted to office but i can't even join them together because i would exceed the building length found in those codes so just as a matter of practicality to redevelop anything in that area it's always been difficult for my clients and uh we just like to see something better something that would cause some investment in the area nothing huge not downtown we also see that area as the gateway to fort lauderdale if you come to fort lauderdale you're coming from the airport you're going on the cruise ship and that's the first point you're going to see coming into our town so we think it's important that that whole corridor along federal highway be enhanced be built up and transition into our neighborhood you know in a way that makes sense and allows them to develop those properties because that at this point and we've run into it in downtown too on federal highway where those properties weren't deep enough and this would allow some flexibility to be able to expand off federal highway and make more viable projects there as well so i really support what you all are doing and supporting us uh with this vision and i hope this continues to move forward and it's positive for our our neighborhood okay thank you all all right thank you uh ted and sarah good afternoon everybody ted and sarah president of river oaks republic this is very close to my neighborhood i go through here almost every single day it's just to the west of us and uh one thing you mentioned about the comments off track for one second on next door about your speech i was indefinitely suspended by next door the week leading up to your state of the city speech i don't know if that's any coincidence or not but that uh that is a fact and uh conspiracy to keep i think exactly there you go but uh but it worked and it worked i i heard the scariest thing i heard so far today was flagler village south that's one thing that uh i don't think we really want in this area you're right now that's and uh but but just let me say you've had two great presentations back-to-back uh meetings that i spoke at the one with the floodplain management talking about the uh the dangers of building on floodplains about this nature's uh basically sponge and i don't want to see the same thing happen here as it done it did in river oaks one of the things that was quickly passed over on your presentation was the fact that it could be wide spread flood risk and that was your presentation those aren't my words and and that is a fact because you're coming in with just a lot more cement and a lot more concrete it also said it's going to be undue pressure on infrastructure which is the pressure on infrastructure possible widespread flooding these are not good things um it said develop parking garages along the corridors well that's more concrete and then the prioritize the redevelopment of underutilized parcels so now i now i guess open spaces are now called underutilized parcels which is again another scary thing you know if you ask me we do need some open spare some open areas but just the fact that uh you just got to be very careful i know this is a strange neighborhood with a lot like it's been said a lot of different zones and uh and and you just got it we just got to have smart development look out for the widespread uh flooding possibility as as pointed out in your your uh uh presentation thank you okay you know i i think there's sort of a miss you can you can sit down um i think there's sort of a misunderstanding by folks that think that when you have redevelopment and you have um uh new projects that are uh taking up the space where there might have been uh you know um an open field or an open lot that that unless you have those open fields and open lots you that's the only way you can have proper drainage but what we've discovered in particular in flagra village is that when you design it in such a way that um that the the water when it when it rains uh you know it's it's uh captured through injection wells and and these past few weeks and we've seen so much rainfall especially in the month of september um we saw flagra village hardly flooded why because there's a system there there's a system that captures the uh the storm water and it injects it underground and you don't see flooded streets like you do in my own neighborhood poinsettia heights which is an older neighborhood it relies on it has storm drains but it also relies on swales and yes it floods but at the end of the day if it floods at two o'clock in the afternoon by ten o'clock at night it's gone so there are systems in place and flagra being a modern system um you you very rarely see flooded streets in that area i mean it's always been my experience so now river oaks which was built at a time when we didn't think about these things um uh unfortunately and a lot of the neighborhoods river um melrose manor all those neighborhoods that you know that were built without storm drains um you know we're playing catch up now we're doing our best to try to accommodate um the drainage the drainage needs uh with pump stations and and uh uh and sewer drains but it's a huge task very expensive and um uh and i think that you know looking at uh the south rack now uh there are opportunities here to be able to accommodate not just uh the the new approach to storm drainage but also to rehabilitate neighborhoods that i think have long been overlooked and i think that uh through mr dettman's comments about you know looking at smart development we could we could reimagine the areas especially in poinsettia area point sienna park um as well as uh um the areas in and around there i used to have i used to have a triplex in point sienna park on 4th and 18th and uh um um and you know it was mostly offices um my my corner the other three corners were all i think one was an optometrist one was a lawyer so that kind of has been transitioned into more uh commercial use but i think it's ready for the next level right and i think uh the i think the community is ready to see something better happen there so okay is there anyone else who wishes to speak on this item anyone from the commission okay thank you so much we really appreciate your being here thank you city staff thank you uh moving on to our next item business three electric bicycles and other micro mobility devices tell us milos good afternoon mr mayor uh commissioners milos mr orvis transportation and mobility department director so i'll just wait for the presentation to load but uh generally speaking in response to concerns raised by the city commission and also our members of the public um over the last few months we have been working on developing e-bike and micro mobility uh devices ordinance so the purpose of this presentation today is really to um give you a little background uh go over public engagement processes that we conducted go over some of the proposed ordinance provisions including uh how we we are proposing to handle enforcement and finally go over anticipated timeline for uh implementation so um over the last couple of years number of these devices has uh uh increased significantly uh concern concerns we have been receiving so far mainly have to do with the reckless use of these devices and the florida law does allow local governments to adopt ordinance to govern uh the operation of micro mobility devices within uh local jurisdiction uh to develop ordinance uh we have been working with um internal work group working group uh with participants from parks and recreation city attorney's office and also transportation and mobility department uh finally um the florida senate was also proposing bill which was bill 382 um ultimately which was really aimed to regulate operation of these devices ultimately it was uh bill was vetoed on june 25th of 2026 so the purpose of our and the goal of working group within the city was to uh come up with a proposal that would um address the main concern which has to do with the reckless operation and also to come up with something that we can enforce on local level so while the intent of our ordinance was also to uh mirror some of the proposed state regulation once state bill was vetoed we had to make some changes to our local ordinance so our focus uh are any electric devices including e-bikes e-scooters e-skateboards hoverboards and one wheels florida law defines e-bikes as bikes which have operating pedals and also engine that does not exceed 750 watts anything over 750 watts would be considered e-motor e-moped and it's not covered as part of the ordinance it's already covered as part of the law florida law in terms of general rules in florida e-bikes are really treated as regular bikes they can operate really in any areas that regular bikes can operate helmets are mandatory for anyone who is 16 under 16 years old they're also recommended for anyone who is over 16 years old and finally there is no registration driver license or insurance requirements so under our proposed ordinance what we are looking what we would be looking to establish is for uh minimum operator age to be 16 years uh for the operator to carry government issued um id we would not be we are not proposing or we wouldn't be allowing any distracted operation of these devices and finally we are looking to establish registration process which is very important that then on the back end when it comes to enforcement of these devices um in terms of uh and as you recall uh initial concerns with operation of these devices really started around parks and parks areas uh later those concerns expanded also to shared use pads and sidewalks so for parks our our recommendation is to prohibit uh operation on any parks pathways and recreational trails athletic fields and turf areas and also park plazas proposed ordinance would permit operation within any roadways within parks uh at or below posted speed limit um on park sidewalks in safe manner and uh finally devices would be also um the operators would be able to vault those devices throughout park areas and uh secure them at designated um locations uh in terms of sidewalks and shared use paths our proposed ordinance uh would allow uh operation of those devices along sidewalks in safe manner um while operators would be required to yield right away to pedestrians at all times and also would be required to use audible signal uh anytime they're overtaking or coming into conflict with the pedestrian and that can be a bell horn or any other uh verbal uh indication um when it comes to proposed um exclusions uh that would be any county and state right away uh it would be any private property uh we wouldn't be regulating any americans with disabilities mobility devices uh and we wouldn't be covering any emergency responders or on city personnel including some of the already um permitted city programming so uh public engagement was really crucial uh in helping us develop um some of the uh narrative of this ordinance so we had a public meeting on june 11 we provided the public uh with uh overview of what we're proposing um and received their feedback through a survey um their survey results indicated that most of the the participants were really favoring uh low speed cap and safe riding over uh prohibition of operation of these devices uh on sidewalks and uh within uh shared use paths as well um and also on august 26th of this year we also went before parks recreation and beach advisory board who was also supportive of our proposal in terms of enforcement uh what we are proposing is uh for uh these to be civil infractions uh issued by police departments so our working group really came out with uh with this as the best recommendation uh so it would be warnings first offense would be 250 bucks dollars uh any subsequent would be uh 500 again uh devices would have to be registered um by all those operators and uh finally we're also looking to create an appeal process uh which would most likely uh be something uh similar to what we might be using for uh automated schools on uh speed detection cameras which would be special magistrate process that's what we are looking um into um in terms of um other um local municipalities within brower county and miami-dade county um this is a summary what others have been doing so uh there is really different approaches of the of all municipalities unfortunately one of the challenging facts is that since there is no um state law that regulates operation of these devices every municipality is creating their own local ordinances um and that's where lack of consistency um is generated um and why i mentioned that is that um rules might be very different within our city versus um city that is neighboring uh and just a few miles away which then uh creates some challenges uh for the operators as well so this is where uniform statewide law would be very helpful and we have submitted policy requests for a review for this to be considered uh so here we are summarizing uh our ordinance so we can refer to it during uh discussion once again uh we created this proposal based on uh research on local and state level uh recommendations from our internal working group and also public feedback um couple of things that during public meeting came came up is that some of the users of these devices really use these devices as their primary means of transportation meaning they do not have any other way to get around the city they also pointed out that um for those who are using it as primary means of transportation um there is not a significant amount of bicycle infrastructure around the city for them to safely move and use that alternative infrastructure so they would be uh put in a travel lane um and when it comes to um anticipated implementation um timeline provided that the city commission is uh supportive of our our approach uh we could come back with the first uh ordinance uh reading for the of the first ordinance in late 2026 that could be uh december um and the second reading shortly thereafter uh we would recommend educational and outreach period up to 60 days we would be working with our police department on that uh and we could um start enforcement uh period in early 2027 down the road later down the road we would be looking at the effectiveness of the ordinance of the enforcement effort and we would inform city commission about any uh future potential changes that would be warranted so i will move uh to this summary slide so we can further discuss okay does anyone from the commission have any questions yes i have some questions thank you thank you um milos for this presentation um i do have some questions um let's start by just about the devices that are being recognized here um you said we i saw where you said um 750 watts with um no pedals that is um considered these are the ones that are not um covered under that is correct so anything over 750 watts that does not have a functioning in pedals meaning the operator would not be able to propel themselves using pedals only uh would be considered e-moto okay so what is the average speed um capability of an e-bike so e-bikes there are three different classes of e-bikes uh within the state of florida and those are one two and three um classes one and two are really similar their maximum speed is about 20 miles per hour when uh operated using uh electric motor uh class three um provides assistance up to 28 miles per hour so those are the three classes when it comes to e-moto's they are capable of developing speed of over 28 miles per hour okay um in comparison to a standard bicycle um what's like speed capacity with the human power that is a great question so it really depends on uh on a user those who would be your regular typical users uh i would assume that they wouldn't be operating at more than 10 to 12 miles per hour i would say um those who would be recreational users uh and are using road bikes that we see properly equipped uh on the road they might be operating at much higher speed all right because my my concern with this is where um it appears that we're going in the direction that e-bikes are allowed on the sidewalk is that what i'm getting i'm hearing the proposed ordinance would allow operation on the sidewalks in a safe manner okay but um who defined that's where i'm going who defines safe and that would be go ahead yeah that would be up to a judgment of police officers so the state law what they were proposing there and you will see we'll see that many um other local municipalities um mirroring that state law that ultimately got vetoed were looking at um speed limit right so um in uh where are these police officers by the way you think we're going to station police officers and all of our sidewalks in our parks there's not going to be a police officer anywhere and you're going to see these e-scooters or these e-bikes just pushing pedestrians off the sidewalks so i agree with that that's my yeah why is miami beach prohibited and so does uh sunny isles beach why are they prohibited on sidewalks i'm agreeing with what i'm hearing on the day i don't think we should have it on the sidewalks in fact i don't think we should have them in the parks at all you're saying that sometimes this is the only mode of transportation that they have well let them park their bikes at the beginning of the park and let them walk it's our you know our parks are are not that big and that you know walking there is a better compromise than than than than putting pedestrians lives and and body at at risk when we allow side when we allow e-bikes and scooters to be on sidewalks in our parks i'm totally against this i think it would be easier to enforce also i'm sorry and doing what you just said much more in force you don't have to worry about it because they're just parked at the entrance to the park and that's it leave it there i mean i just i i don't know what neighborhood outreach uh uh allowed you to conclude that and also in your presentation you said with regard to sidewalks on your page 11 it says uh sunny isles is prohibited miami beach is prohibited wellington well they're more worried about horses on their sidewalks than they are uh e-bikes so um when you say it's inconsistent what the what the rules are it's not inconsistent it's quite consistent that it's mostly prohibited in other places but but you know i i think everyone did a great job in trying to you know get some sort of consensus here but really milos i just don't i don't have any faith in people or in our ability to enforce to to open it up to you know we have to protect pedestrians you know and we don't we have the worst um uh record of pedestrian death and and and uh injury in the state here in our city and we've got to be very careful about that this only would contribute to it right um yes that's um where i was going trying to figure out how did we get to um a point where we would want to have e-bikes or um in that manner because we don't really love bicycles lawfully on on the sidewalks and well actually they are they are allowed on the sidewalks okay even the okay yeah they are okay scooters all right but where i'm going with this is the safety matter and and there was just unfortunately a incident um a couple days ago with an e-bike on us on a sidewalk the protester and that was walking was hit by the e um the e-bike and was thrown into traffic hit and killed by a car it wasn't in our city but it was here in our county so there's a lot more i think um to preserve the safety of everyone not only the pedestrian but also for those who are driving these devices um i know we had a survey and it looks like it was a you know we go with who participates in the survey um i don't know if we need to um go back and look at this again but with what i'm seeing i'm not comfortable with i agree and we appreciate everyone's feedback so if you want me to try to summarize the feedback i can do so and just looking at this slide okay from from what i have received so far it looks like that the will of the commission is for us to prohibit on sidewalk city on sidewalks um also within parks which would include those couple of uh places that are listed there uh and the sidewalks and does the city commission have any feedback related to minimum age photo id fine structure well again it's enforcement you know unless there's an incident unless someone gets hurt the police are not going to be called the police have better things to do than than to worry about bicyclists so um you know let's be smart you know trying to try to avoid situations that we can instead of encouraging situations that that uh cannot be enforced so you know i all the other stuff i think is agreeable but with regard to um scooters and bicycles electric bicycles i just don't think they should be allowed in the parks now whether they should and they also should not be allowed on on sidewalks i think the state law requires them to be on sidewalks uh the uh the scooters uh permits them not requires them permits permit it was our city that went to tallahassee and got them to be allowed in the bike lanes that was where there was a problem there but we eventually got them to the point where this legislature agreed to allow scooters to be um driven in bike lanes but i just i we need to people who walk don't want to be dodging you know uh you know motorized vehicles including scooters and uh and bikes so um i think that we should go back to the drawing board and um you know your fine structure and all that is fine but as far as allowing these these motorized vehicles to be on sidewalks i think we should be more protective of the pedestrians we all agree in terms of the parks uh just leaving them at the entrance i think that you left at the entrance i personally no i am too i know commissioner views of him is that okay with you because i i mean we can still come we can still see a first ordinance a first reading it it says the timelines by the end of this year it's still time a couple of months um when we say the um i guess the interest some of the parts i guess any interest to the park that's what we're not being able to drive them and not to take them inside the park yeah all right i'm i'm comfortable with that but i do have one question for clarity um on page five where it says all devices must be registered with the city and display a registration decal at all time who's gonna where what department is that gonna go through yeah so our working group uh realized that uh most of these ordinances have been developed and adopted by local municipalities within the last year or so right so all when it comes to enforcement and effectiveness of the enforcement really uh we don't have a good idea as to how effective these ordinances are in different places because most of the local municipalities are in the first phase which is just warning a period not really an enforcement outside of miami beach who has been enforcing this from 2024 right for a couple of years so what what the working group uh realizes the registration would be very important aspect of our ability to ultimately enforce the law a local law and it would be done through our department so we are setting up uh provided the city commission is uh supportive of that we are supporting uh we are providing what we are creating um a system that would allow users to register device now how it would work is as follows so if operator is operating device and they're operating in the area that they are not allowed to operate that may be in an unsafe manner or actually if we were to prohibit on city-owned sidewalks they would be pulled over by police um police officer would ask whether they have registration and that would be basically either warning or 250 already um fine for not having a device registered okay um one other question um with our um due diligence in looking to do our comparison was any consideration given to um even north of here like our college towns um you know the scooters all of those e-devices are really inundated in those pockets have we considered what campuses are doing um as far as um e-bike regulations yeah so when it comes to our research it was all across florida so we're looking at brower county miami-dade county pound beach county we went to orange county and volusia county as well uh we to answer your question directly we did not look at the campuses per se those are more of a private privately owned areas so our our ordinance would not really uh cover those areas understood but just getting a a feel of how they're yeah and we can do that yeah because you know as we know they are inundated with these type of devices because the students are really using them so it may be something that we haven't considered even as municipalities what's being allowed on campuses or not being allowed yeah it's warrant checking we will do so all right thank you no other questions okay thank you thank you okay moving on to uh business four our last item this is a presentation on train horn quiet zones back to you all right uh mr mayor uh commissioners once again millish missouri's transportation and mobility department director so the goal of our presentation today is to provide an update on two separate related efforts uh the first one is uh county-wide quiet zone uh and also uh what were the most recent actions from the federal railroad administration the second one is a project that is related to keeping the quiet zone in place it's called seal broward sealed corridor improvements and finally to receive a city commission feedback so a quiet zone is a section of a rail line where additional safety measures have been implemented a waiving the requirement of locomotive locomotives to blow horn when approaching grade crossings so the quiet zone does not prevent the use of train horse whenever whenever there is a imminent safety concern whether it's pedestrian on a rail line or a vehicle on a rail line finally one implemented quiet zone really uh improves quality of life uh because there are uh no longer uh reduces reduces reduces uh pollution from the train horns um and without the quiet zone in place train horns really must sound up to 20 seconds before every one of the crossings in terms of the background uh county-wide quiet zone was established back in um 2019 uh it was spearheaded by the brower metropolitan planning organization uh city of holly was a lead applicant with eight other cities spanning from deerfield beach to hollandville beach and included also county and the state there are about 65 plus crossings along this corridor and 18 of those crossings are within our city the quiet zone risk index is a score that measures safety risk of vehicles and pedestrians when they are the railroad crossing um and um we didn't propose or existing railroad uh quiet zone uh to establish or keep and maintain the quiet zone in place under fr fr a rules this core must meet specific safety thresholds so if the baseline risk index is too high without the horn then additional safety devices must be installed to lower the score before a quiet zone is approved or in order for the quiet zone to stay uh in place so the list of crossings um within the cities uh is on this slide so while the the county-wide quiet zone that is currently in place got put in place in about uh 2019 the effort to establish quiet zone within a county started back in 2014 when the city commission supported a tighter grant application uh for fec corridor safety upgrades uh following that in december of 2015 city commission also uh supported or adopted resolution to join the county white quiet zone together with that eight other cities um in 2022 it was in 2022 when the fra came to the cities and stated some concerns related to increased number of fatalities along the corridor and they at that point stated that they will be placing this quiet zone under review for suspension or termination in response to those safety concerns broward metropolitan planning organization applied for the railroad crossing elimination program they were able to secure that grant which i will talk about later and the city commission supported participation in that grant as well finally most recent actions i will uh cover as part of the next slide so most recently uh in july of this year uh fra met with all municipalities stated some of the concerns about the quiet zone related again to number of uh accidents and fatalities and in august of this year they issued a formal inspection report which identified number of defects in the original notice of establishment which was filed uh when this was uh originally put in place and they also stated the periodic reporting which should be done every about two years is about 50 plus months overdue according to fra communication at that time quiet zone uh was subject to suspension and under review for uh termination so we developed a summary options for the city commission uh to uh consider the main difference between options a and b is really either one of the two would be retaining quiet zone in place um the difference between a and b is that a would keep it as a joint county-wide quiet zone versus b which could split it into number of different individual um quiet zones benefit couple of benefits of uh county-wide quiet zone is that reduces noise pollution resulting from the passing trains in all municipalities because really train horse are loud and when they pass in wilton manners we might hear them here and the other way around additionally additional benefit is that currently the risk the way the risk score is calculated is average risk score of all 60 crossings right uh what fra has pointed out to us and we're yet to receive additional data is that over the last couple of years our crossings have um yielded the highest risk index so there is a benefit to us to keep that quiet zone the way it is which is uh joined so either one of the options a and b under either one of the options we will have to provide a feedback to the fra by november 1st as to whether we are intending to keep the existing quiet zone in place as a joint effort or we're looking to establish our own quiet zone there is number of additional requirements that we will have to go through uh which is amending documents entering into agreements with other municipalities county and the state and additional safety measures might be required because right now we are running some of the risk indexes and analysis of those and we are yet to determine as to how that score compares to national average or minimum requirements in order to see what additional improvements we might have to do uh finally option c and d we are showing them there they were provided by fra uh but either one of the two would suspend the quiet zone in place which would immediately result in uh train horns to resume uh over the last uh couple of weeks uh since fra communicated uh to us we have organized the meetings with um other municipalities eight municipalities county and the state and we spoke with them about this effort um i'm happy to say that on a staff level um all municipalities would like to keep this effort as a joint effort on a staff level now they are still um to receive some feedback from their leadership and their elected officials for example city of hollywood who is currently the lead and was the lead uh applicant is to present an update to their city commission on uh october 20th related to this effort but their recommendation would be to keep it um in place unless something changes uh we have also engaged uh broward mpo um they are helping us out with communication to fra and uh we have also advocate advocated for additional time with fra and the reason why is our main concern here with the option a is that fra from november 1st fra would give us only 30 days in order for us to um amend the paperwork and also enter into the agreements with other municipalities state and the county in order to maintain the quiet zone in place so we keep advocating with fra for additional time we're updating those risk index scores and we are scheduling field inspections with fra to update crossing inventory forms which will help us uh in the process uh in the process of population of uh risk uh index so uh broward seal um corridor project is a related project again uh which would help us improve some of the crossings within the city and within the existing quiet zone in order to help maintain quiet zone in place uh broward mpo again secured a couple of years ago um city commission adopted resolution uh of support for it and participation uh out of close to 20 million dollars of improvements uh 5.5 would be invested in city of fort lauderdale there is about 680 000 um match on the city side and we would be focusing on making improvements at six crossings uh within the city uh the crossings that you see with the asterix which would be southwest fifth sixth and the 17 court um are only three crossings based on fecr that do not have a current crossing agreements in place so as part of the next steps we will be taking these agreements to city commission uh for consideration um in november so we have worked with our internal internal um departments including risk division and city attorney's office to review these fecr agreements proposed agreements um and um also negotiate over the last uh couple of months uh while initial concerns had to do with liability and cost associated with entering to new agreements at this point of time they're really related to the cost so in terms of what we are looking at right now there is some shared level of maintenance maintenance of the improvements of the railroad crossings um with the new agreements fecr is shifting that cost to the city that's number one number two there is about 80 000 of additional cost which has to do with annual maintenance and uh licensing of these new uh crossings and 80 000 is really total for all uh six crossings finally to give you an idea of the cost based on historical data we have been spending over the last five years anywhere between 16 000 a year to 920 000 a year for related to fecr and uh and the crossings and crossing improvements the low side would be for some level of minimal investment or work the high side would be work such as brower boulevard crossing full rehab which happened a couple of years ago so again in terms of next steps we have to get back to fr fr a by november 1st um and let them know which selection we are um uh willing to uh undertake whether um it's keep quiet zone a joint go for individual um and then uh november 6th is when we are planning to uh bring city to city commission for consideration fcr crossing agreements to um help us or help mpo start improvements at six crossings within the city to support wine zone in place as part of the next steps we also have to just make sure that we set up ourselves for success uh from the standpoint of financial uh resources to support by its own and ensure compliance but that concludes my presentation i will move to this slide which is a summary slide if you have any questions i'm here to respond okay anyone have any questions or comments thanks mayor i'll oh hi john ben how you doing thanks sorry for being late appreciate uh better late than never that's all i said yes thank you um milosh thank you thank you for this good work i know mayor commissioner we've a lot of us worked on this for a while years ago the downtown core and throughout fort lauderdale at one point was not a quiet zone and was a significant noise challenge so this matters this is very important in my view and we want to do everything we can as a city to support achieving maintaining the quiet zone so option a to me makes the most sense i think when we work collectively with other municipalities that's the way to go it to your point about the qzr i score we need others to be part of that for for all the reasons you mentioned so uh at this point hollywood has been the lead agency in it um and i think if hollywood and others are interested i think us offering to support hollywood and or ourselves be a lead agency if hollywood likes for the reporting requirements any way we can support the collective makes a lot of sense so for all those reasons i think option a is the way to go mayor i think moving as expeditiously as possible makes a lot of sense given the the time limitations as well uh to make sure that this is you know achieved and maintained okay um any other comments or questions all right so i do have a couple things i'd like to add i agree with the vice mayor and um um but it concerns me that it's almost like we're being ransomed here like if we don't spend all this money to improve these intersections they're going to go ahead and um and impose these uh impose or reimpose the uh the horns and uh and we have to maintain them which is another expense and people wonder you know all this fat in the budget that we're supposed to cut back on um if the new homestead laws passed i mean these are additional um i will call them you know unfunded mandates by the federal government and you know the other thing is even if we even if we rebuild all these intersections and add you know uh raised medians and and more gates and all that most of the people that are dying from these uh intersections are not going to be impacted by these improvements people are committing suicide or they're driving around the gates somehow um i mean these are not the who's coming up with these solutions to think that these are the these are the ways to remedy um and get and and reduce deaths at our intersections i'm not sure if washington really understands what's happening here at the local level has that other have those conversations been had yeah and we are trying to be mindful of that we definitely are mindful of that we're trying to communicate that message to the fra as well um i think that um there is a lot of opportunity for improvement from that standpoint uh in the meanwhile um all we can do is um is basically defer to qyazir risk indexes and see what are improvements that we can do in the meanwhile so we keep our quiet zone in place but if i if i may provide some additional context so based on coordination and feedback from the mpo who has been leading this effort from from 2014 about um out of 39 crossings i'm sorry out of 66 crossings 39 are already sealed meaning that they already have some improvements in place right so the has it helped excuse me has it has it has it helped that's the information that we're still pending to see how much this helped uh the brower seal corridor project will also improve additional 20 so we have 39 plus 20 is already 59 so we'll have only about seven more uh that we have to um determine what improvements they would need to uh in order to maintain the quiet zone in place now the challenge that we have is with the timing of construction efforts versus the timing of timeline that fra is providing for us to uh determine option a or b figure out the agreements and construct the improvement so that is uh the challenge at this point of time but there is a good faith effort we believe on everyone's end in order to um well if they see the good faith effort maybe they can delay their decision but but you know it's a challenge because i i still don't understand why we're the death trap of you know of the train world here uh it's i mean we have more more um deaths and injuries in in briar county than any other place in the country and again i don't know why bright line is such a magnet for this kind of you know these kinds of incidents but um it's not just fort lauderdale we know it's all the cities up and down the corridor but um have we not participated with even though or a hollywood is the lead agency we have we not joined in with them in any way so they are lead agency for eight cities um i'm not sure how active we were or the remaining eight cities over the last couple of years but based on communication from the fra again some of the concerns from there and was whenever notice of establishment was submitted there was some inaccurate information so the traffic data for example is one of the data points that they have to use it shouldn't be older than three years old and it was already might be already older than that and then reporting requirements were not really followed up and followed through so to to mr vice mayor's point uh we have organized these meetings we regrouped uh eight municipalities and this and the county and the state when the conversation started everyone was looking hey maybe we should set up ourselves for individual but then after we continued our conversations everyone felt much more comfortable hey let's say together so that's our goal but i will also say this that given the timeline that we have at this point of time which is we have less than a month i would love to see for the quiet zone and for the feedback from local municipalities to be the way that it has been so far but i also think that we have to be prepared in case one of them is to say no we would like to go on our own for us to be able to handle this on our end and also if we are to serve as a lead provided that city commission is supportive of that we can do that in return we would be looking to enter into some level of interlocal agreements with other parties that would be participating in this effort and we would be asking them to contribute certain level of resources in order for us to engage a consultant who can professionally and timely take care of the compliance going forward i would think that the mpo would be taking the uh initially they have the funding they have the ability to to uh advocate on our behalf um as a member of the mpo um i've seen the main where the where the uh the consensus on the mpo is to avoid the horns as at for at any cost and so i just want to make sure that we're doing our part to participate and uh and aligning ourselves with that effort um because there will be a riots if those horns come back again and uh i mean it just it's just you know awful so um okay well i i appreciate your presentation i appreciate all your efforts that you're doing and i think you hear the consensus of this commission that we support what the uh option a is the preferred option i do i appreciate your feedback again we'll see you november 6th with uh with uh those crossing agreements and we'll also inform you uh related to any financial or other resources that we might need in order to support option a okay very good thank you so much uh city managers any further business of the commission with regard to this conference meeting nothing further uh city city city attorney do you have any further business no mayor would you mind just i just want to ask a couple questions about the e-bike ordinance so i'll keep it short is that right i was listening um as you all were we're talking thanks uh milosh or city manager question on the e-bike ordinance um the minimum age so i think the minimum age in our thinking right now is 16 16 i think that's correct so i'm interested in exploring what other cities do and and maybe it's in the comparison that's in chart but of lowering that um and lowering that for possibly lower speed vehicles so i want to get your feedback on that milosh so what we have seen is typically about 16 years of age uh there are some uh municipalities that have 15 uh i think was that uh let me see uh it was wellington that has it at 15 now we can go and establish any limit uh that city commission would like to see uh based on a feedback from and when we went to parks board there were some parks board members that were supportive of limitations within parks but they had concerns related to uh to to age limit and how 16 might be what age were you looking at i mean there are just a lot of younger people that ride them all over neighborhoods i mean neighbors have been asking me there there are 12 13 year olds that they ride them um so it looks like does miami beach not have an age minimum age i don't think that they do so under our proposed ordinance minimum wage would be 16 to operate them for any e-scooter that is right anything that is correct so for any one of these devices here yeah i mean i just i think it should be lower um and i don't know the exact age mayor um but it's just uh it's you know you can be 14 to ride a bike in traffic i think does that sound right how old do you have to be to ride a bike in traffic does anyone know i don't think that i know the answer to that question i don't even know if there is um and obviously e-mobility devices can can obviously move faster than a bike um so anyway so that's one kind of question i have and then helmets or any helmet requirement so under florida law uh anyone who is 16 or below is required to wear a helmet yep okay so those would be my feet my piece of feedback is vice mayor can i just say something sure um i'm very concerned about kids being irresponsible uh in taking these e-bikes and running them rampaging through neighborhoods and through parks and through all opportunities that they i i mean i just can see it would be an absolute nightmare and then no one's there to enforce it no one's checking ids no one's no i mean we don't have police officers that are going to be looking looking for bicyclists who are underage or or acting appropriately there was a discussion earlier um before you came here about what is the safe manner there is no such thing as a safe manner that can be enforced and so the discussion was to keep them off of sidewalks and keep them out of parks oh yeah i agree with that yeah okay yeah no completely concern is it's i mean the age i mean with 16 you'll have to enforce that right you'll have to ask for ids totally agree with you yeah but but you know to have an eight-year-old running around an e-bike um i'm just i'm yeah we're not making a decision today but i think we really need to think think that through yeah so i think eight's too young but um yeah i just again a lot of young families they they use these safely in the neighborhood so that would just be my um i'd like to at least look at other municipalities that allow for younger in addition to miami beach so um that's it thank you mayor all right thank you milos thank you meeting adjourned thank you we'll resume at six o'clock