City Commission Regular Meeting on 2025-05-06 6:00 PM - May 06, 2025

Steven Glassman: present · Pamela Beasley-Pittman: present · Ben Sorensen: present · Dean J. Trantalis: present

Outcome: So with regard to the minutes and the agenda as amended, do I hear a motion to approve the minutes and the amended agend (partial — some responses not in transcript)

So moved. Second. Moved and seconded.

Steven Glassman: yes · Pamela Beasley-Pittman: yes · Ben Sorensen: yes · Dean J. Trantalis: yes

Outcome: And the agenda as amended and the minutes from the previous meeting have now been approved. (partial — some responses not in transcript)

So do I hear a motion to approve the consent agenda items except CR1 and CM9? Do I hear a second? Second.

Steven Glassman: yes · Pamela Beasley-Pittman: yes · Ben Sorensen: yes · John C. Herbst: yes · Dean J. Trantalis: yes

Outcome: And those consent agenda items are now approved.

Steven Glassman: yes · Pamela Beasley-Pittman: yes · Ben Sorensen: yes · John C. Herbst: yes · Mayor Chantals: yes

Would someone second it, please? Second. It's been moved and seconded.

Steven Glassman: yes · Pamela Beasley-Pittman: yes · Ben Sorensen: yes · John C. Herbst: yes · Dean J. Trantalis: yes

Outcome: And that item's approved.

Do I hear a second? Second. Moved and seconded.

Steven Glassman: yes · Pamela Beasley-Pittman: yes · Ben Sorensen: yes · Dean J. Trantalis: yes

Outcome: And M1 is now approved. (partial — some responses not in transcript)

M2, motion approving an agreement for the Butler Building upgrade at George T. Lohmeyer Wastewater Treatment Plant. Do I hear a second? Second.

Steven Glassman: yes · Pamela Beasley-Pittman: yes · Ben Sorensen: yes · John C. Herbst: yes · Dean J. Trantalis: yes

Outcome: M2 is now approved.

Do I hear a second? Second. Moved and seconded.

Steven Glassman: yes · Pamela Beasley-Pittman: yes · Ben Sorensen: yes · John C. Herbst: no · Dean J. Trantalis: yes

Outcome: And M3 is now approved.

Do I hear a second? Second. Moved and seconded.

Steven Glassman: yes · Pamela Beasley-Pittman: yes · Ben Sorensen: yes · John C. Herbst: yes · Dean J. Trantalis: yes

Do I hear a second? Second. Been moved and seconded.

Steven Glassman: yes · Pamela Beasley-Pittman: yes · Ben Sorensen: yes · John C. Herbst: yes · Dean J. Trantalis: yes

Second. Moved and seconded.

Steven Glassman: yes · Pamela Beasley-Pittman: yes · Ben Sorensen: yes · John C. Herbst: yes · Dean J. Trantalis: yes

It's a very quick thing, so I'm just going to put the evening meeting on pause for a second, and I'd like to convene the CRA meeting.

John C. Herbst: present · Steven Glassman: present · Pamela Beasley-Pittman: present · Ben Sorensen: present · Dean J. Trantalis: present

Outcome: Do I hear a motion to approve?

So moved. Second. Moved and seconded.

Steven Glassman: yes · Pamela Beasley-Pittman: yes · Ben Sorensen: yes · John C. Herbst: yes · Dean J. Trantalis: yes

Outcome: That M1 is now approved.

Steven Glassman: yes · Pamela Beasley-Pittman: yes · Ben Sorensen: yes · John C. Herbst: yes · Dean J. Trantalis: yes

Outcome: And that resolution is now approved.

So moved. Second. Moved and seconded.

Steven Glassman: yes · Pamela Beasley-Pittman: yes · Ben Sorensen: yes · John C. Herbst: yes · Dean J. Trantalis: yes

Do I hear a motion to close public hearing? Second. I've been moved and seconded.

Steven Glassman: yes · Pamela Beasley-Pittman: yes · Ben Sorensen: yes · John C. Herbst: yes · Dean J. Trantalis: yes

Please, do I hear a motion to close public hearing on PH4? Do I hear a second? Moved and seconded.

Pamela Beasley-Pittman: yes · Ben Sorensen: yes · John C. Herbst: yes · Dean J. Trantalis: yes

Steven Glassman: yes · Pamela Beasley-Pittman: yes · Ben Sorensen: yes · John C. Herbst: yes · Dean J. Trantalis: yes

Outcome: And OFR-1 is approved on first reading.

Second. Be moved and seconded.

Steven Glassman: yes · Pamela Beasley-Pittman: yes · Ben Sorensen: yes · John C. Herbst: yes · Dean J. Trantalis: yes

Second. Moved and seconded.

Steven Glassman: yes · Pamela Beasley-Pittman: yes · Ben Sorensen: yes · John C. Herbst: yes · Dean J. Trantalis: yes

Good evening, everybody, and welcome to the City Commission meeting this May 6, 2025. I want to apologize to the community for our delayed start, but our afternoon meeting ran pretty late. So I appreciate your patience and welcome. For those of you who are here for the first time, welcome to our City Commission meeting, and we thank you for partaking in the business of the commission tonight. The process that we follow here is we begin our evenings with the Pledge of Allegiance and then a moment of silence, and then we get into our agenda. But before we even do that, we have presentations. Tonight we have five presentations, and these presentations are regarding either events that are taking place in our city, recognizing individuals or groups, or in some way sometimes acknowledging activities that are taking place in our city and acknowledging those individuals that are part of that. So here we are tonight. I'd like to begin by inviting Mahogany Tillman. Mahogany, are you here? There she is. She's a senior at Dillard High School, and I ask her to join me at the podium, and we'll together do the Pledge of Allegiance. So please stand.

I pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Great. Thank you so much. Thank you. You're welcome. So you're last year?

Yes.

You're going to college after this? I am. Where are you going?

South Carolina State University.

Oh, congratulations.

Thank you.

Well, we have this little tote bag for you so that you don't forget us when you leave town and go off to school. So thank you so much. Thank you. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you, too. Do you mind taking a picture with us? No problem. Why don't you stay in the middle? Okay. Thank you, Mahogany. Good luck at school. I now ask everyone to please join me in a moment of silence. Thank you. So before we begin, I have a few employee retirements to announce. We take this time in our meetings to recognize those individuals who have worked with our city at least 10 years, and tonight we have some really long-term employees who are now retiring. I'd like to announce Daniel Rezone, a police officer who's been with us for 17 and a half years. Thank you, Daniel, for your service to our community. Joseph Georgiana, who has been an HVAC technician in Parks and Recreation, he's been with us 20 years. Congratulations, Joe. Al Battle. Where's Al? We miss Al. He's been with us. He was the DSD director. Most recently, the DSC director, and he's been with us for 20 years. Thank you so much for your service, Al. Last meeting was his last meeting. David Baguan, who is a firefighter and paramedic. He has been with us for 25 years. Thank you, David, for your service. Avis Wilkinson. No. Avis was the assistant housing and community development manager for DSD. She was with us for 12 years. Thank you, Avis, for your service. And last, but certainly not least, Robert Kacerovich, who has been a captain with our fire department, was with us 29 years. So thank you, Robert. Thank you, everybody, for your continuing commitment to the city of Fort Lauderdale for all those many years. Agenda announcements. PH-5 is being removed from the agenda. And, Mr. Clerk, would you please call the roll?

Vice Mayor Herbst. Commissioner Glassman. Here. Commissioner Beasley-Pittman.

Here.

Commissioner Sorensen. Here. Mayor Trentos. Here. We have two agenda item revisions. In CR4, the CAM and Exhibit 1 were revised, removing item J from the budget amendment. OSR 2, Exhibit 7 was revised to add Exhibit B. So with regard to the minutes and the agenda as amended, do I hear a motion to approve the minutes and the amended agenda?

So moved.

Second. Moved and seconded. Please call the roll.

Commissioner Glassman. Yes. Commissioner Beasley-Pittman. Yes. Commissioner Sorensen.

Yes.

Vice Mayor Herbst. Mayor Trentos.

Yes. And the agenda as amended and the minutes from the previous meeting have now been approved. So now we'll launch right into our presentations. And I have the honor of making the first presentation tonight to present a proclamation recognizing May 1, 2025, as Israel's Independence Day here in the city of Fort Lauderdale. And I'd like to invite Ayelet Black, who's the deputy council general of Israel, to please join me at the podium. From the office of the mayor of the city of Fort Lauderdale, this proclamation in recognition of Israel's 77th anniversary of independence. Whereas on May 14, 1948, Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, publicly read the Declaration of Independence of Israel, marking the founding of a nation built on the principles of democracy, freedom, and resilience. And whereas for 77 years, the United States and Israel have maintained a special relationship rooted in shared democratic values, common strategic interests, deep bonds of friendship, and mutual respect. The city of Fort Lauderdale recognizes and honors the contributions of the Jewish community to the cultural, economic, and social fabric of our city, especially during the Jewish American Heritage Month. I'm not going to get this. Yom Hatzmat. Okay, not so bad. Israel's Independence Day is celebrated by the people of Israel and by the communities around the world, including across the United States through festivals, cultural events, and gatherings that honor the founding of the state of Israel. The significance of the Independence Day is deepened by the preceding day, Yom Hatzikaron. Close. Okay. Israel's Day of Remembrance for Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terrorism, a solemn occasion dedicated to honoring the memory of those who gave their lives in defense of Israel. As part of the Independence Day observance, the Speaker of the Israeli Parliament, or the Knesset, delivers remarks atop Mount Herzl, accompanied by a nationally televised ceremony that unites citizens in pride and reflection. Finally, the city of Fort Lauderdale joins communities around the world in recognizing the Independence Day as a celebration of unity, honoring Israel's independence, and reaffirming our commitment to shared values of freedom, democracy, and peace. Now, therefore, we, as the city commissioners of the city of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, do hereby proclaim May 1st, 2025, as Israel's Independence Day here in the city of Fort Lauderdale, dated May 6th, 2025, signed by myself, Mayor Dean Trantelis. Congratulations. Thank you. Can I say a few more?

Thank you so much, Mayor, Commissioners. I can't tell you how moving it is, being an Israeli diplomat here in Florida, and receiving, really, this proclamation, which is not just words. It's a real testament to the cooperation and the joint values that we work on every single day. What happens here in Florida, and really being an Israeli diplomat here, this posting, it's like winning the lottery. You land in Florida, you get a big, humid hug, and considering that in Israel right now, that we're going through a very tough time, as was just read in the proclamation, our day of independence comes right after our day of remembrance for our fallen soldiers and victims of terror attacks, because we pay a price, and we continue to pay a price, for our freedom and independence. And when we fight for this freedom, we fight for, really, the joint values that join together Israel and the United States of America. So I thank you so much for everything that we do together, and everything that you do for the Jewish community. And there are so many better, it leaves me very hopeful for a much better world. And I just leave with a prayer of God bless Israel, God bless the United States of America. Thank you so much.

I'd now like to invite Commissioner Glassman, who will be presenting a proclamation regarding Jewish American Heritage Month.

Thank you, Mayor, and I'm happy that you're here with us right now. I'd also like to call up to the podium Randy Coleman, who is the president and CEO, and Sandra Alla, who is the chief operating and programs officer of the Goodman Jewish Family Services of Broward County. Thank you. And this is from the office of the mayor, City of Fort Lauderdale, A Proclamation and Recognition of Jewish American Heritage Month, requested by Commissioner Steve Glassman. Whereas, in 2006, President George W. Bush proclaimed May as Jewish American Heritage Month, following a bipartisan resolution of Congress and decades of presidential proclamations recognizing the history, heritage, culture, and contributions of Jewish Americans to the United States. And whereas this month-long observance provides an opportunity to reflect on the rich legacy and enduring impact of Jewish Americans, whose contributions since the 17th century have shaped the nation's progress in civil rights, social justice, business, education, and public service. And whereas the American Jewish community's origins trace back to 1654, when a group of 23 individuals of Jewish faith fleeing persecution from the Portuguese Inquisition in Brazil sought refuge in New Amsterdam, now New York. From this initial group, the American Jewish community has grown to approximately 7.5 million, representing about 2.4% of the total United States population. And whereas Jewish residents have played a vital role in shaping the cultural, civic, and economic life of Fort Lauderdale and Broward County, helping to define the values of compassion, community, and human dignity that unite us. And whereas Dr. Stanley and Pearl Goodman Jewish Family Services of Broward County, Incorporated, JFS, originally established in 1962 and incorporated in 1963 as Jewish Family Services of Broward County, was renamed in 2014 in honor of a generous endowment gift from Dr. Stanley and Pearl Goodman. Today it stands as the county's leading Jewish social service agency, committed to supporting individuals and families through life's most challenging times, regardless of background, race, or religion. And whereas the Dr. Stanley and Pearl Goodman JFS of Broward County has led with innovation and compassion, offering critical services such as counseling, food assistance, emergency financial aid, senior care, support for Holocaust survivors, and domestic abuse recovery, serving thousands each year with programs rooted in Jewish values and a commitment to social justice. And whereas the agency's nationally recognized Holocaust survivors' assistance program and wide-reaching community services reflect a legacy of leadership, resilience, and care that continues to uplift our community. And whereas in honor of Jewish American Heritage Month and in recognition of Dr. Stanley and Pearl Goodman JFS' more than 60 years of service, we celebrate the agency's contributions to the Jewish community and to all residents of Broward County. Now, therefore, we as city commissioners of the city of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, do hereby proclaim May 2025 as Jewish American Heritage Month in the city of Fort Lauderdale and dated this the sixth day of May 2025 and signed by the mayor, Honorable Dean J. Trentalis.

Mayor, commissioners, I thank you for this honor and privilege for being able to accept this proclamation on behalf of the entire Jewish community. We are a human service agency that helps the Jewish people in this community, but we help every individual in this community. If you're part of a vulnerable population, whether it's food insecurity, clothing insecurity, mental health issues, we are here to help. And based on the Jewish values and our history and our heritage, one of the things that I implore each of us to do is to be kind to each other. Let's find a way to work together, whether you're on the left or the right, whether you're Republican or Democrat, whether you're African American or you're white, we have to find a way to live together. And the city of Fort Lauderdale is doing an incredible job of making sure that happens, and we're proud to serve all of the residents of Fort Lauderdale. So I thank you again for this privilege and honor in accepting this proclamation today.

Great. Thank you so much.

I would now like to invite our Vice Mayor, John Herbst, to present a proclamation regarding Economic Development Week, and I would invite Daphne Sandville to accompany him at the podium.

I didn't bring the bag.

Daphne, did you bring your whole family with you? You don't travel alone, do you?

So from the office of the mayor, City of Fort Lauderdale, a proclamation and recognition of Economic Development Week. Whereas, economic development is a vital component of strong, resilient, and thriving communities, providing the foundation for job creation, innovation, business growth, and an improved quality of life for all residents. And whereas, the city of Fort Lauderdale recognizes the essential role of economic development professionals and organizations who work diligently to stimulate economic activity, strengthen local businesses, attract and retain talent, drive investment, and build vibrant neighborhoods. And whereas, as one of the nation's fastest-growing cities, Fort Lauderdale boasts a diverse economy, a robust tourism sector, a skilled workforce, and a strategic location that positions itself as a gateway for global commerce. And whereas, through collaborative partnerships with the Greater Fort Lauderdale Alliance, the Broward County Office of Economic and Small Business Development, local chambers, non-profit agencies, and the private sector, the city champions policies and initiatives that support workforce development and empower small businesses. And whereas, Economic Development Week, established by the International Economic Development Council, highlights the importance of public-private partnerships in building sustainable, equitable communities, and advancing shared prosperity. And whereas, the city of Fort Lauderdale remains committed to expanding economic opportunity, fostering innovation and equity, and ensuring that all residents and neighborhoods benefit from the city's continued growth. And whereas, to support this commitment, the city actively highlights successful economic development programs, showcases transformational projects, and engages neighbors, business owners, and civic leaders in meaningful dialogue about shaping a resilient and inclusive economic future. Now, therefore, we, as city commissioners of the city of Fort Lauderdale, do proclaim May 11th through 17th, 2025, as Economic Development Week in the city of Fort Lauderdale, dated the sixth day of May, 2025, your Mayor, Dean J. Trantalis.

I didn't anticipate speaking, but thank you, Vice Mayor, Mayor, and Commission. On behalf of my public affairs team, Economic Development Week, and everything about economic development couldn't happen without the public affairs team. I also want to thank Brian Johnson with the Minority Builders, and Courtney with the Urban League for helping us support, collaborate on projects, and making sure economic development, small businesses thrive. And for Economic Development Week next week's Shameless Pitch, we will be having a pitch competition on Wednesday, and our city manager, Raquel Williams, will be there giving some welcoming remarks. So we hope to see you there at the YMCA Black Box Theater from 9 to 11, May 14th.

Great. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, folks.

I'd now like to invite Commissioner Beasley Pittman, who will present a proclamation recognizing Mental Health Awareness Month here in the city of Fort Lauderdale. And I'd like to invite Dr. Joe Aurevez, the CEO of National Alliance of Mental Health, excuse me, Mental Illness, Broward County, to please join the commissioner at the podium.

Good evening, everyone. Good evening, everyone. You know me, Mayor. I love that talk back. You've got to talk back to me. This is such a privilege tonight to be able to present this proclamation and also bring in awareness, color green. It is in representation of Mental Health Awareness Month. So you'll see that staff has green butterflies, and it represents the color for this event. Okay? All right. From the Office of the Mayor of the City of Fort Lauderdale, Proclamation and Recognition of Mental Health Awareness Month, whereas National Alliance on Mental Illness of Broward County is dedicated to raising awareness and dedicating programs that support treatment and recovery systems for individuals who are facing mental health challenges. Through education, support, and advocacy, the National Alliance on Mental Illness of Broward County helps individuals and families better understand and navigate those complexities of mental illness. And whereas each year, one in five adults experience a mental health condition, half of all mental health disorders begin by the age of 14 and 75% by the age of 24. Making early diagnosis and treatment is critical to improving long-term outcomes. And whereas, although mental health conditions are treatable and manageable, it's the stigma and the fear of discrimination that often prevents individuals from seeking the help they need. And whereas mental health care is essential, is an essential component of comprehensive health care and must be accessible to all individuals regarding of race, gender, age, sexual orientation, or cultural background. Breaking down barriers to care through a compassionate and inclusive approach is vital to building a stronger and more supportive community. And whereas mental illness is not a crime, yet individuals with mental health conditions are disproportionately represented in jails and prison. The National Alliance on Mental Illness supports initiatives such as crisis intervention training, which is CIT for law enforcement, diversion programs, and mobile crisis response teams, which helps reduce involvement in the justice system and improves public safety. And whereas the National Alliance on Mental Illness for mental health of Broward County observes May as Mental Health Awareness Month and to inspire hope, promote access to services, and share the powerful message, you are not alone. And whereas the City of Fort Lauderdale is committed to fostering a community that values mental wellness and also support those facing mental health challenges with compassion, resources, and the care they deserve. Now, therefore, we ask the City Commissioners of the City of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to hereby proclaim May 2025 as Mental Health Awareness Month in the City of Fort Lauderdale. And this is stated this day, the sixth day of May 2025, by our Mayor, Dean Trantellis. Would you like to say something? Yes.

Thank you very much, Commissioner, Mayor, Vice Mayor, esteemed members of the Fort Lauderdale community. Again, I'm Dr. Joe Orbeck, CEO of NAMI Broward County, and I want to express my deep appreciation and gratitude for recognizing May as Mental Health Awareness Month. This year's national NAMI message is powerful and personal. In every story, there is strength. That story may belong to a neighbor, a colleague, a parent, an elected official, or a child. And even in every time we acknowledge it, we break down stigma and open the door to hope. That strength is found in the families we support, the individuals we attend for our groups, and the community members who show up, like all of you, ready to end stigma and to start real, real conversations. NAMI is the nation's largest grassroots mental health organization, and NAMI Broward is proud to serve as your local grassroots health nonprofit. Here in Broward, we provide completely free, evidence-based programs, including peer and family support groups, education classes like Family to Family and NAMI Basics, outreach presentations to schools, community groups, and first responders. All designed to help people feel heard, seen, and supported. No insurance and no diagnosis required. Your proclamation articulates the data of how we all need to embrace mental health for all. And while we receive very little state or county funding, only limited support locally, we are committed to showing up in every single zip code, meeting people where they are. That's why moments like this matter. This proclamation sends a message. Mental health matters in Fort Lauderdale. We are proud to bring our services directly into the community, libraries, schools, faith centers, and not just in offices. And we rely on local partnerships, like this one, to keep those programs free and accessible. I'd also be remiss if I didn't mention a growing movement in Broward County. We also invite our business community and city departments to engage in our stigma-free workplace initiative to be able to help each other through our mental health and employee mental wellness at every single level. Several neighboring municipalities are already involved, and we'd love to bring more to more businesses and companies within Fort Lauderdale. And finally, I invite each and every one of you to join us on Saturday, October 4th, at Nova Southeastern University for the NAMI Mental Health for All Walk. It's a morning of celebration, community, purpose, and we're proud to have more individuals and offices from Fort Lauderdale Walk with us. So thank you again for standing with NAMI Broward County and reminding our residents that we are never alone. Together, we build a stronger, healthier, more passionate Broward County. Thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner. I'd now like to invite Commissioner Ben Sorensen to present a proclamation regarding Honor Flight South Florida Day in the city of Fort Lauderdale and invite Jessica Easterling, who's co-chair of Honor Flight South Florida and Honor Flight South Florida Volunteers, to join him at the podium. And your entourage seems to be the theme tonight. Yes.

Yeah. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, y'all, Honor Flight team. Come on up. So for those who might not know, Honor Flight, amazing, especially Honor Flight South Florida, purely volunteer organization, no paid staff. What they do is, with y'all's help, identify veterans, World War II, Korea War era, Vietnam War era, and Cold War era veterans. And free of charge, those veterans, on an Honor Flight in partnership with Spirit Airlines, fly up to Washington, D.C., free of charge, fly up for a full day of amazing celebration and tribute to those veterans. So they go from memorial to memorial, special events, special interactions with folks, and each of those veterans is accompanied by a guardian. A guardian can be anyone like you and me. Don't have to be a veteran. Don't have to have served at any point or currently serving. You just are there supporting that veteran during their day in Washington, D.C. And one of the joys of it is you get to really celebrate with a veteran, and you yourself get to really celebrate the wonder of Washington, D.C. and the monuments and memorials to celebrate our veterans. So please think about being a guardian. Just go to Honor Flight South Florida and sign up to be a guardian. I'm going to be a guardian this May 17th with my aunt, who's a veteran being honored. But you don't have to have a family member going. You can just serve a veteran. So I ask you to think about that amazing, amazing way to support our veterans. And did I detail that all right? Was that okay? Your work is done. Is there a proclamation somewhere? There is a proclamation. In 10 minutes, Mayor, I'll be done with my speech, and then we'll get there. So here's a –

They have to take a bathroom. That's right. That's right.

I'll keep it short. Keep the proclamation short. This is from City of Fort Lauderdale recognizing Honor Flight South Florida, whereas Honor Flight South Florida is a dedicated all-volunteer organization that serves veterans across Broward, Dade, and Moreau counties. Representing them with the opportunity to visit our nation's capital and the memorials built to their honor, these one-day missions are powerful tributes to the men and women who served in the United States Armed Forces. The program serves veterans who enlisted between 1940 and 1975, and whereas Honor Flight South Florida is guided by the belief that those who inspired our national memorials should have the opportunity to experience them firsthand and fulfills its mission by ensuring American's heroes are celebrated for their bravery and selflessness. Whereas the City of Fort Lauderdale commends Honor Flight South Florida for its steadfast dedication to preserving the legacy of our veterans, recognizing the importance of honoring those who defend our freedoms, and reaffirms the significance of reminding our community of the enduring sacrifices made to our country. Now, therefore, we as the City Commissioners of the City of Fort Lauderdale hereby proclaim May 17th, which is the next Honor Flight, as Honor Flight South Florida Day in the City of Fort Lauderdale, dated this, the sixth day of May 2025, signed by your mayor, Dean J. Trantellis. Thank you. Jessica, one of the co-chairs of Honor Flight. I'll turn it over to you, Jessica, or whoever wants to speak. Come on up. All right.

On May 17th, we celebrate Armed Forces Day. We are also honoring 70 heroes on Honor Flight South Florida, mission number 35. We have 70 veterans, one from World War II, two from Korea, 10 Cold Wars, and 57 Vietnam veterans. Among these heroes is Mary Gutana, who is a Vietnam vet. She will be accompanied by her special guardian, Ben Sorenson, her nephew. Please all come to salute them at Saturday night's Fort Lauderdale's homecoming. If you haven't been to a Honor Flight homecoming, it's amazing. We get over 1,000 people coming. Some of these vets have waited more than 50 years for this honor. Mayor Trantellis, Vice Mayor Herbst, Commissioner Glassman, Beasley, Pittman, and Sorenson, thank you for supporting our American treasure.

Thank you.

Thank you, folks, and thank you, Commissioner. That concludes our presentations tonight, and I want to thank everyone who's appeared on behalf of these presentations. Thank you so much for your coming to our community meeting tonight. At this point, I would like to ask members of the Commission if there's any item on the consent agenda that they would like to have pulled. The reason for that is normally we vote all the consent agenda items at once. If there's an individual item that a member of the Commission would like pulled, we'll vote on that separately and discuss it separately. If an item has not been pulled, then you come here tonight to speak on one of those consent agenda items. I will invite you to speak on that item before we vote on the full agenda. So, Commissioner Herbst, Vice Mayor Herbst, do you have any consent agenda items you'd like to pull?

No.

Commissioner Beasley-Pittman?

CR-1.

CR-1. Commissioner Glassman? CM-9. And Commissioner Sorenson? No. None. Okay, so we have one person who signed up to speak on CM-6. That's Barbara Stern. So, Barbara, would you like to come up?

Thank you, Barbara Stern. I'm here today asking the Commission, why are we still paying AECOM? Why are we still giving them work? We have a change order request on the new police headquarters. A new report has come out, although I have not had a chance to read it, but according to the memo put out by City Manager Williams, the draft peer review has identified critical findings that include life safety concerns requiring timely corrective action. Why are we still doing work on police headquarters? Why? This has become the money pit. If you haven't seen the movie, let's go back and watch it. This needs to stop. We need to figure out, can it be salvage? Tom Ansbrough suggested we tear the building down and start over. Vice Mayor Herbst previously suggested that. We keep having problems. We've known for a year, almost a year, that there's problems, deflection, sinking, all these different problems. We keep getting change orders. I understand AECOM is going to have to pay us back. Why we're paying them anything for a change order, why we're getting a change order from them is ridiculous. It needs to be offset in the monies that we're getting. But the fact that we keep throwing money at this is ridiculous.

Okay, thank you. Mr. Farjardo, would you like to respond to that? This is regarding CM6. It's a change order for construction administration services for the new police headquarters for AECOM technical services. Why did that come before the commission tonight?

Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Commission. Anthony Farjardo, Assistant City Manager. So the item is on your agenda tonight. This is within the budget that was approved by the City Commission previously. So they're not asking for additional funds. The work that we are asking AECOM to do and to extend these services is to align with the actual terms of the contract as it stands today for the completion of the project. So there, and then there's also some additional work that they need to do regarding the HVAC equipment for the firing range. None of these are associated with the deflection, at least on this change order. There is a change order from MOS that has a couple of deflection items on there for monitoring purposes. And then the work that was brought up that still has to be done regarding Phase 2, we'll get that information shortly. We're hoping in a couple of weeks so that we understand better what that report actually means and how it will impact the project.

Does this item have anything to do with anything related to that Phase 2 report? No, it doesn't.

Okay.

So it has nothing to do with the Phase 1 report or the Phase 2?

No. This is just for contract services to extend for the additional, for the 18-month period.

Okay.

Thank you.

Okay. So do I hear a motion to approve the consent agenda items except CR1 and CM9?

Moved.

Do I hear a second? Second. Okay. Please call the roll.

Commissioner Glassman?

Yes.

Commissioner Beasley-Pittman?

Yes.

Commissioner Sorensen? Yes. Vice Mayor Herbst?

Yes.

Mayor Trent House?

Yes. And those consent agenda items are now approved. CR1, Commissioner Beasley-Pittman?

Yes. Thank you, Mayor. This particular item has such a great opportunity to impact for our city, and I wanted to have someone to come up and just expound on it. I didn't think it was appropriate just to leave it in the mix. So if we can have someone to come and explain the naming of the new name for this park, I think it would be beneficial for us all.

So, who's here from Parks and Rec? Oh, Carl. So, Carl, tell us a little bit about the history of this, and how is it that the community came together to recognize this individual in the naming of this park? We have about two hours. You can go ahead.

Good evening, Mayor, Commissioner. This is Carl Williams, Parks and Recreation Director. Give me one second so I can pull up some background detail here.

I believe it's in honor of a Native American that there's some association of this area to this individual. Yes, sir.

I'm just filling in for you while you pull that up. Yeah, Mayor, while he's pulling that up, this was chosen by the Riverside Park Association, so they're really excited about that. As you know, Mayor, this is park land that was purchased by the City Commission years ago with park bond money, which it's an amazing piece of property right on the water. And so they were considering different names, and they all really coalesced around the Abiyaka. And, Carl, I'll turn it over to you. Yes, sir.

Thank you. So, yes, so as Commissioner stated, the information was provided to us from a couple residents within the area, and they took it to our homeowners association there in Riverside. And they, during their meeting minutes, this was an item for discussion. Abiyaka Park is also the parcel of property that we use to purchase with those bond dollars. And Abiyaka, and I'm going to pull up the actual feedback here on it, from the letter by the Vice President, there are 28 members that voted in support of this particular item. Abiyaka Park, or Abiyaka is a native, and based on some of the background information, was someone that was very diligent, fought for the waterfront property, very hands-on and ordinated with that.

Thank you. Commissioner, would you like to introduce the item?

Introduced.

The resolution of CR1 has now been introduced. Please call the roll.

A resolution to the City Commissioner of the City of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, approving the Abiyaka Park for the new park in the City of Fort Lauderdale, located at 501 Southwest 12th Avenue, providing for conflicts, providing for severability, and providing for an effective date. Commissioner Glassman? Yes. Commissioner Beasley-Pittman? Yes. Commissioner Sorenson? Yes. Vice Mayor Herbst? Yes. Mayor Chantals?

Yes. And we now have Abiyaka Park here in the City of Fort Lauderdale. Congratulations. Thank you. Awesome. Moving on to CM9, Commissioner Glassman.

Yes.

Thank you, Mayor. Let me just – oh, we're going backwards, right? We went to CR1 first. Hold on one second. I figured you would catch on. Yes, we can. Thank you. CM9. So this is a question for staff. This came up at my district-wide pre-agenda meeting last evening, so, Raquel, maybe you can help me, or I guess whoever – maybe Angela, if she's still here, could help me. I see that we're spending about $436,000 and change for a 60-month rent. So it was brought up to me, you know, we have that building that the fire union gave back to us in Poinsettia Heights. We know that that building is not in good shape, but they no longer want to do it as a fire union hall. We have that building. It's close to Federal Highway. But the thought was mentioned about why don't we look at that site and why don't we – because we're going to have to do something with that building, either renovate it, demolish it, build something new. Why don't we build our own wellness center instead of spending hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars to rent some space in the building? So I'm just mentioning that. I'm fine with moving forward with this, but I just wanted to let you know that that came up as a discussion item at my meeting last night to maybe look at that building. I don't know what our plans are for that building, but we have it back now. And rather, as I said, rather than spend those hundreds of thousands of dollars, you know, every five years on a lease, maybe we can do something else. That's all.

Thank you for that comment. We can definitely look at that. I think the ultimate intent is perhaps to have the wellness center as part of our future city hall. And so we can explore that opportunity as well and come back to the commission.

That would be great. And then also maybe if we could at some point in time hear what staff thinks about that property that we have back now. What are we doing with it? It's sitting there. It's actually quite a unique building. I don't know what it would cost to renovate, but architecturally it's kind of interesting. The architect was a noted architect in town and interesting property. And we have it back, so we should figure out what we want to do with it. Okay. Thank you so much. Thanks, Mayor. You're welcome.

Just to add to that thought, so I talked with the new union president about that building just the other day, and I asked him why they were abandoning it. And what he had indicated to me was that the cost of renovating it was just excessive for them. I don't know if we can do it any cheaper or if we have a copy of their cost estimates, but certainly something we should get. But, yeah, because they were working with architects. There were problems with the air conditioning systems, with all kinds of things, with the roofs. I believe it leaked, and a number of different systems were not in great shape.

Okay. Commissioner Glassman, would you like to move the item? Yes. Thank you. So moved. Would someone second it, please?

Second.

It's been moved and seconded. Please call the roll.

Commissioner Glassman? Yes. Commissioner Beasley-Pittman?

Yes.

Commissioner Sorensen? Yes. Vice Mayor Herbst? Yes. Mayor Trentals?

Yes. And that item's approved. M1, motion approving an award of state housing initiatives partnership ship funding to Oasis of Hope Community Development Corporation for new construction home ownership. Let's see, a couple of people signed up to speak, but I think just for questions, yep. So, would someone like to move the item? Moved. Do I hear a second? Second. Moved and seconded. Please call the roll.

Commissioner Glassman? Yes. Commissioner Beasley-Pittman? Yes. Commissioner Sorensen? Yes. Vice Mayor Herbst? Mayor Trentals?

Yes. And M1 is now approved. M2, motion approving an agreement for the Butler Building upgrade at George T. Lohmeyer Wastewater Treatment Plant. Walker Design and Construction. No one has signed up to speak. Would someone like to move the item? Move. Move. Do I hear a second? Second. Anyone have any questions? There being none, please call the roll.

Commissioner Glassman?

Yes.

Commissioner Beasley-Pittman? Yes. Commissioner Sorensen? Yes. Vice Mayor Herbst?

Yes.

Mayor Trentals?

Yes. M2 is now approved. M3, this is a motion approving a change order for the construction management at risk services for new police headquarters. Moss and Associates. One person to sign up to speak. Barbara Stern?

Barbara Stern, again, raising concerns about moving forward with the new police headquarters, spending any further money. We're getting requests for change orders. This is beyond deflection. We have problems with the columns. The building is not structurally safe. I don't know why this commission didn't take the advice last year when we were first put on notice and stopped the construction. AECOM said, oops, we made a mistake. There were design flaws. We are paying for this over and over and over again. And I understand that AECOM is supposed to pay us back. But why would we continue to move forward with a building that is not structurally safe? I would urge this commission to hold a workshop, have some discussion, make some decisions, get some educated information from completely neutral, independent sources to say whether or not this building will be safe to occupy, will be safe in five years. We don't need a surfside collapse. We don't need other problems. We know this building has design flaws, and it has construction flaws, not due to the fault of Moss Construction. They are working off bad plans that were given to them. But this building is flawed, and the construction on it needs to stop. And there should be a special workshop to discuss this.

Thank you. Mayor, I really have an issue when the public hears this over and over that this is not a safe structure, not a safe building. I want to ask Anthony to come up to the podium. That's not a good message that people need to hear over and over and over again because I disagree with it. And I think it's a disservice to try and keep saying that just for your own benefit. I would like you to address this because what I believe is there's probably not been a project that's had more eyes and ears on it than this one in the history of Fort Lauderdale, which probably will actually play to our benefit in a very interesting way. I am sure there are structures that go up all the time, not just in our city but elsewhere, that don't have the scrutiny of this one. So we just heard the need for other people to look at it, other engineers. But tell us, isn't that exactly what we are doing? How many sets of eyes and ears do we have on this outside vendors looking at this because of our concern when we were first made aware of the deflection issue? And I want to hear if you believe that this is an unsafe structure and I want to because I'm very serious about this. I just don't appreciate that message getting hammered out there constantly by a few people when they don't really know what they're talking about. So if you could just address this. Thank you.

Yes, Commissioner. So, again, Anthony Fajardo, Assistant City Manager. In terms of number of eyes that we have on it, so for the deflection alone, we had obviously the original engineer of record, which is Thornton Tomasetti, as a sub to AECOM. But we also brought in Lactis Engineering. They looked at it originally when we first were made aware of the deflection. And then at the direction of the commission, we brought in WJE after interviewing other firms to bring on a third-party peer review. They are the ones that are doing the Phase 2 as well. So for Phase 1, Lactis was involved, and WJE for Phase 2, it's WJE doing the peer review by themselves. In terms of the safety of the building, the Phase 2 report does break it down between life safety, serviceability, and documentation. Under life safety, they make recommendations that need to be vetted through AECOM and WJE, and we need to price those out to see what the impacts are going to be. They do list them as life safety, but they also list timelines in which they should be addressed. I would be more comfortable for WJE to respond to those after they've had a chance to talk to AECOM. We do plan on them coming here on May 20th for a presentation, which at that time they can really dig into why they made the comments the way they did and what they feel that there are implications to the project. I would say that any project that's under construction, right, so until a building is fully constructed, everything's tied together properly, and the building is complete, that it's probably from certain perspectives not meeting code until it gets to that point, right? So you have to put in structural members, structural support, structural connections. This building is a long way down. It's a little more than 80% complete, I think, in the last report. So I'm told by WJE these are things that can be repaired, that there's not a need to tear the building down. However, that decision still needs to be made by the city based on those conversations that have yet to happen. Whatever the desire is of the commission to move forward, that's what we'll do.

At the May 20th commission meeting, we're going to have that as a conference agenda item? That's the intent, yes. Okay. Will there be a chance for a response to be given? I know we just got a report yesterday afternoon. I only skimmed through it. It's lengthy. I haven't read the whole thing. I will. But I did notice that there are some things that questions are asked and then said, well, if you can answer this in a satisfactory manner, then we can put this one off the table. But there are others that need more of a look than those. But when we have that meeting on May 20th, will we know by then the responses to those concerns that were just brought up in the report we got yesterday?

It's our hope that we get some of them taken care of. I can't say whether we'll have all of them taken care of. These are very technical aspects. AECOM and TT need time to review the report. They just got it right after you all did. So if they can provide that additional information for those handful of items that might be clarified or may need clarification, they might go away per WJE's comments in the report. We won't know until that happens. My hope is that those might be low-hanging fruit type things, and we would have some additional information for you at the May 20th meeting.

And then I just need this assurance, because I certainly don't want to see us move one police officer into that building if there is any doubt at all about the structural integrity of this building. You agree with that?

I do agree with that, and we've had conversations with Manager Williams as well as the police chief, and that is our intent. We want it to be a fully functioning, safe structure that everyone can be confident in before we start utilizing it. Thank you.

Commissioner, we would never put any personnel, including our public safety personnel, into a structure that is deemed unsafe or that we feel is unsafe.

I wholeheartedly agree with you, and I would certainly hope that that is the message that goes out loud and clear from the city, that that would never happen under our watch. I just, again, find it troubling that people might think that we're moving forward with an unsafe structure. That's all. Thank you.

Anthony, could you explain what this change order is for?

There are several items there that were driven by owner change orders. There are some items that are there for clarification through the RFI process. I didn't get the list out, and I don't remember everything, but there are two items that are related to deflection. So there's repair work that's going on on that north portion of the building as a result of the deflection.

I saw there's plywood on the windows today.

Well, there's plywood still on the windows because we had to refabricate the glass because the opening is smaller now, right? So those are coming. But the work that's going on on the ground floor are putting in micropiles. Micropiles have gone in. The foundation had to be cut. We felt it was important to monitor it on a daily aspect for a certain period of time and then monitor on another aspect after that to make sure nothing shifts and moves. So those are the two items that are on this agenda related to deflection. So we will call those out under the errors and omissions and seek reimbursement for that.

Okay.

All right. Thank you. Anthony, before you go away, so just some questions about that because I have some concerns about this as well because I was just reading through the memo here, and it talks about the WJE Phase 2 peer review has identified critical findings that include life safety concerns, sheer wall, foundations, columns, roof beam capacities, slide bearing capacities. There's a lot of very serious problems in this building, and I understand that we're going to be taking a look at that, and I appreciate that. And I certainly know that nobody wants anybody to move into this building if we don't think it's safe. But I guess the question to me is why are we moving forward with construction items on a building until we know for sure that we have found a way to resolve these critical life safety concerns? I mean, when I read critical life safety concerns, I don't know any other way to interpret that other than critical life safety concerns, and I don't know why we're moving forward with ongoing construction with a building that has critical life safety concerns until we have resolved what those are and how we're going to address them and who's going to pay for them because this is all separate and distinct now from the deflection. I mean, we've been talking about the deflection for the better part of, what, a year now, give or take, and now we've got this – thank God we did this review of the rest of the structure. I'm, you know, to my colleagues up here in the dais, I'm glad we all agreed that we needed to take a harder and deeper look at the rest of the building because if the portion that's experiencing the deflection was poorly designed, you know, then certainly it gives rise to the question that, well, what about the rest of the building? And, you know, thankfully we looked at it and found all these problems. And it just – it gives me more and more pause every time I look at this and I wonder what else are we going to find. Every time we peel back a layer of this onion, we find more defects in the design. Again, this is not a reflection on moss and their construction. They built what they were told to build. This is not a moss issue. To me, this is all design issues. So help me – help me understand critical findings including life safety concerns on foundations, on columns, on shear walls, on roof beam capacities. I mean, you know, not an engineer, but sounds pretty serious to me.

Well, I think all those questions are extremely valid, but I think we should – I think Anthony told us we're going to get a full presentation at our next meeting. I don't know if he's prepared.

Could I ask that we hold off on that because, as I said, I'm not going to be here. And since it sounds like we may not even have all of our answers by then anyway, can we hold us until the June meeting? I just sent Raquel a request for that as well because I'd really like to participate in that one, Mayor, in person.

That's okay. Is that going to delay anything materially? We're so delayed on this point. I don't think it's going to matter.

As Anthony mentioned, we may be able to get some of the clarification that is being requested from WJE of AECOM and Thornton Tomasetti. But a delay to the following meeting, which is June 3rd, would probably give us a better opportunity to have all of our answers delivered to us. So a more robust response.

So I think what we're looking for are solutions, not answers. But, like, I think we all know that there are certain parts in the building that need, you know, reinforcement or whatever. But we need to know that it's remediable, you know, not just we have a problem, woe is me, what do we do. So, you know, we want to know that there is a remedy and that it is going to be, you know, it's going to be sustainable and that this is a Category 5, you know, hurricane proof. And that was what you insisted on. That's what I insisted on from day one. So I don't want the slightest wind to blow it over, you know. So, but I don't think it's, I mean, I drove by today. It's a gorgeous building. I mean, it's going to be a wonderful amenity. And in addition to our operations, the police department will have this for generations to come to be able to work in and to protect our city. And so I'm really looking forward to it. But I do know that there are parts within the building that are going to need addressing. And we just want to know that they're remediable and that there is a solution, a timely solution for that. So that's, I think, so we can wait until the June meeting in deference to the vice mayor. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Thanks. Okay. Any other questions with regard to M3? There being no one else who has signed up to speak, please call. Would someone like to move the item? Moved. Do I hear a second? Second. Moved and seconded. Please call the roll.

Commissioner Glassman?

Yes.

Commissioner Beasley-Pittman? Yes. Commissioner Sorensen? Yes. Vice Mayor Herbst?

No.

Mayor Trentals?

Yes. And M3 is now approved. R1 appointment of board and committee members. Would I like to please read the names into the record?

Yes. For the May 20th resolution, Homeless Advisory Committee, Robin Martin, nominated by Commissioner Sorensen. Raymond Detman, nominated by Commissioner Sorensen. General Employees, Retirement System, Board of Trustees. Robert McComsey, nominated by Mayor Trentalis. And for tonight's resolution, Affordable Housing Advisory Committee, Augustina Sklar, nominated by Vice Mayor Herbst. Amanda Wilson, nominated by Commissioner Sorensen. Beach Business Improvement District Advisory Committee. Cody Bertone, that's primary member representing the W-4 Lauderdale. Ryan Kopp, primary member. And Leslie, Neslie Lauren, alternate member representing Hotel Marin. And then Robert Lackle, primary member. And Veronica Villanova, alternate member for the Conrad. Board of Adjustment, Jay Sheckman. That's for an alternate position, nominated by Commissioner Sorensen. Budget Advisory Board, Desiree Giles-Smith, nominated by Commissioner Beasley-Pittman. Charter Revision Board, Mary Pelequin, nominated by Mayor Trentalis. Michael Albetta, nominated by Commissioner Glossman. Economic Development Advisory Board, Haley Dowling, nominated by Commissioner Sorensen. Education Advisory Board, John Gillen, nominated by Mayor Trentalis. Historic Preservation Board, Richard Rosa, nominated by Mayor Trentalis. Alan Jones, nominated by Commissioner Sorensen. Homeless Advisory Committee, Colby Williams, nominated by Vice Mayor Herbst. Paula Yukna, nominated by Commissioner Glossman. Amy Schimelfang, nominated by Commissioner Sorensen. Marine Advisory Board, Steve Witten, nominated by Commissioner Glossman. Bob Swindell, nominated by Commissioner Sorensen. Robert Franks, nominated by Commissioner Sorensen. Northwest Progressive Flagler Heights Redevelopment Board, Matthew Cohen, nominated by Mayor Trentalis. Parks, Recreation, Beaches Board. Edan Eckstein, nominated by Mayor Trentalis. Sustainability Advisory Board, Nicole Barnett, nominated by Mayor Trentalis. Robert Dowst, nominated by Commissioner Glossman. And Sarah Ramonka, nominated by Commissioner Sorensen. And we received two additional names, if we can read those into the record. Planning and Zoning Board, Kevin Buckley, nominated by Vice Mayor Herbst. And Northwest Progressive Flagler Heights Redevelopment Board, Jeff Burns, nominated by Vice Mayor Herbst. And that rounds it out.

Okay, thank you. We have two people who signed up to speak tonight. Judith Stern, followed by Barbara Stern. Can you press the, can you press, could, could you, could you press the button underneath? There you go. You're on.

Judith Stern, 905 Southeast 12th Court. When Commissioner Beasley Pittman went to reappoint me to the Charter Review Board based on my years of experience and knowledge, three of you opposed it based on testimony that came before you, or statements that came before you, by Elijah Manley and Donna Guthrie. And my concern is you're now appointing someone to the Charter Review Board that Elijah Manley has stated the man is a predator. If you want to use the same standard to oppose me, based on the comments by Elijah Manley, then you certainly should be more concerned that you're appointing someone that has been written about to be a sexual predator. That same person also lists himself on LinkedIn as a self-employed political consultant. Certain members of this board have complained about me being a political consultant, therefore I shouldn't serve on boards. If you're going to use a standard to attack Commissioner Beasley Pittman's choice, then you should be using it for yourselves. I'm happy to put this all on the record, and I'm happy to include, and David, I have a copy for you for the record, even the comments where Elijah Manley says this man is not fit to be serving. And the record is, to be frank, he shouldn't be working any position of authority or trust. I ask all political organizations, activists, organizers, candidates, and elected officials to avoid him at all costs. His conduct and behavior is a poor reflection on those he works for and works with. He also says he made inappropriate sexual advances and would talk to and touch me in ways that were unprofessional and non-consensual. You want to use a standard against me, use it, cross the board. Thank you.

Thank you. Barbara Stern? Microphones. The microphone. Oh, she has a...

Good evening, Barbara Stern. I'm here to oppose Michael Albetta, serving on the Charter Review Board. Commissioner Glassman has attacked appointees that have come out from Commissioner Herbst, Weizemir Herbst, because Johnny Rodstrom was a political consultant, because of statements that were made publicly, because of the attacks on public figures. The night that this commission voted for Ms. Williams to be the city manager, we had grumblings from Mr. Albetta, accusing Vice Mayor Herbst of snubbing her because he didn't want to hug her and went in for a handshake instead. This is someone who was disrespecting a sitting commissioner after having signed a code of conduct. Previously, after Vice Mayor Herbst was terminated or gave notice of his termination, an email went out on February 19, 2022, from Christina Curry, Melinda Belker, Michael Albetta, all challenging the fact that he was wearing a grunt-style shirt and tried to compare him to an insurrectionist. This was someone making unfounded statements. So when we talk about people who are fit to serve on boards and whether or not these people fit a certain image, look at some of your own appointees, because these are words that came from Michael Albetta. So when you now want to put up. So I think this commission, if you're going to attack the credibility of other commissioners' appointees, look in the mirror, look at your own, and you decide who is fit, because this is someone who has attacked Vice Mayor Herbst on multiple occasions. He has supported Norby. He was running around doing Norby's campaign, taking Norby belts everywhere, who ran against Vice Mayor Herbst. And if that person was fit to serve on this commission, on this board, excuse me, then certainly those who are nominated by Commissioner Beasley-Pittman and Vice Mayor Herbst should have been appointed as well. Thank you.

Okay, thank you. Does anyone else wish to speak on this item? There being none, would someone like to introduce the resolution? Introduced. Please call the roll.

So before we discuss this, Mayor, I do think this is important, because when former Commissioner Sturman wanted to block Jackie Scott from being appointed to a board back in November of last year, we had some very lengthy discussion about this. And Commissioner Glassman basically pointed out that all of our appointees are essentially political in nature, that these are folks that have worked on our campaigns, and that's usually why we wind up appointing them, because we have a relationship with them, and we know them, and we feel that they'll represent our interests and those of our community. And he said, we can't go down this path of blocking people. And Mayor, your quote was, it would be a cardinal sin to block somebody that a commissioner wanted to appoint. And yet we've done that several times. It was done to Commissioner Beasley-Pittman. It was done to me twice. So I want to know how it used to be a cardinal sin back in November to block somebody. But now it's become a matter of practice. It's become normal, normative. And I just think that's a shame. You know, I wasn't going to bring it up, but it's been brought up now. So yes, Michael Albetta attacked me, accused me of being a January 6th insurrectionist, published that. It was, went to Commissioner Glassman, who then disseminated it on his official letterhead through the city email. And yet I've said nothing. You know, when Melinda Bowker got appointed to a board, I said nothing. When my political opponent got appointed to a board, I said nothing, because I respect the process. My exact words when Commissioner Sturman was blocking Jackie Scott was, we need to respect the commissioner's choices. We should not go down this path of deciding we like somebody, we don't like somebody. We respect the commissioner's choices. This has been our practice for decades, and I have adhered to that. Whether I like people, whether I don't like them, whether they oppose me, whether they have slandered and defamed me, I've still stepped aside and I've let it go on. So I want to just point out that there's a degree of hypocrisy that's been working on this commission now. And I just, I find it, I find it very unprofessional. It's just not the way we should be doing business. And again, I've tried to refrain from this. I've tried to uphold a higher standard up here, but I'm just, I'm very disappointed. I'm very disappointed that the words that you articulated back in November about how important it was, it's a cardinal sin to block a commissioner from pointing somebody that they believe represents them. And I supported you on that. And I know Commissioner Sturman was very angry with me because he thought that I should be supporting him. And I didn't, because I believe in the sanctity of the process. I think process matters. I think protocol matters. And yet we've abandoned it. And I think, I think it's unfortunate. Okay.

Does anyone else have any comments? All right. Please call the roll.

Commissioner, you introduced it. Is it as amended to include the additional names?

The ones that were written? I'm sorry, the ones that were read out loud? Yes. Yes. By the way, do we have any policies about, I noticed that there's a pattern here that sometimes we don't ever get to see these names in advance in the agenda. Lately, the three planning and zoning board nominations have been read orally, but we don't read them in advance. So we can't check anything out. We can't vet anybody that we're appointing. Is there a reason why, or do we have any ordinance that says that names should be submitted to the clerk so we can read them in the agendas and the public can read them in the agendas instead of just hearing them read out loud?

No, I think we've always reserved the right to be able to make appointments, nominations, or retennis, as they would say, you know, in open commission meetings. We've always reserved that. Okay.

Sometimes someone is nominated and they just don't have either the application or vice versa, just getting back, getting in contact with everyone. So we just try to get them on when we can.

Okay. I think it's a good practice to let the public read the names in the agenda when they receive the agendas. I just think that it is. That's all. I'm fine with the amendment of the names that you read, so I'm fine with moving it forward still. Thanks.

Thank you. This is as amended. As a resolution of the city commission of the city of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, appointing or nominating, if applicable, board and committee members, that's forth in the exhibit attached here to and made a part hereof. Commissioner Glossman? Yes. Commissioner Beasley-Pittman?

Before I make my vote here, I'm thinking I should have made some type of a motion to extract one name from the votes. Am I too late? Because I don't want to vote for the names that are being presented in the manner that we have read them. Am I too late?

Well, it is too late. You could vote against the resolution.

You can offer an amendment.

You can offer a friendly amendment to the maker of the resolution if you like. But we're voting now on the resolution that's been introduced. And you could vote against it if you want to.

Well, I have someone on the list who I don't want to vote against, the person that I recommended. So, the friendly, I can suggest a friendly.

At this time, I think you started the roll call vote already. Yes. Yeah. It's too late to. We're past that point. So, it would either be vote against it and then, if it fails, to introduce another resolution.

Right. You can introduce another resolution. If you're on the winning side, you can ask for a reconsideration. So, you'd have to vote for it and then you'd have to ask for a reconsideration, Commissioner. Does that create a paradox for you?

Yes.

I'm not a good double-dutch. You have 30 seconds. I'm not a good double-dutch jumper. I would have jumped in sooner. Okay.

Double-dutch.

Let me, I'm going to have to say no. No. Okay.

So, Mayor, I'm sorry to interrupt, but I did receive a text that I think is interesting because two speakers used a person's name tonight and that person's not happy that his name was used. So, I'm going to read this statement that I received from Elijah Manley. Hang on. We're voting right now. We're voting. Let's finish our voting. Go ahead. Let's finish the vote. Let's finish our voting. And then I'll read the statement. All right.

Please continue the voting.

Because he's not happy that his name was used.

Please consider, please, Commissioner Sorensen.

Yes.

Vice Mayor Herbst.

So, again, because I believe in practice, protocol, and tradition, despite the fact, again, that I was defamed, I will vote yes for all of the individuals involved because I believe in taking the high route.

Mayor Trent House. Yes. All right. Do you have any questions? That resolution is now approved as amended. Okay. Commissioner Glassman, did you want to say something? Yes.

So, this is a message from Elijah Manley, whose name was used by the two people who spoke just recently at the podium. And, quote, I support Michael Albetta's nomination because he works hard, is a well-respected voice in the city who brings value. The use of my name for political purposes is uncalled for and unnecessary. I urge the city to support Michael Albetta. Unquote. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. Moving on to R2, resolution declaring notice of intent to lease a portion of city-owned property located at Holiday Park to the Young Men's Christian Association of South Florida, YMCA, providing notice of intent to terminate a lease dated November 14, 2016, and setting a public hearing for June 17, 2025. We have one person signed up to speak just for questions. Right, Mr. Russell, wherever you are? Where's Mr. Russell? There you are. Would someone like to introduce the resolution? Introduced. Okay. Please call the roll.

A resolution to the city commissioner of the city of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, providing notice of intent to lease a portion of city-owned property located at Holiday Park to Young Men's Christian Association of South Florida, Inc., a Florida not-for-profit corporation for a period not to exceed 50 years pursuant to Section 8.13 of the city charter, providing notice of intent to terminate a lease dated November 14, 2016, providing notice of a public hearing before the city commissioner at 6 p.m. on June 17, 2025, and providing for an effective date. Commissioner Glossman?

Yes.

Commissioner Beasley-Pittman?

Yes.

Commissioner Sorensen? Yes. Vice Mayor Herbst? Mayor Trent Hollis?

Yes. So, see, Vice Mayor, we do enter into leases, not just license agreements.

You know, Mayor, the funny thing is, in the support before, staff actually called it a lease. So, apparently, they don't know the difference either. It's okay.

We're all learning. We're all learning. We're all learning. Moving on to R3, resolution approving a grant agreement with the Florida Department of Transportation for the construction of the Breakers Avenue Resiliency and Pedestrian Traffic Improvements Project in the amount of three big ones, $3 million. Introduced. Introduced. Any questions? There being none, please call the roll.

A resolution of the city commissioner of the city of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, approving a state-funded grant agreement authorizing the acceptance of the grant funds from the Florida Department of Transportation in the amount of $3 million for the Breakers Avenue Resiliency and Pedestrian Traffic Improvements Project in authorizing the city manager to execute the grant agreement in any and all documents necessary or incidental to accept such grant funding on behalf of the city of Fort Lauderdale, Florida in providing for an effective date. Commissioner Glassman? Yes. Commissioner Beasley-Pittman? Yes. Commissioner Sorensen? Yes. Vice Mayor Herbst? Yes. Mayor Trent Hollis?

Yes. And that resolution is now approved. So, Commissioner Glassman, you probably have had this conversation with staff, as I have. Like, can we get this thing started? We have some money. What do you want to do here? What's happening here?

Well, I can't decide whether this is...

You're not going to be Commissioner District 2 forever. You know what I'm saying?

You know, between this and One Stop, I don't know which one is, like, crazier, but this has been going on a long time. I remember, Mayor, when you were the District 2 Commissioner and you had charrettes about Breakers Avenue, like, in 2003, 2004. So this has been going on a long, long time. You're right. With this $3 million we've secured, maybe we're short a little bit under $3 million now out of the $11, $12 million project. The city put in $5 million. The state's putting in $3 million. The federal government put in $1 million. We're trying desperately now with the Third Amendment to the surtax agreement with the county. I'll let Ben talk about that. If we can get started, when we can get started. Can we phase this in? What's the realistic date of getting that money from the surtax in a local agreement, Third Amendment?

Well, since we have most of the money, can't we get started?

I leave that up to step. Why don't we hear what Milos has to say? All right, let's hear what Milos has to say.

Good evening, Milos, Mr. Orović, Acting Director for City's Transportation and Mobility Department. So, Commissioner, you're absolutely right. We have about $8.4 million for the project. The gap is about $2.8 million, not including any construction cost escalations over the last year. We are currently advancing design from 90% to 100%. So within the next two months or so, we will know exactly what that final cost is. We're exploring different funding opportunities to close the gap. One of them is also pursuing this remaining funding through our budget process and also looking into surtax as well. So when it comes to surtax, really, it can fund the Breakers Avenue project. We hope to see some feedback from the county within the next couple of months. So recently, on April 17, there was a most recent meeting. There were a couple of decisions that were made. The term sheet was shared with Broward County, and there was some communication between BCCMA and the county. The county is reviewing final feedback from the BCCMA. Hopefully, within the next couple of weeks, we get final draft agreements, and we can review them. And obviously, in order for this to be effective, most of the municipalities who are participants in the surtax program will have to approve it. But really, the county's goal, which Commissioner Fisher has also provided an update on surtax funding and status of a Third Amendment to surtax agreement a few last week, actually, on Thursday, his goal is to really get a feedback from the cities and get it approved through summertime so that it can become effective by the end of the year and the funding can be distributed ultimately to municipalities.

And that formula would bring us approximately, what, at least $3 million?

About $3.5 to $4 million, which might vary over the years, but that's how much is expected this very first time.

Okay. And do we have any other outstanding projects, or would we be able to grab a chunk of that to finish this project?

That would be up to members of the City Commission to determine and decide how we use that funding.

Milos, to add on to that, the question that was asked, there are projects in District 3 that are expecting some of that money as well. So I'm trying to make sure that with what's being allocated, those projects within District 3 would not be eliminated from receiving funds as well.

Do you know the totals?

I don't have the totals before me, but I'm sure that we can get them from staff. One of the projects that's been on hold is the Northwest 15th Avenue project that's from Sunrise to 19th Street in the Lauderdale Manor's community. And then there's some others, but that is the main one that we've been talking about, at least before I got here. Okay, so we can get that information through that. So it's new.

Do we know what that dollar amount is for that project?

I do not have that dollar amount, but we will be prioritizing projects through the budget development process and identifying resources to fill funding gaps. And we'll be depending on the commission to assist with the policy direction. But our intent is to try to close the gaps on those projects where, you know, those projects that have been languishing for some time.

Okay. They have. Yes, they have. Very good. Thank you. Thank you so much, Milos. Thank you, Milos. Moving on to R4, quasi-judicial resolution approving the vacation of a 10-foot wide by approximately 371-foot-long sanitary sewer easement located at 1055 North Federal Highway. Anyone wishing to speak must be sworn in, and the commission will announce any site visits, communications, or expert opinions received and make them a part of the record. Vice Mayor, do you have any disclosures?

I spoke with Mr. Lockery.

Commissioner Beasley-Pittman?

No disclosures.

Four. If I have any communications, it would have been with Mr. Lockery. I just don't recall.

I like that version. I'm going to say if I had conversation, it would have been with Mr. Lockery.

Okay.

Commissioner Glassman. Yes, thank you. I spoke with Mr. Lockery and also Jeff Burns on November 6, 2024. Okay.

And Commissioner Sorensen. Yes, Robert Lockery. Okay. Mr. Lockery, is there anyone who signed in to speak, but for questions only? Anyone have any questions? There being none, would someone like to move to close public hearing? So moved. Been moved. Do I hear a second? Second. Moved and seconded. Please call the roll on closing public hearing.

Commissioner Glassman? Yes. Commissioner Beasley-Pittman? Yes. Commissioner Sorensen? Yes. Vice Mayor Herbst? Yes. Mayor Trent Ellis?

Yes. And public hearing on R4 is now closed. Would someone like to introduce the resolution? Introduced. First, please call the roll.

A resolution of the City Commission of the City of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, vacating all of that certain sanitary sewer easement recorded in official records book, 3493, page 212, and being a portion of Track 1, Lake Park Unit 1, according to Platt thereof, as recorded in Platt Book 23, page 36. All the public records of Broward County, Florida, located east of northeast 18th Avenue, north of East Sunrise Boulevard, west of North Federal Highway, and south of northeast 13th Street, all said lands being the City of Fort Lauderdale, Broward County, Florida. Commissioner Glassman? Yes. Commissioner Beasley-Pittman? Yes. Commissioner Sorensen? Yes. Vice Mayor Herbst? Yes. Mayor Trent Ellis?

Yes. And R4 is now approved. Moving on to R5. This is a quasi-judicial resolution amending the Site Plan Level 2 Development Permit for an Alternative Design Deviation Request. It's regarding the Fort Lauderdale 8th Avenue Hotel, LLC, a canopy hotel. Yes. Very luxurious. Five-star, right? Anyone wishing to speak must be sworn in, and the Commission will announce any site visits, communications, or expert opinions received, and make them a part of the record. Vice Mayor, do you have any disclosures? I believe on this one I met with Mr. Schein. Commissioner Beasley-Pittman? I would have met with DeLocquee-Fern. I did meet with Mr. DeLocquee.

Commissioner Glassman? I met with Andrew Schein on June 20th, 2024.

And Commissioner Sorensen?

Robert Lockery.

Mr. Lockery, was the only one who signed up to speak for questions only? Does anyone have any questions?

Yeah, I do. Please. Robert, yeah. Just a question for you. Robert. Absolutely. The mayor, vice mayor, commissioners. Robert Lockery on behalf of the applicant. Thanks, Robert, for your work with the neighborhood and, you know, helping kind of be available for discussions. I got an email about a half hour ago from Al Hubring, who's the president of Venezia. And he's saying, the Canopy Hotel did not meet with us as requested by the city and I have concerns about the podium height being modified as it will shade our pool. It was not discussed at the Beverly Heights meeting. We were told only they were reducing height. And let's see, he said, if you could please note our concerns as we won't be able to be at the commission meeting. Yeah. Certainly.

Yeah, absolutely. So we met with the neighborhood. There's a little echo there. Yeah, yeah. Is that me? We met with the city-recognized neighborhood association on February 6th. I know members of Venezia were there. We had subsequent discussions with them as well. The nomenclature, and we can certainly present the differences, you know, to the commission if you'd like. But essentially the difference is what was currently approved is a dual-branded hotel with two different hotel brands, Homewood Suites and Tempo. And it was an 11-story hotel. The proposed hotel is now a nine-story hotel. We've taken two floors out of the building. It is now a canopy. As it relates to that, as we explained to the association, with the old previous approval, at the 8th floor, there's a portion of the building that steps back for the tower. Now that we've gotten rid of the tower, the building comes down flush on the west and on the south side of the building. On the north side of the building, there's still a 30-foot setback. Their pool is on their south side of their building. We're to their east. So I don't think, if anything, there should actually be more light and air around their building.

Okay, great. That seems like that was his main concern. And we certainly can follow up with him. Okay, and I copied you on an email back to him, so if you can check in with him and help explain that. We will. Thank you, Commissioner. Great, thanks. Mayor, thank you. That's all I have. You're welcome.

So this is across the street from the Venetia. I see. Is this right next door to the Cumberland Building?

Yeah, it's south. Yes, Mayor, there's one building in between, essentially, but it's basically south of the Cumberland Building. That's correct. Okay.

Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else wish to speak on this item? There being none, someone please move to close public hearing.

Moved.

Do I hear a second? Second. Been moved and seconded. Please call the roll.

Commissioner Glassman? Yes. Commissioner Beasley-Pittman? Yes. Commissioner Sorensen? Yes. Vice Mayor Herbst? Yes. Mayor Trentonis?

Yes. And public hearing on R5 has now been closed. Would someone like to introduce the resolution?

Introduced. And that's for approval? For approval. Thank you. Thank you. A resolution of the City Commission of the City of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, approving an amendment to a site plan level two development permit and an alternative design that meets the overall intent of the downtown master plan for a project formerly known as 100 Southeast 8th Avenue Hotel, now known as Canopy Hotel, located at 100 Southeast 8th Avenue, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in the downtown regional activity center, East Mixed Use Zoning District. Commissioner Glassman? Yes. Commissioner Beasley-Pittman? Yes. Commissioner Sorensen? Yes. Vice Mayor Herbst? Yes. Mayor Trentonis?

Yes. And R5 is now approved. Moving on to public hearings. This is PH1, a quasi-judicial ordinance approving a public purpose use and structure at 845 Northwest 3rd Avenue in the City of Fort Lauderdale, Progresso Village Stormwater Pump Station. Anyone wishing to speak must be sworn in, and the Commission will announce any site visits, communications, or extrapringings. Expert opinions received, and make them a part of the record. Who would we have met with? This is a staff issue? PH1?

I have none.

I have none. Commissioner Beasley, none.

Nobody about the pump station came and talked to me.

Shockingly. Commissioner Glassman?

None.

And Commissioner Sorensen? None. Okay. No one signed up to speak. Someone would like to move to close public hearings? Moved. Second. Moved and seconded. Please call the roll.

Commissioner Glassman? Yes. Commissioner Beasley-Pittman? Yes. Commissioner Sorensen? Yes. Vice Mayor Herbst? Yes. Mayor Trent Ellis?

Yes. A public hearing on PH1 is now closed. Would someone like to introduce the ordinance? Introduced. The ordinance has been introduced. Please call the roll.

An ordinance of the City of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, approving, pursuant to Section 47-18.26 of the City of Fort Lauderdale, Unified Land Development Regulations, the location of a stormwater pump station and associated facilities of public purpose uses and structures within a residential multifamily mid-rise medium high-density zoning district on a property legally described as all of lots 1, 2, and 3, Block 262, Progresso. So, according to the plot thereof, it was recorded in Plot Boat 2, page 18 of the public records of Dade County, Florida, said land situate lying and being in the City of Fort Lauderdale, Broward County, Florida, containing 10,135 square feet, more or less, and identified by the United States Postal Service, address 845 Northwest 3rd Avenue, Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Granting relief from Section 47-5.19, Section 47-5.36, Section 47-19.5.C.1, Section 47-21.10, and Section 47-25.3.A.3.D.I. of the ULDR, providing for conflicts, providing for an effective date, and providing for conditions for the termination of public purpose status. Commissioner Glossman? Yes. Commissioner Beasley-Pittman? Yes. Commissioner Sorensen? Yes. Vice Mayor Herbst? Yes. Mayor Trentals?

Yes. And that item has been approved. We're going to take a stop right now. I forgot to do the CRA meeting, and I know people have been waiting here. It's a very quick thing, so I'm just going to put the evening meeting on pause for a second, and I'd like to convene the CRA meeting. So, Mr. Clerk, if you could please call the roll.

Vice Chair Herbst? Present. Commissioner Glossman? Here. Commissioner Beasley-Pittman?

Here.

Commissioner Sorensen? Here. Chair Trentals?

Here. Moving into M1, motion approving minutes for the April 15th meeting. Do I hear a motion to approve? So moved. Second. Moved and seconded. Please call the roll.

Commissioner Glossman?

Yes.

Commissioner Beasley-Pittman? Yes. Commissioner Sorensen? Yes. Vice Chair Herbst? Yes. Chair Trentals?

Yes. That M1 is now approved. I'm just looking to see if anyone's signed up. No one's signed up to speak. Okay. R2 has been removed from the agenda, so we'll just be dealing with R1. This is a resolution approving the budget amendment, return to Central City Community Redevelopment Agency fund balance for reallocation. Would someone like to introduce the resolution? Introduced. It's been introduced. Any questions? No one's signed up to speak. Please call the roll.

A resolution of the Board of Commissioners of the Fort Lauderdale Community Redevelopment Agency approving a budget amendment and providing for an effective date. Commissioner Glossman?

Yes.

Commissioner Beasley-Pittman? Yes. Commissioner Sorensen? Yes. Vice Chair Herbst? Yes. Chair Trentals?

Yes. And that resolution is now approved. Is there any further business of the CRA? There being none, that meeting's concluded. Sorry for the, we've just overlooked it earlier. Back to the regular meeting. Yeah. She likes to hear me banging. Okay. PH2. This is a public hearing on a quasi-judicial resolution approving a waiver of limitations at 501 Hendricks Isle for installation and use of 100 foot plus or minus long times a 5 foot plus or minus wide wood marginal dock where Hendricks West lacks a principal building. Anyone wishing to speak must be sworn in. A commissioner will announce any site visits, communications, or expert opinions received and make them a part of the record. I have a couple people signed up to speak. Steve? Steve Whitten? You want to go? Only for questions. Okay. Andrew Schein, I assume, is Andrew here? Or are you? Oh, there you are. There you go. Oh, like a ghost.

Wow.

That's a puff of smoke.

Should have waited until I was called, but I got a little ahead of myself.

What an attorney. Mr. Lockery, he's pretty quick.

Okay. I assume only for questions? Yeah, I can do questions. I do have two things to note on the conditions, though.

Does anyone have any questions to ask Mr. Schein regarding this matter? Do we have to do disclosures on this? That's my question. I beg your pardon. Thank you for reminding me. Do you have any disclosures on this? So I have a question about disclosure to the city attorney.

D. Wayne, I've spoken to the chair of the Marine Advisory Board. Is that getting an expert opinion?

The disclosure doesn't have to be from, the conversation doesn't have to be from an expert. So, yes, you should disclose that. So, yes.

So I've had input from Mr. Whitten.

Thank you. Commissioner Beasley-Pittman? None. And I had none. Commissioner Glassman?

Yes, our office had communications with Debbie Eisinger, president of the Hendricks Venice Civic Association.

And Commissioner Sorensen?

Steve Whitten.

Okay. Okay. Now proceed. Good evening, Mayor. Andrew Schein with Lockery and Chakas representing the property owner here. This is, I won't go through the presentation unless you'd like me to, but this is 500 Hendricks. I'm sure we're familiar with the property. This is on the west side. The planning and zoning board, the plans that were approved by planning and zoning board always contemplated a dock on the west side. I don't want to speak for the neighborhood here, so don't take this as me speaking for them. But what I do recall is that the improvements on the west side, particularly the landscaping dock and the parallel parking spaces for guests, were one of the only positives that they liked about this project. But I don't want to speak for them on that. That said, this was approved unanimously by the Marine Advisory Board, and it was approved with no conditions. The city attorney's office put 14 conditions in here, which we do accept. And I just want to bring two specific up. I do, I'm going to request a change on one, but I'm going to bring two specific up that really benefits the neighborhood and the city.

Just a quick question. Are we supposed to be able to see something on this side?

You don't need to. You don't need to.

Okay.

He made it up and he wants to use it. It's just an aerial. It's just an aerial. Okay. The first condition that is going to be a benefit here is that the condition, I don't know if it's truly related, but it bans liveaboards on the west side here. So this area, in previous years, previous owners had liveaboards here. If this is approved, liveaboards would be banned on there. It also, interestingly, bans short-term rentals on the east side, so in the condos. It completely bans short-term rentals. Again, I'm not sure how this really relates to a dock waiver, but we do accept the condition. I would request it's condition number seven. It bans short-term and vacation rentals, but the city attorney's office created their own definition for vacation rentals. I did run this by the city attorney's office, and they're okay with it. I would request if it could ban short-term rentals as defined in the ULDR. So who's going to use this?

Who what? No structure can be built here, so who's going to use this?

It's going to be for the condo owners on the other side. Across the street? Yes.

They own it?

Yes.

I see. Okay.

Yeah, so two of the docks will be – it's only two docks there. They're parallel, which is another benefit. Right now, the boats usually are perpendicular to prevent navigability. These docks are going to be parallel. They're going to be flush. They're only going to be two, and they're going to be deeded to the condo owners. Got it.

Andrew, I have a question.

Yes.

Regarding the vacation rental, so is that in the condo docks as well?

We will likely put it in the condo docks. TBD, if it's banned here, we don't need to put it in the condo docks. We're fine with short-term rentals being banned. I'm just requesting the change in seven to be – you can't do short-term rentals as defined in the ULDR.

As defined in the code of ordinance.

Or the code of – right, code of ordinance.

Okay, I'm just concerned. I just – do me a favor, though. Just please make sure there's some consistency with those documents because, you know, the developers put out documents all the time, and they might not even be aware of this banning of that. And they might actually have – you can rent after 30 days. You can rent for 30 days. You can rent – trust me, I've seen a lot of that.

This is just for owners, though, correct?

Correct. And I spoke to ownership this morning. If this is approved with this condition, we will be putting it in our condo docks.

Okay, thank you. Because I own a building where we have a few docks, and it can be rented month to month by an owner. So if an – how many – I don't know how many units are planned here, but let's say 12 units are planned there, and there's enough space for two boats. So how is that going to be allocated?

It's going to be first-come, first-served. First-come, first-served, right? Yeah, first-come, first-served basis. Yeah. And I don't recall if rentals – if dock rentals are permitted in RMM 25, but if you want to add that as a condition, we'll ban rentals.

But they're an appurtenance to ownership, correct? Correct.

Correct.

They can't do it – they can't just rent it out to a non-owner or a non-renter.

In certain zoning districts, you can rent out a dock to non-owners. If this is approved tonight, no, we cannot do that.

That's what I want to –

Correct, no. Okay.

Okay. Any other questions? Okay. Thank you. Okay. Do I hear a motion to close public hearing? So moved. Second. Moved and seconded. Please call the roll of closing public hearing on PH2.

Commissioner Glossman?

Yes.

Commissioner Beasley-Pittman? Yes. Commissioner Sorensen? Yes. Vice Mayor Herbst? Yes. Mayor Trentals?

Yes. And public hearing is now closed on PH2. Would someone like to introduce the resolution? Introduced.

And that's for approval?

Yes. Thank you.

A resolution of the City Commission of the City of Fort Lauderdale.

Sorry to interrupt. I just want to make sure that the condition change is noted in the record just to be short-term rental as defined in the Code of Ordinances. If that's okay. Yep.

So that would be as amended?

Yep. That would be. Okay.

So Commissioner Glossman adopted as amended, approving? Yes. Thank you. All right. A resolution of the City Commission of the City of Fort Lauderdale, Florida pursuant to Section 47-19.3E of the City of Fort Lauderdale, Florida Unified Land Development Regulations and a waiver of limitations to allow a mooring structure to be installed and used without a principal building pursuant to Section 47-19.3C to permit 500 Hendricks LLC, a Florida limited liability company installation use of a 100-foot plus or minus long by 5-foot plus or minus wide wood marginal and associated mooring piles at 501 Hendricks Isle with the marginal dock extending a maximum of 5 feet plus or minus into the adjacent Cairn Canal Waterway and the associated mooring piles extending a maximum of 25 feet into the adjacent Cairn Canal Waterway Hendricks West being associated with a principal building under construction which is located at 500 Hendricks Isle, Fort Lauderdale, Florida and more particularly described below subject to certain terms and conditions repealing any and all parts of resolutions and conflict herewith and providing for an effective date. Commissioner Glossman? Yes. Commissioner Beasley-Pittman? Commissioner Sorenson? Yes. Vice Mayor Herbst? Yes. Mayor Trent-Hals?

Yes. And PH-2 is now approved. PH-3 public hearing a quasi-judicial resolution approving another waiver of limitations at 155 Isle of Venice apartment or unit 501 for an existing 16-foot long by 16-foot wide for post-boat lift extending a maximum of 33.57 feet into the adjacent Rio Grande Canal. Anyone wishing to speak must be sworn in and the commission will announce any side visits, communications or excerpt opinions received and make them a part of the record. Vice Mayor, do you have any disclosures? Same disclosure, input from Mr. Whitton? Okay. Commissioner Beasley-Pittman? No disclosures. I don't recall any either. Commissioner Glassman?

Same disclosure, conversation with Debbie Isinger, president of the Neighborhood Association. And Commissioner Sorenson?

Steve Whitton.

Okay. Steve, you signed up to speak, but just to respond to questions. Okay. Do I hear a motion to close public hearing? Second. I've been moved and seconded. Please call the roll on closing public hearing on PH-3.

Commissioner Glassman? Yes. Commissioner Beasley-Pittman? Yes. Commissioner Sorenson? Yes. Vice Mayor Herbst? Yes. Mayor Trent-Hals?

Yes. Public hearing on PH-3 is now closed. Would someone like to introduce the resolution? Introduced. The resolution has been introduced. Any questions? There being none, please call the roll.

And that's for approval, correct? Commissioner?

Yes. I'm sorry. Yes. Thank you.

A resolution in the City Commission of the City of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, pursuance to Section 47-19.3E of the City of Fort Lauderdale, Florida Unified Land Development Regulations, granting an after-the-fact waiver of the limitations of ULDR Section 47-19.3C to permit Victor Joel Aguilar and Yajira Zadet Rosario, husband and wife, use of a 16-foot long by 16-foot wide four-post boat lift, extending a maximum of 33.57 feet plus or minus into the adjacent Rio Grande Canal for such property line situate and being within 155 Isle of Venice Drive, Unit 501 Fort Lauderdale, Florida, 3-3-3-0-1 and more particularly described below subject to certain terms and conditions, repealing any and all parts of resolutions in conflict herewith and providing for an effective date. Commissioner Glassman? Yes. Commissioner Beasley-Pittman? Yes. Commissioner Sorensen? Yes. Vice Mayor Herbst? Yes. Mayor Trentiles?

Yes. And PH-3 is now approved. PH-4, public hearing quasi-judicial resolution approving a waiver of limitations at 629 Idlewild Drive for five dock piles and two triple mooring pile clusters. Anyone wishing to speak must be sworn in. And the commission will announce any site visits, communications, or expert opinions received and make them a part of the record. Vice Mayor, do you have any disclosures? Same disclosure. Input from Mr. Whitten. Commissioner Beasley-Pittman? No disclosures. I have none. Commissioner Glassman?

Office communication with Mary Furtig, the president of Idlewild Civic Association.

Commissioner Sorensen?

Steve Whitten.

Steve, you talk to everybody but me. What's that? And he's in my district. Busted.

I don't remember. He's one of my constituents, man.

I'm one of your constituents. I don't remember having this conversation. But anyway, I fully confess. Okay, so no one signed up to speak except yourself, Mr. Whitten, and it says questions only. Please, do I hear a motion to close public hearing on PH4?

Moved.

It's been moved. Do I hear a second? Moved and seconded. Please call the roll.

Commissioner Glassman? Commissioner Beasley-Pittman? Yes. Commissioner Sorensen? Yes. Vice Mayor Herbst? Yes. Mary Trent-Hellis?

Yes. And public hearing on PH4 is now closed. Would someone like to introduce the resolution? Introduced. For approval? The resolution's been introduced for approval. Yes. Thank you. Okay. Any questions? There be none. Please call the roll.

A resolution of the City Commission of the City of Fort Lauderdale, Florida pursuant to Section 47-19.3 of the City of Fort Lauderdale, Florida Unified Land Development Regulations granting an after-the-fact waiver of the limitations of ULDR Section 47-19.3 seat to permit Douglas J. Summers, a single man, and John M. Summers, a single man, as joint tenants with rights of survivorship, installation of five 10-inch wood pilings and two triple-pile mooring clusters into the adjacent waters of the Intracoastal Waterway, a.k.a. New River Sound, for such property lying, situate, and being at 629 Auto Wild Drive, Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33301, and more particularly described below, subject to certain terms and conditions repealing any and all parts of resolutions in conflict herewith and providing for an effective date. Commissioner Glassman?

Yes.

Commissioner Beasley-Pittman? Yes. Commissioner Sorenson? Yes. Vice Mayor Herbst? Yes. Mayor Trent-Hellis?

Yes. And that item is now approved. Moving on to PH5. That one was removed. We've removed. I'm sorry? Removed.

That one's removed from the agenda. Yes.

I was just about to say that. You took the words out of my mouth. Okay. OFR 1, this is the first reading of an ordinance amending maximum daily penalties for code violations to align with Chapter 162 of the Florida State Statutes. No one has signed up to speak. Would someone like to introduce the ordinance on first reading? The ordinance has been introduced. Please call the roll.

Mayor, may I just ask you a few questions before we vote or do you want me to? You go right ahead. I appreciate it. Thank you. Actually, a couple of comments, and I'm hoping that staff can work on this. So I'm not opposed to this ordinance. However, I don't necessarily think it's about what kind of penalties for code that we establish, but it's how we enforce them, how we collect on them, the percentages that we see sometimes in terms of collections are really just pennies on the dollar. I know that we're facing an interesting budget year coming up, and I know that the numbers that I always see in terms of what we collect on these cases is just so low. I have several properties in my district in Progressive Village on the beach that have been struggling, neighborhoods that have been struggling with properties in their neighborhood where we just can't seem to make any progress. The violations just pile up, and these properties are just horrendous. So I'm just wondering what the plan is for us to actually collect. And if we're going to raise these fees, that's great, but, you know, how strict are we going to be? How tough are we going to be when it actually comes time to collecting these penalties?

That's an existential conversation. We've been talking about this for years. Portia, do you have any ideas on this?

I do. Good evening, Mayor, Commissioners. So right now we have the Lean Amnesty Program where we're collecting at 10% in addition to the administrative cost. Before you, on July 1st, we're going to bring a presentation where we're going to provide the results of our current Lean Amnesty Program. We're also going to bring before you a city comparison with other cities in terms of the amounts owed for our city and theirs and the different methods that we use to collect those fines and liens. In the past, we've done things such as collections. We've done Lean Reduction Programs, Lean Amnesty Program. The Lean Amnesty Program last year was one of the more successful programs that we've had. With the special magistrate, we really did not collect very much at all, which is what led us to recommending that we do an amnesty program.

And I think that's great, and I look forward to hearing all of that information. I'm just thinking that we just have to get a little bit more aggressive. You know, we just leave a lot of money on the table when it comes to this issue, and whatever we can do, I would just really appreciate it. And especially when we can talk more about those two properties in the neighborhoods, and I think you're well aware of who they are and what they are. So thank you. Thank you, Mayor.

Okay. It's been introduced. Please call the roll.

In ordinance of the City of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, amending Chapter 11, Code Enforcement, Section 11-12C of the Code of Ordinances of the City of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, by amending maximum daily penalties for code violations to align with Chapter 162, Florida Statutes, repeal of conflicting ordinance provisions, and providing for an effective date. Commissioner Glassman? Yes. Commissioner Beasley-Pittman? Yes. Commissioner Sorensen? Yes. Vice Mayor Herbst?

Yes.

Mayor Trentals?

Yes. And OFR-1 is approved on first reading. OFR-2, first reading of an ordinance amending the City of Fort Lauderdale Unified Land Development Regulations, section... I'm not going to read all of this. I'll let you read all of it. Permit allocation of residential dwelling use from a sending site to a receiving site utilizing the Transfer of Development Rights Program. No one has signed up to speak. Someone would like to introduce the ordinance? Introduced. Okay. Any questions regarding this? There being none, please call the roll.

In ordinance of the City of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, amending the City of Fort Lauderdale, Florida Unified Land Development Regulations, section 47-13.20, entitled Downtown Regional Activity Center Review Process and Special Regulations, section 47-13.50, entitled Regional Activity Center District General Regulations, and section 47-28, entitled Flexibility Rules to Permit Allocation of Residential Dwelling Units from a Sending Site to a Receiving Site Utilizing the Transfer Development Rights Program, providing for severability, repeal of conflicting ordinance provisions, codification, and correction of Scrivener's errors, and an effective date. Commissioner Glossman? Yes. Commissioner Beasley-Pittman? Yes. Commissioner Sorensen? Yes. Vice Mayor Herbst? Yes. Mayor Trent Hollis?

Yes. And that is approved on first reading. Moving on to OSR 1. This is a second reading of a quasi-judicial ordinance, rezoning from residential single-family low-medium-density district to Northwest Regional Activity Center mixed-use district at 539 Northwest 13th Avenue, Fort Lauderdale Community Redevelopment Agency. Anyone wishing to speak must be sworn in, and the commission will announce any site visits, communications, or extroverted opinions received and make them a part of the record. Vice Mayor, do you have any additional disclosures?

None.

I have to turn the page. Vice Mayor, I mean, Commissioner Beasley-Pittman? No additional. Okay, I have no additional. Commissioner Glassman? None. And Commissioner Sorensen? No additional. No additional. Okay. So, no one has signed up to speak. Someone please move to close public hearing.

Move. Second.

Be moved and seconded. Please call the roll.

Commissioner Glassman? Yes. Commissioner Beasley-Pittman? Yes. Commissioner Sorensen? Yes. Vice Mayor Herbst? Yes. Mayor Trent Hollis?

Yes. And public hearing on OSR 1 is now, closed. Do I hear a motion to, excuse me, could someone like to introduce the ordinance on OSR 1? Introduced. It's been introduced.

In ordinance cementing section 47-1.6.B of the City of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Unified Land Development Regulations, through the revision of the official zoning map, the City of Fort Lauderdale on Schedule A revised compilation attached there to, and by reference made a part thereof, so as to rezone from residential single-family low-medium-density district to Northwest Regional Activity Center mixed-use west district, all of lot 7, 8, block 4, first addition to Tuskegee Park, according to the plot thereof, as recorded in Plot Book 9, page 65 of the public records of Broward County, Florida, located south of Sis Trunk Boulevard, east of Northwest 14th Avenue, west of Northwest 13th Avenue, and north of Northwest 5th Street, all said lands, being the City of Fort Lauderdale, Broward County, Florida. Commissioner Glossman? Yes. Commissioner Beasley-Pittman?

Sorry.

South. Don't do that to us. Commissioner Sorensen? Yes. Vice Mayor Herbst? Yes. Mayor Trenton Tulles?

Yes. And this ordinance has now been approved on second reading. Moving on to OSR 2. This is the second reading, Quasi-Judicial Ordinance Approving the Vacation of a Right-of-Way for a 40-foot-wide by 525-foot-long portion of Northeast 6th Terrace Right-of-Way, the YMCA Broward Health Project. Anyone wishing to speak must be sworn in, and the Commissioner will announce any site visits, communications, or expert opinions received and make them a part of the record. Any disclosures, Vice Mayor? Vice Mayor?

Nope.

No new ones. Okay. Commissioner Beasley-Pittman? No. I may have had a conversation with Mr. Lockery on this. Commissioner Glassman? No additional. And Commissioner Sorensen? No additional. No additional. Okay. Mr. Russell and Mr. Lockery, you signed up to speak, but just for answering questions, right?

Okay.

All right. Would someone like to move to close public hearing?

Moved.

Second. Moved and seconded. Please call the roll.

Commissioner Glassman? Yes. Commissioner Beasley-Pittman? Yes. Commissioner Sorensen? Yes. Vice Mayor Herbst? Yes. Mayor Trent House?

Yes. And public hearing on OSR 2 is now closed. Would someone like to introduce the ordinance? Introduced. The ordinance has been introduced. Please call the roll.

In ordinance vacating, a portion of that certain 40-foot right-of-way lying between Blocks 251 and 252 Progresso, according to the plot thereof, is recorded in Plot Book 2, page 18 of the public records at Dade County, Florida, located west of Northeast 7th Avenue, north of Northeast 8th Street, east of North Federal Highway, and south of Northeast 9th Street, all said lands being the city of Fort Lauderdale, Broward County, Florida. Commissioner Glassman? Yes. Commissioner Beasley-Pittman? Commissioner Sorensen? Yes. Vice Mayor Herbst?

Yes.

Mayor Trent House?

Yes. And OSR 2 is now approved on second reading. Congratulations. Okay. Is there any further business of the commission at this meeting? Do you have any announcements for any closed-door sessions?

Not for a closed-door session, but I do want to bring to the city's commission's attention, Broward County and Coconut Creek and Darefield Beach have entered into what's called a 164 process with regards to Monarch Hill. That's the trash mountain in the north part of the county. In February of this year, Broward County Commission approved several ordinances that made possible certain necessary steps for waste management to expand the landfill. The two municipalities are opposing those expansions and thus have entered into that process. Broward County has notified us of that. We know after that notice has gone out, the Broward County County Attorney's Office notified the municipal attorneys of this. Pembroke Pines has decided to enter into the process to participate in support of the landfill expansion, and we'll be looking for direction from the city commission in terms of the city of Fort Lauderdale's position. I believe Melissa Doyle on the city management side is best suited to kind of give you a detailed explanation of the issue. We'll probably schedule something for the next meeting, but we will be monitoring. They have one of their sessions tomorrow evening around 2 p.m. at the governmental center. We'll have Rhonda Hassan present to monitor the discussions that they have at this preliminary stage. So what is our stake in this? So we're one of the largest providers of our contributors to the landfill. Contributors, right. So it would definitely impact our costs. The increased capacity of the facility basically reduces the amount of waste that we would have to transport to facilities outside of the county, adding to the cost of our trash collection.

Okay. But at this stage, there's really nothing for us to do other than to monitor the situation, right?

Correct. And part of what we're discussing is what type of input we would have as a non-party versus a party in the matter.

So why would a city like Pembroke Pines get involved?

Well, there may be an interest in terms of I think they also have a facility near their city that they probably have an interest in not having that expanded. Right. Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah.

Okay.

Thank you for making us aware of that. Sure. And also, on a personal note, on June 3rd that evening, I have a conflict. My son has his 8th grade promotional ceremony. So I'll have one of our assistants. I've never had an 8th grade promotional ceremony. Just the evening. So I'll be absent that evening.

Is that the commission meeting night? It is.

The whole day or just the night? Just the night. I'll be there before the conference. Okay. All right.

Today we postponed everything.

No. Did you enter? Yes. When we postponed it, of course, the trips is going to be moved to eternity. Right, right, right. Okay. Any further business of the evening meeting? If not, we'll resume the conference meeting. This meeting is now concluded, and we will now resume our conference meeting and our commission reports and Beasley Pittman. Commissioner, you're on stage.

What I'm going to do, I'm going to bypass on giving the report, but there is something I do want to bring up for conversation. Okay. And that conversation is regarding the basketball course at the beach. Okay. Okay, versus the pickleball. And I have heard a lot from not only neighbors in District 3, but emails from individuals all over the city. And it's my understanding that there is conversation about the courts being moved and then also alternatives being given for different locations. With that being said, I don't want to see the courts moved. Neighbors do not want to see the courts moved. Is there, can we have the opportunity of those alternate sites being considered for the pickleball courts instead? So that's a conversation.

So it's interesting. I know the developers of the Bahia Mar had requested that the pickleball courts be put in place of the basketball courts. And I know the commission proved that when they approved the amendment to the comprehensive agreement. Keep in mind that I hate to think of this as an adversarial situation because if, in fact, we do decide to move the basketball courts, and I guess we already have approved that, it could be a win-win because the developer, I understand, and is willing to contribute a significant amount of money towards the displacement or let's just say the replacement of the basketball courts, we could actually add more courts. And while we're at it, I'd like to do something to the barbecue and picnic table areas, which I think have deteriorated over time, and I would like to improve and enhance that experience as well. And if we do add pickleball to the site where the basketball area is, we have to see what that looks like. You know, I want to make sure it's aesthetically pleasing. I know that pickleball is becoming more and more popular. I see where Andrew Agassi has now entered the fray and is hosting big tournaments. It's become a thing, and I think that we might even see better basketball courts and a larger basketball area maybe. I think there are four hoops now, and we could maybe add two more or four more. So I think this could be a win-win for everybody if we approach it in a way that is constructive as opposed to being combative. So that's just part of the conversation. Part of the conversation, yes. Just something to think about.

What's the part about the picnic tables? That's the first thing.

I know. I'm bringing you that. It's not my reports yet, but I've gone there, and I just think we can make it nicer.

Replacing the picnic tables? No, no. I'm getting rid of them.

Replacing them.

The picnic tables and barbecue works? I know it's very popular. It's very popular.

No, no, no. I want to keep that experience on the beach.

Because I've already had like 200 or 300 emails on this. I don't need another 300. No, no, no, no.

I want to keep that experience for people to come to Fort Lauderdale Beach and use the barbecue facilities. I think it's great. It's great for families. I see families all the time using it. But we can do better. And as we're looking at that area of the beach, let's look at it holistically, how we can improve that area. Because when did we do that? Like 30, 40 years ago? No argument. I just wanted to make sure we're not getting rid of them. No, no, no, no.

I'm not prepared for another onslaught of emails.

So for the code of record, just to clarify, these are improvements that are part of the interlocal agreement with the BMR Community Development District. And it's a part of the improvements that they agreed to do versus the developer. Exactly.

Okay. My input, continuous input regarding this, going back when we had this initial conversation, I have to say, I don't know how the oversight with that being that it's south of the pedestrian bridge. And in my mind, I never would have thought that we were talking about interfering or changing what was on the sand already. Okay. Again, the comment, my concern is moving. Let's upgrade what we have and also pick another place for the pickleball. Comments I'm getting, people are saying that the view for the new area for Raheemar is those individuals who may be moving there do not have a desire to see those who are playing basketball. And derogatory terms are being used in social media. Yeah, I think that's a very uncalled for. It's very unfortunate, but it's still part of the conversation. I know. When you have individuals who frequent the park, the beach, who are entitled to because it's a free public place. And if that's what's being perceived to be the perception of the masses, because, you know, people on social media, we seem to take that as face value, as the news, as the truth, unfortunately. And we talked about that with other situations concerning us as commissioners, things that are said about us. And we know how hard that is to unravel or unring that bell. So we, I believe, and Dwayne, you can verify if I'm not correct, there's a possibility for a modification in our agreement where we can look at this a little bit more deeper. Like I said, I'm not in favor of moving the basketball courts. We can add pickleball courts anywhere else on the sand, the same that you want to do. You say we can improve and make from four to six basketball courts, wherever we're looking at to do that. Let that be the site for the pickleball.

Again, that can be part of a conversation. It's nothing has to be done tomorrow because it's still a long ways off. But I got the same emails that you got.

I believe we all did. I think we're all.

But I do believe that there's a solution. And I think that we, I would like to look at the area holistically and look at all the, don't we have exercise stations there too? I'd like to see all of that improved.

And volleyball courts.

This might be the time to do that, okay? Create a sports center that is inclusive of all those different activities. And, you know, whether you are a visitor or whether you're an owner in the Fort Lauderdale Beach area, I think that should be an opportunity for anyone and everyone to be able to come to the beach and enjoy what we have there. It's one of our richest natural resources. And we should all be able to partake in it. Is there anything else you wanted to bring up?

That's all I wanted to bring up. That's it? Okay. Just to seal this part of the conversation. Right. I am in support of the Bahia Mara, the St. Regis project. Only concern I have is that conversation about the basketball courts being, you said displaced, but you replaced it with another word, but being moved. That's my comment regarding that. Okay.

Commissioner Glassman. Yes. Thank you, Mayor. Wednesday, April 16th, it was a good event for the Middle River Terrace area and the South Middle River area. We had a really nice event to celebrate the Northeast 12th Street extension. I want to thank staff for all of that. Such a necessary component of that neighborhood where there was really just a dirt part of that road with no asphalt at all. So thank you for that. Thursday, April 17th, I had the pleasure of addressing the Central Beach Alliance meeting. Always a great crowd, a huge crowd that evening as well. So Tuesday, April 29th, I want to welcome Ocean Prime to District 2 and the Las Olas Marina. We had a wonderful ribbon cutting there with the Chamber of Commerce. Really nice crowd. What a beautiful location on that marina, which was really just asphalt and an awful parking lot, is now totally reimagined. And it's a mega yacht marina. Ocean Prime is the first of three restaurants that will be located in that area. Thursday, May 1, I participated with Vice Mayor Herbst in honoring Lisa Lutoff-Perlo, Melissa Milroy, Ed Smoker, and our very own Mayor Dean J. Trantalis for the Riverwalk Tribute. Congratulations on the tribute. And that was a really well-attended evening as well. Coming up tomorrow, we have the Fort Lauderdale FOP Police 2025 Families and Officers Memorial Ceremony. If anyone has not seen that ceremony, and I have attended every year since sitting here for the last seven and a half years, it is probably one of the most moving ceremonies in the city where we honor those who gave their lives in service to our city. It's a beautiful ceremony. If you haven't been to that ceremony, I would urge you to attend. It's in Esplanade Park right across from here. That's tomorrow. Thursday, May 8th, the old historic church on 3rd Avenue, one of the oldest in town, probably our only Gothic structure in the city of Fort Lauderdale, will have a ribbon-cutting for a brand-new restaurant. You might remember Holly Blue was in that location for a while, and now it's going to be Jay's Steakhouse. We'll be attending that ribbon-cutting and welcoming that business to Flagler Village. Flagler Village is always excited and looking to have more restaurants. Friday, May 9th, we will honor the Downtowner of the Year. Congratulations, I don't know if he's still here, but the Downtowner of the Year with all of the downtown interests are recognizing Robert Lockery. That's Friday, May 9th at First Baptist Church. Wednesday, May 14th, I'll be participating in Vision 2030 by the Chamber of Commerce and the Beach Business Improvement District. That's at Lagomar. We'll be talking about Vision 2030 the next few years, how we want to see our beach, our barrier island, developed. I'll be attending Monday, May 12th, the Lauderdale Beach Homeowners Association meeting. Look forward to speaking with them. Thursday, May 15th, is the Central Beach Alliance meeting. And just one comment. First of all, I want to recognize the amazing events that happened on the Barrier Island this past weekend. We had the air show. We also had a part of the Grand Prix at the La Sola's Oceanside Park. And at the Aquatic Center Swimming Hall of Fame, we hosted the TYR Pro Swim Series where we smashed records, world records and United States records in swimming. Congratulations to all those people. That being said, and I want to congratulate everybody and thank everybody who was part of that. Those are logistically huge, huge events on the barrier island. So, of course, what would a District 2 pre-agenda meeting be last night without folks saying, hey, we have to do a better job managing traffic? People are well aware of how wonderful these events are and how important they are to the barrier island. But we still need to do better in terms of getting people on and off the barrier island. I know I say this all the time when events come to the barrier island, but it's really serious. Too many log jams. People are very concerned. How would an emergency vehicle make its way through? We have delivery trucks lined up along the streets. We have just a real, real problem with that. Either we have to have more officers on the street or aides on the street guiding traffic, and obviously that would be paid by the event people because I know that they have to make us have full recovery. But I'm just saying, Raquel, we've got to do a better job with that because this weekend, and those were, again, three amazing events on the barrier island, but all at the same time, all on the same days. And we just have to make it a little bit easier for the residents to get around, to make sure that this is not impacting their quality of life in a really big way. So I would just ask that if we have to schedule these many events in the same days on the barrier island, that we really do a better job in managing the traffic on A1A and all of the arterials that lead to A1A A1A and the roads that run parallel to A1A, west of A1A. And that's it for me, Mayor. Thank you.

Okay, thank you so much. Commissioner Sorensen.

Thank you, Mayor. First, I want to just thank our new chief waterway officer, Marco Aguilero. Just, you know, a day or two onto the job, I just want to share, you know, something that happened and how he responded. And so I kind of asked him to write it up a little bit so I could share it with you all. Marco got a fix-it for Lauderdale request from a neighbor saying that a large concrete floating dock had broken free from George English Park and was drifting down the river. He immediately called FLPD Marine Patrol and Marine Facilities Manager. He went up to George English Park to see if he could locate the dock. He got there. Marine Facilities Manager and Supervisor were on site, but they couldn't locate the dock because it had drifted from the location. So then he thought of calling up the aquatic control group, and that's a group that helps clean our canals, the surface cleaning, and to see if they could help with their vessels, which they said they were happy to do, even though that's way outside their contract scope. So Marco then left the park and went to try to go behind businesses and see if he could see the dock. Finally was able to find it at Bayview Cadillac, kind of near where Bayview Cadillac is. Aquatic Control Group sent their vessels to help locate and secure the dock and bring it back to George English, and the Marine Facilities also helped bring it back. So I just want to thank Aquatic Control Group, Marco, for his great work already as Chief Waterway Officer. So I wanted to share that, Mayor. Just a good news story. I want to lift up some of the good things that have happened. Went to the Artserve Awards Gala, which was great. Also went to during Fleet Week. So Fleet Week was fantastic. I think just city staff, everyone who worked on that, fantastic. I went to ESGR Breakfast, hosted by Port Everglades, which was fantastic. Bunch of cleanups on Fort Lauderdale Cares Day. So, again, thank you, staff. I mean, I was out there. A lot of our staff was out there. So all teaming together, making our city better. So thank you for doing that. Great partnership with MODS on Navy STEM Day, which was great. Had a good walkthrough on Riverwalk to look at improvements we can be making to Riverwalk. So that was fantastic. Want to wish early Mother's Day. Mother's Day is Sunday, so don't forget your mother or other loved ones that you can celebrate that day. Your wife. Yeah, your wife, significant other, other wonderful women in your life. So I want to just lift that up. And lastly, let me see here. Oh, let's see. Ben Rogers or Milos. This has come up before, but it's ready for this.

He's ready. He's ready. He's jumping.

He's jumping. He's we've talked about this. Milos, 17th Ave in Las Olas. We talked about the site triangle. And so just interested, this is a limited site triangle mayor at 17th Ave and Las Olas. And so want to continue to explore kind of solutions there for what we could do to address that site triangle mayor.

You can only go north. Isn't that blocked off?

You can go, so Milos, you can go south. Yeah, you may describe it.

Milos Rostovic, acting director for cities, transportation, mobility department. So when it comes to southeast 17th Avenue, it operates only in southbound direction for that last block. And that's how it connects to Las Olas. It's been like that from 2008 or prior to that point. That's how far back Google area really goes. So there are some concerns with the line of sight there. They have been brought up over the last couple of years through various different reports. We did collect some traffic data in late 2024, in September of 2024, which showed really minimal traffic making that southbound right turn. It was less than 10 vehicles in the morning peak over two hours and the same amount in the afternoon peak during two hours between 4 and 6 p.m. I did speak with our colleagues from police and fire, just making sure that there is no concerns, that they don't have any concerns when it comes to potential closure. And when it comes to the process, really, there are two ways to go about it. One is for the neighborhood group to initiate the request, and the other one is for the city commission to authorize the closure.

This is coming southbound. Coming southbound. Coming southbound. Yeah. The neighborhood group to go west. Yep. Isn't that where Jackie Scott lives?

Cooley Hammock, yep. On that street? I don't know if she lives on that street. She might, yeah. I think so. So that neighborhood association is asking for to explore that possible closure. Okay.

Closure. Is that right? Okay. Good? Just wanted to make sure, do we have a direction from the city commission then to...

I think the commissioner is suggesting we now, like you said, approach the association, the neighborhood association, just let them weigh in on that, because they're very sensitive as to those street closures?

They have. They're interested in this. Yeah. Okay. So can we move ahead with exploring that?

Mayor. So is the recommendation to close it? That's what the neighborhood would like. So that it only goes... So it doesn't go southbound. It only goes north?

Yes. Correct. But it doesn't go north from Las Olas.

I think we're going to have to have a larger conversation, because I know that I'm going to be hearing from a lot of people just east of the Sospiro Bridge on the Las Olas Isles that use that way a lot of times. So maybe if we could just have a little conversation about it and...

Well, the Las Olas Isles won't be negatively impacted, because you can go north on 17th Avenue. You just can't come south on 17th Avenue. That's because of the line of sight construction. Am I understanding that correctly?

You can't even go north. Avenue actually goes only southbound for that last block. So you cannot go north. You can only go south.

You can't go north.

You can only come out of the neighborhood to connect to... You can't go north. That is correct. So you will hear from Russell.

Trust me. I will hear it. Well, the thing is, you know, a lot of these neighborhoods want to restrict access to the neighborhoods. And these are through streets. And so when you compress traffic in one street, it goes on to another street and adds even more traffic to 16th and 15th. And that becomes a problem, because you get a lot of congestion. So I think it needs to be fleshed out a little bit, and maybe District 2 Commissioner needs to weigh in on this.

So I just know that I have to at least be able to present it to everyone that lives from A1A all the way to, you know, to that street heading west. So they just have to be aware.

All right. So could you bring that to one of your next meetings, maybe one of your neighborhood president meetings or your pre-agenda meeting and talk it through?

So if I could ask Milos and Commissioner Starnson just to give me a little sheet on what it is exactly you want to do so I can have that factually in front of me? Thank you.

Absolutely. We can do that.

No. Great. Next, tunnel mayor just and commissioners just continues, discussions continue to go well. I'm, maybe many of you are too, but continue to have great conversations with tunnel construction companies, very interested in the project, continue to have good conversations with U.S. Department of Transportation, continue to, their view is the tunnel is the way to go. So they continue to work with us in exploring funding, the relationship with the, you know, the county, as you know, they passed their resolution. So we continue to make progress there. So we continue to head in a very good direction there. That's it, mayor. Thanks. Okay. Thank you.

Let me just do some highlights here, things that haven't been mentioned. First of all, I just want to thank our police and fire department, as well as all the members of our community for being such welcoming hosts to the, to our men and women in the Navy who came here during Fleet Week. It was a resounding success hearing the responses from those that, that visited here that week. They were so thankful for the kind of reception that we gave them, and I hope we can continue that tradition here in the city of Fort Lauderdale, and, and it really was a wonderful opportunity for us to showcase our city. So thank you, everybody who, who was involved with that. Let me see. There are a number of different events that took place. I think you kind of all mentioned it. Oh, I attended the mayor's gala at the, uh, along with the commissioner Beasley Pittman. We attended the, uh, United Way Broward County mayor's gala on April 26th. Very well attended event. Uh, really was fun. Uh, I just want to say one thing. If the city buys a table, then if someone signs up to attend and they don't attend, that means that we have an empty table and that kind of would happen. And I've seen it before, uh, different events. So I want to, I want to suggest a policy. If you sign up to attend and you don't attend, you're going to be forbidden from ever attending again because it's a waste of money when we can invite other members, other staff members who may want to come with their spouses or their friends. And I just think it's a little disrespectful to, to say you're going to show up and you don't show up. So, um, going forward, I just think that should be our policy. And, uh, and I think that if, if you say you're going to be there and you don't, unless you're sick or you have some other commitment, then, uh, uh, then I think that you should be, um, you should waive any right to attend any further event. That's the city sponsors mayor.

Can I tag onto that too? Cause you know, one of the problems I've been having in a lot of the things that we've been dealing with, and we just went through it with the air show is I reach out to the attorney's office for an ethics opinion about this. And they're not getting any information back about how much these events costs and what the value of these things are. And as we know, we've got a much more robust opinion out of the attorney's office, uh, this past year about even when you're getting something from your own agency, you're still required by state law to report it. So Raquel, I would ask you whenever your staff is getting a table for something, it is incumbent upon them to provide the attorney's office with all the information that they need. The day of the event, we were still trying to get information out of staff. That's unacceptable. So I want to know before any of these events happen, what my reporting obligations are so that I'm understanding of what I'm going to have to do. So let's please try and make a practice of this. Whenever there's any kind of an event that the city is somehow involved with, that we get that information to the attorney's office in a timely manner. These things don't sneak up on us. We know they're happening long in advance. So let's make sure that when I ask the attorney's office to give me a binding ethics opinion about what my obligations are to the county and to the state, that they have all the information that they need and they don't have to chase staff down trying to get an answer out of them.

We can certainly work with the city attorney's office to get the checklist of information that would be required so we can be prepared for that in advance.

That would be very helpful. Thank you.

All right. Thank you. I know reference was made at the TIER, the TYR Pro Swim Series. I have to say I attended the first evening event and got to see some great athletes here participating in these events, and it really made our Aquatic Center shine. And my hat's off to those who managed the pool, who managed the event, and those in our community who showed their support for the athletes. I thought it was a great opportunity for us to really exhibit what the best of Fort Lauderdale has to offer, and we certainly did it during that weekend. And I know Commissioner Sorensen attended some of them. I saw your Facebook posts.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Mayor, and I forgot actually to mention that, but yeah, you're right, and it was three world records, three world records, and also all women who broke those world records. Amazing job, and Laura Vogt, who helps run the Aquatic Center, amazing job. And it was also interesting, Mayor, because I know you were probably doing the same thing when I was there. I was talking to some of the folks and the coaches there, and the coaches were saying the facility, the Aquatic Center and the pools, amazing. World class, and even USA Swimming was posting, these pools and the centers are faster than other places they've been. The way they're designed, they make them faster, the deeper and wider.

And so, of course, and it was hashtagged faster in Fort Lauderdale, right? So, and all the coverage we got on ESPN, live television coverage, all showcasing our wonderful city. So, again, thank you to everyone who helped make that a success. And as Commissioner Glassman pointed out, the Florida, the Air Dot air show that appeared this past weekend, it got a little rainy on Sunday when I went, but everyone had a good time. Thousands of people showed up. Another great way to showcase our community. Yes, there's always going to be traffic, but when you have tens of thousands of people, you know, it's just something you expect. So, otherwise, I thought we did a great job in hosting that event and hope to continue to see it year after year. Let's see. So, one of the first luxury condominium buildings that's going to be built here in Fort Lauderdale, something that we have not seen in a very, very long time, because the market has always been about rentals, we're finally going to see condominium development here in downtown Fort Lauderdale. I'm very happy to share with everybody the groundbreaking on May 13th of the Andare building on Las Olas. It's at 10 a.m. at their current sales office. The sales office that they spent a million and a half dollars on is going to be torn down, and we're going to have the groundbreaking. So, it's a good trend, a trend to show that, you know, to me, rentals invite transiency, and people who buy condominiums tend to be more stable, and it helps to stabilize a neighborhood. So, I'm very happy to see that we finally are getting condominium ownership and development here in downtown Fort Lauderdale, which is the beginning of a trend, because we know that the Viceroy is a condominium, Ambel is a condominium, and these are just a few of the buildings that are already on selling units, and hopefully we'll continue to see that trend increase in the years ahead. On May 14th, we're having a sister city event with the Council General of Mexico at the Tower Club. That's at 6 p.m. Everyone's invited to attend. And also, on May 16th, we're having, not we are, but the city has been invited to attend the retirement lunch for Judge Jack Tudor, who is retiring from being chief judge and being a judge altogether at Broward County. That's at noon at the main library. With regard to the honor of the Riverwalk tribute, I just want to say thank you to the trustees of the Riverwalk, who included me in the list of honorees that they honored. That evening was Lisa Lutoff-Perlow, Melissa Milroy, and Ed Smoker, all a great company to share that honor. And I finally got a brick. How long has this been, Riverwalk been in business? 40-something years? Yeah. So, anyway, so that was a great honor, and I want to thank the folks for including me. One issue I want to bring up, and we'll wrap it up for tonight, is I got a letter from Ty Sutton, who's the CEO of the Broward Center, Joe Cox, who's the CEO of the Science Museum, and Jenny Morihone, who is the executive director of the Downtown Development Authority, asking us to reconsider our late-night liquor sales on Hemershey. We have a 4 a.m. license that's been designated in certain properties on Hemershey, and they feel it has led to the deterioration of the street and the culture on the street. Are you going to protest that?

Don't take away my 4 a.m. license. Or am I going to go after this? So, Mayor, we're planning on bringing a conference presentation to the commission in June to discuss this very issue. We have the same letter. We've met with them several times as well as some other stakeholders, so we're going to bring that to you in the next month.

And, Mayor, just to assure you, because at that last goal-setting workshop, not this past January, but the January 2024, this was actually one of our goals, reimagining Hemershey Street, and staff's been doing a good job. We've had a lot of charrettes with the Sailboat Bend Civic Association neighborhood and all of that surrounding area on Hemershey, and I agree with you, but they have been putting together a plan for that whole corridor.

Okay, great. That's good to hear, because it's time, you know, it needs a refresh. And I know what, when we did it, we did it about 20 years ago, and it was to encourage activity in a dormant area. Same thing we did on the beach, to try to encourage people to come to the beach and, you know, enjoy what we have there. But I think it's a victim of its own success, and I think it's time to revisit that. I do not want to do what Miami Beach did, which, what is it, a 12 o'clock cutoff for serving liquor on Ocean Drive? What did you guys do?

There were various times, so some 8 p.m., some midnight, some 2 a.m.

Okay, all right.

Depending on where you are.

Okay, but I do know that they severely restricted. You said 8 p.m., which we would never do. We'd have protests in the street. All right, that's it for me. Madam City Manager, do you have any report to make?

Thank you, Mayor. I just want to highlight all of our personnel who have been working very hard on all the events that you've mentioned. I particularly want to highlight the team at FXC for hosting the Blue Angels over the weekend. I think that's a tremendous honor for our city. I also want to thank you for the feedback you provided related to the amenities on the beach. We did some preliminary work in identifying some options, but with the feedback that we heard today, I think we have a little bit more work to do, and we'll come back to you with some opportunities.

Good. Do Wayne, do you have any report to make? Nothing in addition. Okay. Is there any further business in this commission? There being none, meeting concluded. Thank you, everybody.

Thank you.

Thank you.