City Council — Apr 24, 2024

good evening and welcome and again a happy passover to all who are celebrating the wednesday april 24 2024 city of plantation city council meeting is now called to order at 6 10 p.m city clerk miss bedrow can you please call the roll councilmember anderson here councilmember andreou here councilmember horland yes here president pro tem reinstein yes here acting mayor fadgen here city attorney ezra here thank you before we move into the opening remarks i'm going to turn over the floor to the acting mayor tim fadgen thank you council president pro tem reinstein we're going to have to figure something out on that one but so i'm going to make a brief announcement um you may notice that there's been a little shuffling close enough i'm going to make a brief announcement you may notice that there's been a shuffling of our seats tonight mayor sortle has taken a leave to attend to some personal matters with consultation of our city attorney ezra and guidance from our charter and city ordinances the president of the council assumes the mayor's role in his absence and then the president pro tem assumes the duties of the council president with the cooperation of the council the department directors and all of the employees we're proceeding with the business of the city and we're going to continue on until mayor sortle returns so thank you thank you mayor uh just so happens that uh opening remarks and uh pledge of allegiance was assigned to me tonight so we are going to first start with the group behind us if you want to come forward for the pledge of allegiance we have tonight in celebration of autism acceptance month we are welcoming three students violet omar and dylan from mirror lake elementary and their coach melissa smiley and their inclusion teacher andy gresham to lead us in the pledge of allegiance so let's just make sure the microphone is on and if everybody will please rise for the pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you everybody can be seated and you're going to hang on right there we're gonna we're gonna talk to you for a minute thank you for being here if uh if you could please introduce yourself and maybe tell us what you like best about your school mirror lake okay what's your name my name is violet and uh what i like is disney princess and art stuff and what i like about my school is that i have quick reading and long math on i ready fantastic thank you thank you for sharing with us my name is omar toa and i like playing my video games a lot in home and doing i ready thank you omar thank you so much for sharing with us and i think dylan was was going to make it but okay he's not here um so you can stay up there for one one more moment um i want to especially highlight mirror lake elementary school under the leadership of principal valise and assistant assistant principal hafez as well as their coach melissa smiley and their inclusion teacher andy gresham who's up here with us mirror lake elementary has one of the oldest and largest autism special programs in the county the program has grown over the years and now has eight self-contained classes for students with autism that need extra support for successful education the autism programs have smaller student to teacher ratios and many strategies are used throughout the day to accommodate their specific needs there are currently over 130 students diagnosed with autism at mirror lake and they're all amazing students i can personally attest to the way the students are integrated for part of the day into the other classes and miss gresham teaches teaches a class where some of the students are integrated in as part of the inclusion program and they fit in just like all the students as they should be and it's wonderful how they're accepted and loved and this play having them lead the pledge of allegiance is a perfect introduction to its autism acceptance month we're also going to have a proclamation for autism acceptance month so we can give another round of applause for the students bye-bye thank you for being here this is smiley before you leave let's take a picture all together let's yeah let's do that i'm not sure how we're going to top that thank you so next on the agenda is items submitted by the mayor this is where we move into proclamations as well as service awards i just so happens that i also have the first proclamation up and so i'm going to ask is um marie miranda here yes come on up okay perfect so come on up to the podium and i will meet you there okay pleasure to meet you nice to meet you as well anybody else here okay wonderful okay perfect so welcome marie marie miranda from the hds foundation advisory board uh we have a proclamation here which is for hds foundation we rise for autism day i'll read the proclamation and then give it to you and you can say a few words if you like whereas autism acceptance month observed annually in april signifies a departure from the traditional awareness focused approach to autism it emphasizes understanding appreciation and celebration of the diverse strengths and perspectives of individuals on the autism spectrum this movement of acceptance in contrast to mere awareness champions the principles of neurodiversity empowering autistic voices and advocating for inclusion and whereas during the month of april efforts are directed at challenging stereotypes promoting respect and fostering supportive environments that recognize the unique contributions of individuals with autism by amplifying autistic voices and encouraging societal shifts towards acceptance autism acceptance month aims to create a more inclusive and understanding world for everyone regardless of their neurodivergence and whereas there are many organizations doing great work in this area the hds foundation incorporated is a 501c3 nonprofit organization founded to provide mentoring services and opportunities to teens and young adults who have autism related disabilities the primary focus of the hds foundation is to promote the development of work and daily living skills build social educational transitional experiences via specific school-based partnerships and support the post-secondary journeys for this growing population and whereas the hds foundation celebrates their 15th anniversary by hosting the we rise for autism golf classic on april 26 2024 at our very own jacaranda golf club and whereas rise rise r-i-s-e is an acronym for resources interventions support education rise strives to bridge the gap in services and opportunities for autistic children adolescents and young adults whereas the city and the citizens of the city of plantation do hereby support the ideals of autism acceptance month and rise now therefore on behalf of the mayor and the city council of the city council of plantation we proclaim friday this coming friday april 26 2024 as the hds foundation we rise for autism day thank you so much would you like to say a few words of course can you get a picture with on my phone yeah yeah absolutely i can share that picture with you yeah that works too yeah um so at the hds foundation we we've been you know doing this for 15 years as a foundation um we are supported uh 100 by the corporation by our hds companies which we develop software and services for affordable housing and um economic development um um agencies nationwide locally etc and so uh autism touched our family and uh christina miranda gilson who is the the owner of the hds companies started this because she learned what it was what it meant she walked the walk that a lot of the families have to go through um to integrate their their child their children into the community and to allow those children individuals that then grow up into young adults teens and later very productive members of our society to have those opportunities much like typical children would and so um what the foundation does is exactly that we provide programs that we run through the through the school systems and broward county we're super proud of the school system in broward county because it was where we started we started at cypress bay and um we've had incredible programs there um for for many many years and um what these what the bridges program does is that it provides a grant um for the students to be able to participate in um community-based instruction and integrate and learn how to open bank accounts and learn how to go to the market and do their their their grocery shopping and learn how to how to cook learn how to do things that others would typically do not even realizing that they're learning to do it um our students need a little bit more they need a little bit more guidance they need a little bit more exposure in particular ways and so these grants really allow this the that population to be exposed to to that to different types of jobs to different types of uh programming that could happen after secondary education so whether it is um you know that they go on to a trade school or whether they go on to university we have a lot of students that go to the university my niece was graduated the university of north florida in early childhood education and we are incredibly proud of her accomplishments as we are of all of our students so thank you so much to the to the city of plantation for recognizing the foundation we are very proud of this um and we'll cherish it thank you so much may i let you continue with the proclamations thank you so next we have uh we want to recognize a wonderful person who uh donated communication boards to our uh nine parts so how we have a video to watch how do you want to do this yes for those of you in the audience we have a jojo wants to know uh promo that we do for a lot of our parks and recreation programs and we took the opportunity during the unveiling of these to do a jojo wants to know episode so that's what uh we're going to be seeing here what's going on plantation it's jojo i'm here at plantation woods i'm here with dr pamela rowe hey well you just donated this sign can you tell me a little bit about it um this is a communication board it's really important for uh children and families that have that communication barrier uh different uh disabilities and different challenges uh that impede and you know a challenge for individuals to use their words this gives them a voice this gives them a way to communicate how many different options are there for communicating it's it's numerous there's no limit there's no cap to this because it's only limited by the parent's imagination or the child's imagination or numerous options so a child walks up there and i'm guessing they touch on something that's how they communicate they communicate or the parent can communicate with them and actually model language just like when you're with the child you don't just expect them to say i want a cookie like do you want a cookie you want a cookie so they can point to this and this helps to build vocabulary and a functional place to use it where's the i want to have fun button for me you can just say i want to have some whatever you want to do jump watch hit if that's fun for you you can do that i want to run i want to play i want to climb i want to sit whatever you want to do i want to push and it's in english and in espanol nice so i noticed the qr code so people can do this as well on their their phones too yes it's called the take your voice with you app basically with smarty ears this was developed by barbara fernandez and she is a communication specialist you can just tap on this with your phone and download the app and you can take this board with you wherever you want to awesome i appreciate it i know everybody here that's going to be using the park is going to appreciate it yes and we have a bunch more coming around the city at all our parks right yes we've got nine total i believe awesome it's exciting well come out here check it out we'll see you later plantation we have a proclamation for you whereas a communication board is a composition of images specifically selected to support communication by pointing to or touching one or multiple images that can help children with limited verbal communication such as autism or with other disabilities communicate with their caregivers and other children through the use of these boards and whereas a generous donation of nine bilingual playground communication boards was made to the parks and recreation department by dr pamela roe and whereas the boards will be placed throughout the city at nine playgrounds which include plantation community center volunteer park central park dyke park jim ward community center seminal park jaccarina lakes pine island park sunset park and whereas the parks and recreation department unveiled the communication board at the plantation community center on monday april 22nd 2024 and whereas pamela roe is the clinical director of pamela roe ma ccc slp llc an adult and pediatric therapy practice with seven florida locations her practice provides speech occupational physical and respiratory therapy services in 26 counties in florida and whereas she is co-author of putting your dreams to work keys to setting up your therapy practice and start your engines a road map to your clinical fellowship year as a continuing partner with various state agencies pamela enjoys empowering individuals to communicate and use their voices within their community and whereas in celebration of autism awareness month these communication boards will encourage and give access for increased communication in our parks and beyond now therefore i tim fadgin acting mayor and the city council of plantation florida do hereby proclaim wednesday april 24 2024 as communication board day in the city of plantation and call upon all the residents of plantation to join us in this important observance thank you very much for the opportunity to provide these communication boards in the community it's very important to provide access to all neighborhoods so we were very happy to have something that's not only multilingual but also multicultural and with that being said thank you very much for the opportunity so for everyone in the audience uh if you'd like we do have one set up here we also set one out in the lobby so if you'd like to go up and be able to look at a little bit closer and you would be able to scan the qr code because it is on every one of those boards and you'd be able to take it with you we can't thank you enough pamela for being part of our community and reaching out to us i love getting those kind of calls we'd like to do something that betters the community um and as we are in autism awareness month and even as we start looking to next year's budget we're uh and looking to add therapeutic recreation into our budget into our platform and this is a very good start for that so thank you so much for that new problems thank you so much okay i believe councilmember andreio is up next thank you mayor thank you good evening a lot to celebrate in our beautiful city so this proclamation is for an amazing young man who i have known his entire life he's a eighth grader uh mr jacob thompson and if his family would also join me here at the podium jacob don't be shy the proclamation reads whereas jacob thompson is a 13 year old plantation resident who formally attended central park elementary and brother to omari thompson and son to tanya and alan thompson and whereas jacob has been a member of his middle school gold team for three years and was a part of the team placing twice in the broward schools county championship first place was obtained for the fall of the 2022 season and second place was obtained in the fall of 2023 season and whereas jacob is a left-handed golfer who has been instructed by his father and enjoys playing and practicing with his twin brother and dad and whereas jacob continued to develop as a golfer by attending summer camp at plantation preserve and lagomar golf courses every summer since the age of six and whereas jacob participated in the national finals of the drive chip and putt competition at augusta national and augusta georgia on april 7 2024 and whereas he had to qualify locally sub-regionally regionally and nationally and compete with other golf golfers throughout all 50 states and whereas jacob thompson came in first place in the drive competition for all you golfers with a drive of 274.8 yards i heard that lots of adults can't do that and overall third place in the national finals drive chip and putt finals for 12 to 13 year old boy division so therefore tim fadgen our acting mayor and the city council of plantation florida do hereby proclaim april 24 2024 as jacob thompson day we're so proud of the future tiger okay so now we're at the uh small business month proclamations glenn you want to come up we wanted to uh recognize the diverse uh cross-section of businesses within the city and uh we put out the invitation we have some of the folks here so i can do you have a list here i'll just call them up on my one then so this year we honor uh luggage and shoe repair expert come on man come on down so um you want to say a little bit about your business well won't we um okay no problem all right let them do their little commercial all right so we got uh natasha with dutchies all right she's also a proud board member of the gateway tobias financial advisors all right we have lac accounting and bookkeeping services and we have some other uh participants but it could not attend so that's uh and just spoons i'm sorry just spoons wonderful all right breathe the talk and then you're across from my office i'll be over there i saw your sign whereas small businesses are the backbone and lifeblood of local economies in the communities throughout the city and serve as job creators and placemakers in our city districts and whereas shopping locally allows the city of plantation residents to invest in their own neighborhoods and grow the vibrancy of their communities making the city a great place to live work and play and whereas small businesses demonstrated resilience flexibility and courage in the face of the covid19 pandemic and its economic impact and were a driving force in the economic recovery of the city and whereas small businesses employ approximately 5275 individuals constituting nearly 10 percent of plantations employees and whereas small businesses reach communities that have not always benefited from the city's overall robust economies vitality and serve an important role in access to economic opportunity and whereas small businesses and small businesses support organizations like chambers of commerce's small business associations and other non-profit service organizations are key collaborators and advancing our agenda for equitable economic growth and whereas the contributions of our small business sector should rec should be recognized and celebrated by our city now therefore i tim fadgen acting mayor and the city council of plantation florida do hereby proclaim may 2024 as small business month in the city of plantation and urge all citizens to join the city of plantation and recognizing the contributions of small businesses to the economy and continue supporting them and honor the occasion with programs and activities that highlight these important businesses we gave you your proc so why don't you go ahead and you can start say a few words if you like sure thank you very much and thanks for the invitation oh we've been established business since uh 40 years i mean 43 years ago i've been in the shoe repair industry for i mean since 1990 we are located on on jacaranda plaza we do all kinds of repairs like uh shoe repairs luggage repairs handbags briefcases all these kind of needs i mean i'll be over there uh well thank you thank you so much thank you appreciate it absolutely you would like to go i want to thank everyone here uh for this proclamation and recognition uh this we are tobias financial advisors uh we are a financial planning group that helps people demystify clarify on how they can actually achieve the goals and live the lives that they want whether that might be retirement college planning or just keeping up with uh owning a home so uh we're here and we're happy to uh accept this and we appreciate um everything you do we're at the corner of uh pine island and peters and the royal palm buildings thank you everyone i'm so honored to be here today my name is annegan i'm the owner of lec accounting and bookkeeping services i've been accounting for about 10 years now i own lst accounting which is um a accounting firm that provides accounting services for businesses and also individuals so um whatever accounting needs the business needs of course you have to have your books in in place and in order as well so i'm very honored to be here like i said and thank you so much for this proclamation and we are actually um virtual um company but we do um of course go to our clients sites to help them out and everything so thank you again for being here i'm so happy to be here and thank you for having me good evening everybody my name is natasha um i'm the owner of 32 sausages we're located on 441 in between broward and um davy boulevard um we've been in business for 10 years a little bit of everything uh butchery manufacturer a restaurant and a retail store uh we've been uh very honored to be a part of the city of plantation in many many ways over the years and um this is really amazing we greatly appreciate it especially for recognizing that small businesses are really a core part of the community um our hard work goes a long way and we really thank you from the bottom of the world thank you you gotta say the slogan oh it's not a party till the sausage comes out hi good evening um my name is betty i'm the general manager for justin's cafe um we do want to thank you guys uh we have been in business for five years uh we are located right on uh west wide boulevard at the uh plaza of big loft if you guys know where we are please make sure you stop by um unfortunately the owner was not able to be here today because he's actually um working on our second location just for the soul which will be right here in plantation as well so make sure you guys stop by and um over here is my kitchen manager uh tiffany so she's also here with me and thank you so very much to all of you and even though um the owner was not is not here today he also sent a few coating tokens of appreciations and he stinks as well not the beach cover ever we got a few here my hands are sweaty hold on then i need one with mine yeah thank you sir thank you okay um i think we're gonna do service awards next and then we'll do the uh the presentation so first up edward alacron mclean 20 years with building with a crowd like that you don't get to leave the podium without saying something great people they must like you yeah sometimes started public works worked my way into building if i could survive cheech i could survive anybody so um thank you guys so much i'm really humbled by all this and especially that no thank you thank you next uh john adams 20 years utility i'm not gonna let you off the hook i appreciate uh just feel uh blessed uh sorry guys uh truly blessed and appreciative of the first 20 years uh very proud of the goals that my team and myself have accomplished so far and look forward to all the challenges of whatever the the rest of this career holds for me thank you awesome britney shepherd place department 10 years you gotta say something okay um i just want to thank everybody especially the citizens you know it's been a great 10 years being able to serve you and i look forward to many many more years awesome last but not least caitlin murphins fire five years gotta say something well it's been an honor especially working with chief todd love working with him i'm proud to be working here full-time five years and also volunteering for 13 and love the city thank you all right next up uh council member horland you want to make the uh introduction thank you mayor um council if you recall at the last meeting um i told you about uh the presentation we had brow league of cities by robin vegas robin if you'd like to come up uh with business for the arts broward which i was very impressed with what they're they're doing there robin's the former uh cultural arts director at pembroke city of pembroke pines and an artist herself and i think it really dovetails well into what we're trying to do with public art in the city so she's going to give us a little presentation tonight make sure the green light's on robin thank you can you hear me so i'm with business for the arts of broward as denise mentioned um we're a non-profit and we connect the business and the arts community have anyone heard of this movie so the barbie movie really brought a part of my childhood to life and i felt a deep nostalgic connection and i think that's what art does it creates an emotional response and i wasn't the only one i mean it's taken the box office by storm earned over 1.38 billion dollars worldwide it was the highest grossing film in warner brothers 100 year history and the largest film release of 23. so if i ask you how have arts impacted you personally you know what do you think of is it a concert that you've attended is it a book that you just read maybe you traveled to another country and learned about their culture went to a museum i think it's easy for us to personally express how arts impact us but maybe not so easy to describe how business and art are connected so how do they fit together uh one example that we at bfa like to quote is the boeing relocation in 2001 according to the new york times boeing was relocating and they were considering dallas and chicago and everyone thought they were going to go to dallas because they had better financial incentives but they went to chicago and they specifically stated it was because of the quality of life and the art and cultural offerings so i think this is important to note the economic impact that the arts can have on our community and how a thriving art and culture creates a better place for tourism and for us to live work and play a few examples hamilton investors paid 12.5 million dollars which is an average amount to start the broadway show in the first year they saw a 600 return on their investment and according to broadway league trade group as of december it's grossed over 904 billion dollars another example is chicago's millennium park in 1998 chicago mayor daly established this park in the business district with restaurants concerts festivals and interactive public art in the first six months that it was opened two million people visited and now their average visit is three million people a year who spend 150 to 300 a day and then a local example is art basel this five-day art event produces 500 million dollars annually and it all started with murals in the winwood district and bringing an art show to miami so how are art and business connected the recent americans for the arts economic prosperity six report clearly illustrates this 79 of americans believe art and culture is important to their community's business economy and local jobs and 86 percent of americans believe art and culture is important to their community's quality of life and livability and we at business for the arts of broward would like to make broward county a cultural arts destination where business and art are strategically connected i think we all know that people want to live in a vibrant culturally enriched and diverse city the same report also shows broward county arts and culture impact so this survey was taken in by only 122 of the 229 art and cultural organizations in broward county which is 53 percent so it's really not a true economic impact it's an understatement but at least 386 million dollars are produced by our art and culture nonprofits in broward county annually by audiences and the organization spending so why should you support the arts the arts strengthen our economy with over a trillion dollars in economic activity in the united states they improve health and well-being reducing stress illness help people with addiction trauma recovery depression anxiety there's new research on helping alzheimer's patients and veterans the arts strengthen the fabric of our communities and connections in a time when people are so divided the arts is one thing that can bring people together and help unify them and of course we know they improve education and stem re-stem education helps with test scores in our children and help our communities to flourish by by preserving the unique character and heritage of your community so we're really excited to announce a partnership of bfa with the community foundation of broward called lead with love and this is a broward county mural campaign where we're looking to partner with eight cities to create eight murals around broward county that say love by this globally recognized artist say adams say started as a group in the graffiti movement and he exhibited with artists such as jean michelle basquiat and keith herring he was the creative director of hip-hop jam jeff damn recordings where he created album covers and logos from everyone from run dmc ll cool j the bc boys public enemy mary j blige maroon 5 jay-z don henley the list goes on and on he's the only artist who's commissioned to create art for the opening of the smithsonian african-american history museum you can see the flag he created at the top and here's my barbie photo again so he designed the award-winning smithsonian anthology of hip-hop and rap book and he was recognized by president obama for his artistic contributions some of his clients include google apple mattel levi's footlocker converse youtube bacardi paps blue ribbon dave chapelle and many more back in 2015 say honored jazz musician preston love by painting a mural at the jazz and art center in omaha nebraska his hometown love played with ray charles lena horn billy holliday aretha franklin the four tops the temptations gladys knight marvin gay and many others this mural received such overwhelming response that say began painting love murals across the united states and inspired us to want a love mural in brower county here are some photos of some of his other murals that he's painted around the united states and here's the first love mural in brower county that we unveiled on valentine's day this year it's on las olas boulevard near the tunnel and it was again a partnership with the community foundation and our first lead with love mural thank you so not every art advantage can be quantified in a dollar amount you know some of it is just feeling good here's a community paint day where people came out to paint with say and at the top you'll see a little girl in the top corner and she walked by every day with her mom or her dad and watched say painting one day she was given a brush and allowed to paint a heart on the mural and a couple days later she came back and said that's my heart and she kissed it so we're seeking um partnerships with like i said eight cities we want to do a love mural in each of the nine districts in brower county this is a three to five year mural program and we're looking for partners to provide a wall and a partial partial money to the murals um so i just wanted to bring this opportunity to you and thank you for the chance to talk about it or do you have any questions thank you very thank you very much um council any questions um i would just like to um thank administration for allowing robin and the council for agreeing to have her tonight you could see why i was excited about this i think you know as the city moves forward with our cultural arts offerings i think it's just terrific i spoke to glendon hall yesterday i said we need to find a business to support this so we can get the grant and find a wall where we can i think it would be wonderful to have a a love mural in the city of plantation so i thank you again for coming out tonight we do have a couple of members of our chamber of commerce here i wanted robin to be able to connect with our business community and with parks and rec and plenty and zoning so thank you mr president if the council has thank you council member horland council member andrea thank you robin i absolutely love it i hope we can go into some type of partnership with you but my question is what type of financial commitment are you looking for sure um so business for the arts of broward we have many business sponsors and supporters and the community foundation of broward has many philanthropic partners so we're planning to fundraise the majority of the money for each mural but we do want each city to contribute a small percentage of the total cost um we're saying like 10 to 20 000 the murals we're expecting will probably about be about 60 000 that depends on the size of the wall the condition of the wall if it needs to be prepped um and also the complexity of the design you know we could incorporate your slogan for the tree you know the tree city or whatever slogan you want into your specific mural each one would be um approved and highly you'd be a high stakeholder in the design of course and it would be your approval so we're looking for a small contribution um the the percentage or i'm sorry the total budget also includes say hiring about four other local artists to help him execute the mural so we do support local artists as well in this project what next steps would we need to do is there some type of contract we would have to if you guys are interested we'd love to you know sign the paperwork and get you guys um on the list we're have several cities that are interested right now but we would love for you guys to be the next after fort lauderdale thank you thank you councilman anderson so should we consensus right now and something obviously sounds like we want it so should we consensus so that we can move forward in the background for them to do that i i want to move forward councilman if you hold on one moment i just want to ask another question before we move there uh my question is in terms of the funding that you're talking about for in any of the cities or with any of the um the relationships that you're you're creating to to build to create these are you doing any sponsorships are you doing any funding from businesses to help contribute absolutely so like i said if we're if the city can could contribute maybe 10 up to 20 000 we will fundraise the remaining you know up to the 60 000 with the community foundation and business for the arts of broward if you guys commit to that level we will fundraise the rest of the amount and make it happen we are already started getting fundraisers and sponsors and businesses who are eager of course if you know people in plantation who you think would want to participate as a sponsor you know you can do that as well if that would help you get the money from your side that would be fine very good thank you that was a further clarification but you probably just answered you mean so you're going to do your sponsors but for our portion we could even fundraise our portion as well as what you mean absolutely for the first one that i showed you we i think we had 18 sponsors with three major sponsors and then we had several small sponsors and part of what they received for their thousand dollar sponsorship was they got to come out on the community paint day and paint with say and so many people have come up to us and said that that they'll never forget that opportunity and it was really fun so we do want to tie it in and make you know people have input and feel ownership to the mural in your community and make it a really fun project maybe one further clarification is um when you have those joint partnerships with businesses are you acknowledging the businesses anywhere on or near the mural sure we have a huge plaque on each mural that lists all the sponsors with a qr code that links back to our website of course you could also link it to your website as well we have press releases we did a ribbon cutting where we had all the sponsors come in and we're you know we did videos we did drone videos photography we documented the whole project as well community foundation and business for the arts will be marketing and advertising this program and when all of the murals are done we hope to have like a mural you know celebration and people can go throughout the county and find these beautiful murals that i'll say love so we look at this as a three to five year project completing two to three murals per year very good thank you and councilman mohorland just to finish up and just to lead to the further clarification again we do have money in our public arts fund but we would be able to take donations within the city so that it wouldn't just be public funds that are being used for this thank you thank you very much so to councilmember anderson's question do we have some consensus yeah i i'm happy to hear we have consensus to have administration uh contact you and i'll give you everyone's contact information and see if we can move on mayor to do that thank you thank you so thank you robin for coming thank you very much that's the easiest decision this week thank you we'll now turn to parks and recreation mr goodrich for uh upcoming events first of all i do want to say robin will not get out of here without uh seeing trish i've already posted her at the back door um we were very excited to see the presentation and uh we would uh gladfully like to add that to our public art uh programming that we have started uh the mural that we did put at central park has been overwhelmingly approved and thanked by many many people so we would love to add that to our repertoire and as we continue to build the public art in the city we're very happy with that in an upcoming council meeting i'm going to be uh showing you some presentation we're working with our gis department uh to develop a platform that'll be on the website so that the people can see across the city all the different public art that we have started and then we'll start building on that what the community art is as well so that they'll have different layers to be able to look at all those interactive things and uh it does make a difference in the community without question so before i get too much further before i start on the upcoming events i do want to say a special thank you from this past weekend's earth day event i can't thank enough all the departments everybody in those back few rows on the on the side here uh every department has openly very positive participation by everybody uh and it can't be done even those that uh play the behind the scenes roles whether it be hr whether it be finance whether it be procurement uh all of those departments as well all allow us to be able to make those kind of events happen every day and it makes us all look good and it's part of our community and we want to make sure that we keep growing those types of things because it's such a positive impact for the neighborhood so thank you to all of them okay so upcoming events we have um today we we started with opening for parade registration for the fourth of july parade it's a free event for anybody in the public any of those small businesses or anybody else would like to participate reach us at plantation.org go to the parks and rec website and we have our registration there for everybody to fill out thursday the 25th we have a senior trip going to the norton museum uh it is a full uh event leaving the jim ward community center for the seniors uh thursday the 25th also we are going to have a wheelchair tennis exhibition out at the veltri tennis center a lot of people have been very positive in that program but we're looking to grow it so we're having an exhibition out there that'll be 6 30 p.m at the veltri tennis center on thursday saturday the 27th to sunday the 28th we have a usta level 6 junior tournament that will also be held at the veltri tennis center friday may 3rd we have our next and final rock the park concert series for this year smoke and renegade is the name of the band they're a tribute band to boston and sticks it is a free concert be held at pine island park concert begins at 7 p.m food trucks open at 6 p.m we've had a fantastic year this year very well attended the weather's been really really good for us so we're really happy to keep that program going uh and look to keep continue to grow it friday may 3rd and saturday may 4th central park series swim meet will be held at the central park pool aquatics complex saturday may 4th we have uh actually it's not parks and recreation this is a library event monica's here the teddy bear picnic will be held at the uh helen b hoffman library it'll start at 10 30 a.m if you have any questions feel free to reach out to the library uh saturday may 4th to sunday to may 5th we have the plant affair going on out at the volunteer park uh community center uh there's going to be all kinds of things going on out there that's done by the plantation historical museum that runs from saturday 9 to 5 and sunday 9 to 4. finally sunday may 5th swim lessons registration opens for our first summer lessons uh we can't stress how important it is to have kids uh learn and be taught swim lessons uh the last few years we've grown that program tremendously and we continue we're ready to ready for everybody this year if anybody has any questions reach out to the aquatics complex you can do that at 954-452-2525 right now we have uh in athletics we have pal has registration for fall basketball flag football and tackle cheerleading and on the adult athletic sides we are always have openings in softball basketball kickball and flag football thank you thank you mr goodrich mr goodrich a question you mentioned about rock the park do we have a schedule yet for next year no but uh we're working on it okay are we going to be considering additional saturday night yes very good thank you so much of course we next have public request of council regarding municipal affairs those who wish to speak we request that you complete a speaker form if you have not done so already please do please state your name and address and please address your remarks to the council president not the mayor or individual members of the council please keep your remarks to the allotted three minutes if you need additional time to conclude your remarks instead of asking for additional time at the beginning please ask for it at the end of your three minutes as you see the time expire uh we have a number of comment requests already first is mr corman rob corman 11095 whitehawk street uh i actually want to talk about the mural project um in looking at the issue of monetary value to the city uh ten thousand dollars is small return the examples that were used in the presentation in particular with chicago and the creation of the being in that entire park area in the middle of their cbd what that actually did is it returned people to an area that developmentally wise was dominated by large buildings and open space the purpose of public art going back in the western tradition to the time of the romans was to actually instill civic pride in each city because each manner of art that was presented in the city was different stylistically unique whether it was in the churches or in the public square art was intended to bring people in and demonstrate a notion of pride a ten thousand dollar investment in something like this laying the framework for it done the right way including as danny knows the qr codes that our code requires that provides information about each piece sets up a way of looking at the city that people often don't think about art is many times subliminal you don't realize it's there but you will have a reaction to it the first mural that was put up in midtown has some rather polarizing opinions based upon the content and the style but either way you can't deny the fact that it forces people to look and engage that structure in that space differently art is for that purpose so if we can partner with somebody who arguably does have a slightly commercial bent to their art that's separate again i could talk about that one for hours but the idea behind it one that is intended to originally honor an individual but has taken on a broader meaning of acceptance is something that we should consider and embrace so regardless of how much it may ultimately cost the city in direct tax dollars i think the payout for the city will be much larger in terms of setting the tone for what we desire in our public spaces and with public discourse as well as allowing the city itself and the individuals there to take a measure of artistic pride that they might not normally do don't get me wrong covering electrical boxes is great but this is a kind of large-scale public art that does have the capacity to change minds thank you thank you uh penny brill good evening penny brill 117 40 northwest 11 street plantation i've lived in plantation acres since 1991 and i walk i'm talking about volunteer park that's what i'm here for i walk volunteer i'm sorry can you pull the microphone closer okay um i walk with a couple of friends volunteer park at least four times a week and that includes the loop around the lake and also the dirt loop around the equestrian park lake i came to you at the end of 2023 asking about the state of the bridges in the park and at that time almost every bridge in both the parks were blocked off by wood and a sign that they would under repair this had been like that for almost two years at that meeting the council agreed that the bridges in volunteer park needed to be repaired and especially agree that the long bridge that crossed the lake of the park should also be repaired replaced but not destroyed and um but you said you would look for the money well nothing was said about the fate of the equestrian park at that time so here we are now almost six months later the smaller bridges have been repaired very happy about that we can go out to the lake a little bit but the big bridge nothing i don't know what was been done to look for the money where it is you know we're six months later we still don't know have anything the equestrian park nothing and what's a little scary is you walk the equestrian park on the dirt scale dirt track around there and there are a lot of people who do that not just horses but people do that and they've got the bridge and they have a wooden plank on the entrances to stop people from walking over but the plank is probably about this high and it doesn't take much doesn't take much to get under it you know a little limbo whatever kids could get under it and one of the planks is put up with duct tape duct tape so i think that's a potential liability there are no signs saying don't walk the park there's a sign that says nor the bridge no horses or no fishing but nothing about people so it's important to decide what are you going to do about the equestrian park bridge i think it should stay there because it's also a beautiful bridge and we should look into fixing that as well but the bottom line is again the park the bridge stays the same volunteer park is a very important part of plantation we just had the earth the earth thing there and wouldn't that have been nice for the people to be able to walk across that lake they didn't get that opportunity because it's still not fixed and another thing is that besides where's the money and i heard about last week something about um can i have an extra couple of minutes go ahead go and conclude that there was a couple hundred thousand dollars in fines for a short-term short-term vacation rental that was that was discharged they couldn't perhaps if i recognize it may have been very hard to get the people to pay it but these fines could go towards perhaps helping build the bridges again i'm not into the finance but we should use that things and um that goes also for the equestrian park because if you go online and you look at the plantation website what park do you see there what's the first thing that hits you volunteer park and a bridge so the bridges are so important and they should all be fixed because let's bring it back to the way it was when it was first built that's all kind of asking that we look into that and by the way when you have signage for the next thing in volunteer park do not have the sign say that there is parking on 118th street there's no 118th street it's 118th avenue and there was the digital sign said street not avenue just a little something to pay attention to thank you thank you very much uh mr conklin mr win on deck if i may approach thank you dennis conklin 4581 northwest 6 court heavenly host protect you and your families it's day 1503 of martial law such shutting down our churches conducting mask and shot mandates our loss of unalienable god-given individual rights day 626 since the illegal fbi invasion of the trump family home violating fourth fifth and sixth amendment rights day 267 of the arraignment gag order a first amendment violation of a president's right to free speech it's day 212 no jury violation of the seventh amendment right to trial by your jury of your peers and we're in the 201st day of the hamas war against israel the israelis the jews and every freedom-loving person in the world it is of course the military wing of the muslim brotherhood terrorist organization right now we're seeing on america's campuses basically the effect of the propaganda wing of the muslim brotherhood that's the organization care threatening jews on campuses uh stay 70 of the violation of president trump's eighth amendment rights that is excessive bail shall not be required nor excessive fines imposed nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted i wanted to wish happy passover a blessed passover to everyone observing um i wanted to bring up uh the items that we can't really comment on and that's the uh agenda items a b and d and later on agenda item 20 want to thank you for the next stage in plantation park east for the replacement of the water main system um in the first two proclamations it was about autism uh the signs and the uh autism month and um what's been discovered uh since the mandates of the uh covet vaccines uh steve kirsch he's a west coast tech guy he does all this number crunching and everything he was injured by the shot and he started looking into the other vaccines um which caused me to look into mine when i was a kid growing up i had four shots and basically it was two polio shots and two of the tabs of polio it wasn't really a shot then when i went off to maritime college i became a pin cushion and i had basically after 18 i had about uh another 18 shots frequently my children a generation later had 11 shots uh both of them have may i request two minutes go ahead please both of them have allergies one has asthma as a child and um today the as i gave you the presentation is to recommend 80 shots for a child until their 18th birthday uh what steve kirsch discovered was when he looked into the harm that caused him the vaccine harm he looked into all the other vaccines and he discovered the relationship between the vaccines increasing and the increase of autism when i was a kid nobody ever heard of autism and now it's gone basically as the number of shots go up so has the autism ratio gone up so it's now up to one in every 36 children is on the spectrum and boys especially four times more affected it's one in seven boys and uh with that i would like to yield back my time from the two minutes thank you mr huckman i request you to not mandate the shots again because they're coming again at us saying that we're not going to have bird flu so thank you thank you mr huckman mr winn joe win good evening joe win 944 and don't start that one over joe win northwest 944 northwest 92nd terrace oh my goodness you guys are all in different positions it's really throwing me off mr acting mayor members of the council uh totally i just wanted to make a comment before i get into the things that i wanted to talk about on the uh mural the public art i think you may recall that i have actually stood in this exact spot endorsing concepts such as that so the the ideas that it raises awareness it raises appreciation it raises connectivity of an area and of the people in that area and the support for the businesses and the people getting along i'm all for that pretty much yes and as has been stated prior uh it's not a lot of money um it's it's pennies to to a budget of a city of this size uh so the benefits far far outweigh any costs uh so i just wanted to put that in anyway now um i have spoken about the intersection of knob hill and northwest sixth street source yes uh sixth street and the immediate area north of there a number of times uh through a number of emails as well as standing here uh unfortunately i don't like doing it i'd rather not have to do it uh but yet again um as i was driving today i noticed that once again uh it has an impact so i just want to go a quick review uh talking about the house impacts of that guardrail area about 200 feet north of that intersection uh in 2015 house was impacted in 2017 it was impacted again a guardrail was installed the residents said it wasn't good enough in 2021 april of 2021 they were proven right when it was hit again and it went a call went through it uh in january of 23 the city approved an 84 000 barricade i reached out appealing for safer roadway design because walls don't solve the problem fixes to the speed the comfortable speed of the roadway can in august 2023 there was a major head-on collision at the same spot it closed shut down knob hill i appealed to the council for safer roadway design urgency writing quote every day year these roadways remain as they are more people will be injured due to dangerous design well last month we unfortunately lost two people at that intersection again as i've said we don't know exactly the cause but speed is often a factor today barricade is again destroyed after a vehicle hit it so are we just going to keep more pouring more money into and i apologize i hate being this um but may i request another minute go ahead thank you uh we're just going to keep pouring money into a barely effective shield for the homeowner uh or we really want to bother making our roadway safer and more welcoming for residents i again thank you as a council for requesting updates on the mmtp but in the meantime does our city have any ability to add road complexity features such as those that are used in other cities and even other countries to encourage people to slow down essentially make them more comfortable driving slower because that curve i think is really throwing everyone we're stuck with cars for the foreseeable future but that doesn't mean we need to be holden to the dangers that they can create when the built environment treats everything practically like a highway we need proper city streets streets streets not dominated by speed the best solution to making roadways safer is making improvements that naturally cause people to want to drive slower to feel like driving slower is the correct thing to do and that minimizes the damage for all when some of them make poor decisions thank you thank you mr dwaye ted dwaye and matt mcintosh on deck can everybody hear me i'm trying to get this to where it should be ladies and gentlemen my name is ted dwaye and i have lived at 11 901 terror drive and plantation for over 12 years professionally i've been a licensed cpa for over 30 years as a cpa and a taxpayer i abhor government waste and efficiency on march 27 2024 i spoke to you on this venue and described living across the street from a property that operated as an unregistered short-term vacation rental for over 400 days my neighbors and i had to endure numerous loud out-of-control parties with dozens of cars and hundreds of people in one instance it took seven police cars and 11 officers to clear the neighborhood of several hundred party goers and their dozens of vehicles the city eventually fined the property and the fine grew to 228 000 as the owners failed to comply for over 400 days both jason nunnemaker and dan holmes assured me that the city would not recommend any fine relief on this property despite those assurances there was a fine reduction hearing on march 20th 2024 at the hearing the licensing clerk for the city advised that the city recommended a fine reduction to approximately 185 000 and magistrate david gold listened to the testimony and he actually reduced the fine further from 228 000 to zero except for maybe a couple thousand illegal fees no one had told me that the city used a score sheet to determine fine reductions when i reviewed the score sheet for this specific case it had the licensing clerk's name on it but it was not dated not signed bore no evidence that it had been reviewed or approved by anybody and apparently these score sheets have been used throughout the city for years at the march 27 2024 city council meeting you the council members appeared shocked that a nuisance property such as this having been in violation of city ordinances for over 400 days could have its fines reduced from 228 000 to zero the city council promised to look into this matter and take the appropriate action however despite those assurances on march 29 2024 less than 48 hours after you expressed your dismay at this situation mayor nick sortell chose to sign a lien release officially eliminating the entire 228 000 fine on this property despite the concerns i had raised i was not even given the courtesy of a phone call to say this was occurring i only discovered the lien release through searching public records in addition the city employee who notarized the lien release attested to a false certification by claiming that someone who was not present signed the document for a notary that's a serious violation of the rules under which they operate as a magistrate hearing last week on april 17th another short-term vacation rental was seeking a fine reduction despite the fact that no one representing the property was present at the hearing the magistrate still heard the case and the licensing clerk for the city still recommended a 40 fine reduction on the 27 000 fine and the fine was reduced to approximately 11 000 the only person at the hearing representing the city with the licensing clerk that presented the case the magistrate no other officials from the city were present to observe what was occurring and may i finish please please please conclude as i stated you at the previous meeting the city's entire process for collecting adjudicating fines for violations of city ordinances is broken and it does not appear to have improved since my last appearance in front of you in fact i request a review of the process and to date i have not heard that has taken place actions such as this undermine the city's ability to enforce its rules and regulations since properties in violation have no incentive to comply in a timely fashion and why should they when the city has a pattern of giving generous reductions or elimination of fines for even extended periods of non-compliance as in years what is the city doing to rectify these ongoing problems and i appreciate your time consideration thank you thank you mr joanne i i will just let you know that um i have asked uh mr noon maker at the end during council member comments to give us an update as well on that matter perfect thank you thank you um mr mcintosh followed by miss gelfand on deck matthew mcintosh 601 northwest 82nd avenue plantation florida i just want to express my appreciation for the both the proclamations for today and also since i've been like coming to the city council meetings this uh i was a little pleasant surprise to see what else is going on in the community um like i'm very far removed from the school system for example and right now none of my brothers have kids so so being able to see today's kids like kind of share their current day accomplishments it's like oh this is this is what else is happening and it's like so disconnected in that way so it's always cool to see such a new perspective like that every time i go to these city council meetings i just want to conclude my comment on uh wanting to wish mayor sorter uh well and i hope for his return thank you thank you very much miss gelfand piki gelfand 9381 northwest 18th place plantation i chose to live in plantation nobody chose for me i live alone i own my own home and again i chose to live here i like this city i enjoy my time here um i want to thank chief harrison and captain rudy okay i keep calling lieutenant fuzz um i graduated last night from the citizens police academy and i would recommend yeah and i would recommend it to anybody that lives in the city to take it next year it's um it's interesting you learn how the police department works you get to go and you know there's no ride along you don't hold a gun but you do get to hear what swat does what the canines do and everything else no and i didn't go on the gun range um i'm also um enrolled in the university of plantation thank you to laura she was oh there she is who gave the idea that's for people to learn what's going on in our city the first word the first week was charles and he taught us all about budgeting more than i've ever learned from here from sitting here about procurement charles huh not procurement i'm sorry budget is the last one um so that's something else uh the lady that spoke about art in public places great i just gave her a card and i have already said i would donate 500 towards art in public places and i think that there's people in the audience that could do the same but i'm not going to point them out hopefully hopefully that the council will approve the ten to twenty thousand dollars um and of course i see in the outside area mr bill laystrom 8601 is back trying to get into business so you'll be seeing me being the bitch that i can be saying that we don't want one please i'm sorry the word bitch yeah excuse me um i don't want this 8601 this is worse than the first one this one wants an eight-story building with a swimming pool on top it wants parking for several hundred more cars that will be going up and down sunrise boulevard and pine island road and i will do everything in my limited power to make sure that it'll be won't be as bad as it is again i chose the city i voted for all of you that are on the dais i'm sure that a lot of people here have voted for you all on the dais and just remember that we all work together thank you oh and i'll relinquish my time thank you very much last call from the council chambers any other comments from the council chambers miss becker are there any comments from online any further comments from the council uh hearing no further account no further comments from the public uh regarding municipal affairs are now closed we'll now turn to the consent agenda the consent agenda consists of items 1 through 19 and may be approved with one motion i'm going to begin and pull items 1 2 10 11 and 12. you pulled them anybody else from council 1 2 10 11 and 12 and i also have from the uh public also 12 which was already pulled are there any other um does any member of the public wish to pull any other items hearing none do we have a motion motion to approve items 1 through 19 minus 1 2 10 11 12. we have a second second i'm clerk council member andrew yes council member horland yes council member anderson yes president pro tem reinstein yes thank you thank you so uh i'm going to start with um items 1 2 10 11 and 12 as a as a general comment and i'll ask mr um spencer to come up please she was already ready for we've already had a bit of a conversation on this um and just so the the public is aware of the discussion is that on all of these items um there is language that provides that there would be no cap on the request that is being made so if you look at i'm just looking for one moment in each one of those items there's a reference to um independently or aggregately exceed 35 000 dollars there is specific language that says that the department shall be responsible to ensure the funds are available or there may be some other language suggesting that that adequate funding must be available and this is a this is a matter that i've raised a concern at a prior meeting and that is that while we are relying on the departments to ensure that that anything that is is is purchased is falls within their budget you're asking the council to approve something without a cap on that amount with that in mind mr spencer if you can just explain anything further that would help explain how this works correct um so good evening charles spencer procurement director um so the language is put there in order to give greater flexibility to departments to be able to use the contracts um to service their departments more efficiently um without and work within their approved allocated budget for the services or the commodities that they desire or need for the operation the proper operation of their divisions and departments um the cap is virtually there by essence of their of their fiscal budget which is approved and monitored by um not only just the the requesting department but also the finance department so to give you some background on how and what this looks like from within the city operations a department will issue a purchase requisition through our erp system that purchase requisition goes through several channels of approval before the um work actually starts so it will go through the department head first for approval of services then through procurement for processes relating to procurement then go through risks managed now then go through finance department for proper insurances that funds are available relating to the service being requested then through risk management to ensure proper insurance is associated with the work being requested then through administration for profit for approval of business practices and then back to the user requesting department for issuance of purchase order to the vendor tied to the agreement so there are several workflow checks and balances relating to the service before anything is approved finance is really good as well as procurement any other department is really good about rejecting a purchase order that does not have proper funding available as well as the proper account number associated with it or did not go through the proper procurement channels in order to make sure that the services are being rendered correctly in accordance with our policies and procedures so mr smith i'll you know i want to make sure to say is that um since i've been up here uh procurement has done an outstanding job uh you've won every award that is possibly available um in the state if not in the country and i and i think all of our departments do an amazing job what i'm looking at is simply the the the language that's in front of us um asking for an approval and what i'm wondering is that you know in the and let's take a look at number one which is the grant writing so in the grant writing in the language that is provided to us it's again it's in the last bullet point that may independently or accurately exceed 35 000. and i understand the need for flexibility um it could go over 35 000. the question is is whether or not for any of those um that were numbered one two ten eleven and twelve on the agenda is whether some type of cap uh for each item whether it's 40 000 50 000 75 something so that in terms of our fiduciary role that it would come back to us if you felt that there was a need to go over that still giving some flexibility but uh at least making sure that we're not having to look on the back end but we're looking at it as it comes before us the first time is that something that um that procurement could could work with some type of cap or do you think it would completely hamstrung your ability to get these projects done i definitely think it will it could bottleneck the process i'm not going to say that it can't be done because obviously it can be done but i do believe it will bottle bottleneck the process um where a department that has reached their cap um has a project that they're needing to get done has to wait to a next council meeting in order to extend the services necessary to do that work in order to get that approval um so it kind of it could bottleneck what the work that the departments are trying to do under the confines of that particular contract or agreement um so so let me ask the question a little differently since i have the floor is that um that for some items where you are more familiar with the item and the need the budgetary need uh could those have a give you flexibility but with a cap and those items that may be new or may you you may be more concerned that you need an ex an extensive amount of flexibility that those could be the ones that have this type of language or would that be too constraining as well so the only get some kind of yeah yeah so the only way something like that could conceivably work under our current erp platform would be the department will have to enter a purchase order for not to exceed amount the cap um in order for to draw down on that purchase order to ensure that we do not exceed that cap um the concerns were issuing a purchase order for not to exceed amount for the cap um would immediately allocate the funds to that purchase order would could hinder the responsibility for their department to be able to move funds necessary within that funding source so it's it could again that makes sense yeah that wasn't something that was discussed before okay thank you very much i appreciate that uh is there any other councilman i think uh we have council member andrea please on item number one i just had a few uh comments and questions so first of all i think it's a great item i was asking for some time now that we get into the grant writing business and i was very excited seeing as how we just uh celebrated small business month coming up um in may that we're using certified local businesses my question for you though is why did we decide on a flat rate in lieu of a percentage for the grant um i'm just worried that you know we could be kind of to council or council president reinstein's point we could be paying one firm in essence about twenty seven thousand dollars but if that firm doesn't ever get approved for any grant funding um it could be seen as a waste so that's a wonderful question one that i'm oddly prepared to answer if that helps so um when we solicited for this project and um carol morris being the um project manager on this particular project we had two different funding mechanisms um or pricing mechanism one being a flat cost on hourly rates and two being a percentage of the grant received to our knowledge we learned some things during that process that we found that most grant writers will not provide a perfect percentage of the grant received because they based on their professional certifications and organizations that they deal with um that is perceived to be unethical and the state does not may not fund a grant that is done on a percentage basis and that was kind of the response that i have received and seen within the solicitation that has been submitted during this process i didn't know that i learned something new no and now you shared all of that new knowledge with us so thank you um can we get a follow-up report one year from now so that we can see kind of the outcomes and the return on investment and then also who will decide on which grants to apply for and i ask because i personally would love to see some type of grant to replace the septic tanks um throughout the city and i know there there are a lot of funds involved um that are out there commissioner geller has been advocating for this there was a story i believe in sunday's sun sentinel about it as well so um you know because of all of the recent flooding and the predictions around climate change i think it's something that we need to start addressing and we didn't from my recollection talk a lot about that during our strategic planning but it's something that i don't want to fall between the cracks well jason unmaker caa we'll take an across the board approach assuming this item passes tonight one of the things we do is the next staff meeting talk to the departments about various priorities so taking the septic to sewer conversion one of the things utilities is doing is a master plan update and also getting some up cost estimate updates because the last time they looked at that say for country club estates was some time ago so we know those estimates have gone up we do want to seek funding for that but we we want to be pretty confident that we can tap into some grant funding to offset the resident costs because there will be resident costs as you know um you know we're going to go everything from ferdap grants which we've done in the past maybe lane border conservation fund we intend to go for a raise grant for the midtown bridge and that's that's a good example of the variability in the cost so that one might be a fifty thousand dollar grant application uh furd apps generally run thirty five hundred to five thousand um so they've really vary across the board depending on the intensity of the the grant itself um in the interim we've been generating grants internally carol has done them pd has done them those have been accessible we have a number of hardening grants we've taken down obviously you're all aware we have the body cam grant um so we're going to pursue it vigorously and we'd be happy to report back on our hopefully hopefully our success thank you thanks thank you very much do we have a motion to approve second any other comments on number one madam clerk councillor andrea yes councillor maurland yes council maravil祐 yes president lionstein yes thank you number two are there any other comments on number two it's not motion to approve second no other comments madame clerk please council member andreyan yes council member orland yes council member anderson yes president Pro Tem Reinstein. Yes. Thank you. And item number 10. Motion. Any other comments? No other comments? Do I have a motion? Motion to approve. Second. Madam Clerk, please call the roll. Council Member Andreu? Yes. Council Member Horland? Yes. Council Member Anderson? Yes. President Pro Tem Reinstein? Yes. And for item number 11, any other comments? If not, can we have a motion? Motion to approve. Second. Madam Clerk? Council Member Andreu? Yes. Council Member Horland? Yes. Council Member Horland? Yes. Council Member Anderson? Yes. President Pro Tem Reinstein? Yes. Thank you. Thank you. And for item number 12, we also have some member of the public comments. We'll first call Mr. Nguyen. You want that first? Nguyen off. Oh, sorry. You know, my shin got hit. And now I'm off again. Go ahead, Mr. Nguyen. 944 Northwest 92nd Terrace. Members of the Council once again. I come to you on this one mainly just to raise the awareness and I think broken record or skip CD and a CD player and a CD player that's a CD player that's being shaken a bit too much if that reference catches. Essentially, speed control devices, speed humps, they are essentially the cheap and easy fix for bad road design. They are cheap. That is correct. They are probably the cheapest way to slow cars down. I will agree with you on that. However, they are not the solutions moving forward. I brought up that roadway a number of times, but that's just a roadway that I'm familiar with that I've seen over the years. I guarantee you there are others in this city. And I know we've had members of the public come up for their communities talking about roadways that they deal with regularly that have similar challenges and similar problems. I know we look to these speed humps, but they only can be applied in communities with 30, maybe 25 mile hour posted speed limits. But if those areas are still design speed of 35, 40, 45, it's not going to solve the problems in between the speed humps. So I understand that's our immediate solution, and I'm fine with procuring them and getting them and applying them where they're necessary. But we need to be thinking bigger picture and what can replace them with better design in the future. That's all. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Conklin? Dennis Conklin, 4581 Northwest 6 Court. Dittos. Yes. What I saw when I looked at the backup was this is for 114 speed cushions. And what was mentioned was speed bumps. The speed cushions, sometimes I believe they're called speed tables. And it's not just a, in Brazil they're called spring breakers. It's not just a bump and like that, but it's a distance. So I think that's what they're talking about with the cushions. And there are, I believe, better ways for traffic calming. For example, in Plantation Park East, you can restrict the bridge at 47th Avenue and put it back to three lanes by restricting three lanes, which is what it always was. So you increased that capacity 200% and it's destroyed Plantation Park East neighborhood. They come in on either 48th or 46th Avenue. And wouldn't you know it, Plantation Six Court Park, which I call the Stan Johnson Memorial Park, that's right in between the two cut through streets. So our kids have to cross one or two of the busy cut through streets. I've mentioned before the use of the roundabouts, too, which are planned for Plantation Park East along 5th Street. And it doesn't fit there because you really need two lanes for a traffic roundabout to work. And you don't have that planned for two lanes. My main suggestion for 46th and 48th Avenue is alternate lane interruption so that you flat out have to stop. You've got to change lanes because you've got landscape in the middle of the doggone lane. So I'll yield back my time. Thank you very much, Mr. Conklin. Council Member Andreu. My question is probably for the engineer. So I want to thank you for the speed radar sign on Tropical. And I have seen and heard anecdotal information that it is helping. But do you have any real data since putting that radar sign on Tropical? And then where are you planning on putting additional signs? And if you can, I know, I think Council President Reinstein was saying at the end of the meeting there were going to be certain updates. But, again, we've been in conversation. And I think that one of the members, residents, wasn't here when I discussed the intersection at Knob Hill and 6th as well. And that you have been in touch with the county because one of the things that I was asking for was a turn signal. And I think that, too, would help in terms. We know it is a bad design, but at least to try to get some immediate assistance and hopefully prevent further accidents from happening, I think a turn signal there would help significantly. So I know I threw, like, three different things at you, but if you could. No problem. It's a loaded question, but I will take it. Thank you. Good evening. Samira Shalane, city engineer. To answer the first question, I would like to hold the answer until May 8th. We will be providing you with a presentation and some proposal for amendment of the traffic calming. We spoke about it regarding the ACRES traffic calming project, and I promise to share the post-study. Due to spring break in March, we just concluded the traffic study. And on May 8th, if administration is okay with that, we will be sharing the results and having a full presentation regarding traffic calming. So if you allow me to postpone the answers until that presentation, I will appreciate that. When it comes to Knob Hill, Knob Hill Road between Sunrise Boulevard and Broward Boulevard is a city arterial roadway with a 40 mile per hour. There is some curvature that plays into the equation throughout the design of the roadway. This roadway is under an interlocal agreement between City of Plantation and Broward County traffic engineering. Therefore, any request to traffic modification need to go through Broward County traffic engineering. And you're correct. The request have been made for 6th Street and 4th Court. Both requests have been made. The next step is Broward County will conduct their traffic study. And Broward County, similar to City of Plantation, we only conduct traffic study when school is in session. So I will make a follow-up call to the county to ensure that they put our task order before school let out because if we don't do that, then it will be postponed until August, September. So we will try to push that request. And I will give you an update once the information is received. I do have a follow-up. When was that request made to Broward County? A few weeks ago. Because I can tell you that right on that corner of 6th and Knob Hill, I've seen Broward County vehicles parked on the corner in front of Sunset Cove, which look like they may have been already doing some of that analysis there. That may be correct. But also bear in mind, Broward County is responsible for they own and maintain all our traffic lights. So it could be they are conducting the study or they are doing maintenance or signalization to the light. That's all under their jurisdiction. Very good. Thank you very much. I'm in contact with their acting director of traffic engineering, and I will provide you the information once received. Any other questions? Thank you so much. No problem. Thank you very much. Unless there are any other comments, do we have a motion on item 12? Motion to approve. Second. Madam Clerk, if you could call the roll, please. Council Member Andreu. Yes. Council Member Horland. Yes. Council Member Anderson. Yes. President Pro Tem Reinstein. Yes. Thank you. We are now up to administrative items, items 20 and 21. Item 20 is we are confirming the transmittal and our receipt of quarterly reports. Is there anything from the finance director on that? If not, or is it Ms. Morris? Yes. Okay. Is there anything to report? Thank you very much. Is there anything from the council on that, on item 20? Then 21 is listed for a discussion regarding amending the city code to allow dogs in select city parks. Who is coming up for that one? Mr. Neutermaker. Trish is coming up. Whole team is coming up. Parks and Rec item. Thank you. Good evening, council members. So we, this is something that Phil and I have talked about for several years. Resurfaced recently with Mayor Sordal, I believe, received some requests from members of the public. Um, I happened to be at a commission meeting for the city of Coral Springs several years back, uh, for an unrelated item. And they actually passed a very similar ordinance the evening I happened to be there. So this, um, like I said, resurfaced recently. And the draft of this ordinance was, was based off of the ordinance that was passed in Coral Springs. Um, in anticipation of the meeting, I reached out to the parks and rec director in Coral Springs to see how it's been going three years later. And, um, he was very pleased to report it's been great. Um, they have received far less complaints post passing of this ordinance than prior. Uh, they had trouble similar to us, um, really enforcing, um, the current ordinance in place, particularly at unmanned parks. Um, people are walking their dogs regardless, and it's difficult, A, if staff are there to, to know what's going on at all times. And then, of course, if we don't have staff at particular parks, um, it goes unnoticed and, and unchecked. So we thought this was a nice compromise, um, to be able to allow people to walk their dogs under control on a six foot leash in some of our parks that are more passive in nature. And with that question. Thank you very much. I do have, uh, some questions and, uh, and I, I think this is great. Uh, we, we've had a lot of residents, I think, that have been asking for it. So this is great. Um, a couple questions, one is regarding the actual enforcement mechanism to support compliance, um, and that's one. And the second is you, it mentions in, um, subsection C, a waste container. Um, will we be providing actual waste containers with, you know, the type of disposal bags that you see in some communities? At this time, we did not anticipate providing, uh, the waste container at those, uh, parks that will be allowed. We're hoping that, um, pet owners are responsible enough to be able to clean up after their dogs. Um, and regarding your first question, uh, after my discussion with the, uh, Coral Springs director, they, um, mentioned they did a three month implementation plan where they had, um, cards that were printed, uh, citing the new ordinance when it would take effect. And being able to inform the residents, um, you know, you're, you're not allowed to walk your dog here, but on X date, you'll be able to walk it in other certain parks. So, and of course, we would do social media campaigns to inform the public. And as far as enforcement, I worked with, um, Assistant City Attorney Quentin Morgan on this, and I believe he cited back. I'm sure Mr. Ezra will be able to help me out a little bit, but there are currently, um, ordinances in our code referring to, um, animals that are dangerous or, you know, they, you might be able to help me out on that. But there are two different codes that, um, assist with enforcement of that. Well, it would probably be some type of civil citation program, um, I'm assuming, uh, because you can't really do code enforcement in situations like this because the remedy in a code enforcement matter is to get a lien against the property. Uh, so typically it would be either a municipal prosecution or a civil citation for a violation of the code. Uh, so in order to follow up on that, is there a need to reference that civil citation in this ordinance? Um, it typically not because there's a remedy section, but I'm taking notes for us to follow up to make sure that we address all of the comments that are under discussion. Thank you, because, you know, in reading this, uh, while I think this makes perfect sense and it's, uh, it's needed, um, you know, when you, when I read certain things that are, we're telling residents that we are requiring or we're prohibiting, but then you don't tell them that if they do what we tell them they can't do, that there will be any repercussions. Um, and, you know, it, it may prove, be less successful than we'd like it to be, but, uh, thank you very much. Any other comments from the council? Questions? Thank you very much. I didn't see it. Sorry. I, I, I, I, because I just, right after you asked that, I just, I just, I just reached on to grab it to click it. Um, I read it all, but I didn't, but I'm not going to read right now. The, most of the parks that do all the parks listed have garbage cans at them. Most of your parks, you have a garbage can somewhere. Yes. So I know this is nitpicky, but that's what, when you're doing it, you do it right. It says no animal waste shall be allowed to remain in such area, but then it says put it in a waste can container. So it's in the area. So it probably should just be rephrased differently that, you know, it has to be cleaned up after the pet in place in a waste container or something a little more different. And then, yeah, I think over time we should probably provide the bags for the ones that don't remember them. But I don't think that needs to be written in here. Okay. Just practice in the future. That's it. I will come. Go, go ahead. Council Member Hornland. Thank you, Mr. President. Um, to that point, I did have a conversation with, uh, Trish about that today. And we have to remember that these are unsupervised parks. Because I asked the same question. Because now that we're going to be requiring, uh, someone to go out there and empty those, uh, that was my first question to you. Or are we going to put those, uh, waste disposal, uh, devices in there? So, um, and I promised Trish. I don't know if anybody went to the Chewy Grand Opening the other day. But they provided me with these lovely portraits of Miso and Lady who are going to be very happy to be able to explore some of our other parks. So, um, I think it's a great ordinance. Thank you, Trish and Phil, for bringing it up. Thank you again. Thank you very much. Uh, next we have, uh, administrative items, 20, uh, excuse me, legislative items 22 through 24. Number 22 is an ordinance amending the Code of Ordinances to allow for online publication of advertisements and public notices. Uh, City Attorney Ezra, will you please read the ordinance? Yes, sir. This is public hearing second reading of an ordinance of the City of Plantation, Florida, pertaining to the subject of legal and official advertisements, updating the Code of Ordinances to allow for publication of advertisements and public notices on a publicly accessible website. Pursuant to Florida law, providing for severability, codification, conflicts, and an effective date. Thank you very much. Do we have any, uh, yes, we have Council Member Horland. Oh, no. Sorry, that was a bad. Sorry. Council Member Andreyo. Thank you, Council President. Question, um, I believe it's to April. How much of a cost savings do you anticipate this to be? It's a great change. And also, I was just wondering why it was dated, um, backdated, if you will, April 1st. Ms. Biggero. Um, okay. So, to your first question, um, so, each advertisement we would send to the Sun Sentinel was about, depending on the size, you're looking at about $400. And add, depending, again, depending on the size, um, well, actually, anywhere from $100 to $400. So, it, I did a calculation on our, off, based off of our bill, and we would have, like, a, we had, like, a $24,000 bill from May to November, um, last, last year, $24,000. That's a great, that's perfect. Look, now we have the money for the art in public places, right there. Yeah. So, um, and it, it was back, we, we, it was backdated because we actually had gotten the invoice for this, like, way back. So, the ordinance process takes a while. So, we were, yeah, yeah, that's why. Thank you. Anything further from the council? Anything further from the public? And do we have a motion? Motion to approve. Second. City clerk, if you could please call the roll. Councilmember Andree? Yes. Councilmember Horland? Yes. Councilmember Anderson? Yes. President Pro Tem Reinstein? Yes. Thank you. Agenda Item 23, an ordinance amending the Code of Ordinances, Chapter 7, Elections. Second reading, City Attorney Ezra, can you please read the ordinance? Yes, sir. This is public hearing, second reading, ordinance of the City of Plantation, Florida, pertaining to the subject of elections, repealing Sections 7-1, 7-2, and 7-3 of the Code of Ordinances of the City of Plantation, repealing Resolution 12841, amending Chapter 7, Elections of the Code of Ordinances of the City of Plantation, providing for qualifications, providing procedures for becoming a candidate, payment of qualifying fees, and submission of required forms, providing an alternative method of qualifying by petition, providing for campaign reports, providing for a form of ballots, providing for proclaiming elections, providing for an oath of office, providing for initiative and citizen referenda, renumbering Section 2-3, vacancy and candidacy for members of the City Council or Mayor, to Section 7-9, providing for conflict, severability, codification, and an effective date. Thank you, City Attorney. Any comments from the Council and comments from the public? Do we have a motion? Motion to approve. Second. City Clerk, if you could please call the roll. Council Member Andreu? Yes. Council Member Horland? Yes. Council Member Anderson? Yes. President Pro Tem Reinstead? Yes. Thank you. Next, Item 24, consideration of a request to approve a land use plan amendment for Water's Edge, properties located at 1600 Southwest 80th Terrace, and a zoned office park plantation. Do we have a presentation? Mr. Alpert. Yes. Good evening. Actually, we'd like to present items 24 and 25 together, since they're the same parcels. Item 25 is a quasi-judicial item, while item 24 is under legislative items. You put your microphone on, please. Sorry. May I ask Mr. Alpert a question? Are you asking for the ordinance to be approved tonight on first reading? For the lupa? Yes. And we should read the title of the ordinance. But to answer your question, you can do the one presentation for both items, but there will have to be two separate votes. So we're not taking any testimony on 24, only on 25? That's correct. Mr. Alpert, you may proceed. The proposed location is south of Peters Road and west of University Drive, within an existing office park. Here is the aerial view of the parcels affected by both applications, as well as the notification area. The subject 22.4 acre site is located in the southern portion of the Midtown District. The applicant is requesting a land use plan amendment to change the parcels designation from office park limited commercial to office park and irregular residential 17.7 dwelling units per acre, and a rezoning from office park to planned residential district 24.7Q. This is the entire site, 22.4 gross acres. Here is the future land use map of the entire city, but I have enlarged the area, the scope of the subject properties. So the current land use designation is office park. This is the existing land use designations, which is a mixture of office park, commercial, and various densities of residential. The applicant proposes to change the land use for this portion of the property, which is about 5.3 net acres, to the irregular residential density. Next is the official zoning map of the entire city, and an enlargement. Again, it's office park, and it would be changing that 5.3 acre portion to, sorry, 16 acres to PRD 24.7Q. This is a conceptual site plan to give you an idea of the applicant's proposal. We will not be discussing the site plan tonight. Shown here are the existing and proposed residential projects in the southern Midtown District. The proposed use is compatible with the adjacent land uses, as there has been a considerable amount of residential development taking place in recent years. The developer will need to address their impacts on the existing sanitary sewer infrastructure. The community meeting was conducted on February 13, 2023, at Central Park, with no members of the public in attendance. The planning and zoning board recommended approval of these applications on October 3, 2023. If the land use plan amendment and rezoning are approved, it would permit construction of 395 dwelling units. The applicant is requesting a density of 17.7 units per acre on the overall 22.4 gross acre site. And residential use is a permitted use in the proposed PRD 24.7Q zoning district. Staff supports the applications to allow future residential development on the subject office park property in order to facilitate the supply of both market rate and attainable housing opportunities. In the event that the City Council approves the request, staff recommends that the applicant incorporate an affordable housing component, address the utilities department's comments, and incorporate pedestrian-scale lighting and a bus or a ride-sharing shelter adjacent to the property. Staff and an applicant are available to answer any questions you may have. Thank you, Mr. Albert. Questions from the Council? There's a number of members of the public. Oh, there we go. Councilmember Anderson. I don't know if this is premature. I talked to you a few weeks ago because this was going to be on the last Council meeting. And the applicant, instead of providing affordable housing, one of the options was to provide, I'm not sure the term for it, but basically the background worked on if we had another property that we were going to build affordable housing on that they would do the, basically make it shovel-ready, provide the engineering and architecture, well, I'm not sure about architecture, but basically of the other services. Correct. And you and Danny were going to look into comparing that versus affordable housing and the cost-benefit of either one. Is this the time to talk about it or is it on the next one? I'm not, because of the way we're combining it. Right. I'm not sure. I want that answer before I vote tonight, but I'm not sure if it's for this part or the next. Next. City Attorney, did you want? Yes. So, based upon how this is being presented and how the discussion is going, it would be my suggestion that we swear in people as part of this process before proceeding if we're going to get into comments from the public on both of these items, or at least the presentation before the vote is taken. Very good. Thank you. So, why don't we take a moment and have the City Clerk swear in any witnesses for items 25? Okay. All right. Those taking on this, please stand. Raise your right hand. We'll ask it. Do you swear or affirm that the evidence you are about to give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? Right. All right. Thank you. Very good. If the Council wants to wait for a presentation or you want to continue with your questions. I can wait. Councilmember Andrea, do you want to? Thank you, President Reincey. My question might be answered in some of the presentation that the applicant has, but I would like to know, has the old Plantation Water Control District been contacted regarding permitting? For this property? Correct. We're not doing the site plan at this point in time. Okay. Yeah. And then going back to page 14, I don't want to skip over those comments as if they are just recommendations. Yes. Because, you know, with the recommendation I can choose to heed it or not. So, there needs to be stronger language other than it's a recommendation. Again, I don't know if the applicant is going to address those issues in their presentation, but in order for me to support this, I need to know that those concerns are going to be addressed, not just we're leaving it up in the air for them to choose whether or not they're going to heed a recommendation. Thank you, Councilmember Andrea. Councilmember Horland. I'll wait until the presentation. Okay. Then why don't we go ahead with the presentation before we take further questions from the public? Everybody was just sworn in. That's okay. Go ahead. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Council President. I'm Bryson Ridgeway, 8000 Peters, Plantation Road. I appreciate the time here tonight to consider this application. You know, I first wanted to start, and just really quickly, I think the art program is fantastic. We would not only be happy to contribute, but given the fact that, you know, we know a lot of real estate owners, we'd be happy to help you find not just one wall, but multiple walls, because I do think it's about doing it multiple times, not just once. So, happy to support financially and happy to support finding walls. Mr. Ridgeway, just make sure you're speaking right into the microphone, please. Sure. Thanks. Real quick, before we start, I wanted to tell you a little bit about our group. Some of you may know a little bit about our group, but for the community as well. If you don't mind doing the next slide, would you? For the community as well, look, we're a real estate investment company. We do do development, and a lot of companies do that, but we do it differently. There's the vision behind the company is not just to go build space or make money. The vision behind the company is to create opportunities for other people to create their own small businesses. And if they didn't want to create their own small business, to have equity ownership and the value that they create. I can tell you it's just a very rewarding experience. I think the country was built on small businesses, on entrepreneurship, and that's really the entire reason I started the company. The second thing is how we do things. We are focused on being partners, long-term relationships, and it's very much just about win-win. Sometimes you can't do exactly what all parties want, but you can, you know, find out what the objectives are and figure out a way to get there. And so we are 100 percent committed to that. And I thought it was apropos, you know, to start the conversation with, you know, we didn't, we're surrounded by a lot of business properties. And we have a 595 to the south. We have, you know, 3.2 million square feet of office around us. We have some major roads, so we don't have a tremendous amount of residents that were within our district for our community meeting. And one of the council members had an excellent idea to go out and reach out to the people that were around us, the local businesses. And we did that. I did that specifically. And we visited over, I should say me. I'm used to saying weeks. I'm just not big on the word I. But I visited over 60 businesses. And I have to tell you, not only, it was, it was really impressive because, and I have, I'll show the public these boards. But, but these are businesses that I was fortunate enough to get the business owners there. I was expecting, you know, if I visited 50, I would find 10 business owners. Your city is amazing. It was over 25 had business owners that were there when I went to go do the visit. So, it, it, it made me feel great that you have a lot of small, locally owned businesses here in plantation. And it also made me feel like this is the type of city that I would like to, you know, have a great long-term relationship with. I hope this is the beginning of that relationship. And I hope my actions today express that. The other part that I wanted to share was through one of those conversations, when you, when you, you naturally walk in to meet somebody that you haven't met before. And you asked to meet the business owner. Of course, I have, you know, a board or a quick presentation with me. And so, we, we were, you know, there's, there's the manager there. Her name, I changed their names a little bit for their, for their, for their privacy, Alexis. And there's a resident that's next to me and, and, and we'll call her Mary. And so, Mary hears me talk about, you know, adding apartment units at, at this location. And, and Alexis is, you know, listening. And Mary says, well, you know, what about, what about the traffic that that's going to create? Because we have terrible traffic on university, particularly on university. And, and, and I, you know, I listened. Now, this conversation, it, 40 minutes, you know, and, and it was great. Actually, Councilmember Andrea, I think you had said once that, you know, when you were out campaigning, the actual one-on-one conversations, kind of reinvigorated your faith in humanity. And so, I, I got that experience because Mary, you know, as Mary was going through the traffic, you know, she folded into and, you know, look, the cost of living is, is incredibly high, which I know affordable housing is important to this, this, this council, and we'll talk about that. And so, when Mary had said that, Alexis jumped in. And Alexis was like, you know, it is too high. It's so high, I had to move to Davie. So, Alexis used to live, I got the impression she lived right next door. It was either Midtown 24 or Camden. And she had to move to Davie. So, now, you know, Alexis was lamenting about the fact that she didn't get to live in plantation anymore. You know, she loved plantation. Instead of walking to work, because she was fortunate enough, she could walk to work. She was driving. And then, you know, Mary, Alexis, and I just kind of looked at each other and we said, and now we're adding another trip, you know, on the road. And maybe someone else who, you know, doesn't work in plantation is driving to that unit that you vacated. And so, you know, Mary, Mary came to the conclusion. She goes, you know what? I'm not against all development, right? I just, I think that our city should be very selective about the development that we do. So, the development that we do, it should provide the benefits. And it should be, the benefits should just greatly outweigh the cost. And so, that conversation, I just, I thought encapsulated, you know, the challenges that you all have in picking the projects that you want to approve. And it is my hope today that you see our project as one of those smart, selective developments like Mary came to conclude at the end of the conversation. So, this story begins, you know, we owned, we purchased a property three years ago. It was an office property. And we predominantly focus, you know, two-thirds of our time on office. We love office. And I don't think office is dead, by the way. I think that you have one of the most robust and attractive office environments in Broward County. I do. Downtown Fort Lauderdale and Plantation are the most attractive office environments, hands down. And so, we bought that property three years ago. And while we were, as I mentioned, we're big on partnerships, one of the tenants at our property, we were having a conversation. And they said, Bryson, you really do like Plantation. You want to do more business here. You need to read the Midtown plan. And so, when I read the plan, I noticed that across the lake from us, where there's this, you know, gray asphalt parking lot. A sea of parking is like five and a half per thousand parking that was completely vacant with some trees that were, you know, 35, 40 years old and not doing too well. You know, I saw that there was a plan to do residential. And so, my natural inclination was, hey, that's fantastic. That will be, that will help support the restaurants. The restaurants are really what makes our office location attractive because people want a place to go to walk for lunch and for meetings, for coffee, for dinner. And then maybe some of the people will be able to live there. And so, when I checked into it, nobody had, you know, kind of pursued it. And so, I happen to know the owners. And we had a conversation. I said, Bryson, look, if you feel like you really like this location and you want to pursue it, then by all means. And so, when we, when we, we first look at the location and, and we blacked it out a little bit just so that you could kind of see it as a heat map. The first thing we always ask is forget about everything. Just would you want to live here? Would you want to work here? Would you want to, if it's a restaurant, would you want to, you know, would you want to eat here? Would you want to shop here? And so, the yellow polygon is our site. The pink, the pink images we're, we're specifically focused on for residential food and beverage. So, those are food and beverage locations. Now, a couple of them are not, I mean, just immediately east of us. I think the old, not 2J's, but Jason's Deli and Tijuana Flats, you know, now vacated. But, but anyhow, when we, when we originally looked at this, this is what the heat map looked like. This is a great place. People could walk to go get food. The yellow polygons are apartments. This is a place that, you know, I think, I don't know if you can see the number. There's around 1,300 people that are, you know, within walking distance. So, it's a little bit of a village and a community. There's over 1,200 jobs that are, that are within walking distance. And then, and then the last part is, you know, there are two grocery stores. The, the Publix, you know, unless you're a really light shopper and looking for some exercise, probably not walking. But in San, you know, that's, that's definitely, certainly would be faster to walk over and grab something. So, we really love the location. The, the thing that I would add is, there's some great natural amenities. There's the Jacaranda Lake in two parts. And then, the Greenway and the Waterway. I'm big on the outdoors. I think, I think a lot of people are. So, that was really attractive. And then, the last part is access. You know, we, we are focused, a lot of times, and I'll get to it, when you build new space, one of the costs can be traffic. And so, we're always focused on locations that are walkable, locations that have quick access onto infrastructure. Or locations that don't need to use, you know, major roads. And so, the Midtown Bridge, which we'll talk about in a minute, made it incredibly attractive from that perspective. The, the other part was, is community improvements. And we're, we're committed to doing these things. A lot of them were part of our plan. And so, when staff had reinforced that these things would be, would be needed and necessary, we are, we are happy to say yes. The yellow is an improvement on the sewer infrastructure, running all the way from Peters down to Tropical. And we're, we're committed to working with the Utility Department on that. The, the purple is, is pedestrian connectivity. Two, two pedestrian connectivity to the, to the re, couple hundred thousand square feet of retail to the east. One down to the Greenway and then one to the office. So, so really, you know, probably the reason why we like this site is it's a walkable site. And then the, the turquoise polygon is where, we're excavating a half acre of the lake to add stormwater capacity. When we first did this plan was that night where the city, unfortunately, it had a lot of rain and, and it flooded. And so, that was the front of our mind. And so, we, we went through the, the, the effort to do that. And the last part, no one's asked us to do it. We, we would just like to commit to do it. You know, when we replace some of the, hopefully, if we get the opportunity to do this and we replace some of the landscaping, there will be some trees we'd be able to salvage. We'd love the opportunity to replace those, move those trees over to the Greenway. It's a great green space. It's just covered with grass. And I think people bake in the sun. So, it looked like an opportunity to, to improve the community. The, the other part is when you look at it from an aerial, this is, you know, in, in our mind, we looked at it like this is the missing piece to the puzzle to make it all fit. You know, a lot of times, walkable environments, when you have a big open parking lot that's empty, it's hot, it's just visually not stimulating, people don't want to walk across it. By putting something in here, it connects all of these little pieces and makes it, it makes it a truly walkable environment. And so, it just naturally made a lot of sense. The, the economic impact, you know, it's 42 million of annual income that it would bring to this area. When we did a retail study, the retail that was doing the worst was actually, this, this district is fantastic. But it was the retail that was immediately east of us. And the retail that was doing the best was the one up in the fountains. You know, it's not a surprise that they had some mixed use components there. So, so this would, this would help the entire Midtown district. An extra 3.9 million in taxes. And, and I do believe it will help the office occupancy, which has been struggling. But again, plantation is one of the better markets. And so, if, if you bring just a 10% increase in overall occupancy, it's another 95 million of daytime spending. I think everyone, if it, we don't need to spend too much time on this slide. But I just wanted to tell you, office is not dead. It just requires mixed use environments. When you have a mixed use environment, people are, they're just difficult to get people back into the office. And when companies decide to have people in office, they want a location that people want to go to, to go eat or have drinks after work. And they want to be able to track young professionals, which requires housing. And then the housing supports those F and B operations that the office users love, but can't support on their own. Because lunch, lunch checks aren't as big as dinner checks. So, so I, I really do think you have a robust office environment. And then the last thing, you know, we talked about, talked about, look, you know, Ben, smart development benefits and costs. And so, you know, this, this is, look, there's, when you add residents, there's going to be a traffic impact anywhere. If you're going to do development, you know, it's, we, we have a personal commitment to do it in a way that's responsible. That, that turquoise polygon is the walkable framework. It is faster to walk to everything in that polygon than it is to get into a car and find a parking space. In that polygon, you have, you know, eight restaurants, a grocer, 1,300 residents and 1,200 jobs. The retail and office, I, I, I've been working from this office. And I go to this office because we have the office across the, across the lake for three years. I never jump on university or, or Pine Island. I always take this, it, it changes names depending on where you are, Southwest 78th, Southwest 10th. But I always take what I call the, the internal circulator. The green takes you to 2 million square feet of retail. The yellow takes you to 3 million square feet of office. Never hitting university, never hitting Pine Island. And then the pink. So, so today, you know, if you did want to get onto 595, which, you know, if you need, the only reason I could imagine you doing that is if you want to go to the airport, if you have a meeting outside of the city. It's, you take Southwest 13th place, you make a right. And in 250 feet, you're on the, you're on the office ramp, the ramp to get to I 90, I 595. In 2027, the primo plan that, that pink, pink, pink diamond, they're adding a bus rapid transit stop as part of the, the primo plan. I should say as early as 2027, if they get things done on time. The, the pink star is the midtown bridge, which I know all of you are incredibly familiar with. It's, it's a football field away from our south entrance. And, and I can't advocate enough for that midtown bridge. In fact, if it's not in here, the owner, I've spoken to the owner of the property. They are willing, over the next 6 to 9 months, you know, however long this process takes. If, if, if I was so, you know, lucky to continue in this process, he is open, they are open to working with the city. If they need any easements changes in utility, whatever it might be to help make that bridge easier. They are on board to do. So, so we just, this is the type of location where we can get for the city. All of these benefits, you know, the economic impact, the supporting the office environment, supporting the retailers, you know, providing more supply and rental housing. So that is more affordable overall with the absolute least amount of traffic impact. While we, so, so, and I, we kind of went over these things when I just said it, but doing this, we support affordable housing, restaurants, food and beverage, support the office district. We, we'll be, we'll be supporting the parks, the sewer contribution, the stormwater infrastructure and, and, and kind of, and making, making, you know, a friendly internal walkable commute. And I had mentioned the cost mitigants, you know, if there is traffic that leads to this site, you know, and it would ever get, it would be on university for 250 feet. But more than likely, you know, you're using that internal, that internal road. We, I had, I was very lucky to talk to, you know, 70 plus people over the last 18 months. And so when we did that, there were a couple of topics that, that, that popped up. And so I just wanted to give you kind of a quick, quick rundown. This, this is very compatible with the future land use plan. You know, whether the red commercial, you know, has residential in it, there's residential all around it. On, on the next slide, it's the zoning, same story with your plan mobility. And again, residential all over around it. And then on the next slide, from a height perspective, plus or minus 85 feet, everything around us is 70 to 130 feet. You know, that that's new, you know, there's the office property that we own. That's a lowly, you know, 15 feet, but you know, it's from 40 years ago. So, so it's in, it, it conforms with the comp plan from that perspective. This city has been rightfully very focused on ownership. You know, I, I do, I do see how people that live in a city take a more vested interest in the city. Just even, you know, from involvement on committees and volunteer firefighters, which, which I'd love to get to in a second. I think you all are pretty familiar with this. These numbers are, you know, when we made our application a while ago, so the interest rates a little bit lower. But the big takeaway is, you know, if you're a young professional, it's just not attainable to go purchase a home. And, and, and the middle column, the, the middle column and the far right column are the ownership columns. The far right column is the more likely column. The middle, the middle column is, hey, best case scenario, if you wanted to go buy something. And that's the stats I have on the right. You need 120,000 of equity. You need to make over $140,000. You'd be paying over a hundred, a thousand dollars more a month in rent. And, you know, from building a wealth perspective, this was actually, this was surprising to me. It really blew my mind. The S and P 500 outperformed the, the Florida housing market over the last 20 years. Now, depending when you pick it, it's really close. But even for a renter, if they were to take that rent differential and put it into S and P 500, they would be able to still build wealth. So, so this is, apartments is a more attainable way to, to get people started in the city of Plantation. The, the connectivity, I think I talked about a good deal. I'm happy to come back to this if we have questions. The Midtown Bridge, I just think this is really important. And so I just wanted to talk about it one more time. This is, in our mind, just a real differentiator why this site is different than other sites. And if there is a site that makes sense, that brings benefits and mitigates costs, that this, this is the type of site that does that with the Midtown Bridge. The next slide shows you the Primo, the future Primo plan. Similar story, just a different mass transit option. And then I think there's one more, one more slide. Yeah, one more slide. We, we, there we go. No, you're good. We, we talked about this. This is just kind of further reinforcing that there really isn't. I mean, I'd been, I've been working at this office, you know, off and on for three years. I don't use university in Pine Island. The traffic's, traffic's not great. And, and inside those green and yellow lines, you know, I fly. So, so, so that's, I think it's a good, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a great, a great solution. The, the other topic is affordable housing. So, I have three kids, you know, we, we have a new business that we started four years ago. I don't have a ton of time, just like everybody else here. But I think it's really important to be involved. And so I've, I've always, I had a mentor tell me, just do one thing and do it well. And the one thing that I wanted to do well, and I got involved with 18 months ago, it started with homelessness. And when we started doing research on homelessness, it turned into research on affordable housing. They're not directly linked. They have different causes. But they do, there is some correlation there. And so the, when we, whenever we tackle a problem, I'm a big believer. I think it was Einstein that had said, spend, if you have an hour to solve a problem, spend 55 figuring out what the problem is, and then five minutes on the solution. So we dug in and we try to simplify things for our own sake. I'm not that, not that intelligent. So I have to keep things really, really simple for myself. And so it really boils down to lack of supply and high costs. So on the, on the, on the lack of supply, look, if there's 10 people that want something and there's only five of them, the people, the five people that make the most set the price for those five things and they price out the next five. We saw that with, with used cars during the pandemic. You know, I, you know, used cars, you know, are more affordable than new cars for a litany of reasons, except in the pandemic when you ran out of microchips and all of a sudden used car prices went up. So just yours truly, you know, purchased a car in 2015 that was used. And in 2019, it was worth more than what I had paid, you know, four years ago. Now that price is now, you know, I think it went from like 22 to 28. And now it's back down to 16. But, but the, it, it demonstrates the, you know, the, the demand supply. So if, if we really want to attack affordable housing, we do need to add market rate supply. Because if, if, if we don't, it just drags everything up and it makes subsidized housing more expensive because the subsidy to go build it gets bigger. And then we have a finite amount of money. We can't build as many subsidized units. So adding supply is, is a big one. The next one is keeping the cost low. I think it's, it's, it's intuitive. The only thing I would call out here is that middle column. You know, the way that subsidized housing works is it lowers the cost of housing. Because even if we built as much market rate as we could, it still costs, you know, more than a lot of Americans can afford to pay and rent. And so the subsidy brings that cost down so that less rent will support it. And it's just really important to think about where that subsidy comes from, making sure it's equitable. You know, not putting the burden on a small number of people. And it, it's critically important to make sure that subsidy goes a long way. You know, so if you have a hundred dollars, you want to spend a hundred dollars to go build a hundred units and not ten. The next slide is, I think we skipped one. Anyway. All right. So maybe, maybe it fell out. All right. So this is, this is our internal checklist on the right. We do this for every project. We look to add supply. We look to build cost effective units. And we look to help subsidize affordable housing. I think the next one, William jumps into how we, the add supply. We went through this, this graph on the right, which, you know, I can send to you, shows you rents in the Midtown South Village. Red means the rents went down. If it's not red, then rents went up. The green on the left column is when supply was added. And then at the bottom, you'll notice that the average rent went up in years that new supply was added by 1%. And the average rent went up 4 to 7% in years where new supply was not. So when new supply is not added, that demand starts driving up the rents. The next one, cost effective units. We, our original plan, look, by the way, you have a fantastic staff. They've been creative in problem solving. And I think a lot of it comes also from your direction to challenge them to do it. And they've put some tools on the table. So we are going to revamp our site plan. And we're going to do it in these ways. We are going to add studio units. So smaller units, less cost, which means a lower threshold rent. We are going to add a wider range of unit sizes. So think about it like if you only want 700 square feet but you only have an 800 square foot option, it's terrible to have to pay that extra premium, you know, that you get priced out. Especially like if yours truly for the first 10 years of my life would have lived in a studio before I had kids. So we will add a range of options so that we will have a broader band of pricing that will be attractive to people. We the minimum square footage sizes have been like looks like they'll be revised. So we're looking at ways to now make all of our units more efficient, which I'd be happy to talk about. And the last part is we will redo our shared parking study and talk to our the land seller. We ultimately have an office building right next to us where basically they have excess parking, but they still need some rebuilt. And so we will redo that shared parking study and have a further conversation to see if we can further reduce having to rebuild some of the parking spaces that we're taking away. So we will we will do these things to bring the cost down. And then the last part, the subsidy part, we look at someone I brought up a great point about firefighters and and particularly volunteer firefighters, which this city has. And and I think look, volunteering is fantastic, volunteering to save other people's lives. And and at many times risking your own just puts it in my mind at the top. We no matter which option the city council picked, we would like to start a trend of dedicating a unit in our in projects to volunteer firefighters at the 80 percent AMI, which is 40 percent less really where that where that target rent would be. We're happy. We're happy. We're happy to do that. And then the bigger question, which I think you're trying to get to more than one unit, is how how can we, you know, add affordable units to your to your supply? The there's there's been projects in the past that have been able to do a 10 of 15 to 20 percent commitment that and again, I'll say I'm a I'm a transparent person. I think being win win just requires transparency. That's not possible at our project. And the simple reason is the cost basis for our project is just higher between the land costs, between the stormwater improvements, between a litany of things. And you can see it in the rents. The market rents in the south village area are beyond that workforce limit. The market rents in that north area are within that income band. So it's it's incredibly painful, you know, for us. It would mean that the typical renter best case scenario would pay an extra one to three thousand dollars more, which means the equilibrium rents in that area would go up one to three thousand dollars more per year, which means every product in that area would be able to push their rents because all they do is price off of, you know, 10 percent discount, 15 percent discount to the to the best in class. So so what we but but I'm not here to tell you that I can't. I'm here to tell you I can because I know the objective is to deliver affordable housing. I can do, you know, one of the two things. One of the ideas is new. It just came, you know, from a great meeting had with a, you know, a local community leader here. I think it was either two days ago or one day away. The days blend for me. But the first is a shovel ready project. The this would be us taking it could be a city piece of land. If you want us to go find a piece of land for you, we're happy to do that. I'm here to be a problem solver. But to find that land, take it through site plan land use. Sorry, land use rezoning site plan approval and give you a shovel ready project. We'd be happy to even put a bid in to build it. But be happy to be in a disadvantage spots that you could go market it to somebody else and get a get a better deal or not bid on it at all. You know, we just want to help you get to a shovel ready project. And and I would I would even say include in that process. I'd be happy to go do, you know, talk with Ralph Stone and the county to go go figure out how much gap financing we can get, how much TIF financing we can get. And if there are any grants available, I'd be happy to do all of that. You know, my objective is if I if I can't help in another area, how can I help you get housing? I can do this. I can spend my time. And and we could spend it's around a million dollars to take it through that process. We could we could do that and absorb that in our project. That the downside some people are brought up to that is hey, Bryson, that's fantastic, but that's not, you know, you give us a shovel ready project. How long will that take? I know you're going to build your project. You're telling me you can't put it in your project because of the cost difference. And and I can't take credit for the idea, but I thought it was a fantastic idea. And the idea was, look, and I'm a little nervous about it. But but I think we can work it out is we can take. So a stack is eight units. We could take three stacks, which is 24 units. So three bedrooms, one stack of three bedrooms, one stack of two bedrooms and one stack of one bedrooms. And we can turn those 24 into 48 studio apartments. And we would be able to offer those studios within a workforce housing band. Some part of the three and two bedrooms is going to require a little creativity. And by that, I simply mean, you know, a shared kitchen and living space with full ensuite bedrooms. But it will reduce the footprint, which will reduce the required rent, you know, and, you know, down to eighteen hundred dollars. Which is well below, you know, what the other product in the market is. And and I'm a look that I'm not nervous about people wanting it. I'm more nervous about, you know, the cost to build it. Because when you build smaller, there's there's some fixed costs that still are there. And so the cost per square foot goes up. And then I have, you know, some other execution concerns. But but I'm willing to go out on a limb and and do that for 48 units. So the I wanted to put that to the city council and and I wanted to give you options that you could work with and see that I'm working with you all. And that's that's I think there's one more slide that that that's the shovel. So that's the shovel ready information. It's a million dollar contribution and and a lot of time for me personally. And then the other one is sorry, I jumped ahead. Smart growth. I think I think this is the location that provides the benefits at the least amount of cost to the community. And then the last slide, I believe, is oh, these are the companies that we visited that we were able to get in touch with the owners or CEOs. And there's one more slide. And I will tell you, I'll end on this note. You have some fantastic people, whether it was Diego at Helena's who's, you know, doesn't speak a ton of English, but made an effort to talk through it and basically said, hey, I trust you. I like you. You know, I'll support you. Or whether it be, you know, Frank over at Vignettos or Sandy at Arturo, you know, you go or Luis over at Pep Bar, you know, it's you have some great local entrepreneurs here. And and we'd love to start a relationship and work in the city in the future. And and with that, you know, I'd be happy to answer any questions. Thank you very much, Mr. Ridgeway. Before we start discussion, I want to make a disclosure that Jennings disclosure. I met with Mr. Lestrom and Mr. Ridgeway. So thank you. Do we have any comments, questions from Council? Can I also make the same Jennings disclosure? You just did. And I will as well. Thank you. I will as well. Same two people. And Councilmember Hortland. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Mr. Ridgeway. What I enjoyed about our conversation was the fact that you, as you stated, you are a problem solver. And I expressed to you, and I'm sure you've heard it from staff, how concerned this council is with attainable housing. And you did come back with some new ideas. So I was pleased to see that. Like my colleague, Councilmember Andreu, I want to get some guarantees on the recommendations tonight. And we did have a conversation specifically about utilities because I'm concerned about the impact that this project would have on infrastructure. So are you committed to, I know we've talked about the force main there, but as is recommended in the backup material, would you make a commitment tonight to design, fund, install, and convey those off-site improvements out east for that force main? Yes. We will make that commitment. And Mr. Pollio, Mr. Adams, and Mr. Newmaker have been great. The only thing we just need to work out is the contribution amounts. But, yes, we will build those, install them, and give them back to the city. Okay. Thank you. And let's talk a little bit about those combined units because, as you said, you're a little nervous about it. Yeah. And I conveyed to you that as I was helping my daughter find apartments in Manhattan recently, there were a lot of those units where they've had that shared space. So can you talk a little bit about that? Are you seeing any of that in South Florida or more in urban areas? Yeah. That's a good question. So it's new. It's not new in New York, you know, or high rent markets for the reason we're talking about it. It is new in Florida, and the places that it has been successful have been in urban areas like Miami, downtown Fort Lauderdale. It's been very successful. I went through, you know, again, I've only had 48 hours to go look through it. But I think what's critical, by the way, these units would be the same quality, same finishes as every other unit. I think what we would want to do is, oddly enough, you know, put much larger windows on it so that it's brighter and it's just a great place to live. So, yes, we see it. There's high demand for it. The products that have it in those urban locations are doing really well. And I would say that, you know, plantation, the thing that I love about plantation is you have an economic engine, you know, in a, what I'd call like a, you know, like a midtown core. And then you have the suburban, you know, the beautiful environment that suburban, you know, residential provides. So, I think the walkability and everything else in this midtown south village provides the environment that would support it. It's just unprecedented. Right. And I understand a little bit of, not quite fear, but, you know, a little, being a little tentative about proceeding with that because it hadn't been done. Just clarify for me when we talk about those 48 units, would they all be the shared units or would some of those just be individual studios? That's a good question. So, each one of those stacks, the stack of one bedrooms would be traditional studios but a little smaller than even what we were going to build. I think we had studios that were more like 600 feet. These would be like closer to 550, 500. The two bedrooms and the three bedrooms would be the ones that have, because we'd be fitting within that footprint, those would be the ones that have the shared living space. Okay. But essentially we'd be getting 48 attainable units. That's right. Out of that project. And we don't need to decide on that tonight if this were to go forward. That would be something that we would. That's, I was going to say, that's a good thought. I'd be happy if the city council wanted to discuss which one they liked better and they would like for me to. So, say for instance, city council said that, you know, either of those could be attractive but we're unsure which one we want to do. So, I'd be happy to move forward with our site plan process and continue to work with city council to answer questions and tweak both of those at the same time so that you all felt like you had two great options. And I appreciate you sitting down with Mr. Stone because I think that's something I'd even asked Mr. Laystrom and he had sat down with him. We were talking about another project quite a while ago because there is a lot of gap financing and tax based incentives there. I think that this council has also said that they had a desire to have ownership. But when we take a look at that South Village, we really don't have any affordability or attainability in that South Village. And I think it would be important in that area for the people that work in the area. I, you know, I think that when we talk about infill development, which we need to start to look at within the city before the state makes us look at it. I think that this would be a good opportunity. I think it's a good location for it. As you said, looking at the midtown plan, it had been planned for housing back there. So, I appreciate you being willing to work with us on that. I just really wanted to get those commitments on the affordability and on the improvements with the utilities. The other thing that was asked of was the improvement in lighting and the... Absolutely. And by the way, if I make a commitment, I'm going to keep it. You know, my words, the most important thing. So, I'll commit to all three of those things. Okay. Thank you for answering the questions. I'd like to hear from my colleagues. Mayor Fadgen. Thank you, Council President. I appreciate you incorporating housing for the firefighters. We had a good discussion about that when we met. Is there any room to add, like, two or three units for the firefighters? I mean, you can think about it and get back to me. I appreciate the one that you're giving us, but if you can give us two or three... So, each, I'll just be candid, each one adds to the project, you know, $310,000 to $320,000 of cost. So, yeah. I would, if you could think about it, and you can get back to us when we get down that road. Okay. I will think about it. Okay. I don't want to put you on the spot. The shared living, there are examples of shared living in South Florida. I believe there's one in downtown Fort Lauderdale. It's on the east side of the tracks, might be on the north side of the New River. Yes. Is that ex-living, or did they get rid of that? It, I think it was ex-living, and it now may be the society. Okay. They change, sometimes they change names. But that's shared living. And I know that they have, there's several buildings down in Miami, actually kind of dotted around. So, it is an interesting concept. Yeah. So, I think that's a great idea. I believe Max has sent us articles about supply, and I've done more research on supply. So, it's not necessarily that we have to require affordable housing units. Supply is going to have an effect on the entire market. So, I just want to throw that out there. So, but I like the development. I think that it would invigorate the Vignettos. I don't remember the name of that plaza, but we're Vignettos and legends and all that stuff. And I think we spoke about if you could work with the owner of that plaza, because I believe that there's not a direct crossway because it's more of a drainage kind of field, that green area between your property and where that Vignettos is. So, I did look into that. It is a drainage. We are happy to add. Maybe some sort of bridge. Over the, well, we do have two pedestrian pathways on the north and south end of it. Like, so, from our entrance on the south, if our site plan doesn't change. So, they wouldn't have to, like, do a big walk. They can more beeline towards this, basically what I'm looking. Could I follow up on that one? Absolutely. Yeah. That's really my comments. Thank you. Councilmember Horland. I'm sorry. The mayor made me think about something. I'm glad you brought up the plaza over there, and Mr. Ridgeway did speak to those business owners. We've lost a couple of businesses in there. You know, and when we talk about the applicants coming in and wanting to put housing in, we often talk about the need to support those businesses, and this would certainly do that. When we talk about the walkability over there, one of the things this council has been concerned about is the lighting in that general area. So, what I would ask is when you're looking at creating some type of pathway over there, it's very dark. So, whatever we can do to improve the safety for anyone who would want to walk over to those restaurants. We'll make that commitment. I just know that cost, in the scheme of things, we can figure out a way to make that happen. So, I'll make that commitment. Thank you. Thank you very much. Anything else from council? We have a number of comments from the public. Mr. Auerbach. John Auerbach. And on deck is Ms. Bush and Mr. McIntosh after that. John Auerbach. I'm here tonight, although I live at 6201 Element Terrace. I'm also, we also are the owner of the University Shops or the One Plantation Shops, which I think you guys were just referring to as hopefully the, hopefully the new neighbor for, yeah. So, yeah, so we have been fortunate enough to own that shopping center. And we hope that Mr. Ridgeway and his efforts are successful in building a brand new residential project across the street. And we've owned that center since 2004. And, yes, that center has had a very interesting history. It was redeveloped in, I think, 10 and 11 when we started the One Plantation project as well as we had taken a very old center, the La Quinta Shopping Center, I believe it was called, which had 81,000 square feet of retail. And we broke it open and made it into a more traditional center and renovated every single building, created a pathway and walkway from One Plantation. And still we've had several businesses turn over over the years. I don't think we've ever been full in this location. Tijuana Flats just went out. Jason's Deli had gone out a few years ago. And we, I believe, just signed a Korean barbecue concept that's going to go in. The bakery center just went out, or the bakery went out, and we were hoping to get somebody else in there. So it's been a long road with that center. We've owned it almost now for 20 years. And we welcome some new development across the way that could help our tenants in their daily efforts to sustain business over there. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Arbaugh. And, Mr. Arbaugh, I've seen that you were already sworn in, but please, for the record, just tell us that you were sworn in. I was sworn in. And I'll just ask that all the speakers, when you come up and introduce yourself and your address, just also confirm that you were sworn in. Ms. Bush? And if you want to speak, anybody who wants to speak on 24 and 25, just as a reminder that you're speaking about it at the same time. Cynthia Bush, 700 Southwest 78th Avenue, number 919 Plantation. And I have been sworn in. I am also a member of the Midtown Development or Midtown Advisory District Board. Is that? I'm trying to think what it's called now. And I am here to speak in favor of this project. As someone who's lived at 78th Avenue on that street, I have walked around this property many times in my sort of weekend walks or general perusing the neighborhood. And it's obviously a property that really needs to be redeveloped and rethought. You know, it's traditional office space that just has not really been occupied. I can't even think how long it's been since there's been anyone really utilizing the property. So, one, I think this is an important first step to just reinvigorate some property that just needs to be, needs it, as do many areas, I think, in the south side of our district. Two, yes, it is walkable. As I just said, I walk from it from my building. And I can imagine that people who live in my building will walk up to the fountains from time to time, too, as part of, like, enjoying that area. Some concerns, I've actually had spoken with Lacer Mountain Hallway about some of them. The corner by McDonald's and the traffic and the left turn there would be really important as we go forward to think about some of those issues. Because it is a really dangerous sort of area and very congested. The left turn there, in particular, is particularly dangerous. I don't use it. I go around if I have to. And then also, of course, pushing really hard to get the Midtown Bridge going and not letting it languish as something that just doesn't get completed quickly enough. I think the sooner we get that moving, the easier it's going to be for all of us. And I think also for trying to figure out what the final traffic flow of this area will be. It would be helpful to have that bridge getting built. And then finally, hearing that the developer uses the roads up through past my apartment building, I would hope that he would join me in pushing for some really much needed improvements to Southwest 78th Avenue for maybe bike path, better walkability, crosswalks, traffic flow issues, and traffic calming. So thank you. Thank you very much. Mr. McIntosh, next. And Mr. Corman on deck, followed by Joe Wynn. Hi. Matthew McIntosh, 601 Northwest 82nd Avenue. I was sworn in. I also wanted to make a Jennings disclosure. I've never done it before, but I spoke. No? You don't? Oh, okay. Well, that's great. That's very educational. All right. Good preparation. Can I get two minutes added just in case? Just keep going. Yeah. Okay. All right. Thank you. As a resident of the Midtown District, I wanted to voice my support for the rezoning for Water's Edge. I moved to my apartment from Fort Lauderdale to the apartment complex to Manor and Plantation because it's a short drive from my workplace. And I renewed my apartment lease because it is a nice, dense, walkable area of Broward County that I see has a ton of potential to become even better. I live on the fifth floor of my apartment building for context on 82nd Avenue at the road. My apartment complex is on, has shade trees, large sidewalks, and is only a four minute walk from Publix and only a 10 minute walk to a restaurant like Taco Craft. My neighborhood is beautiful and I love it. Not proving the sort of rezoning for denser developments would be able to uphold the character of Midtown. Not allowing more developments like the one I live in or Water's Edge will lead to an increase in rent for places like my own as demand for walkable neighborhoods remain high and supply remains inadequate if y'all didn't approve the rezoning. In the housing crisis, we need more housing to be built, even if it's market rate housing, to reduce the demand on existing housing. Reducing the demand on existing housing is financially key for not only stopping rising rent, but to start decreasing it without having to increase property taxes to fund subsidies for building affordable new apartments right out the gate. More density is needed to support the businesses that are based in Midtown. Foot traffic, not car traffic, is what drives growth for businesses and jobs. The more dense an area gets with a mix of both commercial and residential spaces that are connected is the more one is able to do their daily trips by walking like I do with walking to Publix. The more trips one can do on foot is the less one needs to drive to get where they need to be. The less people are driving is the less cars on the road. Less cars on the road means reducing traffic. So I know that's two big priorities for the cities, reducing traffic and more affordable housing. Please support the rezoning. Thank you. Thank you very much. Mr. Corman. Rob Corman, point of order before my clock starts. Go ahead. Can we read it? Like, am I commenting on both 24 and 25 at this time? Yes. Okay. To that point, then I assume I get double time to speak, three minutes per item? If you need additional time at the end, just ask for it. Okay, cool. In that case, then, yes, I've been sworn in and I understand the rules. So you've heard me say this before, in particular with properties in the OPP. The comp plan is not done. So we are in a position of ATFQ. Answer the fabulous question to determine whether or not a land use plan amendment should be offered for this property to change office park to residential. When the property north of the Ellsworth was brought up, Mr. Leystrom heard me argue against it, especially with dashed line density issues that were in there. This property is a little bit different. And this property is different for two reasons. First of all, the Midtown Bridge. When that is in there, that will provide a traffic feeder that will solve many of the people's traffic issues. Not necessarily traffic problems, but the traffic issues because it will provide what it's intended to do, which is a feed off of University and Pine Island. And it will allow people to actually travel those interior quarters of the Midtown. The other issue that I want to bring up has to do with the presentation that we just saw. Which is a presentation by a developer who is trying to think outside of the box on this issue. The same type of outside of the box thinking was approved up on University and Sunrise recently. And out of that one, we did get affordable housing units from them. This is another example of an outside of the box thinking of how to accomplish the task at hand. So, if you look at the market for these mixed use apartments, just because there aren't many of them in what we would call a suburban area of South Florida, as opposed to in the Brickle area. Actually, my niece is in one of those. She's a student at University of Miami. Why do I bring that up? Well, I bring it up because we have NSU just to the south of us. And we have several schools there, several individuals who could benefit from apartments like this in this location. They'll put them on a transportation corridor, get them to the school and back. Likewise, the idea that, I mean, all props to one apartment specified for firefighters. I believe if that stack is offered at that particular level in the affordable housing realm, firefighters could take advantage of it. So could our paramedics. So could nurses. So could any of our first year teachers that are in the area. So the idea that a developer is willing to go out on a limb to craft such a solution actually is, in my opinion, a net positive. The site plan cannot be considered right now when you're looking at the Lupa. We can't talk about the specifics of what they are going to put down there and what it's going to look like. But what we can consider is what the offer on the table per the presentation has made and the guarantees that you have received. So with regards to the Lupa, this is one of those weird chance, weird places where you're looking at me and going, wow, Mr. Corman saying that crazy. I'm actually okay with this particular carve out because something which I had thought about and was addressed, the issue of that parking garage, it's going to go in there. I personally hate parking garages and if you're advocating for a spot that is within this midtown district saying how many fewer of the car trips are going to be need to be made. I don't necessarily think that the parking lot needs to be that prominent, but the talks are in there to decrease that parking footprint. Because as we move forward, if this is in fact a live work play type of environment and those improvements to lighting and sidewalks and everything else that you're putting in there is followed. I think this could actually be a net benefit to the city. What I would hate to see happen is for us to put a barrier in place to a developer. I'm not going to call out other developers like styles, but I'm going to say that there are developers out there who haven't been willing to work with the city as much, who haven't been willing to look at the priorities. And the fact of the matter is over the last four years, the priorities of the city has changed with regards to development and more importantly redevelopment. And so while I would love to have the comp plan in front of us to determine whether or not OPP should stay in the city and be designated, the actual carve out here with that dash line density, keeping the footprint of the building in a smaller area, making the improvements to landscape lighting and movability about the city, I personally think is a net benefit. Had I been sitting on planning and zoning when this was approached and it was presented in this way, I would have voted for it. That was one of the days where I was on a trip. Couldn't make it. Max was sitting in the chair. Good on him. But what I would say is this is something that we should strongly consider just because of that ability and desire to work with the city and what our priorities are. Thank you. Thank you very much. Mr. Wynn followed by Alejandro Munoz and then Max Goldstein. Good evening. Joe Wynn, 944 Northwest 92nd Terrace. And you were sworn in. And I was sworn in. And I may not need to make a Jennings disclosure, but I will disclose that I have met with the developer, similar to many of you. It seems like the developer made an opportunity to meet with a lot of members of the community, understand some of the concerns, the challenges, the needs, the expectations, and the uniqueness of that area. And get a variety of perspectives from elected officials, residents, both within and without that Midtown district. I think that alone speaks to a lot of the sense of inclusion and specific applications that this project could convey. Now, I know we're also speaking on the land use plan. Yes, approve it. Work it out. It'll be the 80th. That's fine. Whatever. We can deal with that kind of thing later. In the meantime, this is essentially almost an anchor project for a new section of Midtown, right? We want to think of the bigger picture of Midtown as not one thing. It's too big to think of it as one, right? We're not going to have one housing or one office building in that thing and, you know, have a 200-story skyscraper. I feel like we'd have some people here at the meeting complaining about that. So instead, we have sections. And the whole goal of Midtown as a walkable community, which I think I've heard walkability mentioned tonight more than almost any other word besides affordable housing, which is fabulous because that was too many now. So the goal of it is density and urban infill is what creates those concepts. It's what creates the ability to have less traffic because you have the ability to connect. It's what creates the ability to have affordable housing without directly subsidizing or specifying it, simply because you have supply that meets the demand or at least comes close to that demand. And then the final thing is we discussed the climate aspects on this, right? We want to achieve some sustainability goals as well. That may not be our top priority, but it is in our minds. And research has shown that urban infill is one of the most effective ways to address climate impacts of an area more than putting solar panels on, more than converting to EVs from gas engines, more than most other activities by a long shot. And it's because it brings all these things and good practices together into one. Now, I have had an opportunity to see a version of this project, and it was interesting. It was good. Lent some support, lent some contributions, and I expect to see it evolve and change as we go, but only if those projects and ideas get approved tonight. So I look forward to your support. Thank you. Thank you very much. Mr. Munoz, have you been sworn in? I have not. Okay. Madam Clerk, if you can please swear him in. Please raise your right hand, please. Do you swear or affirm that the evidence you're about to give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? Yes. Go ahead, sir. Thank you. Thank you. Alejandro Munoz, 9450 Pointiana Place. I just wanted to say that I think that rezoning this area to mixed residential use would serve a much more productive purpose than what it currently is. As we saw, it's a mostly half-empty parking lot, and this is especially true considering all the housing talk and the lack of affordable housing. And I just wanted to say that plantation seems to be in a good place to build a very walkable midtown. There's walkable again. But doing that would require taking a look at things like the parking requirements in order to preserve space for people and limit the amount of cars that would travel through this area. So I hope that maybe this project aligns with you all taking a look at those parking requirements in the near future, and hopefully we can build something with more people and less cars, hopefully. Thank you. Thank you very much. Mr. Goldstein. Good celebrity today. Max Goldstein, 1021 Northwest on 15th Avenue. I was sworn in. I wanted to start by thanking Mayor Fadgen. I was hoping that you guys all read my emails. I know I send a lot of them, and they're pretty long. They're kind of like mini novels sometimes. You're very verbose. Yes. I could use a couple of writing classes to learn to shorten it. So, of course, I support this project, too. And I'll do the full disclosure. Two things, actually. The first is that I'm on PZB, and I did vote on it. But I'm representing myself as a resident and not as a member of PZB. And I did also meet with the developer, of course. He likes to talk to everyone, it seems. So there's really two things that I want to add to this discussion. The first is the mobility aspect of it. The good thing about plantation and where we stand is that we actually got the MPO to do a lot of this legwork for us. This is the last thing that I talked about the last time I came here, which was the MMTP, the Multimodal Master Transportation Plan. If we are to fulfill that plan and add to it, hopefully, with a network of protected bike lanes, wider sidewalks, road diets throughout Midtown, we can get a lot of these supposed extra car trips from this development. We'll probably be able to shift a lot of them to walking, biking, and transit. So that traffic impact that we might be looking at in the future, you know, we have a way to shape that and mitigate that ourselves without the development even being there. And the second is that, you know, I love this talk about affordable housing. You know, I love talking about affordable housing. And this was a great presentation by the developer. But it's kind of exhausting to have to go through the same points every time with every development and try to negotiate on an ad hoc basis every single development. The good thing is that the county has a policy that we can adopt that would shorten a lot of these discussions. It's affectionately called the Geller Amendment. We all love Senator Geller here. And it's the actual number on the county policy. It's 2.16.4 in the land use code. And it is basically a formula for affordable housing that the county has. And it's different ratios depending on the affordability measure. I know that Councilmember Horland is on the Broward County Planning Council and you have an item tomorrow morning talking about the Geller Amendment. But for those of you who are not aware, it's basically that for every affordable housing unit, that whatever level of affordability, the county gives you bonus market rate units to try to offset that cost and encourage the developer to build more affordable housing units. The city has not adopted it yet. And we should, because then not only do we not have to negotiate this on an ad hoc basis, which saves you guys time and staff time, but the developer comes in already expecting to contribute something. And we don't have to negotiate because they come in knowing if I put this affordable housing in, I get my project approved. I get to build my market rate units. I get to do my project knowing that I have to put affordable housing in without having to negotiate with the city. So those two asks basically are all I have to say. Thank you. Thank you very much. Any further comments from the public? Yes, sir. Mr. Duke. I'm Owen Duke, 10301 Northwest 11th Street in Iowa this morning. Thank you, sir. We've spent a lot of time lately just deciding what good projects we can put in and what constitutes a good project. And this particular project hits every one of the yes buttons on that. It's just excellent. So I don't really need to say anything on this. But I've dealt with a lot of developers in my life, including my father and my grandfather, so I go way back. And so I know them pretty well. But one person that I'm really an expert on is Bryson Ridgeway. We've been friends a long time. And he takes a little different look on the projects when he starts them. Most people take a piece of land and they'll say, how many things can we crowd in there and how much income can we get? Bryson's approach is, what's the best thing for this land? What is it going to do? What can we do that makes it work, that makes it valuable, that makes it do this? With the idea that all of these dollars that you look at just fall into place. And if it doesn't work, no matter how many units you get in, it doesn't work. But if it does, it does. So that's the approach he's taken to that. And he's come up with an exceptional project. So I want to endorse it. Thank you very much, Mr. Duke. Any further comment from Council? If I may? Just before we act, regarding a motion or? No, I wanted to weigh in on what we would prefer. Yes, go ahead, please. If I may. Council Member. Having heard the discussions and the presentation, I think that what I would like to see is that stack of the 48 units. I really think that it is a bold move. I think it's something that would be exciting for the district to go ahead and try that, especially the two blended units there with the shared living space. I, again, think that we need some affordability and attainability in that part of the district. So that would be my vote if we were going to weigh in on that tonight. Anybody else want to weigh in? Can we go back to that slide? I just needed a refresh. I'm sorry. Please come to the microphone. Sorry. The slide that was missing, city staff, Samira, had recommend that we help push along a potential study to a traffic interrupt at Southwest 13th and University. We agree with that and that we're going to commit to doing that. That was the one that when it came up, I was like, where did it go? I just wanted to share that. Thank you very much. I'm sorry. The 13th and University, is that the left hand by McDonald's? That's the left hand? Right, because that was one of the concerns I wanted to address because remember also we've already approved a Hilton Hotel there as well. So we also have to, you know, account for that. I had watched that and I knew that that was a concern and so I wanted to help address it. Thank you. The one that shows the options, right there. Thank you. So it was the two bedroom or one bedroom for firefighters at the 80% AMI and that's one unit, you were saying? That's correct. But in addition to that one unit, it would also be, I agree with Council Member Horland, in lieu of the shovel ready, I would prefer the stackable units, the 24 units as well, which become the 48, right? What was the WFH? Oh, workforce housing. Oh, okay. Sorry. And they would, the workforce housing studio. Okay. I agree. Thank you, Council Member Andrew. Council Member Anderson. So, I think we need all the points made tonight make a lot of sense and we need the flexibility to have a diverse range of prices in there, people in there. We need the diversity to make it successful, both the restaurant, the retail, the living. So, I also vote for the 48 WFH. And I concur as well. Thank you. Bryson, what did you say that the slide, you just said that you talked with Samir, Ms. Shailon, and you would do a study or what did you, I just didn't. It's a, I believe it's an FDOT road or a county road and they required traffic studies to push the application along. And so, we agreed to do additional. So, I think we may have even started that process on a smaller study. Okay. Yeah. I know we talked about it in our individual meeting and I assume we were on top of that. So, thanks for. Thank you very much. And if there's no further comments, before we call a vote, I also just want to add in, you know, one of the things that many people have commented on was Mr. Ridgeway, his listening skills. And we really appreciate that and it wasn't just listening to us. You heard members of the public say that you met with them and you listened to them. One of the things that we've talked about many a time for many applicants that have come before us is that, you know, they send out a notice to businesses and they say, well, we got, we didn't get any response. And we've discussed, well, oftentimes it's, who are they sending the notice to is going to possibly the business owner and not the tenants. And you recognize that and actually went and met with the tenants to really get a sense for the actual people that are there, what they think. So, kudos to you for the legwork on that. Do we have a motion on item 24? Excuse me. I'm sorry. I need to read the title of this ordinance and then I will need to read the title of the rezoning ordinance just as a reminder. Okay. Item 24 first, city attorney. Thank you. An ordinance pertaining to the subject of comprehensive planning changing the future land use designation of a parcel of property specifically amending city of plantation ordinance number 1626 as amended which adopted the city's future land use plan and map to redesignate a parcel of land containing approximately 22.4 plus or minus gross acres of property from office park limited commercial to office park and irregular residential. 17.7 all within a dashed line area in accordance with policy 1.7.6 of the future land use element of the plan. Said parcel of real property described as a parcel of land in section 11 township 50 range 41 east. Said parcel including a portion of track C together with a portion of track D of Jacaranda parcel 834 plat. According to the plat thereof is recorded in plat book 133 page 28 of the public records of Broward County Florida and being more particularly described in the legal description identified as exhibit a property generally located at 1600 southwest 80th terrace and 1601 southwest 80th terrace providing for conflict severability and an effective date. Thank you. Thank you. Do we have a motion for item 24. Motion to approve. Can the motion. I'm sorry. Council member hurling. Pending the comments from utilities. Well, we're approving the lupa. So do you want to make that for the next item. I'm 25. Well, I don't it was under item 24. The back up for 24. That's fine. I mean, I did get Mr. Ridgeway to commit to it. He did. That's fine. I'll amend the motion pending the discussion with administration and utilities finalizing those details. Second. We have a first and a second. City Clerk, if you can please call the roll. Council member Andrew. Yes. Council member Warren. Yes. Council member Anderson. Yes. President Pro Tem. Yes. Thank you. Item 25. We did combine these together, but any further comments? Hearing none. Do we have a motion? Excuse me. I'm sorry. I did that again. And I just want to state for the record that the agenda backup is made also part of the record for this quasi judicial proceeding. I'm going to read the title of the ordinance. A zoning ordinance of the City of Plantation, Florida rezoning approximately 16.052 gross acres from OPP office park plantation district to PRD 24.7 Q planned residential district in accordance with the City of Plantation comprehensive zoning ordinance chapter 27-92 for property within the City of Plantation, Florida set parcel of real property described as a parcel of land in section 11 township 50 range 41 east. Said parcel including a portion of track C together with a portion of track D object around a parcel 834 plat. According to the plat thereof as recorded in plat book 133 page 28 of the public records of Broward County, Florida. And being more particularly distraught described in the legal description identified as exhibit a property generally located at 1600 southwest 80th terrace and 1601 southwest 80th terrace providing for conflict severability and an effective date. Thank you. Do we have a motion? Item 25. Motion. Motion to approve. Second. City Clerk, if you could please call the roll on item 25. Council Member Andreu. Yes. Council Member Horland. Yes. Council Member Anderson. Yes. President Pro Tem Reinstein. Yes. Thank you. Thank you very much. I would just like to add, if I may, Council President Reinstein. No. Just kidding. Go ahead. May I? Go ahead. That this really is an example of how developers should, I think it was said already, but how developers really should come into our city. And I hope that others are listening and watching because I think you really went out of your way more than any way you have seen before. And I appreciate that. Your willingness to be flexible and be creative and think outside the box. I think nobody said it better than Mr. Duke. And I hope you will take that to heart. You should keep that part of the tape forever. Mr. Mayor, you want to speak? I just want to add to what Council Member Andreu said. I think the last two developers really came in here proactively trying to help us solve the problems that we're concerned about. So it would be very refreshing if we keep that with future applicants to, you know, bring us the solutions. And then let's have a conversation and then make sure that everyone is listening to all the stakeholders. So I appreciated our meeting and I appreciated your presentation today. So thank you. Thank you, Mayor. We're next up, item 26. City Attorney, would you like to read item 26? There is nothing to read for this. This is not an ordinance. This is a development order. And because of the nature of how we started this process, I did not read the quasi-judicial proceedings. I think we've already gone through the process. Again, just for this item, the agenda backup will also be made part of the record. Thank you very much. Who's presenting? Mr. Holmes. Okay. Good evening. This is application PP24-0007. It is a request by the Shops of Broward. The property is located 8100 through 8160 West Broward Boulevard. You can see the property is located just there, just south of Broward Boulevard, west of the Broward Mall. This is the city's zoning map. You can see the underlying zoning is NPM. This is an aerial photo, which sort of shows the location of the property. So there are several requests that are a part of this sign, special exception. The first request is from section 27150T, which requires the top 50% of a ground sign to contain the shopping center name, primary message in the bottom 50% to contain the tenant panels. So what the applicant is basically requesting to do is to allow the tenant panels to be on the site occupying more than 50%. So essentially allowing the tenant panels to occupy more than 50% of the sign. Request number two requires the fund of the principal message to be larger than the fund of the secondary message, the tenant panels. And you can see here in this case, to allow the name Shops At to be equal to or less than the size of the fund of the tenant panels. So basically, this is required to be larger than the tenant panels. There are portions of this that are smaller or about the same size of the tenant panels. So that's the second part of the signed special exception. So request number three is from section 27-160, which limits single-story, multi-occupant establishments with two or more street frontages, over 300 lineal feet to two 48-square-foot, double-faced ground signs. The applicant, in this case, is requesting to allow one 80-square-foot ground sign. And that ground sign would be located along Broward Boulevard. So they're opting not to put a second sign along Perimeter Road, but to put the sign along Broward Boulevard. That's where they feel they have most of the traffic and they would get, you know, most benefit from a sign. Request number four is from section 22-20P, which limits the height of a ground sign on the six-lane roadway to nine feet. The applicant is requesting to allow a ground sign to be 10 feet, so just to go one foot higher. Part of the rationale for that along Broward Boulevard, you know, there's the old plantation canal that runs along there that kind of has a significant setback for properties that are located on the south side of Broward Boulevard. And so they're trying to kind of increase the height of the sign to get greater visibility to the sign. Request number five is from section 27-150Q, which requires a setback for a 10-foot tall sign to be 10 feet from the property line. They are requesting to allow it to be setback five feet. Again, given the setback from Broward with the canal there, they're trying to push it up a little closer to the street to get more visibility for the sign. And then these are just some pictures. There is an existing sign that's there. This kind of shows you exactly how far the sign would be set back. You can see the difficulty of kind of seeing the sign as you traverse or travel along Broward Boulevard. And this is just looking at it from another angle. Very difficult to see the existing sign that's currently there. So just in general, just some analysis criteria. The old plantation water control canal right away is 90 feet wide between Broward Boulevard and the north property line of the shopping center. The sign is located five feet from the north property line, thus 95 feet from Broward Boulevard. If you look at the distance that they're proposing to set it back, the proposed height of the sign at 10 feet will aid in the visibility of the sign. And finally, that staff supports the height and design of the sign and the five deviations from the sign code. As such, we're recommending approval of the proposed sign special exception request. Happy to answer any questions. I don't see any questions from Council. Any questions from the public? Mr. Nguyen. Joe Nguyen, 944 Northwest 92nd Terrace. Yes. Approve. Just get it done. Approve it. The way that it's set up, the way that the canal is, before we get the canal covered over and put in a beautiful linear park. Until then, essentially, this is a highway billboard because we're essentially putting it along what factors into when the lights are green, a highway. So as a result, cars are moving quickly and this is far away, so it needs to be large for them to see it. I don't like it. I don't like it. I don't like that we have that kind of development in that area, but that's what we have. So until we have the ability to change it to being denser area, things closer to the roadway, smaller roadways, slower cars, more people out. Until then, we really need to feature it so that we don't have people making last-second turns where they go, oh, wait, there's the business, and then they slam on the brakes and turn, which creates more hazards. I do like the ability of people going, oh, look, there it is, and they can make a decision five seconds earlier. So that's pretty much it. Approve it. I understand the variances are due to really being that the canal is there and it creates a separation there. So that's all. Thank you. Have a great night. Thank you. Do we have a motion on item 26? Motion to approve. Second. Madam Clerk, if you can call the roll, please. Council Member Andreu? Yes. Council Member Horland? Yes. Council Member Anderson? Yes. President Pro Tem Reinstein? Yes. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No? The mayor gets to speak at the administrative update. It's not on my agenda. It's right here. It's not on this one. It's not on this one that I have. But go ahead, mayor, please. Go ahead. You're not paying attention when I run the meeting. So first thing, the city's sustainability and resiliency advisory board has just launched its green bill. It's a business certification program. The program seeks to recognize businesses of all types who have implemented efforts to conserve water, minimize energy, use or otherwise be more environmentally friendly. Information applications can be found on the city's website. We look forward to recognizing these businesses for the efforts in the near future. I think the advisory, the resiliency, the sustainability resiliency advisory board meets the second Monday, which, oh, the 13th is their next meeting. And they would love to see you come out and watch them. They they've been having some pretty good discussions. And I know they've been working really hard on that on this initiative. Earth Day, another success. Megan did a fantastic job, kept a tight ship, kept us in line. So and then the last three days have been very full and busy, busy days. Monday morning when we were notified of Mayor Sordal's leave, Jason and I had a conversation about how we're going to proceed. And I told him I do not want to disrupt the meeting schedule. I'm going to prioritize my schedule that the city is going to be first. I've talked to my staff at my office. They understand I'm already coordinating with Pam. So when I do have conflicts that I'm letting her know about those schedules. And I told Jason that any meeting that you would expect the mayor to be or someone would expect to have the mayor there. I'm going to make I'm going to be there. So Monday and Tuesday, I met with finance. I love a good finance meeting. Parks and Rec. Met with the social media team. And that was a really good meeting. You know, it's basically representatives from all the departments and it's collaborative and it's brainstorming. And I was really impressed by it. You know, we have an understanding of what's happening, but we don't know what's happening. So I really enjoy sitting there. Had a meeting with Chief Harrison and got an update from him. This morning, I met with Jason, Carol and Laura. And in the coming coming days, there's going to be a lot more meetings and they're really making it easy. And I appreciate that. And I'm really happy to report. I think that everyone on the council would be very pleased with the communication, the openness of the process and the dedication to succeed. I don't I don't think I'm surprised by that. But being in this role and experiencing it, I think that makes me more proud about my city, our city. So the directors and all the employees I know are going to be fully engaged in the mission to serve the residents and constituents of our city. My message in these meetings has been we're going to keep the city moving forward with the ultimate goal. When the mayor comes back, mayor sort of comes back that nothing's been missed or delayed. So he can just step in and continue what he was doing before. And then finally, the outpouring of encouragement, the well wishes that I've received and the prayers that our residents have sent, including from Robin and Nick. I'm beyond grateful and I'm sincerely thankful we do live in a special place. And I think that's been said a couple of times tonight. So I'm looking forward to getting us through this gap. And then mayor sort of coming back and then not get that gavel back. I don't really feel like I did anything today. So on another note, happy birthday, Denise. You don't look a day older than last week. So and then happy Passover. So that's all I have. Thank you very much, mayor. I'm not a council member comments. I'm going to actually begin. I I want to just echo what the mayor has said is that I'm comfortable assuring our residents that our city is in good hands. And we should all wish our mayor good health. I also want to congratulate Plantation Middle School on their new PTSA officers for the academic year. I got a notice of it, so I thought it was worth thanking them. All of the whether it's PTO, PTA, any of these parent activities that are at our school, they really deserve recognition because they work really hard to benefit our schools. And they're doing a great job in our schools. Likewise, I had a chance to attend a Broward ESE Advisory Council meeting recently. It's the second one I've attended this year. And chair Jackie Luscombe does a wonderful job. And so I wanted to acknowledge that because as I sat through the meeting, it's not an easy advisory council. Not many of them have some have more difficulties than other. But she does a wonderful job in that respect. But in regards to the school, I did want to comment regarding the deaf and hard of hearing visual alert system. It's something that I've brought up a number of times. And I think other council members have brought up a number of times that it's something that the school board has been working on. And they've been working on. And it always seems like it's continuing to be worked on and not completed. And we're getting great updates. And we appreciate the updates. And the schools appreciate the updates. But the school year is almost over. And these alert systems are not completed in all of the schools they were promised to be worked on. So just want to say that, that we are still concerned in our city that our schools don't have these alert systems for all of the students. And we would continue to encourage the school board to put whatever pressure they can on the contractors and the vendors and all of those people that are part of the system, part of the project. Lastly, Mr. Dway was up here earlier talking about Tower Drive. I had mentioned that I had already asked Mr. Nunamaker if he could give an update on that home specifically, but any comments regarding discussions with the magistrates on how they're handling these type of issues. Thank you. Happy to do so. Good evening. As it applies to 11900 Tara Drive, that is a situation we've been monitoring. They do have an outstanding code action that is a lien on the property for approximately $60,000. That's CE 2100901. So after a discussion we had earlier today, I'm going to send them some correspondence to gauge their intentions. Now I should note that the house is listed in the ownership of the woman who was representing that she was going to purchase the home before the magistrate and her husband, which I think is a positive sign. It's not an LLC. And I think, you know, if I had some back and forth with Mr. Dway, I think from our perspective, if the home is homesteaded, it's not a short-term rental, that's a success. And in our discussion with the magistrates, Mr. Gold specifically, because that was a case that he had heard regarding the lien reduction request, he was acting in good faith. From his perspective, he was hearing the problems associated with that home. And from his perspective, removing a roadblock for the sale he felt was going to cure the ultimate deficiency being the short-term rental. So he understood after our discussion the reason why folks were upset. But from his perspective, he was trying to cure what he felt was the bigger issue. So I understand that. And just on the score sheet, the score sheet is basically, you know, those how it's answered, the points tabulate themselves pretty much. It's not that staff is advocating for that. It's just that is the result. So I feel like the discussion with the magistrates was good. We had some follow-up with the city attorney. We have a draft ordinance to address how we give relief in the future for these reductions. We've had a lot going on. So I haven't had a chance to circle back with that, but we will. We've also had some discussions with code. And there's probably a lot more things we can do there. But I think all in all, we are trying to address the resident concerns. It's not always perfect. But I think in this case, hopefully, we've moved beyond having that house as a short-term rental. And we'll keep focusing on the process. And we need to tune things up. We get that. But I think we are moving in the right direction. Thank you. Councilmember Horland? Thank you, Council President. Mr. Noonemaker, we've had this discussion. And I understand that the magistrate felt that he was working in good faith. And we know that there were other issues that came out of that specific case that we were looking to pursue. And I had spoken to the, we had spoken to the city attorney about, but there was such a short timeframe between that. When that information became aware, we became aware of the information in the time that house closed. In your discussions with the magistrate, is there anything that we can do in providing them perhaps additional information or having staff have that information? Because the individual that had presented himself with Ms. Fortham was not, in fact, representing the bank, as had been stated. So what else can we do, whether it's providing more information and having more guidelines in place that, you know, that was something that perhaps would have raised a red flag with the magistrate as he was hearing that case? So one of the suggestions that came from the magistrates themselves was to have our staff act in more of an advocate position instead of just here's the facts, letting them, you know, weigh in as they see fit to have, to have a little bit more of a weigh in, if you will. So that's something we need to follow up on because, you know, for the most part, you have very junior staff members that might not feel comfortable. So whether we're having more senior staff present the case or for particular cases that have a certain notoriety, if you will, to make a specific appearance for that item. I think there's a couple of different ways we can address it. I appreciate your willingness to look into that. Absolutely. Thank you. Councilmember Andrew. Is this something that the council would want to actually workshop? I feel like I want some more information procedurally. For instance, it was mentioned today, I don't know if it's accurate or not, that no one attended the last hearing, like in terms of staff. Is that unusual? Is that the norm? Staff was there. I think he was saying that nobody, maybe from. On behalf of the applicant. Oh, nobody attended on behalf of the applicant? Well, we can't control that. The person who was being fined. Yeah, because I mean, the staff would have to present the case. Yeah, I don't think he. Yeah. Okay. Maybe I misunderstood. Although, if I may, the idea of a workshop regarding how code does its job, how the magistrates do, something to give us a run through from start to finish of how these things work. I recently learned that in terms of our code, that we have different people who handle different areas of code violation. And so, at a magistrate hearing, there are different people assigned to different types of code. I think hearing more about how that process works might be beneficial to all of us. I don't know. Okay. And maybe that's when we discuss the ordinance as well, and what revisions y'all may or may have. Great. I think perfect. The scoring sheet, the ordinance, the process, that would help me. Mayor? I was just saying, I remember when I could concur. Thank you. Anybody else on that point before I conclude? No. Thank you, Mr. Newmaker. Thank you. My last thing that I wanted to mention in my comments was that, actually, just before coming to City Hall today, I attended a memorial service, a funeral service, at Ramat Shalom for a young 94-year-old, Hannah Temel. Hannah was a Holocaust survivor. She was 15 years old when she was liberated from the concentration camps. And her son, George, was telling her story, and there were other relatives talking about her story. And she's one of the – really one of the last that we're seeing people – the Holocaust survivors are passing away. And, you know, I urge – you know, I urge the public to meet Holocaust survivors if you can. And there are still some left because we become the witnesses to the witnesses. And hearing – I've heard her – I had heard her speak. But hearing her son speak, you could tell that he was ready to take on that mantle as well. So, in her memory, I wanted to mention her name as well. Next, I have Councilmember Andrea. Thank you, President Reinstein. Just, again, to reiterate, I want to thank everybody for a wonderful Earth Day celebration. It really was – all of the departments involved made it a huge success. Also, yesterday, Commissioner Rogers had a wonderful commissioner-slash-mayor-for-a-day event. I think the students – It's hard to behave in the back row. It was very difficult for us. I think we were the rambunctious residents in the back speaking while the commission was holding their meeting. But it was a great experience for our young people to get an opportunity to sit here and run a council-slash-commission meeting. And I know that they benefited greatly from it. So, I wanted to thank Commissioner Rogers for putting that event together along with our staff, Laura, and the team who made that a success. Tomorrow is Take Your Child to Work Day. I know the city is going to host some wonderful events. And those others who work outside of the city will bring any young people – their children, nieces, nephews – so that they can learn more about what we do on a day-to-day basis. So, that's always a wonderful event throughout our community as well. Saturday, John Way Martial Arts is having a community day absolutely free. So, looking forward to attending that event Saturday morning. I think it's going on throughout the afternoon as well. And finally, I wanted to – I know that President Reinstein mentioned about the school district. But I remember Councilmember Horland also alluding to the district having additional meetings in terms of their plans. And we evidently did send a letter regarding the next steps in redefining our school initiatives. So, if you haven't seen it yet, I believe seven additional meeting dates for the community, for the public, have been set. So, I encourage people who want to be involved in those decisions to attend those meetings. Unfortunately, none are here in plantation. But they are – I don't know if Dillard is maybe the closest one looking at the list – but to attend those upcoming events. And then, I want to just finally wish everyone who celebrates a happy Passover. Thank you. Thank you very much. Councilmember Anderson. Pretty much ditto to those sustainability – not sustainability – Earth Day was excellent. And thanks to all the departments. Happy Passover. And that's it. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Horland. And joking aside, full faith in you guys. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. President. First, I want to say I want to thank the mayor for your leadership this week. You know, it was a difficult time, and I think that everyone up here was desirous of being able to show to the residents that we're solid. You handled it like a gentleman. We're all keeping the sortles in our prayers and hoping the mayor gets healthy. But I really appreciate you stepping up the way you did this week. So, thank you. And I want to say I'm proud of this council. We asked for strategic planning. And we said that we wanted to really start to drive the vision of the city and hold people that come into the city and want to do business here accountable. And ask them to think outside the box. And I think we've seen that with the last two projects. And it has forced developers and applicants to be creative. And I want to give more flowers to Bryson Ridgeway, who's still sitting here. When have you ever seen an applicant not take his approval and head out the door? He's a masochist. Stay until the end of the meeting. Either that or you really want to get to know us better. But we really do. We appreciate your commitment and wanting to learn more about our community. So, thank you. But I'm really proud that we're starting to get some of the things that we really wanted to see in the city. So, well done, council. A couple of things very quickly. And I'm glad you brought up the council and council commissioner for the day because we were quite rowdy, the three of us in the back. And I wish Charles Spencer was here because the students up here, there was a procurement item. And we all looked at each other. We know that council member Andrea would have pulled that. So, we're hoping the kids. But it was a lot of fun. It was a great way to get the kids involved civically. I just wanted to remind everybody that we are having the superhero reader day. I sent out a calendar invite to the fire department and the police department. I'm getting some sign-ups and to the council as well. So, I hope everyone will be participating on May 17th. That will be at Plantation Elementary. Very excited. I'm going to get to that. But the invite went out for the super reader day. Tomorrow, we'll be making the capes at the police outreach center. Very excited about that. Very grateful to Chief Harrison for providing that space to us. One of our local businesses, PDQ, was lovely enough to provide some food for all the Cape Meekers. So, and I want to give a shout out to Sherry Goodrich from Procurement who went out and got fabric tonight and dropped off some supplies. So, it was really lovely of her to do that. So, I'm very excited about that. And there's going to be a lot of good publicity for the City of Plantation. I'm bringing my cricket. So, let me see the material. Oh, this could be next level Cape Meeking tomorrow. I'm glad you brought up the reimagining schools because I want the public to be aware of the school board meeting last week. And not for the reasons you may think. But they did put up some new slides. And the new slides talked about those community meetings. And the way they directed it was they were not speaking about the two schools, Plantation Middle and Plantation High School, that were on the low enrollment list. Now, they started talking about zones. And they talked about the South Plantation Zone. And that, my understanding, and perhaps I'm incorrect, that that meeting at Dillard, that they would be speaking about the South Plantation Zone or we're not sure? Or is it just that's where we go? You're not even sure. But I think that people need to pay attention because what they're starting to talk about is, combining schools in that zone. So it's not just the two schools that were low enrolled. For the first time, I also saw them put up the slide about the surplus properties. And we had not spoken previously about the property at hiatus and Broward in regards to remediation on that property. We had not talked about that publicly in this council. But since they put it up on the slide now, we can that there is some environmental remediation that needs to be taken into. And that property, which could provide some opportunities for us. But I think that was some of the reluctance with putting teacher housing on there, too. That would be, that was one of the things that held back on that. But anyway, there's a lot of things going on there that I think our residents and we need to pay attention to in regards to our schools. So I think I'm not going to be as verbose as the mayor thinks I'm going to be. I think that I'll end it. I just want to wish everybody a happy Passover this week. So thank you. Thank you. And thank you, everyone, for your assistance today. 9.53. The meeting is adjourned. Yes. Yes. I have. Good job. Yum.