hey good evening everybody and welcome to the city commission meeting what is that okay okay thank you welcome to the city commission meeting this september 3rd 2025 i want to thank you all for being here tonight for those of you who are here for the first time welcome and thank you for participating in tonight's meeting a uh normally when we have our meetings we begin with the pledge of allegiance a moment of silence and and then various agenda announcements so to begin the meeting i'd like to invite ishmael dagler and carlens concile from riverland elementary school to please join me over here at the podium and let's right hand over your heart to the pledge of allegiance to the flag of united states of america one nation under god no no start again start again start again i pledge allegiance to the flag of united states of america and to the republic of which it stands one nation under god individual and liberty and justice for all yes you'll be on youtube all right i have a little gift for you thank you so much for doing this with us tonight take care good luck in school here let's take take a pic come on commissioner easy pitman wants to join us this school is in my district over here we'll stand and take a picture modern family here thank you thank you okay great uh now please uh join me in sharing this moment of silence and and in doing so i'd like to also recognize that uh gentleman named art sites has um has passed away and art was a very active uh participant on the beach for many many years trying to improve quality of life for those who lived in and around the barrier island especially trying to enhance uh bicycle use and bicycle uh enhancement so please join me in this moment of silence thank you so much um before we begin i have a few uh employee retirement announcements we do this at the beginning of every meeting for those that have been with our our departments uh for uh extended periods of time so tonight there are two people uh there's bridget patterson who's customer service supervisor in department of sustainable development and she has been with us for 29 years so congratulations bridget and john marshka who's a senior electro technician in public works he's been with us for 10 and a half years thank you so much john for being with us and for your work on behalf of the people of fort lauderdale so we have a couple of agenda announcements uh ph1 the applicant has requested that there be a deferral to september 16th 2025 which is our next meeting and there are two walk-on resolutions one is a resolution approving an airport infrastructure grant agreement with the federal aviation administration for the design of runway 27 bypass taxiway and the run-up area relocation project this is what this is uh the first walk-on resolution the second one is uh walk-on resolution expanding the appointment uh expanding the duties of the appointment of weiss serota regarding traffic control devices uh other than that uh there are no other agenda item revisions uh so would someone like to move to approve tonight's agenda as amended and uh do i hear a motion moved second it's motion seconded please call the roll just real quick i'm going to do a roll call uh vice mayor herps commissioner glassman here commissioner visa pitman commissioner sorensen here mary trental yes and the agenda is approved as amended so tonight before we begin the right no that was sorry that was the roll call and now i'm just going to do the vote for the motion okay sorry if you insist vice mayor herps commissioner glassman yes commissioner beasley pitman commissioner sorensen yes mary trental yes and so the agenda is now approved uh so as i was starting to say we often begin our meetings before we go into the agenda with presentations and the purpose of presentations are to recognize individual events or organizations that are uh noteworthy event in this particular month so tonight i would like to invite commissioner sorenson who's going to present a proclamation regarding hunger action month and i'd like to invite alison vall uh who is the assistant vice president of philanthropy is alison here alison is not here well our commissioner is still going to present the proclamation thank you thank you uh thank you mayor and this is on behalf of myself and commissioner beasley pitman um in recognition of hunger action month whereas in 1981 feeding south florida which is a fantastic part of our community court program on wednesdays uh where we help those who are in need find the services and support they they need and feeding south florida is a wonderful part of that so uh feeding south florida has been an unwavering force in the battle against hunger in fort lauderdale and whereas the city of fort lauderdale stands resolute in its commitment to raising awareness about the pervasive issue of hunger and providing vital resources to support the well-being of our community whereas more than one million individuals in south florida including 500 000 children and seniors depend on the food and groceries provided each year by feeding south florida and its partners and whereas feeding south florida a proud member of the feeding america and feeding florida networks demonstrates exceptional stewardship by reinvesting 98 of donations into the community and whereas feeding south florida's vast network of community partners is committed to ending hunger and during hunger action month month the city of fort lauderdale encourages all to strengthen these bonds bonds amplify our collective impact and ensure that no one in our community faces food insecurity alone now therefore we as the city commissioners of the city of fort lauderdale hereby proclaim september 2025 as hunger action month signed your mayor dean j trantelis thank you mayor i'm going to give this to chris cooper to bring to feeding south florida okay excellent thank you so much thank you it's now my privilege to be able to make the next presentation this is regarding a proclamation recognizing national preparedness preparedness month in the city of fort lauderdale and in doing so i'd like to invite the city's emergency management team which includes the following people please join me at the podium jermaine fraser deputy fire chief captain avery figueras lieutenant jason marcus battalion chief daniel oatmeyer and captain shane simcox please join me at the podium thank you so from the office of the mayor of the city of fort lauderdale i'm now here to present a proclamation and recognition of national preparedness month and certainly during the hurricane season this becomes very very important for all of us to participate and to attend whereas the federal emergency management agencies ready campaign has observed national preparedness month since 2004 to encourage americans to take proactive steps to prepare for emergencies and disasters the 2025 theme is preparedness starts at home highlights the importance of returning to the essentials of preparedness including knowing your risks creating a family emergency plan and building an emergency supply kit getting involved in community readiness emergencies and disasters whether caused by hurricanes flooding fire or other hazards can occur without warning but simple actions taken in advance to help minimize injury reduce damage and speed recovery for families and neighborhoods the city of fort lauderdale's domestic preparedness and emergency management bureau is charged with ensuring that our government neighbors institutions and businesses are ready to respond and recover from emergencies and hazardous situations the city's emergency operations center serves as a central command for coordination during emergencies operating at three activation levels to provide clear direction effective planning and collaborative decision making across city departments and partner agencies the national preparedness month provides an opportunity to recognize the vital role of the city's emergency management team whose expertise dedication and leadership safeguard fort lauderdale while also encouraging neighbors to take an active role in their preparedness now therefore we as the city commissioners of the city of fort lauderdale do hereby proclaim this month september 2025 as national preparedness month and on this third day of september 2025 signed by myself mayor dean trantelis thank you all for the all great work you all do here in our city congratulations thank you thank you mayor i'd like to uh thank everyone here with the city for entrusting us with the important uh initiative of keeping the city safeguarded and prepared uh we take that very seriously and uh we got a great team here and we look forward to continuing on some of the efforts that our emergency manager chief frazier um has put forward and for us thank you they are rough and ready thank you so much for being there for all of us here in our city and if april of 2023 provides any lessons yes you can never predict the next storm in the next emergency so now we move into our agenda the agenda begins with what are called consent agenda items the consent agenda is intended to allow the commission to vote on all the items at once unless a commissioner uh decides to pull one and we just we discuss it and vote on it separately if that item that you're here to speak about tonight um is not pulled i will invite you to come speak on that agenda item before we vote on it so there are a couple people uh who signed up to speak on the consent items but they're just for they're just for questions only let me just verify that yeah um vice mayor do you you have any consent agenda items that you would like to pull um commissioner beasley pittman cr6 cr6 six commissioner glassman none commissioner sorenson none okay and all the other consent agenda requests to speak um are just for questions only so all right so except for cr6 so i hear a motion to approve the consent agenda items moved second seconded please call the roll vice mayor herps yes commissioner glassman yes commissioner beasley pittman yes mr sorenson yes may return to us yes and those items are now approved if you're here on those items you're welcome to stay for the rest of the meeting or you may also uh enjoy the rest of your evening um cr6 commissioner beasley pittman thank you mayor um i asked for um cr6 to be pulled i wanted to have a discussion regarding the um memorandum of understanding that's posted um i had some concerns when i was reading and i'm hoping for some clarification um i'm understanding that currently we do have a posting for jobs for um three positions and with this particular item that we are looking at right now the closing date for the positions are actually september 4th and this uh memo that we're memorandum that we are reviewing tonight um will have an effect on um those particular um applicants who are applying for the jobs so um i see that chief and and our deputy director are standing by so i do have a couple questions if we can just ask them to come for sure you want to come to the podium thank you kristin milligan deputy human resources director for the city of fort lauderdale thank you kristin um what my when i was reading this where i was a little cloudy about um how this will work my concern is those individuals who have um gone through the process they applied for this position and they at the posting there was qualifications that were outlined and reading the memorandum it appears to change that opportunity to also allow additional individuals to apply that may not have the qualifications today and if you could elaborate on that for us yes ma'am thank you um right so currently the positions close we are currently um interviewing or testing for a battalion chief lieutenant and driver engineer they're set to close tomorrow as the cba currently reads you have to have all of the qualifications at the time of posting to be able to test that includes years of service in addition to certifications education and things like that what we are seeking to do is to extend the deadline to obtain those qualifications to december 10th while still allowing them to test the reason for this is twofold we have several people who graduate in the fall so they may not have the required degree at the time that the position closes um and this would allow them to test and so long as they obtain the degree by the 10th they would then be able to be on the eligibility list if they do not obtain that degree they would not be on the eligibility list but they would be able to test and that becomes important later additionally we have several people who are one month short of the eligibility i'm sorry the experience requirement so by extending it to december 10th it allows them to test and they will then have met that out that years of service requirement to become effective on the eligibility list january 1st so it gives us a few more people that are eligible potentially eligible for promotion but in addition to that for the temporary upgrade change we're looking to make it would allow anyone who has completed the test to be eligible for upgrade in cases in which that's needed we have absences we need to upgrade people to lieutenant things like that they don't necessarily have to be on the eligibility list they just have to have tested and so that would allow us to potentially reduce our overtime liability as well and that upgrade would be temporary just to clarify yes temporary upgrade okay um that was i did see temporary so that explains that um also my question is um as a possibility because i what i'm uncomfortable with you've had people who've gone through the process and they were under the impression that this is what we're doing and now the window has been open to invite others in that makes the pool bigger that may now change their opportunity that we're in line to do or receive that promotion now i'm wondering if it's any potential opportunity that those who are already on that list that closing and then that there's a window for those new individuals under this memorandum that we go through with those that are there now open a window from september 4th to whatever date to include testing and we get everybody but not eliminating or um canceling out what was already um prepared for for months sure so a couple a couple items there one is we did include in the posting that there was the potential for this mou um to make everyone aware that this could be something that would be approved we are required to post for 45 to 90 days depending on if there's been any change in reference material and things like that for testing so and currently the way the cba reads is you have to have all of these qualifications by the time that the closing or the posting closes so if we don't pass the mou there would not be enough time to reopen a posting administer a test allow for an appeal period and get an on the eligibility list for january 1st so that is why we're trying this is um for lack of a better term sort of a now or never if we don't pass the mou now we wouldn't have an opportunity for this round um to enact this change which includes the temporary upgrade change i see your your will so good evening uh mayor vice mayor and commission your fire chief steven golin so um we we've experienced a time of growth within our agency if we look back years ago that we um hired a large group of 60 and and we're getting to a point of retirement with those individuals what we've seen here recently is where we've been exhausting the promotional list and completely going through it and there's a cost associated with running those those tests off cycle we've run into that a couple of different times as well as we've also ran out of eligible candidates to upgrade so what transpires there is when we don't have enough candidates on a ship that are eligible to upgrade we have to hire overtime even though we're over our staffing numbers so this incurs an additional cost as well what is being brought forth to you today um has been negotiated in the and the union took it to the body and voted on it and a majority of the firefighters were in favor of proceeding this way there's no individual that will be promoted that does not have the qualifications to be in the position we understand the importance of having people that have those those requirements met in order to be in leadership roles within the organization and at no time would we ever ever vary from there what we're trying to do at this point is when you have an individual that is right there on the cusp like literally their graduation date may be a month or two months out and they've worked for the last four years to get that bachelor's degree but this testing will not be offered for another two years so that two month difference on when their hire date was or when the opportunity of that test is being given could potentially keep them from two years in the normal situation the fire department that would have been completely fine however with the the retirements that are taking place and in 2027 we're looking at over 20 i think we're 26 individuals retiring in ranked positions that year we're at an unprecedented time where we need people to step up and become leaders within the organization by them being on that list we're then able to upgrade them and what that means is that they're now shadowing other individuals and they're gaining that real-time experience under the supervision of others that are already promoted into those positions which then gives us a bigger pool when the time comes to promote them so understanding that those individuals with the opening or expanding of that timeline those individuals um by i think i read december 10th is that the date that's correct i'm sorry december 10th right yes um they would have to have met those qualifications so between september 4th and december 10th anyone who has applied or is applying must have met those qualification years um time um qualifications all of that yes ma'am okay so that's really an a streamlined city manager i'm trying to make sure there's no um loopholes in there that we're covering everything because i've you know i i really have a a space in my mind about where there's a any opportunity for someone to leap ahead of someone else and i want to make sure we're not creating a hidden space that we're missing of course and and as do you know we we value the experience level that individuals have within the organization i think that's very very important as they're making the steps through the organization to have that experience to know the city inside and out and be promoting the right person for the position um there also are other things in the collective bargaining agreement that allow us to hold that integrity all the way through the process and how many more um excuse me how many more candidates are will be qualified from ascension of this day so this would make uh eligible for seven additional candidates seven additional uh but they would still have to have all of their things done by december 10th so obviously if they don't reach those numbers that number could uh could uh diminish and how many people are right now that's september 4th they're they're ready to go how many people there are 11 ma'am 11 yes ma'am thank you i don't have any other questions okay anyone else have any questions may i i just and thank you both for that explanation i i find it very plausible and i find the flexibility important here uh to allow the opportunity to go forward but being that our backup talks you know mostly exclusively uh that this is recommended between the city and the union i i would like to see if keith costa has anything to say from the union side because this is something to deal with both the city um and the actual uh international association of firefighters local 765 so i'd like to hear his perspective as well thank you keith costa president for lateral firefighters commissioner beasley pittman to your point our body voted on this they accepted these changes they they welcome the expanded pool of candidates and uh i think that it bodes well for our membership and the city if uh if i might it was this vote um big vote it wasn't close or was it close or was it pretty pretty well accepted yeah it was it was widely accepted while accepted okay thank you i appreciate your time on this thank you very much i i'm i'm supportive of this thank you someone like to introduce the item introduced this is cr6 a resolution uh it's been introduced please call the role thank you gentlemen thank you ma'am a resolution of the city commission of the city of fort lauderdale florida approving and ratifying a memorandum of understanding between the city of fort lauderdale and fort lauderdale professional firefighters inc ia ff local 765 rank and fallen authorizing the city manager to execute the memorandum of understanding vice mayor herbst commissioner glossman yes mr beasley pittman mr sorenson yes mayor trentales yes and that item is now approved moving on to neighborhood excuse me neighbor presentations we start out with gary oliver gary are you here mr oliver how are you good evening mayor trentales and city commissioners i'm here it started in may the reason i'm here when my neighborhood was alerted that there was going to be smoke testing for leaks in sanitary lines to help solve the overburdening of the water treatment plants when inflow and infiltration problems occur so wanted to know what was going to happen well time has elapsed since may testing has occurred i before i move on i grew up in the sunset neighborhood 56 we moved down i went to strandahan so i've been around i've worked here for a while and i'm back now retired and back in the same house so we've there's some improvements so i'm here to talk about that uh the inflow is from rain infiltration would be from irrigation systems and all and are there leaks there are 527 homes in the sunset neighborhood the results are that there were 37 homes with some leaks and that's uh private ownership and on city ownership of of the lines 21 i've been in um talk back and forth with the manager of public works brad kane and i could say that he and his staff and also with ardura the company that was responsible for testing have been very transparent so i've got a lot of information i feel comfortable about that oh i realize there's an unfunded plan to rehabilitate the leaks how that's going to be done and when that's going to happen it's down the road it seems like it could be based in c1 sunset in cy29 all right and the plan is not to burden the homeowners for this project but only treat the few leaks identified my concern now rests with future infrastructure of sewer lines and we heard today about the storm sewage and the cost of storm sewage and the funding for storm sewage uh drain drainage that is well the neighborhood they must have had good engineers we've had aren't we have orangeburg pipes orangeburg pipes consist of very tight tight uh paper uh paper taught taught paper right uh the life of them five i mean 50 to 60 years we're now into 70 years so things are going to have start happening i don't know other parts of the city also may have orangeburg pipes to be contending with so sunset is a working class neighborhood it's low income neighborhood and i ask the city to go easy in terms of how to figure this how to figure this out that's okay leave it there please how to figure this out in terms of funding because if you have 527 homes with pipes how do you do it all time is up time is up so this is my recommendation and i think your concern is shared by a lot of neighbors throughout the city um work with your district commissioner i think it's commission and see how we can uh try to uh sunset neighborhood in in you know our further projects we you saw how many projects we had we had a lot of work ahead of us um you should have said something 56 years ago when you you were first here like they did a good job right but or was it 1956 yeah all right well thank you for being here tonight we appreciate it and uh just continue to communicate with your with pamela beasley pittman so hopefully we can include sunset yes that's that's another thing to add to your list yeah exactly thank you mr oliver thank you uh uh tamara hill heil not here oh she is here okay uh wants to speak about the separation of the water meters and trash hello good evening evening who is tamara okay you're gonna be speaking okay yes or is this a chorus are you gonna i have my look like you all have great voices come on go ahead good evening board members yeah very good very good okay good morning i mean good evening board members um my name is tamara hi i'm the hoa president of rock island oaks which is a habitat for humanity humanity uh community um which was supposed to be an affordable homes and for home ownership however we're facing a burden of being forced out of our homes due to the water um situation if it's not resolved i'm here on tonight respectfully requesting that our community be removed from shared water meters and trash billing system an agreement that was made between habitat for humanities and the city of fort lauderdale this agreement has created a substantial burden on the homeowners okay explain to me what is it that you're looking to set to not be billed for water and trash no we are we are okay with being built for water and trash right but the way that our community has been um built it's built off of one tank we have one tank and the water is dispersed between all 30 homes okay so now with that happening then if someone has a leak and they don't address the leak it comes down on to the other homeowners and what has happened um is that our our water bill has risen so high that we as a a community and the ones that are paying aren't able to maintain it so so you're saying that by the way i stopped at the clock so we can i can understand so you're saying that there are about 30 homes that draw water from a single uh single source and that if one person has a leak is not addressing it the burden is spread on all the other correct uh utility users um and okay i guess i was just saying okay please proceed yes so not only a one homeowner is not if it's about four or five or even 10 homeowners are not addressing the water issue then it falls on the people who are paying so now what happens is our water bill has risen so high it's about forty thousand dollars and we're facing a financial problem because if they shut off our water that means the whole community's water is shut off and we have to move out of our homes so we're asking so chris did you want to um this is chris cooper our assistant city manager do you want to comment on this do you know anything about this okay yes mayor they have been in contact with my office as well they've been with chris cooper and city manager as well so we've been discussing this matter okay okay yep so mayor chris cooper assistant city manager so rock island doaks as was stated was developed by habitat for humanity uh many years ago it's it's an older development that habitat had had built and has since um been removed from everybody has their own mortgage so it's been developed and lived in the uh development one was initially built was built in a way where rights of way didn't meet standards to have city provided utilities so they're very narrow in terms of what we would expect for our rights of way to have easements and whatnot for city-run utilities so those utilities were private so the setup in rock island doaks is that the individual homeowners are on sub meters that are built through a master meter that is built from the city but those sub meters are built from a and excuse me if i get this wrong you can correct me but i believe it's built through a billing service that the homeowners association contracts with so right now each homeowner is responsible for their bill to that billing service but from the city's perspective the amount that we're looking at is the amount that's due through that master meter so we're not billing those folks individually so how do we correct that can we move to individual billing so the only way that we can move to individual billing is if the utilities were made part of the city's maintained infrastructure you know we can talk to utilities and public works we've been having those conversations there would need to be certain things that would need to be met in terms of the certification of the system to make sure it's something that is acceptable to the city there's some risk and liability to that because we didn't install and build that infrastructure so there is some risk to the city for assuming that responsibility there still is the issue with the rights of way in the easements to where we need certain amount of easements to do maintenance and things like that so it's not as easy as just saying the city will assume responsibility for those installed meters that are built to the individual homeowners and then you know address each homeowner by each homeowner now the association can through that service deal with those individual folks that do not pay their bills and i don't know if they've if they've done that or chosen not to but there's some things they could do through the association to help with the issue as well but they do have a very large past due amount that is due to the city through the master meter so commissioner obviously i'd defer to you on this but i just i think it could be a helpful conversation us just think long term and how to make this transition ultimately i know it's not going to be easy but i don't know that's just cheap or cheap but right these are conversations that we've had um linda she's been in the conversation as far as if you come forward linda and um share but we need to um see how we can rectify this we got to come to some type of a um resolution because this is as we know if they there's no water what's next homes are what condemned you cannot live in your home if you do not have running water and so yeah so just adding to the conversation um what we've already been talking about sure linda short director of finance so i've been meeting with this homeless association now about 18 months we've had conversations going um we have not shut off the water even though it's seriously delinquent and we have a state order not to um shut it off until we resolve what's going on with the neighborhood but um you know ultimately at the end of the day the question is whether or not there's enough right of way and you know as uh assistant city manager cooper said you know there's some infrastructure things that you have to worry about we have another another neighborhood is being built or just got built from habitat humanity in a similar type fashion but it's just doesn't have enough space for us to access the meters or do the public utility that's what i know of it from this point in time but they are making payments when they can it's just not enough to cover the bills and the balance continues to grow and just to add some detail the balance is over thirty six thousand dollars at this time um raquel question just going forward in partnership with habitat who i love and support have deaf humanity all day long can we not have a similar setup going forward from from a utilities perspective this is not a i think a good scenario and this is from what 20 years ago this is not a recent 15 15 15 yeah so it sounds like maybe there yeah there's a more recent one that's yeah so with the more recent development we did have this conversation with habitat because they were aware of what happened in rock island oaks when they proposed a new development the issue is there's decisions to be made from the developer's perspective of do they want to have a certain number of units in a configuration on a on a somewhat constrained site i think rock island oaks probably when it was developed was constrained for the number of units they were trying to put there the one that was recently approved in the last year similarly it was a constrained and somewhat um awkwardly shaped lot so the decision was made in order to have the units they wanted in terms of the number of units that they would go with the smaller roads and rights of ways that didn't allow the utility service so a lot of it is what the developer be it habitat or anybody else is interested in doing and what they're looking to have on that site versus what what is feasible when it comes to public utilities and public rights of ways so we did have those conversations with habitat it was part of the development process so they made the decision to do more units and not have the the city infrastructure chris have we verified that this is due to a leak i have no idea if it's due to a leak i don't have that answer does it matter does it matter i mean that's i asked linda from finance to talk about the process i i know what that looks like from a public utility standpoint when there's a leak but i'm not sure what it looks like from this perspective can't prove this from a leak but if they can if they have information that there's a leak there's an ability to get a leak credit if we know when the leak started when it was fixed there's a process that they can go through if they can provide that evidence to us but this is i know that from what i understand um you know i guess their third party that's billing them if they can provide us some information maybe we can consider it but at this point in time we don't have any information on that at all so do we ever explore that in terms of is this a leak is it not a leak is it something else that's causing this or i just know that they for the past 18 months finances and working with them on a solution and the bill is about i think eight thousand dollars a month or seven eight thousand three to eight we couldn't hear you i'm sorry when it started out it started out as three thousand then it went up to four thousand then it went up to eight thousand now it's like ten thousand dollars a month we cannot afford that also i know they just spoke about uh the inter structure um we have garbage trucks that comes through our community fire trucks that come through our community postal carriers that come through our community school buses come through our community landscaping tow trucks flatbeds furniture trucks amazon deliveries ups fedex trucks and other delivery vans that come through our community so when they say that our ropes are not wide enough they are wide enough so linda do we know um again i i'm just trying to figure out what what can happen here what we can do but do we know obviously i know that i just heard that the water bill started around three but we know that everyone has seen increases i'm trying to figure out how much of that increase is actually due to the the new rates and all of the work that we've been doing in the city versus how much of it is a little questionable you know i'm trying to get the delta here of what normally if there was not a leak or it was just the rates that have gone up in the city what would that bill look like do we know that number i don't have an information in front of me but i can provide it to you yeah i i think we need to just gather as much information as possible and then because folks this is you know yeah the the big increases yeah there was a 33 increase between water and sewer in the last uh fiscal year but not 300 no i got it but the 3 000 i think was earlier what i'm remembering is the bill has been averaging between seven and eight thousand dollars is what i'm remembering which is a lot well the point is though that you know the thing is developers try to maximize the uh the space in order to you know in order to um maximize profit and it's all done um you know which in in the end we end up with problems like this right so um we as a city have to be more careful about that in permitting projects that that don't take into consideration yeah okay i'm not looking that take into consideration these necessities because why should i be penalized because my neighbor doesn't want to fix their pipes right so um and so going forward you know this is this is going backwards because we've got to fix a problem that that's already exists but going forward you know let's be smart about this let's make sure that this doesn't happen again uh i'm sure at the time it made sense because they were trying to you know cut down the costs and even though it's a habitat community it shouldn't it shouldn't be any less quality than uh than everyone else so the point is that that going forward i would ask you know the development uh our building department to be a little bit more circumspect and you know how they approve projects like this because this is what results so all right but the commissioner is obviously on top of this and uh um thank you for bringing it to our attention and whatever the commissioner and our staff are able to agree with i'm sure the commission will be uh supportive of that all right mayor can i just say a couple other go right ahead um so one tamra thank you so when they when they're talking about infrastructure i think what they're talking about and brad can please correct me if i'm wrong but tamra what they're talking about is if we transitioned you to city utilities pipes and so forth it would probably require some degree of easements meaning some of the property possibly private property or property of habitat to be used for an easement for access for pipes and so forth so i think that brad am i heading in the right direction on that right so that's kind of that that discussion so that would be a big investment it would also possibly impact yards or so forth so anyway okay and look i think that's the right way to go yes um now the next question is going to be how much would that cost just as for you and and the commissioner to to think about these things brad any sense of what that investment would cost the city to to move to um city utility city water i'm not sure i can tell you i think um early on in this process when um city staff was involved uh public works utilities did conduct a site visit and they were able to confirm there was a lack of right-of-way easements which prevents you know putting individual meter installations in there so i mean that's one concern obviously uh you know one of the other issues was you know they talked about the the sanitation bill and because you know they're not billed by the city therefore that additional service couldn't be provided now i'm not to say going forward that you couldn't look at that because there's 30 individual smart homes in there but i i think we would have to really take a deep dive you know make a full analysis of in of in there and what the cost would be uh you know to get it to where it could be served by the city and on beyond our utility bill and all that we would have to do that and probably bring something back to the commission to let you know what the cost would be that is something we definitely um mayor we should move on at least we have a blueprint as to what the financial impact is for city the community whatever it may be in that way we would know the dollar amount that we're looking at but at this point um speaking to um this community um on multiple occasions uh with my staff with um staff from the city um it's i can say nothing other than mind-blowing i never heard of such a a situation and when i first heard i was like that doesn't make sense but when you see the documentation this is what they're living and you know we as a city what can we do whatever it is we need to be on board 100 to help them get to a resolve and um it may not necessarily um be the picture community that you may envision but whatever we can do um i'm speaking and i'm hoping i'm not considering speaking out of turn but i think as a city we will um line up to do what we can do to make this a resolve situation commissioner beasley pittman yes if i may add just for the commission's awareness habitat for humanity did mention that they would contribute toward capital costs we did not identify a dollar figure because we don't really have an estimate at this time but they did proffer to participate in the resolution of this matter in a capital contribution chris what i just i might be missing something but i don't think this is a good system to allow in the city of fort lauderdale going forward i think we should new construction should be on city water what's give me your feedback right so you know i it is on city water albeit through a master meter through sorry meter so the water they're getting is is provided by the city it's it's really similar and i don't disagree with you that this situation isn't ideal um to say the very least the the the system and the way it's set up is similar to a condo development and some of our other townhome developments in fort lauderdale where typically a homeowners association manages that billing contract the homeowners association has the ability to deal with those individual homeowners for lack of payment you know there there are abilities to turn off those individual meters and things like that so it's not an uncommon practice it's not an uncommon development um method here in fort lauderdale so i think to say you know we should never do it there there are situations where you know it does make sense but you know these are single family homes right right these are single family homes why can't why can't the homeowner why can't the board of directors of your homeowners association go in go fix the pipes and assess the particular home that uh that whose whose pipe has been defective i don't i mean is is it a closed uh community i mean is it a mandatory homeowner's association it is a mandatory homeowner's association yes it will be me so you're you're i can't hear you so when you say um could the board go in and do that right that would be me okay so to to the analogy is it's it's the same as a condominium association which in a condominium association they go in and they make the repair and then they assess we don't have the funds we have no funds okay let me okay so you can you can borrow the money as a homeowners association and you can then levy the the the cost against the particular homeowner we um do you have a monthly dues we have a monthly dues how much how much is your monthly dues uh i think it's two two two twenty one two hundred twenty one dollars two thirty one two thirty one i'm sorry two hundred thirty one dollars and what does that go towards do you have security what does that go that that goes to the water because now it's stint it's high right um and it goes to the trash at this time because the trash also went from three thousand well it went from eighteen hundred last year to in two months it went to three thousand and in two more months it went to six thousand and then it went to nine thousand for this for sewer no no no this is trash republic service yes we looked in our account and everything was being wiped out okay and now we're only down to one day a week all right so uh so going forward i think that you need to have someone come and reevaluate your your balance sheet as an association and see what is a proper amount that you should be collecting every month from each homeowner and uh like i said as an association you can go in there even before you make the repair you can you can assess the homeowner and and ask them to pay for the repair before the repair is done as long as you have an estimate you can you can assess the individual homeowner for the repair that has to be done you as a board from my understanding from what you're telling me would have that authority to do so so you're saying to go into say for instance one of the homeowner's home homeowner a okay okay homeowner a is home and you you determine that there's a leak in their system and that you give them notice that they have to fix it if they don't do it within a certain number of days you have the right to assess them to get get it paid for and to have the repair done and that's and i and that's through my attorney correct yes so the attorney charges us and we don't have that to for the attorney you don't have an attorney we have an attorney we have we have becker and polo poliakoff yes and they should they should have advised you exactly what i'm telling you and i'm sure if you come to them with that with that um we have and they have said what no i i don't know if you maybe maybe you didn't know the question to ask and that's i'm not saying that i'm not saying anything about you know your conversation but becker poliakoff has been around for a long time i know okay and they kind of know the business so perhaps um after tonight's discussion you might go to them and say look can we assess an individual homeowner do our rules and regulations provide for it you know and they'll work with you to amend your your bylaws they'll you need to find you need to be able to have some teeth behind your need and this is this is killing you all this is draining all your families right yeah so i totally understand it but i you know i have a little familiarity with condominium law okay and just to let you know that there are ways to get this done we've tried we've tried a little bit of everything and what you're saying we've tried that as well i've sent many emails for them to them and what are and letting them know exactly what we're going through and they of course know about it and then they'll send me a fee for um talking to them about it yes those damn lawyers yeah we just want to be separated the water and trash okay well i i think look thank you for being here i think we got a good plan so your commissioner is going to be leading the way but we got public works working on it help get an evaluation what this would look like thank you so i think we're heading in a good direction and we'll i will happily support yeah we're your direction commissioner and thank you all for coming to um stake your case continuing as we said before we will do all we can from this position to get a result and mr spence maybe you might work with someone in your office might give becker polyakov a call and say you know how can we help this association get to the point where they have the right and the ability to assess against an individual homeowner for their delinquency they would be charging them for that call as well okay all right i can't help you sorry all right thank you thank you thank you all thank you i don't know why trash would go up that much that doesn't make any sense all right uh m1 motion approving agreements for invitation to bid regarding the purchase of demolition services um someone like to move the item moved do i hear a second do i hear a second okay uh any questions no one signed up to speak any questions there being none mr clerk please call the roll vice mayor herbst commissioner glassman yes commissioner beasley-pittman yes mr sorensen yes mary trentals yes and m1 is now approved mayor a question if you don't mind yes sorry um we have some uh parents of young children that are here for ofr one um and i was wondering if there's any way we could just move that up there to to be able to hear them and get them out of here for their kids well stop talking so much for you i know i know i'll stop asking questions sorry all right we can move on to ofr one all right thank you i appreciate it sure um ofr one is the first reading of an ordinance uh creating section 19-8 entitled exclusive uh children play area to establish regulations designating exclusive children play areas within city parks a number of people signed up to speak um uh who from city staff is here to tell us what this is about we have carl williams parks and recreation director hello carl you want to give us a just a quick synopsis of what this is attending to accomplish yes sir uh good evening carl williams parks and recreation director uh this particular item is referencing a designated children's play area specifically pertaining to playgrounds in our city and to establish in an area or a zone if you would around the playground to allow enforcement for uh non-adults not accompanied by a uh an adult or a parent to be essentially hanging out in the playground okay so anyone over the age of 18 can't enter the children's play area unless accompanied by a child yes sir okay all right um can i ask carl a question go right ahead so carl help help me understand here because i i've been reading the backup i know that to put the signs up it's twenty thousand dollars and then if we decide to do some sort of fencing area that's another five hundred and forty thousand dollars um how do we enforce something like this i mean if it let me just ask you a question let's say we establish a child a child safety area and i can't think of anything more important than the safety of our children but i'm having a question in my mind about this enforcement so if you if an adult is sitting in this whatever this area is how do they prove that the child belongs to them or like do we have our police and park rangers asking every adult in this area who's your child or do you have a child here or help me just understand that process of enforcement so that is a a very good question and it will be challenging i don't want to speak for uh police but uh i see our esteemed chief shows coming up here so i think that would be challenging they would just say parent get with your child who's not with a child would it be identified well if you're at a park right and everybody's there with their child and if someone's there without a child that indicates that that person is not with a child okay but who's doing the enforcement well that would be park rangers or police we and we have we have the staffing for that in how many parks we've got roughly 49 playgrounds and 115 parks and we have staff that could enforce this we don't have children play areas in all of them either well no but okay so how does that work like do we only have certain children players in certain parks so this particular ordinance is only speaking to the designated children's play area as it pertains to the playground and so of those of the 115 plus parks that we have there's 49 playgrounds associated with an app 49 playgrounds yes sir and so but we have staff to enforce in the 49 playground we do not we've got uh limited resources from park rangers and police however um i think that it would be a challenge because they're spread out all over the city and it does become a bit of a challenge to try to enforce that so i also like to always have solutions for problems so let me ask you this question is this a problem now in our parks because i'm not aware and i need to be educated is this a problem or are we just coming up with a solution in search of a problem so the best way i can answer that is it's not a problem that's been brought to my attention um but again i i really don't want to speak for what police may or may not be receiving sure let me let me jump in here if i could go so uh yes it's been a problem and you'll commission you'll hear some of the problems that the parents have have had with this um here's here's how i view it is it's similar to some of our other ordinances where we don't have the enforcement mechanism to enforce in its totality all the time like it's an extreme example but um straws like the you know banning plastic straws right we don't we don't have the enforcement mechanism to have someone in every restaurant um but it's meant to encourage the right behavior furthermore with this how how i see it is is it's a tool that should there be really unhealthy unhelpful behavior by an adult the police then have a mechanism to if it's not illegal behavior up and prior to this ordinance being passed the police will now have a way to get someone out of a child's play area who might not be doing appropriate healthy things that are still in other contexts legal in many ways so it gives them a tool i do not see in chief schultz i defer to you but i don't see any proactive enforcement of this in terms of like police going to parks to see is there an adult without a child i see it as if they get concern or complaint from someone in a park then they can kind of go in and do something about it that's kind of how i see it so if there was a complaint about someone in a park wouldn't we investigate anyway i mean to see if there's illegal behavior or wouldn't sure you'd call like the non-emergency number yeah sure if it's really extreme you'd call 9-1-1 and at least the uh officer uh or ranger would have uh would have the authority to say hey you're violating this rule because right now we don't have the rule right so they at least have that rule to be able to enforce exactly so um so you know yes you're you're i mean the point is we don't have um you know four dozen park rangers or police officers they're going to be assigned and say and stand sentinel at the corner of each playground but the idea is to have the enforcement uh mechanism in place in case it becomes a necessity and again it's to allow how i see commissioners is to allow a um engagement from a safety standpoint if there isn't illegal activity but still an appropriate activity if that makes sense yeah just to the city attorney and this does pass constitutional muster it's all okay i what i can say is that there are two other jurisdictions that have adopted this ordinance it was uh brought to our department by our prior city attorney um we have concerns with regards to the enforcement of the ordinance itself um uh some of which you've kind of already discussed um the i understand the the intent behind it uh but in terms of defining the area with placing signage it it would be difficult for uh us to prosecute anyone under under this uh ordinance and it'd be hard for us to direct uh police in terms of how to engage individuals so as commissioner sorenson has mentioned the individual would have to be within the boundaries of an area that is under pretty much undefined to be within the what is defined as the exclusive play area in order for them to engage so you have a question of if an individual is just standing outside of design doing the same unhealthy activities that you're talking about there is no recourse for uh pd to address that issue and in terms of the unaccompanied adult the adult can point to any child within the playground and say that's my that's the child i'm with there is nothing that requires any constant any relation or relationship with the child it just has to declare that they are accompanied by a child um so there there are a number of issues associated with it but um in terms of the constitutionality i can only say that i know of two jurisdictions that have it on the books and they have not been challenged any other questions or comments okay there being none um um hold on a second let's see this of our first reading um do we have to close public hearing on this we don't have to close public hearing but we have to start public hearing so let's start with britney uh ben horan followed by amanda chalfant followed by eric javen good evening good evening my name is britney ben horine i've been living in fort lauderdale for 10 years now i have two children 10 and seven the park that's closest to me is gore bets um i hear some of the things that are going back and forth about what could be what could be enforced and what could not i can tell you that over the past 10 years some things that i've seen my mother has seen friends have seen babysitters drug paraphernalia on in our playgrounds active sexual activity happening on our playgrounds um meetings that are happening at our playgrounds that aren't making sense to be next to playgrounds 30 adults having adult conversation materials everyone smoking when there's signs saying that there's no smoking allowed most of the behavior that we're seeing um is not it's obviously not from people who are with kids because oftentimes it's a group of people with no kids i'm not saying that i've never seen parents or caregivers do things that are inappropriate but these things that are sometimes foul language or stuff like that these are not the things that we're calling about that we're asking um when i've made phone calls when there's inappropriate activity oftentimes it's on the weekend and the phone number that's posted on the park it's not a weekend or after hours number and none of us are calling 911 because there's 30 adults smoking cigarettes at the playground obviously it doesn't look like an emergency i don't really know that the police are going to take it seriously we have no one to call and i have a couple times um when i've been at the playground with my kids and other kids and there are 15 adults having a meeting smoking cigarettes just as kindly without being obnoxious do you guys mind there's kids here one person might say okay and put out the cigarette ten more adults come light up they're all smoking around smoking on the swings so we hope that you'll listen to the other people and help us out okay thank you thank you amanda followed by eric followed by uh vanessa apotheker good evening commissioners mayor my name is amanda chaufan and i'm here tonight to tell you that the city of fort lauderdale is not doing enough to protect our youngest citizens we are being reactive where we could be proactive we are waiting for something bad to happen to a child before we intervene and i need your help to fix this this ordinance is designed to address a weakness in our governing laws as it stands now if a concerned parent calls police about a potential threat to children on a children's play structure there is no law giving police the right to assess and mitigate these threats something has to happen to a child first a crime has to occur first before police can do anything currently everyone has an equal right to hang out on a slide built for a five-year-old how do i know this because it happened to me just like the other mother i when my children were little we would go to hardy park playground in the morning every week i began to see a man there every week on the toddler's play equipment exercising after a couple weeks of this i approached him and in a friendly welcoming manner said good morning it is a hot day it is impressive you are working out in this heat not only did he not respond to me he looked at me in anger so i backed off a couple more weeks went by and i noticed i never saw this man anywhere in the park other than the children's play structures not running laps around the park not exercising on the adult equipment not in the shade under the trees only on the kids play structures odd right see something say something i did eventually i called the police and reported a suspicious adult hanging out on the kids playground i was told that legally everyone has an equal right to the parks even the kids playground and there was nothing they could do call back if something happens we're not looking to police all the playgrounds we're looking that if a parent sees something and says something there's a legal right to deal with it commissioners mayor this type of legislation before you today is not new it has been rolled out successfully and without legal challenge in many other cities including the nearby city of hollywood this ordinance is not designed to restrict our citizens enjoyment of the parks this ordinance is designed to give a legal structure to proactively protect children on children's play structures that's all please empower parents to see something say something and police to do something give kids a safe place to play commissioners mayor i beg you to pass this ordinance to be proactive in protecting our children before something happens to a child create exclusive children's play areas thank you okay thank you eric followed by vanessa is vanessa still here oh there she is yeah good evening good evening my name is eric javin and i'm i'm a man actually here not just not just the women men are allowed we haven't outlawed that yet yes so i'm here i have the exact same concerns um i've gone to parks i've lived in you know this area for my entire life and i have seen some questionable activities even from before i ever had a kid and so i'm here actually in support of this ordinance and i just don't think that the lack of this ordinance is not so that there is a gatekeeper at every park it's just so that there's an avenue and a mechanism for enforcement of you know what we don't want is you know adults being on playgrounds for no good reason and potentially being able to to bother and be a burden to people there um and not have again an avenue because as of right now there's nothing that can be done because right now anyone can be it's a public park right so we just want to have a section and the the ability of not being able to continuously enforce has never been a reason to not pass an ordinance whether it be a speed limit or drug laws or hate to say it but you know homeless encampments in the parks and not being able to urinate and having extra ordinances we we can't always enforce those things but we pass those laws anyway whether we should have or not and so the reality is um i know that was a long time ago previous not present company excluded but the um the reality is is as amanda had said this is really just to give uh an avenue and an ability for people to actually call and for action to be taken it's not again a gatekeeper where someone says hey i need to see your id i need to see your child so i think it's it's a common sense you know you know no brainer i know there might be a small cost to some signage but i think that's it's far outweighed by the safety of our children in our parks okay great thank you this would also allow us to put signage on the park that states the rule so that people know that they're not allowed to be there without a child so right i agree mayor just one other comment on that is i i forget maybe it was carl who gave the cost of fencing that's not that could be something to contemplate with this but it's not required for what we're talking about so i just want to make sure that that's going to do it to be a deterrent that makes clear sense yeah thanks hey vanessa hi mayor vice mayor commissioners um so i'm vanessa apotheker i'm the president of charpin river civic association district four rep for the council for lauderdale also on the parks and rec board i'm speaking tonight on behalf of myself and i am sharing this statement on behalf of jackie scott the president of coley hammock melinda bowker president of downtown fort lauderdale civic association estelle brennan riverside park ted and sarah river oaks bill brown michael albada adina victor president of chula vista mary peliquin so a lot of civic you know leaders that are in support of the following um we're in favor of the exclusive children play areas within city parks ordinance as you all know many other municipalities have similar ordinances including miami beach hollywood newark blah blah this ordinance will provide authorities to take action on an as needed basis which a lot of people have stated it's not we're policing the gates into the park like who's your kid just if we have an issue with somebody we can the authorities have an ability to take action um and on february 26th of 2025 this year the parks and rec board passed a motion to approve this ordinance 10 to 0 we everybody at the meeting was in favor of passing this ordinance in addition to all of the presidents i just mentioned i have like 40 tarpon river civic association residents that uh have also agreed which i will not read the names of in um to save time however i will say on in my own experience do i get more go ahead uh finish your thought i've had several experiences at hardy park with uncomfortable situations with adults there one taking pictures of my kids i mean just weird things too many things for to happen to one person so i know it's happened to a lot of people and i just think that this ordinance will be there's no harm to it and i don't see any reason why we shouldn't pass it i'm in favor of it i hope you guys vote in favor of it as well okay thank you thanks is there is there anyone else who wishes to speak at this uh on this item there being none do i hear a motion to close public hearing moved do i hear a second second been moved and seconded please call the roll to close public hearing vice mayor herbst commissioner glassman yes commissioner beasley pittman yes commissioner sorenson yes mayor trinthales yes in public hearing is now closed on of r1 would someone like to introduce the ordinance on first reading introduced yours has been introduced please call the roll in orange of the city of fort lauderdale florida amending chapter 19 of the code of ordinances entitled parks and recreation by creating section 19.8 entitled exclusive children play area to establish regulations designating exclusive children play areas within city parks providing for definitions providing for severability providing for conflicts and repeal providing for correction of scriveners errors and providing for an effective date vice mayor herbst yes commissioner glassman yes commissioner beasley pittman yes commissioner sorenson yes mayor trinthales yes and or for one is now approved on first reading thank you for coming out tonight who's talking oh yes hi so we will bring a budget amendment for the signage and i don't have an estimated schedule for when the signage could be implemented but we will let you know once we have the signage available after we get the funding okay great thank you sure thank you uh we might as well do of r2 while we're on the this section ordinance amending section and repealing uh regarding regulation of vessels anchored in public waterways we had that discussion this afternoon um let's see mark you sign up to speak you okay and eric you want to talk on this that did you sign up for for the regulation of vessels you want to hear the clarification okay bob i guess you have to clarify something do you have a specific question because we had a long and lengthy conversation about this this afternoon this is just now to uh to create the ordinance is there a specific question that you have that you'd like to ask there is no presentation we had we have like a 45 minute discussion this afternoon so the commission doesn't need anything more but if you have a specific question we'd be happy to entertain it the purpose of this is to prevent people from docking their boat in waterways where it where they oftentimes leave their boats uh unattended or causing it sometimes deterioration of the waterway as a result of that and now you're only allowed uh you you're only allowed to maintain your boat in a certain area for 30 days uh within a six-month period i'm sorry there are three areas that were identified you have to come up here if you want to talk mr mayor yeah bob dunkel assistant city attorney this is not restricted to three areas it covers all the waterways in the city of fort london okay i'm sorry so do you have any specific question that's it that was well that was one of them so so the you you're allowed you said 30 days in a six-month span right anywhere within the city limits of the of waterways correct and what happens if you go beyond that under under one day of six i think it's up to five five hundred dollars or six months and up to okay don't know how the judge is going to exercise the discretion okay so there is a penalty there's a criminal penalty yes sir all right well then i i then can i speak yeah okay you signed up so yeah yeah so i mean my my issue is we are we are criminalizing an activity that has been basically part of actually the community like i said earlier i was born and raised here and i understand the apprehensions this is overnight yeah not daytime but i get it there have been people docking in our waterways for decades and decades right it's for as long as i've been alive and a lot longer so so yeah it's not docking it's anchoring away from a dock right yes there have been people anchoring um longer don't you think it's about time we took some action to get to stop this practice i i don't know if criminalizing it is the right way force it um well we're not criminalizing it i mean it's you're getting a citation okay i just don't see the waterways the same as you know double parking on second avenue so if the boat is deteriorated has been neglecting and oil or gasoline is dripping in the middle of the in the sea so okay no i didn't say that so you could parcel out you know deteriorated boats boats that are being that some people that there are people who actually leave boats right and you see them just going into the bushes i actually do own it but i don't anchor uh i have a tiny little 17 footer um and it doesn't go very far but this the boating community as everybody knows is enormous here and so um i've actually known people who have anchored and who have lived on anchored boats not necessarily just in for a lot of but all over the world and so you're basically you're you're penalizing the people who do it okay and do it right for just because of people who are doing it wrong and you're actually criminalizing people who could potentially doing it correctly and say okay you're now basically saying that the the waterways are not welcome for people to stay overnight we're not saying any of that stuff and don't twist it like that that's not true at all in fact the boating community including the marine advisory board has begged us to pass this ordinance because they're because they are making it worse for everybody else who's doing it correctly and this practice has been going on i've been on this commission almost 20 years more than 20 years and i've seen the practice of of how people have been at derelict in their responsibility towards others in the waterway this is why our waterways are so polluted because people are so disrespectful of waterways this is one one element of that disrespect and we have to start somewhere to to try to clean up the practices the people that have boats in this community and we're not trying to tell anybody that we're we're dissuading people from boating in this community this community is welcoming everybody in the marine industry those folks that that choose to to uh to abuse that privilege are the ones we're trying to uh intercept here and and i don't uh i yes but the reality is is i know this has been an issue that's been brought up for many many years and it started by started from a lot of the wealthy homeowners that didn't want to see boats anchored in the water in front of them that they paid a lot for and the reality is you know just just i live in tarpon river and on the tarpon river there was a boat that was sinking that was derelict on someone's dock literally like spewing fuel and oil and everything and you know we made it aware and and nothing happened until literally just i mean there was like people taking videos day to day by day and and that's like again people shouldn't be having derelict boats on the water whether it be on a dock or not anchored or not and that obviously i'm totally for getting rid of anything it's dereliction but people who are just trying to do it the right way they have a fully operational sailboat or whatever it is and they're trying to just you know live their life and in in peace and in harmony with with the water and the boat um i i just think that that's criminalizing that because of the people who do it the wrong way is not in my opinion is just not what the city of fort lateral should be about okay thank you for your opinion yes bob to add a little bit of balance to that in 1971 well back in 1968 the uh we adopted a constitution that gave municipalities home rule power which meant that we could adopt anything that the state legislature could 1971 we adopted an ordinance prohibiting the anchorage anchorage of vessels for more than 24 hours that remained on the books and was enforceable in fort lauderdale up until 2009 when the state took it away from us so it's not like i mean we've gone for a long period of time with this the other thing is in in some respects i regret that we had the conference agenda item because we had a number of folks here at conference that could have spoken out and told you a parade of horribles of what goes on there for example i'm on the boat and i and the guy is 50 feet away from me in his back would you no don't change that channel i'm watching that football game stuff like that people dropping trash off there are there are a lot of problems and this will go a lot this is a good first step in addressing some of those things thank you anyone else wish to speak on this item there being none would someone like to move to close public hearing moved second move and seconded please call the roll vice mayor herps commissioner glossman yes commissioner beasley-pittman yes mr sorensen yes mayor chentels yes and public hearing is now closed on of r2 would someone like to introduce the ordinance introduced the ordinance has been introduced please call the roll in the ordinance of the city of fort lauderdale florida amending section 8-145a of the code of ordinances of the city of fort lauderdale entitled regulation of vessels anchored in public waterways making it unlawful to anchor a vessel within the city's public waterways during certain time periods and repealing sections eight point error eight dash four five b c d and e thereof in providing for severability repeal of conflicting ordinance provisions at an effective date vice mayor herps commissioner glossman yes commissioner beasley-pittman yes commissioner sorenson yes mayor trentals yes and that ordinance is now approved on first reading our jumping back to r1 this is um uh appointment of board and committee members would you like to read the names into the record for the september 16th resolution central city redevelopment advisory board christine jones nominated by commissioner glassman nuisance abatement board mark dickerman nominated by commissioner glassman avigdor pemper nominated by commissioner glassman and for tonight's resolution audit advisory board eric so nominated by mayor trentals beach business improvement district advisory board ina lee for the category of greater fort lauderdale chamber of commerce beach council representative laurie johnson primary member representing the weston fort lauderdale cody bertone primary member and alex caceres alternate member representing the w fort lauderdale sabrina graves primary member michael dutton alternate member representing b ocean resort lisa namor primary member and priscilla guardo uh alternate member representing vicky amar jose torres primary member and samuel fierce fiercen alternate member representing ritz carlton sharon howell primary member and steven zunt alternate member representing marriott courtyard jeffrey peterson primary member and daniel mcdermott alternate member representing sinesta fort lauderdale beach resort stewart levy primary member and neslie lauren nomin uh alternate member representing hotel marin robert lackley primary member and veronica millinova alternate member representing the conrad fort lauderdale beach resort for board of adjustment jason hagopian nominated by mayor chantalus jared galus nominated by commissioner sorenson central city redevelopment advisory board jason ross nominated by commissioner glassman civil service board kevin kymel the employee's recommendation to the civil service board community service board christy rice nominated by commissioner glassman parks recreation and beaches board nazar lavji nominated by commissioner glassman public art and placement advice board martha gutierre steinkamp nominated by vice mayor herps erica mohan uh and that's the designee of the chair of the broward county public art and design committee and since publishing we do have one uh for the infrastructure task force advisory committee it's a reinstatement they had they had been taken off for uh absences and they who was that uh shane grabski okay who's the point who's the point yeah vice mayor herps okay and the reason why i brought it forward is that they have a meeting on september 8th so this would be the time to okay if if we could get that one on and that was there a problem john so one was a health issue with a child the other was a health issue with a uh with a parent that's all right okay um okay any uh additions or modifications to that list if none would someone like to introduce the resolution introduced resolution has been introduced please call the role and that's as amended as amended thank you a resolution city commission of city for lauderdale florida appointing or nominating if applicable board and committee members as a fourth in the exhibit attached here to and made a part here of vice mayor herps commissioner glassman yes commissioner beasley pitman yes commissioner sorenson yes mayor chantal yes and those board appointments and committee members have now been approved i want to thank those individuals for making their time available to us and helping bring fort lauderdale to a better place than it is today uh r2 resolution authorizing the issuance of special obligation bonds series 2025 not to exceed 115 million dollars we had that discussion this afternoon regarding it does anyone have any further questions or comments there being none uh no one has signed up to speak so please call the someone like to introduce the resolution introduce it's been introduced please call the roll all right bear with me on this one a resolution of the city commission of the city of fort lauderdale florida providing for the issuance from time to time in one or more series of the city special obligation bonds providing that such bonds shall not constitute an in-depthness of the city within the meeting of any constitutional or statutory provision or limitation or a pledge of the city's full faith and credit but shall be payable as to principle and interest solely from the pledge funds as provided here and provided for the issuance of the first series of such bonds in an aggregate principle about not exceeding 115 million dollars to be designated city of fort lauderdale florida special obligation bonds series 2025 public safety and municipal improvement projects for the purpose of providing funds together with other available monies to pay the cost of certain public safety and municipal improvements and to pay costs of issuance of such series 2025 bonds providing for the issuance of additional special obligation bonds and special obligation refunding bonds under certain conditions providing for the creation of certain funds and accounts establishing the form and denominations of the board of the bonds authorized to be issued here under authorizing the execution directing the author authentication uh and delivery of said bonds delegating to the city manager authority to determine the terms of the series 2025 bonds within the parameters set forth herein authorizing the public sale buying competitive bid of the series 2025 bonds and approving the form of official notice of bond sale authorizing the city manager to award series 2025 bonds within the parameters set forth here and designating a bond register registrar and paying agent for the series 2025 bonds approving the form and authorizing the execution delivery of a paying agent and bond registrar agreement for the series 2025 bonds approving the form and authorizing the distribution of a preliminary official statement for the series 2025 bonds approving the form and authorizing the execution distribution of a final official statement for the series 2025 bonds providing for a book entry only system approving the form and authorizing the execution and delivery of a continuing disclosure commitment for the series 2025 bonds authorizing city officials to do all things deemed necessary in connection with the issue as sale and delivery of the series 2025 bonds providing for severability providing an effective date. Vice Mayor Herbst, Commissioner Glassman. Yes. Commissioner Beasley Pittman. Yes. Commissioner Sorensen. Yes. Mayor Trentals. Yes and thank you for being able to read that whole thing into the record. You take the rest of the night off. R3 quasi-judicial resolution for a site plan level 2 development permit and design deviation requests in uptown project area Cypress development. 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? Could you put your mic on? Met with Stephanie Toothaker. Commissioner Beasley Pittman had to step out. I also met with Ms. Toothaker, Commissioner Glassman. I met with Stephanie Toothaker. And Commissioner Sorensen. I met with Stephanie Toothaker. Okay. So the only people that have signed up to speak are for questions only. So anyone else wish to speak on this item? There being none. Pam, do you want to do you want to make any disclosures with regard to this item? Those are on R3. R3. Stephanie. Stephanie Toothaker. Okay. So someone like to move to close public hearing? Moved. Second. Seconded. Please call the roll. Vice Mayor Herbst. Yes. Commissioner Glossman. Yes. Commissioner Beasley Pittman. Yes. Commissioner Sorensen. Yes. Mayor Trentals. Yes. Yes. The public hearing on R3 is now closed. Someone, anyone have any questions with regard to this item? If none, someone would like to introduce the resolution? Introduced. Resolution has been introduced. Please call the roll. And that's for approval? Yes. Thank you. A resolution of the City Commission of the City of Fort Lauderdale, Florida approving the issuance of a site plan level two development permit for an alternative design deviation request that meets the overall intent of the Uptown Master Plan for a residential project to be known as Cypress Development located at 150 Northwest 68th Street, Fort Lauderdale, Florida in the Uptown Urban Village Northeast Zoning District. Vice Mayor Herbst. Yes. Commissioner Glossman. Yes. Commissioner Beasley Pittman. Yes. Commissioner Sorensen. Yes. Mayor Trentals. Yes. And that item is now approved. Moving on to R4, quasi-judicial resolution, amendment to a site plan level two development permit in the downtown regional activity center. Uh, anyone wishing to speak must be sworn in and the commission will announce any site visits, communications, or extroverted opinions received that make them a part of the record. Uh, we have a couple of people signed up to speak, Mr. Shine and Jonathan Trumpman, but I assume that's just for questions or do you have a presentation? Just for questions. Okay. Um, anyone have any disclosures? Uh, Vice Mayor. Yes. I met with Mr. Shine. Okay. Commissioner Beasley Pittman. I don't remember if I met with Mr. Shine on this one. Um, I'm going to say I met with Mr. Shine. Okay. Uh, any meeting with Mr. Shine is, is, is memorable. So I would imagine that. I remember that. I just don't remember the topic with it, but we met several times. Okay. I know I met with Mr. Shine. Commissioner Glassman. Site visit and met with Mr. Shine. Site visit? Yes, I did. Um, and Commissioner Sorensen. I met with Mr. Shine. Okay. So, uh, no one else has signed up to speak. Would some, someone like to move to close public. Moved. Second. Moved and seconded. Please call the roll. Yes. Yes. Commissioner Beasley Pittman. Yes. Commissioner Sorensen. Yes. Are you your turn to tell us? Yes. And public hearing on R4 is now approved. Uh, someone like to introduce the resolution. Introduced. Resolution has been introduced. And that's for approval. That's for approval. Yes. A resolution of city commission of the city of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, approving an amendment to a site plan level two development permit to amend the parking garage podium screening for the project known as Society, formerly known as Ex-Los Solis, located at 221 Southwest 1st Avenue, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in the regional activity center, city center district, having an underlying land use designation of downtown regional activity center, providing for severability and providing for conflicts. Vice Mayor Herbst. Yes. Commissioner Glassman. Wait. Um, I have a question here. Did you just say approve a resolution denying a proposed site plan? No. Approve it. I said approving. I just, I need to hear from staff on this. I'm sorry. Okay. I, because there's a big disconnect here and I just need to understand it. The, actually the cam says approve a resolution. Staff is recommending we approve a resolution denying the proposed site plan. Correct? Sorry. Anthony for hard. Anthony, you want to explain this? Yes. So, um, basically from staff's perspective, our concern is the quality of the materials on the screening, right? So we were originally told that when this was approved, it would last a decade. I believe it only lasted a couple of years before it started to deteriorate. The master plan calls for quality design and quality materials so that it can be durable. We don't feel that the material is strong enough to hold up. Um, however, having said that, if the commission does wish to approve it, it would just become a code enforcement issue at that point. Well, um, let me just say this, uh, at the very beginning, when we approved this building, it came with a wrap around the parking garage that was very creative and very artistic and not too long after the CEO was granted a few months afterwards, the previous owner took down the, the decorative wrap and left it open for many months and then subsequently wrapped it with a much cheaper material. And now we see it wrapped with, to me, it's signage. It's not a decorative wrap and it's a new, it's a, it's a new, uh, um, new owner. Uh, I met with the new owner. Uh, and you know, the idea was that they were going to return it to some kind of decorative outside. Uh, but they refused to do that. So, um, I was going to vote against this because I feel that, that they have not complied with the, with the, uh, with the request of, I know certain members of the commission as well as with city staff. So Mr. Shine, if you want to talk about, uh, where we're going with this, uh, that would be helpful. Good evening, mayor commissioners that that's, uh, Andrew Shine with Ocari and Chakas representing the property owner. Uh, that's why I did figure I was going to be doing a presentation. Okay. Um, uh, with me, I have Jonathan Trumpman with flow and if I can, we'll keep this under about six minutes, but I would like to have him just speak a little bit about flow just to give a little background on, on this project. Go ahead. Thank you. Mayor, Mayor Cantalas, vice mayor, herbs, commissioners, and staff. Thank you for your time and consideration. We appreciate the effort you put here as all public servants, and we know you have a busy docket with many more important issues. Our founder, Adam Newman had planned to be here personally, but unfortunately could not come, could not make it. He sends his apologies, but it's happy to meet hopefully on more productive and accretive topics, um, for the city of its residents as a brief refresher on flow. We were founded with mission of oneness to connect people with our neighbors, ourselves, and our natural environment. Um, in an age where our citizens are suffering from a crisis of disconnection, we are trying to remedy that and flows dedicated to addressing this by building communities around connection and oneness here in Fort Lauderdale. We took over a legacy asset that was frankly a bit run down when we took it over with a long-term vision and goal of turning the area around by building local community and positive connection. You're saying the society building was run down? I, the, the, the dressing specifically was run down and I think there was improvements to the area and the community that was, was not in, it was not being best to the community. Yes. Um, what does it mean in practice? We sponsor events hosted by residents and welcome the wider community. We have over 600 people on a weekly running club. We've brought positive mission-driven tenants like Pura Vida, high caliber office tenants like Humana, respectable restaurants like Ukiah, a weekly farmer's market, and we're launching an organic grocery in November. As that doesn't express, we'd love to focus on even more investments and effort in Fort Lauderdale, but have been bogged down candidly with the permanent issues and decisions that were made prior to us taking over the property. Flo and Adam personally would love nothing more than to spend time partnering with the city and community on a creative events, including our activations and residencies like we were doing elsewhere at the communities we were building throughout South Florida in Brickell, downtown Miami, El Portal, and Aventura. We appreciate your time and support in helping us move past this issue and focus on the future where we can build together. Okay. Well, let me tell you a little bit of the history. Okay. Because I got there before you. I'm sure you did. Okay. So when we first granted the, uh, CO for this building and part of the design process, the original owner had promised that they were going to put a full-scale grocery store in the, uh, in the building. Instead, they sold the commercial space and all they did was food and beverage, much of which was either successful or unsuccessful. And it caused the, the interior ground floor to be, uh, degraded. Okay. And then in addition to that, they pulled down the decorative signage, which was a component to the approval process. We were very thankful they did it. And we told them you must continue to keep that high quality caliber wrap on the, on the parking. Uh, otherwise you would be in violation of the original, uh, uh, building permit. Okay. Right now you have a sign. You can call it what you want. You can try to be holistic and, you know, feel good about all this stuff. It's a sign. It's not what it was intended to be. It was intended to be decorative art. Humankind is art. You put a little smiley face there. Might as well just be a copyright because that's really what it is. And, and I don't know why you're fighting us on this. I don't know why this is so important for you that you want to do battle with the city, but this is unfair to what was originally intended. Okay. And I don't know why you're doing this. So as far as I'm concerned, you know, you, we don't want to sign there. We have, you know, that's what billboards are for. And this is a very strategic areas at the very end of a site line, you know, that's very strategic in the city and you know, it is, and that's why you want to put a sign there to brand your operation. First you had flow. You took forever to get that off. And now you put something else up there called humankind. So it's very disappointing that here we are tonight having to again, do battle with you. And it's a very simple fix, but I don't know why you, and I don't know why you don't want to cooperate with us. So that's our, that's my position. And if I may step in here, I think there are different opinions on, on the, the design of this. And I don't know if this is working. If I put Andrew shine with a smiley face, would that be any better? No. Uh, but that's not what my name is. That's not what this is about here. Um, so what we've done is we did a lot of community outreach to determine whether this was viable and worth taking forward. And we have received an overwhelming amount of support. Show me this. Show me the, uh, the poll that you took. Do you enjoy seeing this installation in Fort Lauderdale? I don't have the exact, this is just there, there, I have, how does this make them feel? And then we get responses, happiness, give a word to how this makes them feel. And I understand that making me happy. I understand. And I understand that it's not traditional. I do. And it's in a non-traditional part of, of the city. Um, I do think, what do you mean? Non-traditional part of the riverfront is downtown, but that air, that riverfront area specifically, it's, it's one of the coolest areas in Fort Lauderdale, frankly. It was cooler until they built this massive structure there where we had actually a very pretty, you know, gathering place until the previous developer was approved to demolish the whole area. And they, and they built this huge structure. And now you got phase two, which is even bigger and more massive. Okay. Tell me how cool that is. The, the, the pedestrian experience there, it rivals what riverfront was when, when I was growing up. Um, at least to my, at least to my generation, perhaps not to all, but at least to my generation. Um, and I do want to give a little bit of just the background on this, which you do know, uh, this was approved as a, the exact same material screening that's there now. And it was slated to last five to seven years. We know it did not last five to seven years. Wait, is that true? Is that the original approved screening material? Not the original. It was the amended approved. Oh, yes. The one where, so my client purchased the property with, you know, they did a lot of due diligence on a multi hundred million dollar property. And this was the last approval for it. And it says the applicant has indicated that the screening material specified to last a decade and intends to replace these specific art pieces with new pieces by other local artists every five to seven years. The previous owner did not maintain that. This one has been up for almost three times the amount of the previous one or, uh, two and a half times the amount of the previous one. It's well maintained. And I don't think punishing a current property owner for the lack of maintenance from on the previous property owner, or even the promises on the previous part from the previous property owner would be fair in this instance. This will not last forever. Andrew, yes, Andrew, when your client bought this, it had a different sign up there flow. So I said, when you take the word flow down, put up an artistic piece, I said it face to face. And they said, we'll get back to you. Okay. They didn't make any promises. So we'll get back to you. What do they do instead? They put another sign up there to brand themselves. Humankind is, is more of what they project out to the community rather than a brand. It doesn't say that it's not flow. It's not a website. It's humankind. And we had suggestions to reach out to the community, which we did. And we had suggestions to reach out to the NSU art museum. I don't want to speak for Bonnie Clearwater here. Uh, but she said she loved it and we should put up a QR code on it. So everyone we've spoken to has enjoyed this and it really does. It's, this is a community oriented building, unlike any other building in Fort Lauderdale, the amount of community activism that they do and building a community. And the humankind is part of that. It's not part of their brand, but it's part of that, that overall ambience and aura that they're trying to project out to the community. So I do understand. And this, I, this is not going to last forever. This screening, but it's just going to replace it with another billboard. We would have to, we would have to come back to replace it with anything else. But at this point, you know, they, they relied on having this screening. They didn't, they relied on it and they looked at this. Excuse me, don't even use that word because before they changed it to humankind, it was flow. The, the, the screening that's up there now, it doesn't look like this. It looks like that, that, that has not changed. We're not, this is, this is without the flow. This is what's up there now. So Amir, this is what's been up there. If I, if I may interject, would you please? So the signage is a part of the code case and it is not a part of today's approval. They cannot get approved for the sign tonight. This is, this is, this issue is just about material with regards to the screening. They were approved for a particular screening. They sought to have it amended. It was approved administratively. The conditions for that administrative approval has failed. They came back to staff for another administrative approval. Staff denied it and the city commission called that item up. So you are now only, um, only considering the screening. Nothing in this action will approve the wording, uh, along with the screening. So they, that, that code case will still remain. It would still have to remove the screening. Okay. The, the, the, the signage with regards to you. Can, can you go to the previous slide right there? Doesn't that say humankind to you? It looks like, uh, one out of every five murals in, uh, in Wynwood to me. Okay. Well, we're not Wynwood. I know only have one. We don't have five. All right. Anyway. So the real issue here is on the material and not on the subject matter. So it's been called up. Who called it up? And hasn't the material failed already? Yeah. The previous owner did not maintain it. Right. But they've maintained it already. But this is, this material has not been approved administratively or by the commission. Previously it has. This was the same material. You want to explain that to us? Yeah. Because Mr. Spence just said something differently. No, Mr. Spence is correct. There are two distinct issues. We do have an open code case about the signage. So our code is very, that's one thing, the signage. Right. Our code is very distinctive in explaining what a sign is and basically what a super graphic is. The image that you saw with, well, the image that's up on the screen is a super graphic, no words, no texts, no references to anything. Uh, signs tend to advertise, right? And so that's the big difference. There is a process to go through for a sign of that size because signs are limited in size where super graphics tend to not be. So the, the change from the original to the next, I think was done without approval and had to come in to fix it later on. But this is really about the material of the sign of the, sorry, the screening itself. And if it's denied, denied, it would go back to what it was originally. Anthony, how does this not meet the principle of building design? So it was a big concern with staff on the material and, and how long it would last. The principle of building design that's, that's quoted in the, uh, the cam talks about high quality design, high quality materials because of the material tends to deteriorate over time. We, you know, we have a very harsh climate when it comes to things outside. Um, it just didn't last as long as, as it was specified to. I mean, I think it was touted as something that could last up to a decade, but it didn't last anywhere near that long. I believe it was only a couple of years before it started to deteriorate and maybe it was a lack of maintenance. And like I said, if this is something that the city commission wants to see again, there's a separate issue with the sign, but if the material isn't of a concern, it would become a code enforcement issue. However, you're looking at something that would probably be a repetitive problem over time. Well, that was what I was going to just say, but you're already saying this already is a code issue for the sign for the sign. So it could also be a code issue for the material. If they don't maintain it. Yes, it could be. So we would, we would cite like we do anybody else and give them a time to cure. Right. And if they did it in that period of time, it would be fine. Why do we just want to keep going round and round and round and round on this? Like that's probably an answer for the African, not me. So this has been called up. So go ahead, Dan. Yeah, let me jump in here. So, okay. Thank you, Anthony. Appreciate it. Come on up both. Okay. So we're dealing with here today, tonight is I called this up. It's the material. So as you heard, staff is concerned about the durability of proposed material. What's your response to the concern about the durability of the proposed material? Will this last? So basically, here's my question. Is it going to last? It's not going to last forever. How long is it going to last? Cause nothing lasts. How long is it going to last? And what are you going to do as soon as starts to show signs of deterioration? So we put up the same material that was there. That was what we thought was approved and reliant. So obviously this will not last forever. I can't tell you how long it will. When we start to see deterioration, it's important to our brand and our image to maintain integrity. So as soon as we start to see that, if you are going to, if the commission believes we should, or the staff believes we should use a different material in X sign, we're happy to consider that and be collaborative on it. What we don't want is to have invested the money using the same material that we have before and now saying, okay, we have to take it down and put in a different material. If on a go forward basis, the determination is that all future signs should be of a higher grade material, then obviously as good owners, we'll look into that. But I think our position is that we don't want to have wasted the money and then take this down before it starts to deteriorate. Once it starts to deteriorate, we will obviously replace it with something. And if that is determined to be a higher grade material, then we'll do that. Did you get a permit to put this sign up? We did not. You did not? No. It was before my time, but we did not. Okay. So this was an unpermitted project. So now what? I confess, Mayor, I agree. Our team in good faith thought, saw something in tatters, went in, didn't realize they needed a permit. They didn't have a general counsel. You didn't realize it needed a permit. Yes. They did not realize they needed a permit. I, I would not tell you what it was. Okay. Chris, is there anything you want to add to this? No. Okay. Okay. Um, so there's a motion, there's a, uh, someone, the resolution was introduced to approve. That's what's pending right now. That was vice mayor. I believe you said you did that who introduced the resolution. I did. Oh, Ben, you introduced the resolution to approve. Yeah. Yes. Yes, ma'am. Okay. And just, but just, uh, still not done here though. Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. Um, so here's my expectation is that any deterioration of the material is, it's not up to city staff to go out and say, Hey, things are deteriorating. My view is it's up to you to proactively say, this is not meeting the appropriate standards that we all agreed on and that we're going to be proactive and working with the staff, city staff to mitigate. I agree with that commission. And that's why we changed in the first place because it had deterioration and obviously doing unpermitted work is not acceptable. It's not the way to do it. And I agree with you. And so I don't know if this is going to pass, but if it does pass, that's surely the commission giving grace and expecting a better performance going forward without excuses. Okay. Like yes, mayor, I'm, I'm moving it. Okay. Introducing it for approval for approval. Okay. And where are we with the, with the roll call? I'm sorry. I'm confused now. Go ahead. Approval for denial. No, it's approval for approval. It's approval for to allow the screening. Yes. To keep it commission. Keep what they've got, even though city staff says it doesn't comply with, with the current standards. Continue the role. Commissioner Glossman. I, you know, this is an interesting one for me, but I, I, I have to be honest. I just rather not see us have to come back and talk about this again pretty soon. Uh, I've read all the backup staff has explained very clearly why this does not meet the standard. I think we should just fix it now and fix it right and make sure that it does meet the standard and make sure that it does meet the principle of building design and make sure that it, it just conforms with all that or else we're just going to be here again when this deteriorates and we'll have the same argument about the material. And I just rather see us do it the right way right now. So I'm going to, I'm going to vote no. Commissioner Beasley Pittman. I got to give a little commentary myself here on this. Um, um, what I'm, I'm thinking about with this process right now with the deterioration, possible deterioration of the signage, um, it would be determined by the owner that there's deterioration. When you determine that, what would be the timeline for you to change that signage? It would be quick. Quick is not a time. So if we are replacing it in kind, uh, it could be a month or two months until we could take it down immediately. Uh, but a month or two months until it goes back up. Um, if we can't replace it with the same or similar material, uh, then what we would have to do is take it down. Uh, we would have to come up with some other type of more, I guess, a permanent screening. Uh, it would have to go to the development review committee, probably back to the commission. Um, that would be about a six to eight month process during which time the screening wouldn't be, it would just be an open face garage. Also during that time, we would be getting a code violation for having an open face garage. So kind of between a rock and a hard place there. Um, but yeah, if we replaced it in kind one to two months, if we had to replace it with something brand new, six to eight months, I would say with six to eight months until approval, plus maybe another four, four months for construction. So let's say a year. So if we, um, yes, just, I, so that we're not confused. I just want to reiterate that we have a code case of regards to design and we're not approving and you're not asked to approve a signage. You're, you're asked to approve the meshing. Okay. Understanding that. But where I'm going with this is if, um, we vote to, um, deny this and I'm thinking the sign has to come down. Is that the goal? It has to come down. How long will it be before it's replaced? Either way, either way. So the posture that you'd be, if, if you approve the denial, the posture that you'll be in is with their original, original approval, which is actual, actually a metal facade that they would have to, uh, put up in place of what they have, um, currently. It's shown on the bottom of this photo is what the original was. Okay. And my question is to that, that metal piece is not there now, right? No. Okay. So if we vote to deny this, the signage comes down or the screening come down and they would have to go to the metal louvre rod screening system. How long will it take for them to get that? If it's going to be six to eight months anyway, is what I'm trying to find out. Is it going to be six or eight months anyway to get it to what we're saying is, um, acceptable to the code? I would say at least, I don't know what the materials were on the original one. If it's still available, the pricing of it, I would say at least six to eight months. What's the term? Six dozen, a half a dozen to a dozen? Um, voting to, um, okay. What's my choices again? I'm sorry. We keep going around. Approving is meaning that it would stay the way it is. Yes. Okay. I approve it. Stay the way it is. Yes. Commissioner Sorenson. Yes. Mayor Trent Ellis. No. So it approves. It's passed. Okay. Thank you. And again, for the record, that this approval does not, uh, waive their violation of the signed code. I agree. Understood. Thank you. Okay. Um, our five resolution approving and ratifying collective bargaining agreement between the city of Fort Lauderdale and Federation of Public Employees effective October 1st, 2025 through September 30th, 2028 and authorizing execution of the collective bargaining agreement. Uh, no one has signed up to speak. Um, anyone have any questions with regard to R5? There being none, we'd someone like to introduce the resolution. Introduced. A resolution of the city commission of the city of Fort Lauderdale, Florida approving and ratifying a collective bargaining agreement between the city of Fort Lauderdale and the Federation of Public Employees, the division of the National Federation of Public and Private Employees, AFL-CIO effective October 1st, 2025 through September 30th, 2028 and authorizing execution of the collective bargaining agreement. Vice Mayor Herbst. Yes. Commissioner Glassman. Having, uh, having just celebrated Labor Day, this makes perfect sense. Yes. Commissioner Beasley-Pittman. Commissioner Sorensen. Yes. Mayor Trentoff. Yes. An R5 is now approved. PH1, public hearing. This has, uh, been asked by the, uh, uh, the applicant to be deferred to which meeting now? 16th. September 16th. September 16th, 2025. We don't have to vote on that, do we? Yes. I think to keep the- Do you have to vote on that, Dwayne? To defer? To keep the advertising correct. Yes. In order to preserve the, uh, notice. Okay. Move to defer to September 16th, 2025. Do I hear a second? Second. Been moved and seconded. Please call the roll. Vice Mayor Herbst. Yes. Commissioner Glossman. Yes. Commissioner Beasley-Pittman. Yes. Commissioner Sorensen. Yes. Mayor Trentoff. Yes. And that's now been deferred to September 16th. PH2, public hearing, quasi-judicial resolution, approving the rescission of the historic landmark site designation of the property commonly known as the Robinson Cobb House. 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. Uh, does anyone have any disclosures on that? Uh, Vice Mayor? Commissioner Beasley-Pittman? I don't recall any either. Uh, Commissioner Glassman? I had email communications with, uh, Mr. Paul Falcone. Okay. And, uh, Commissioner Sorensen? Nope. None. Okay. Um, don't want to sign up to speak. Uh, is the owner of the property here tonight? Hi. Do you want to come up here and just tell us what went on? Stop talking. I applied for a historical designation in 2002, and it was approved. Wait, wait, wait. What is your name? Robinson. Okay. I'm Ben Robinson. Mr. Robinson, did you sign in to speak up there? No. All right. Uh, since it's quasi, can I just swear you in real quick? Sure. Do you swear or affirm the evidence you're about to receive as the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? I do. Thank you. And, uh, it was approved, and 23 years later, I'm, um, ready to move on, and nobody's gonna let me move on until it's no longer historical. So why was it approved as historic to begin with? Um, does anyone remember Marilyn Rathburn? Yes. She did research with us, and, uh, we made a presentation based on the mid-modern aspect of the house, and, um, it had an unusual addition to it, and, uh, it was approved. And you, you, you volunteered to have it approved? Yes. Okay. But, um, but now you don't want it, you don't want it anymore? No. No. Okay. All right. Mr. Mr. Cobb has passed on, and, um, it's just, uh, it's, it's, it was nice having a historical home all these years, but unfortunately, we're not in Charleston or Savannah. It's a big deal, you know? Okay. So we just need to get it, uh, um, rescinded. Okay. I mean, if I could add, this was an interesting case back in the day. Originally, the Historic Preservation Board actually denied the historic designation on this, and the commission, at the urging of one of the commissioners, actually approved the historic designation after the Historic Preservation Board said no. What did they know? Because there were, there were modifications to the house to the extent where they felt that it really no longer was historic or met the criteria. So this is a very interesting case that we normally don't see. Right. Exactly. You're welcome. Thank you very much. Okay. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Does anyone else wish to speak on this item? They're being known. Would someone like to move to close public hearing? Someone moved to close public. It's been moved. Do I hear a second? Second. Been moved and seconded. Please call the roll. Vice Mayor Herbst, not present. Commissioner Glassman? Yes. Commissioner Beasley-Pittman? Yes. Commissioner Sorensen? Yes. Mayor Trentos? Yes. And public hearing on PH2 is now closed. Would someone like to introduce the resolution? Introduced. And that's for approval? Approval. Thank you. Approval of the rescission. Approval of the rescission. Right. Yes. Please call the roll. A resolution to the city commission in the city of Fort Lauderdale, Florida approving rescission of the historic landmark site designation of the Robinson Cobb House located at 1109 Northeast 16th Place, Fort Lauderdale, Florida in accordance with section 47-24.11 of the city of Fort Lauderdale, Florida unified land development regulations providing for conflicts and providing for an effective date. Vice Mayor Herbst, not present. Commissioner Glassman? Yes. Commissioner Beasley-Pittman? Yes. Commissioner Sorensen? Yes. Mayor Trentos? Yes. And PH2 is now approved. Moving on to ordinance of second reading. OSR 1, quasi-judicial ordinance approving vacation of right-of-way utilities public purpose easement. Anyone wishing to speak must be sworn in and the commissioner will announce any site visits, communications, or extrovert opinions received and make them a part of the record. Commissioner Beasley-Pittman, do you have any disclosures? No, no disclosures. I have no new disclosures. Do you have any new disclosures, Commissioner Glassman? No, no. Thank you. And Commissioner Sorensen. Okay. No one signed up to speak. Would someone like to move to close public hearing? So moved. Second. Been moved and seconded. Please call the roll. Vice Mayor Herbst, not present. Commissioner Glassman? Yes. Commissioner Beasley-Pittman? Yes. Commissioner Sorensen? Yes. Mayor Trentos? Yes. And public hearing on OSR 1 is now approved. Someone like to introduce the ordinance? Introduced. The ordinance has been introduced. For approval, please call the roll. In ordinance vacating or retained right-of-way utilities and public purpose easement lying within the vacated Northwest 16th Avenue right-of-way recorded in official records book 12602, page 611, as recorded in the public records of Broward County, Florida, located east of Lauderdale Manor Drive, north of Northwest 18th Court, west of Northwest 15th Avenue, and south of Northwest 19th Street, all said lands being in the city of Fort Lauderdale Broward County, Florida. Vice Mayor Herbst, not present. Commissioner Glassman? Yes. Commissioner Beasley-Pittman? Yes. Commissioner Sorensen? Yes. Mayor Trentos? Yes. And OSR 1 is now approved on second reading. OSR 2, second reading, quasi-judicial ordinance, rezoning from residential multifamily low-rise medium density district to the Northwest Regional Activity Center, mixed-use west district. New Hope Development Corporation? Anyone wishing to speak must be sworn in. The commissioner will announce any site visits, communications, or expert opinions received and make them a part of the record. Commissioner Beasley-Pittman, any additional disclosures? No new disclosures. I have no new ones. Commissioner Glassman? None new. And Commissioner Sorensen? No new. Okay. No one is signed up to speak. Someone like to move to close public hearing? Move. Second. Move and seconded. Please call the roll on closing public hearing. Vice Mayor Herbst, not present. Commissioner Glassman? Yes. Commissioner Beasley-Pittman? Yes. Commissioner Sorensen? Yes. Mayor Trentos? Yes. And public hearing is now closed. Someone like to introduce the ordinance? Introduced. The ordinance has been introduced. In ordinance amending section 47-1.6.B of the City of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, unified land development regulations through the revision of the official zoning map of the City of Fort Lauderdale Schedule A revised compilation attached there to and by reference made a part thereof so as to rezone from residential multifamily low-rise medium-density district to northwest regional activity center mixed-use west district all of lots 9 and 10 block 11 Lincoln Park according to the plot thereof as recorded in plot book 5 page 2 of the public records of Broward County, Florida located north of northwest 6th Street east of northwest 14th Avenue west of northwest 13th Terrace and south of northwest 7th Street all said lands being in the City of Fort Lauderdale, Broward County, Florida. Vice Mayor Herbst? Yes. Wait a minute. Can he vote on this since he didn't do his disclosures? Do you want to do your disclosures, John? None. Okay. Go ahead. Okay. Commissioner Glassman? Yes. Commissioner Beasley-Pittman? Yes. Commissioner Sorensen? Yes. Mayor Trentiles? Yes. So OSR 2 is now approved on second reading. We have OSR 3 second reading and ordinance repealing the residence requirement to department directors of the code of ordinances of the City of Fort Lauderdale and to remove the requirement that department directors reside in the city limits. One person signed up to speak but he's left the meeting. Anyone else wish to speak on this item? Someone like to move to close public hearing? Moved. Second. We move to second it. Please call the roll. Vice Mayor Herbst? No. Commissioner Glassman? Yes. Commissioner Beasley-Pittman? You voted no to close public hearing? Oh, I'm sorry. I apologize. Public hearing. Okay. My mistake. Okay. Yeah. Yes. Close public hearing. Commissioner Glassman? Yes. Commissioner Beasley-Pittman? Yes. Commissioner Sorensen? Yes. Mayor Trentiles? Yes. And public hearing is now closed on OSR 3. Would someone like to introduce the ordinance? Introduce for approval. Introduce for approval. Please call the roll. In ordinance of the City Commission of the City of Fort Lauderdale, Florida amending Chapter 2 Article 3 of the Code of Ordinances of the City of Fort Lauderdale, Florida by repealing Section 2-41 titled Residence Requirement for Department Directors to remove the requirement for department directors to reside in the city limits, providing for severability, providing for appeal of conflicting ordinance provisions, providing for correction of Scrivener's errors, and providing for an effective date. Vice Mayor Herbst? Commissioner Glassman? Yes. Commissioner Beasley-Pittman? Yes. Commissioner Sorensen? Yes. Mayor Trentiles? Yes. And OSR 3 is now approved on second reading. We have two walk-on items. The first is a walk-on resolution approving an airport infrastructure grant agreement with the Federal Aviation Administration for the design of Runway 27 Bypass Taxiway and Run-Up Area Relocation Project. Would someone like to introduce the resolution? Introduced. Resolution has been introduced. No one is signed up to speak. Any questions? Please call the roll. A resolution to the City Commission of the City of Fort Lauderdale, Florida authorizing the acceptance of grant funds from the Federal Aviation Administration in the approximate amount of $637,954 for the Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport for the Runway 27 Bypass Taxiway and Run-Up Area Relocation Project, delegating authority to the City Manager to finalize the terms and conditions of the grant agreement with the Federal Aviation Administration to accept such grant funding and authorizing the City Manager to execute the grant agreement, providing for an effective date. Vice Mayor Herbst? Yes. Commissioner Glassman? Yes. Commissioner Beasley-Pittman? Yes. Commissioner Sorensen? Yes. Mayor Trentiles? Yes. And that resolution is now approved. The second walk-on resolution is a resolution of the City Commission of the City of Fort Lauderdale, amending Resolution No. 25-142 to expand the appointment of Weiss-Sirota, Healthman, Cole, and Behrman to represent the City of Fort Lauderdale in a matter regarding the Florida Department of Transportation concerning traffic control, device noncompliance, and providing for an effective date. Would someone like to introduce the resolution? Introduced. Anyone have any questions? There being none, please call the roll. A resolution of the City Commission of the City of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, amending Resolution No. 25-142 to expand the appointment of Weiss-Sirota, Healthman, Cole, Behrman, PL2, represent the City of Fort Lauderdale in a Florida Department of Transportation traffic control, device noncompliance matter, and providing an effective date. Vice Mayor Herbst? Commissioner Glassman? Yes. Commissioner Beasley-Pittman? Yes. Commissioner Sorensen? Yes. Mayor Trentiles? Yes. And OSR 3 is now approved. Excuse me. The walk-on is now approved by the Commission. Is there any further business of the City Commission? There being none, that meeting is concluded. Let's revert, return to the conference agenda. Conference agenda we had left off regarding City Commission reports. Vice Mayor, do you have any commission reports? No. Commissioner Beasley-Pittman? No reports. Just want to thank everyone while I was under doctor's care, medical treatment, for the kind calls and prayers. Thank you for thinking of me and continue to do so. Thank you. Get better soon. Thank you. Commissioner Glassman? Yes. Very quickly, August 25th, I do want to thank the three neighborhoods on the beach, Dauphin Isles, Birch Park Beach, and the Lauderdale Beach Homeowners Association. An excellent meeting over at the Beach Community Center. And I wanted to thank the leaders of those neighborhoods for coming together for that meeting. August 30th was a very strong evening. I really enjoyed attending the AFL-CIO Labor Ball and seeing so many folks from our city at the Diplomat Hotel in Hollywood. And September 2nd, just last night, an excellent meeting. Thank you, staff, for conducting that for the Central City Mixed Use Rezoning District proposal, that update. And I guess that will be going on to Planning and Zoning and then on to us. So I just wanted to thank everyone that attended that. And coming up on September 13th, we have the International Swimming Hall of Fame Awards at the Sonesta. And that's it for me, Mayor. Thank you. Okay. Commissioner Sorensen. Thanks, Mayor. Just one comment. September 11th, it's our 24-year anniversary of 9-11 and the horror that was. And we have the city remembrance. It's 9 a.m. on the Riverwalk near the sign we were talking about, actually, actually, near the wharf. So I want to invite everyone to come out to... Isn't it at the Fire Safety Museum? Yeah. I've got West Las Olas. Let me see. It's at the Fire Safety Museum. Okay. Great. Sorry, I stand corrected. I thought I was at the... Great. So at the Fire Safety... It's not here. It's not at the Sandy Ninager statue. No. It's not on the Riverwalk? Yeah. Oh, the evening's at the... Okay. Thank you, Chief. So 9 a.m. Fire Safety Museum. So please join us if you're available. Thank you, Mayor. You're welcome. Does that conclude your remarks? Yes. Okay. Just a couple of things. I was very happy to attend Rabbi Kaplan of the Downtown Jewish Center on August 26th. He was celebrating his 50th birthday. So Mazel Tov, happy birthday, Rabbi. It's a great event. Brought out a lot of people in your congregation. So I was very happy to be part of that. Also attended the Labor Ball. Very well attended. Many of the speeches were very, very important. And so very happy to hear that the labor movement continues to thrive. Yesterday, I did the welcoming remarks at the Community Leaders Breakfast for Tory Alston, who's the new president of Broward College. And that is going to be followed by, this Friday, his investiture as president of Broward College, which is going to be at 1 p.m. at Bailey Hall in Davie. So anyone wishing to come, please know that everyone is welcome. And a couple of things. First of all, I noticed that the city has finally filed suit against the parties in connection with the La Sol's Garage on Fort Lauderdale Beach. A 16-count lawsuit was finally filed to try to derive damages that we have suffered now as a result of the defect in the workmanship and the materials used in the lighting as well as the screening of that garage. So that was filed this week. So very happy to see that moving forward. I guess every effort at mediation failed, Mr. Spence? In terms of voluntary mediation, yes. Yes. Okay. Okay. And that's it. Okay. City Manager, do you have a report? Thank you, Mayor. I just want to share that our teams, including police, fire, parks, and recreation, and others are already preparing for the boat show, which is going to take place on October 29th through November 2nd. So you should have received some communication from the event organizers as to potential participation by the city commission, so look out for that. Our IT department recently launched the Cyber Smart Initiative, where they're providing cybersecurity training for our neighbors at various civic association, homeowners association meetings. They did a soft launch over the summer, and they're going to do a hard launch this month with the Council of Civic Association at their next meeting. Our sandbag distribution is going to have its fifth installment this weekend on Saturday and Sunday from 10 to 1 at Five Parks, Floyd Hull, George English, Holiday Park, Mills Pond, and Riverland Park. To date, we've distributed about 1,900 bags of sand. As far as the City Hall project, we discussed this a little bit earlier, but we do intend to come to the October 7th meeting to have a discussion on the evaluation of the six proposals. Holiday Park will follow suit likely in late October or early November with a discussion of the three proposals that we received. This is regarding the parking structure? Yes. Okay. That concludes my report. Okay. Mayor, actually, I have a question. Yes. Last week, we got an email memo on the one-stop shop. Do we need to talk about that, take action on that, or what's... Is anyone prepared, Mr. Spence, anyone prepared to talk about that tonight? The memo that was issued came from your three of your four charter officers who have been working together with the developer to identify opportunities to cure the default that had been issued earlier this summer. The city attorney, and I'm sure he will speak to this, issued a partial cure. Staff went through a long and arduous process of trying to obtain the documentation necessary as required based on the provisions of the default. So I'll turn it over to Mr. Spence. So you should have received the copy of notice of partial cure and intent to waive previously notice of default. We've previously, our office previously sent a notice of default to a one-stop FTL citing default of Section 4.1, Section 3.3.1, and Section 13.16. The notice essentially says that there was a partial cure of default with regards to Section 4.1. That would be the financing end of it. The financing end of it. But there are other things that still remain in default. Correct. And so there was essentially an offer of a waiver. If we enter into an agreement, we've been calling it a recognition agreement. And I haven't heard from either party as yet with regards to that offer, but that would be the next step. So to your point, we need to put some deadlines here, right? Yeah. I mean, Mayor, I have major concerns with this. I disagree. As I've talked to staff about this, they have significant concerns with this. And this process, the last couple months, have been incredibly difficult for staff to get what they need. Well, that's not the story I'm getting from staff. And I also sat in on those meetings, most of all of them, actually, with staff and the development team. And as far as I'm concerned, they have submitted all of the information that was requested by the team of all of the charter officers who sat there. It was an arduous process, I'll agree with you, but I don't see anything that is violation of a comprehensive agreement that was established. Well, that's not true because they haven't paid their rental fee. Well, no, but again, again. And they haven't submitted to DRC here. Correct. Those are two major things. Those are the two things that still have to be determined in terms of the timeline. The timeline was a year and a half ago. No, but we had a meeting, and we discussed it, and then a letter went – well, I'm only repeating what has already been sent to us. But as it stands now, staff issued a – I guess, what did you call it, a partial cure? A partial cure recognizing that they had the financing in place. Correct. But they still haven't paid the rental payment or submitted to DRC. Well, would you pay the rental agreement if you only had a partial cure? Or wouldn't you want to be told that you've cured the default before you paid the money? In other words, why would you pay the money if you haven't been told that the cure is in place? But the cure is the payment. It's like rent. It's a chicken and the egg. No, no, no, no. It's a chicken and the egg. As a landlord – Wait a minute, wait, wait. In terms of the payment, though, we do need to clarify the record. The payment was something that the commission offered up because based on the current comprehensive agreement, that payment is not due until after the CO. Correct. Right? So they had offered in some discussion here with the commission in recognition of the time that it took to get to this point that they would make these payments up front. So a part of that waiver of, you know, the default in terms of the time is of the essence, we're looking to get an agreement that sets out milestones in terms of recognizing those payments and other issues. And DRCs. Right. DRCs. DRCs. And financing is there. It's there. They're ready to go. But we keep – I believe, because it's been a long, arduous process, I just think that we need to wrap this up now. Wrap it up. Get the check and get the timeline for DRC. Okay. So why don't we establish the timeline tonight? Actually, Mayor, before we get to that, I have a high degree of discomfort with the partial release. So, Dwayne, please tell me what you've done to assure yourself that the financing is actually there. I'm the attorney in the room. Okay. That question you would have to – I would have to defer to the city manager and the city auditor. So who has actually determined that the purported financing actually exists? So as an auditor, which I've spent most of my career as, we do what we call third-party confirmations. So when I go and audit you and you say you have cash in the bank, I send a confirmation to the bank to independently confirm that because I can't rely on the assertion that you make to me that you have cash in the bank. So I have to independently confirm that with a third party that's not connected to you. What have we done to assure ourselves that there is actually financial capacity available with the supposed financier? We received four items that – four documents that were provided that supports – that supposedly supports that they have the financing. In my opinion, really two of them are allowing two individuals the right to negotiate and do some things. And the other one, the third item, has the – with the intention to do it. And there's still a couple things. But the bottom line for me from an audit standpoint is that I don't know what bank they're dealing with, and I don't know what the terms are, and I don't know when that money is coming. That's an understanding that that is a request that I've made that will be in that new – I don't know what we're calling the letter, the new letter that's going to go out as one of the requirements. But to me, the four documents that we have are, to me, has not satisfied to myself that we actually have the funding. I'd like to, like you would say, confirm that we have the funding with a bank and which bank it is and so forth. Then why did you put your name on a partial cure letter? Well, I'm always saying that those are the things that we ask for. But as we receive something, there's a new – there's always a new twist to it. Like, you know, there's a new person now involved that we don't know who it is. I haven't been able to confirm him. So there's a couple of things that are still pending. But if everything works out, there's a possibility that it's there. But the main thing that I brought up is that there's a document called a deed that's transferring $500 million in bonds from one asset manager to a different asset manager. And I kind of question that that was not recorded. Right now it's a piece of paper. It might be legit, but I don't know if that really makes sense if one asset manager is transferring their assets that they're managing for someone to another asset manager. And the original collateral for the project, from what I was told from the BGC company, is that it's all being collateralized by Nicholas Del Franco. But I don't know whatever happened to that. So that was kind of another open item that I don't know. But that's not what your letter said. Well, the letter says we asked for four things we wanted, confirmation on – and it says it the way it says it. It says we have intent to do this now. But it didn't really say what bank is it, when it's going to happen, what is the terms of it. So that's still kind of up in the air. If you lay those four documents out, you know, if everything went perfect, maybe that is confirmation that they have the funding. But until I see a confirmation which bank it was, when it is, I don't really know if that is really there. But what we asked for, we had requested. Again, like the last change was there's a new person involved with the company that's transferring over the bond amount. But again, like I said, I don't know who that person is. The original name they used was somebody that was not related to that company. And so then they added a new name, and we don't even have anything other than a passport number on the person, which, again, that needs to be vetted and looked at. But right now he may be totally legit. I don't know. But that's not what your letter said. Well, the letter says that, you know, and I had some discussion with everybody on the committee that was looking at it, is that we still have the opportunity not to really decide if it was completed with that new letter where they have to handle the two other open items and the requests that they're going to confirm what bank and what the criteria and the terms were. So we know that we can verify that the money is there because if you really look at it, there's still a piece in the first letter that says that the BCC structure program will look at this. And that's the same group on the letter of June 3rd that said these are the three criteria that they still have to go through before we're going to approve it. So in a roundabout way, you have to ask the question, is that item still required that this outside group approve and vent everything they want before they give us some money? So if that all works out, it's possible that that would work. But it's still kind of open. I have to. I don't see it as open. Having sat on all of those meetings and watched what you and Susan and Raquel and Dwayne asked these people at how many meetings were there, three, four? There were three, and I believe you attended some. Most. And every single one of those meetings, a list was generated and agreed upon with every single person in the room. And then by the next meeting, all of those things were supplied. And then more things were requested at a subsequent meeting. And those things were supplied. And then more things were requested at a subsequent meeting. And those things were supplied to the point where a partial cure letter was issued. And now the only remaining items are give us the timeline for DRC. And when can we expect the check? Again, again, if someone's asking me for a check for $250,000, I'm going to say, are we all good? Am I going to give you this money? Or am I going to give you this money? Then you're going to come back and tell me we're not good. In other words, you have to be a fool. You have to be a fool to write a check for $250,000 not knowing that the project is moving forward. Because then they're just going to go to court and we're going to get sued. Because, again, no one has shown me where the terms of the comprehensive agreement have not been met. And I watched this very – Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. No, they're not. Wait, wait, wait. So we still have not gotten confirmation that there is actually any financing out there. Yes, we have. No, we have assertions. We have representations. No, we have. That is not – no, Commissioner, that's not. You don't understand how this works. This is not your area of expertise. They didn't teach it to you in drama school. Well, we certainly know it's your area of expertise. It is. Exactly. I'm a 40-year CPA. Thank you. You know what? Yes. You were the auditor during this project, and we know how that went. And I objected to it. So now all of a sudden you're having issues. No, I had issues with it at the time. You were the auditor into Miami, and all of a sudden you had issues. Wait, wait, wait, wait. You've been the auditor for 16 years. I can give you a whole – And I objected to every single one of those. Gentlemen, let me focus on the issue. No. The issue is this. When the representatives from the organization were standing at the podium, they had – we had requested for verification of their financing, and once default was waived, they said they would make the payment of the rent. They said that right there at the podium. When it was cured. Right. Right. So they received a letter saying that the default on the financing was cured, but they still owe the $250,000. So there was no – they didn't put any strings attached to that. They said as soon as the cure was waived – excuse me, the cure was made, then they would make the payment. So where is it? Because it hasn't been – it's a partial cure. No one that is going to finance this project is going to release funds based on a partial cure. When a landlord sends a three-day notice saying, you know, you're in default of your lease and you have three days to make the payment, the tenant says, well, how do I know that if I make the payment, that default is going to be cured? Well, that's how you cure it with the payment. So you can't expect a waiver of the default on the rent payment before the rent payment is due and paid. Well, all I can say is these people that are trying to do this project, which I still believe is an excellent project for not just my district but for the city, they have to be the biggest masochists in the world to be going through this entire process and still – and wait, and wait, and still saying that we want to do this project because I can't even imagine that if they didn't have the wherewithal to do this project, if they didn't have the financing to do this project, if they didn't have the commitment to do this project, then why the hell would they be putting themselves through this ridiculous process for all this time? Because I'm telling you right now, I watched those meetings. I participated in those meetings and there was always something else that was asked of them and they always then gave that extra piece of information. Now, I believe that we're right at the end. I've asked the city manager to, again, meet with the attorney for the team and to just figure it out. What's the DRC process timeline and when can we expect the check? Well, why don't we make that decision right now? Let's make the decision right now when they have to submit to DRC and when they have to make the rent payment. And upon doing that, those items will be cured. So the rent payment should be due within 10 days from today and that will be cured and the DRC has to be submitted within 90 days. So if we say that, then that will be cured. So it's very simple. It's really, really simple. Well, just to clarify, that sort of deviates slightly from what we had discussed with them, which was to have what we're calling the recognition agreement, where we stipulate that there would be a payment on a certain date and that the DRC submittal will happen by a certain date and some other parameters to add a little bit of clarity around how this project will move forward, given that the comprehensive agreement isn't as clear as it probably could have been. We're setting clarity today. We're doing this now. Well, I have an objection to this process. If we were going to do this now and set clarity and vote, then that team should have been here. This should have been an agended item, not just willing. We were almost ready to adjourn. Commissioner Sorensen said, oh, by the way, don't yell. I'm not yelling. Yes, you are. This came out of the blue. No one is here. There's no due process. There's no one able to defend themselves. Hold on. There is due process. No, there's not. No, there's not. Excuse me. No, there's not. It's a city commission meeting where this is an important project in our commission. Is there an agenda item for that? And we're able to bring it up. Next meeting, we'd like to have this as a conference item agenda. We'd like to invite them to come. And let's agree upon dates. And maybe they'll bring a check with them. And maybe we can get a confirmation that the cash actually exists that's supposedly backing up this financing. Can we please get a confirmation? Yeah. It's more than... Susan has a background in this as well. She knows how to do a confirmation letter. Right. Was Susan's name on the cure letter, partial cure letter? Susan assisted in every aspect of this discussion and with the memorandum. Okay. So I guess she does, Commissioner Horst. No. She did not get a confirmation. I'm asking her to do that. Please don't tell me. You have no idea what you're talking about, Commissioner. She was part of this entire process that issued the partial cure. Susan, did you get a confirmation from a bank saying that they have cash available? Very simple. Did you get a confirmation? Not a representation, not an assertion. And you know what I'm talking about. Leading the witness. We did receive a copy of a, I want to call it a trust statement or a, hold on, I'll tell you what it's labeled. But we can send an independent confirmation to the bank. Exactly. That's all I'm asking for. But we did get a copy of the bank statement from Gauntlet, and it is a custody statement with that $500 million of U.S. dollars. So we can send an independent confirmation to them. That's all I'm asking for. But we did get a copy of the bank statement. Well, I'm not sure if that's what that is, because the way they're doing that is they're creating a deed saying that the company Gauntlet is transferring $500 million of bonds to BGC Global. That's all they're doing. That still doesn't mean that they're going to use any of that money to give the $140 million loan. But that's one of those documents where I was saying there's a process there, which I think that item should have been recorded. But it's not, you know, we're dealing with a Bahamian company that should have been recorded that. But, again, that's just a transfer. That doesn't mean we have the monies coming. Secondly, again, if you look at that first document where they're saying that they're ready to do business with One Stop, it says they intend to do it. They never said this is the bank, this is the interest, this is what we're doing here. So that's questionable. That might come to be true, but that's another questionable document. The other two documents, the other document is putting George Mathurou as someone who can negotiate this contract. But it doesn't mean that he did it or he's going to do it, but he has the authority to do it. And then the other document is there's a guy named Michael T. Williams who has the authority to work and negotiate with the Gauntlet's funds with BGC. To me, again, that doesn't really say that we have money coming to a bank. So my point of agreeing that, well, you've got four documents here, that if everything went perfectly, then you might have the funding. But I don't really think anyone would looking at that say, yeah, definitely we have it. So my understanding was is that the next step, we're creating a document that says we have some requirements with 13.1, 13.3 or whatever. And I persisted to say that we need to show that what bank are we dealing with and get confirmation with that bank, the money. That's all I'm saying. There still seems to be a lot to go on. And I think the $140 million is a much bigger deal than the $250 million. The $250 million is not really even part of the contract, in my opinion. It was just kind of a good thing that we wanted to pursue that we did at a couple of meetings ago. But that, to me, is almost like a side thing. I'm more concerned about getting the $140 million. And, you know, I originally wrote some points down, but I tell you, to me, there's some red flags here. I have some concerns with inconsistent information from May 6 all the way to last week. There's so many changes, so many documents that we've added, but then we deleted. And then we add Acer 2-8-11, but then we take them out. And so now there's no sign of that person. And, you know, I personally called London to speak to George Mathuru, and he didn't even know Jeffrey John. He didn't even know who he was. And we got an agreement that said he's going to be the one-stop person that's handling this. Pat, let me back you up on that. Hold on. You're telling me the guy who's providing $140 million in financing has no idea who he's giving it to? I asked that question on July 29th, and there was no answer. So, I mean, there's a lot of open holes. Maybe he didn't, you know, recall that. This is as bad as the first time when I asked the guy who he was borrowing the money from, and he didn't even know the company. If they have the money, that's all. And yet you signed the partial cure letter. I only did it with the agreement that they gave us some information that we requested by changing the name here, doing this, telling us, you know, the person from Gauntlet is not even listed in their profile, and they give us another name. So, that deed change doesn't mean anything to me. If I may interrupt at this moment. So, the partial cure letter was only signed by myself. And what we're dealing with in terms of providing notice, we have to provide notice with regards to any alleged default under the agreement pursuant to the requirements of the agreement. We provided that default notice, and in consultation with the other charters, I issued that partial cure letter that said that, in fact, that 4.1 was a partially cure. And dealt with the partial waiver. So, in terms of dealing with the outstanding matters, again, I haven't heard anything from these individuals in terms of my letter and the responses from them. Mayor, if you're looking to address anything, it would have to be at a regular scheduled meeting. And that's fine. If we can put it on a conference, as a conference item at a future meeting, hopefully next time. No, what I'm saying, you can't do a motion or... It'd have to be at a commission meeting. We could put it as a conference agenda item, and if we have to vote on anything, we can do it that evening. We do that all the time. But the point is that, you know, look, I have been in favor of this project from day one. I think it would be a tremendous opportunity for Flagler Village in the downtown to have something like this as part of our downtown urban experience. Okay, I totally agree with that. But it's not happening, okay? It's a flim-flam. We keep getting different names, different characters. One of the staff people here in our city told me that some of the letterhead looked like it was cut and paste, like it wasn't even part of, you know, something that looked original. You know, come on. I mean, either do it or get off the pot. You know, it's like this is very important to the city. It's a prime piece of real estate for the city, and, you know, there are other uses that we could consider for it if we're not moving forward with this particular project. So, yes, I remember the time when the applicant, Mr. Johns, stood up there, and when we asked him who the lender was, he couldn't answer the question. And, I mean, it's just – and then the fellow that was with him is no longer part of the deal, who was the lender. So, you know, again, yes, red flags keep flying in our face. So we need to just, you know, find out with certainty what's happening and put milestone deadlines. That $250,000 was something I requested just as a show of good faith, and if they can't come up with $250,000, how are they going to come up with $140 million? So based on the discussion, I take it that the offer to waive is on pause at this moment, if not withdrawn until the commission – No, no, no, you did what you did. We respect it. We support you, okay? But now let's – as Commissioner Glassman said, it'd be unfair to put those additional milestones to cure the other – to cure the other defaults, which was the $250,000 and the submission to DRC. So let's give them the opportunity to respond to that, when they're going to pay the $250,000, and when they're going to go through DRC. And that's when each of those events occur, then we will consider them having been cured. And the reason why I say that is, you know, I consider the offer to waive, as you know, as an attorney, you know, they haven't accepted it as yet. Did you make the offer to waive? Well, that's what's in the letter. So we have the partial cure and an offer of waver based on certain conditions. And they've never responded. Just to add to what D. Wayne is explaining, when I did not see a written response to the partial cure letter, I did reach out to a representative of the developer yesterday and spoke briefly. And my understanding is that they are supportive of moving forward with the recognition agreement. However, I have not seen anything in writing to that effect. And under the terms of the agreement, that doesn't. Is there a time certain on when they have to accept it by? There isn't a time certain with regards to that. So my question is, though, if we do receive the acceptance, then we do go through the process in good faith of negotiating the. Understood. But let's. No, I just wanted to make sure. Yeah, totally understood. So why don't we let's let's put this on as a as a conference agenda item and ask him to come and get some milestone dates that we can establish some certainty. You you did you you you know, you held out the you know, your your offer to cure those other two defaults. And let's see how we're going to be able to follow through on both of those. I think that's that's only fair to everybody. But we need to move forward on this. And there is still I apologize. Go ahead. Is this process fair to us? Thank you. I don't understand this. I'm just as a lay lay person who does business like this, who if someone came to my house and we went into a conversation about a contract and all these things. I would be like, wait a minute, better business, girl, police, somebody. This is fraud. I would have a situation with this. And as a responsible commission, they just say, let's keep it going. Let it roll. When it comes through, I'm voting no. Telling you now I'm not doing this. All right. Well, there's no vote right now. Understood. I'm just putting it out there. But they can come with the five sending the waiver. I'm saying no. I think it's time to consider. So why don't we? I don't accept it. OK, so let's. Commissioner Sorensen, let's let's put on as a conference. This agenda item, invite them to come and let's get some some certainty as to the expectations of performance on their part. Sure. And I really do want to see some confirmation of financing by that point. You can ask them about that when they come. No, I want staff to get this. I want us to independently confirm this before we have that. Before we have that meeting. I want to know that the money is there. Absolutely. Absolutely. We need confirmation of financing in the next three days. Absolutely. If they can't get that, this that is a major problem. So, Susan, did you say there's no confirmation of funds? There needs to be a confirmation of funds. Independent confirmation. That our city auditor is all thumbs up and supportive of. In my view. And Susan. Both of them. We were provided a copy of the bank statement, but we did not do, as the vice mayor said, a confirmation letter. Like a commitment? Which would be typical. A commitment? Well, a confirmation letter would be we write to them directly and they respond to us directly as opposed to having a statement provided to us. You write to whom? Through them. You write to whom directly? To the, at this point, it would probably be Gauntlet Holdings, who are the ones that have the trust statement. So, why haven't we written to them directly to request what you just said? Well, we got the four different documents and one of them was the bank statement and we do have a corporate resolution from Gauntlet. But, again, it was provided through the folks at One Stop as opposed to us getting it directly to them. But isn't that what you had requested? Plus, I think the seal, you wanted the seal and you requested all of that and you got all of that. Correct, but we got it through One Stop as opposed to writing directly to Gauntlet and having them send something directly to us. That would be the difference as opposed to just the copies of the things. So, then why wasn't that one of the things that was written on the board? We need that, what you just mentioned, as opposed to just through Gauntlet. Why was it not phrased that way so that you would be satisfied? Well, it doesn't matter. We just need to do the right thing. Well, because I'm saying that I believe that the funds have been shown, so that's the discrepancy. You know what, Ben Sorensen can tell me that he's got $100 million in the bank and that he's a friend of yours. That doesn't mean he's committed it to you. It doesn't mean he's committed to the project. It just means he's got $100 million. That's all we're talking about here. As I said, then these people must be the biggest masochists in the world to go through this. If they feel that they don't have the money or they feel that they can't do this project. I don't know what their motive is, but this commission is not, we're not masochists. I understand. We're not going to endure this much longer. I just want to say I didn't know this topic was going to come up today, so I had no reason. Well, you should know better, Pat. Well, it wasn't on the agenda, so I didn't think it was going to come up. But I have written a one-page item that I did not send out until I got another look at it. But to me, as an auditor, I think this is a great project, but I think it's being financed by the wrong group. So I really think we should start over from the financing side. You know, there's four things, and I'll just briefly say what they are, but there are red flags relating to inconsistent information. Can we save this? Okay. Can we just save this? I'll send it. Let's save this for now. Okay, because, again, I really wasn't prepared to talk about this, but there's quite a few concerns. Yeah, well, just in terms of the timing, just to be clear, Mayor, we have city conference workshop, which we had. We had other meetings. I was interested in bringing this up at the conference. We didn't have time. So this is an absolutely appropriate time to, just as we did our city commission reports, to bring other concerns and questions we have. Am I wrong on that, Mayor? You're not wrong on that. Is it okay to bring up topics like this? Bring up any topic you want. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate it. And so this was very healthy dialogue. So now, if I'm understanding right, Raquel, this will be on the city conference meeting agenda for September 16th. Correct. Okay, great. So everyone will have notice. I look forward to within three days, because I think that's completely appropriate, to hear confirmation of full funding for the project from the applicant and their team. And also, just one other thing is, in big deals like this, it's important, I think, that both parties, the city and the applicant, work together. And it's also my view that the applicant is very proactive in providing, knowing what big financing deals like this take, the documentation, the support and so forth, that they are very proactive in sharing that and getting that to the city in a very proactive, professional manner. And I look forward to seeing that, because that's how big deals like this get done. Okay. Is that fair, Raquel? I would proffer that we say maybe five business days. Great. Thank you. Five business days. Could I ask one last question, too? Yes. For the record, who is the company that's providing the financing? What is their legal name? So I can look into this company myself. I'd like to know who they are. Well, to me, the last iteration of it is. I think Susan's got it. She's coming up with some documents. Okay. Susan, do you have the actual legal name of the entity? Excuse me. The corporate resolution authorizing the loan is from BGC Global Investments Limited. BGC Global? BGC Global Investments Limited. If you go to... Where are they domiciled? This is out of, I believe, Gibraltar. Are they? Gibraltar, right. That one's Gibraltar. Are they Gibraltar? Gibraltar. Okay. So not a U.S.-based company. Okay. If you look at memo 25-140, you'll see the whole kind of chain of events. But on the second to last page, you can see the four documents that Pat referred to, and they're also attachments. So who's gauntlet in all this? I keep hearing gauntlet, gauntlet, gauntlet. So who's gauntlet? They're an asset manager, just like BGC is an asset manager. And one of the documents is just clearly, and it's not a bank statement. It's a custodial account from BYN in Pershing. So they're holding the bonds for them. But all that document is saying is gauntlet agrees to transfer $500 million of the bonds over to the control of BGC global investment. Okay. Again, what does it mean that they have a deal? Who is gauntlet now? What's their full name? Gauntlet Holdings Asset Management LTD. Hold on, hold on. Gauntlet Holdings Asset Management LTD. And like I said, these are attachments to that memorandum. You'll be able to see the actual statements. We have the corporate resolution authorizing the loan from BGC global. We have the financial capability confirmation, which is the custody statement. Then the deed of assignment from Gauntlet saying that BGC is authorized to invest in the project. Back to Gauntlet for one second. So BGC is a Gibraltar-based company. Where is Gauntlet Holdings Asset Management domiciled? Ontario, Canada. Ontario, Canada. Okay. But their company is set up in the Bahamas. Is anybody an American company here? Is anybody like Delaware Corporation, normal? Like stuff that you typically see? No. Okay. Everybody is domiciled in Delaware, Commissioner, just so you know. All right. So like 99% of the corporations. So let's wrap this up. Okay. Thank you. All right. That was the last question. Anything further, Madam City Manager? I think my report was concluded a while back. All right. Okay. This meeting is now concluded. Wait, wait, wait. Oh, that's right. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Thank you. I'm called to do my civic duty on September 16th. So I have jury duty. Hopefully I'll be... Do they allow attorneys on juries? Well, hopefully I'm released by the evening meeting, but Paul Van Gale will be here for the conference meeting. Okay. And we'll take care of that. I do have a... We have a case before the Board of Adjustment that was appealed to the circuit court. It's H&M Housing Land Development. This is located at 2950 Southwest 17th Place in Fort Lauderdale. I believe that's Chula Vista. That the Board of Adjustment denied their permit application. The court squashed that order. There is... Procedurally, we could do second-tier appeal to the district court on this, but that would be challenging the circuit court's order. I don't believe we have any grounds to really challenge that order, so I'm advising the commission that I'm not planning to file an appeal in that case. And that concludes my items. Do you know what that's about? It's a flag-shaped parcel where they purchased, basically, it's a landlocked parcel. I remember this. And they purchased that. I met with the people. Yeah. Okay. Concluded. Good night, everybody.