City Council — Aug 27, 2025

Good evening and welcome. The Wednesday, August 27, 2025 City of Plantation City Council meeting is now called to order at 6 p.m. Ms. Begaro, please call the roll of the City Council meeting. Councilmember Anderson. Here. Councilmember Andreu. Here. Councilmember Fachen. Here. Councilmember Horland. Here. Councilmember Reinstein. Here. Mayor Sortel. Here. City Attorney Ezra. Here. Thank you. So before we begin with our official agenda, while it's still fresh, we're still hearing the details, I did want to take a moment because of the murders that occurred this morning in Minneapolis. For those of you that are following the news at the Annunciation Church and Catholic School, we've learned that an 8-year-old and a 10-year-old were murdered and at least 17 hurt. They didn't even finish their first week of school. I feel that it must be mentioned and we must not become desensitized to school shootings. Back to school should not mean back to school shootings. We must protect our students and we must do more than we're doing. I'd ask before we begin with the official agenda that we just take a moment of silence, please. Thank you very much. Tonight's opening remarks, invocation, pledge of allegiance will be provided by Councilmember Fadgen. Thank you. Thank you, President Reinstein. If we could stand for the invocation and then remain standing for the pledge. Almighty Father, we thank you for your continued and abundant blessings upon this great city, state, nation, and all of your people. We ask that you bless these proceedings and all who appear before this council tonight as we deliberate on the important business of our city. We pray for understanding and patience. Help us to listen to points of view that differ from our own and to approach each other with respect and empathy. We pray for peace, for an end to suffering, and for an end of conflict. We pray for those who stand on the front lines of service, those who heal, protect, teach, and support our daily lives with courage, compassion, and commitment. We pray for families and friends who are grieving the loss of loved ones. We pray for those among us who are suffering in body, mind, or spirit. May the sick be restored to health, and may those in despair be guided by your light to healing, hope, and peace. Lord, give us all the strength we need to face everything that comes our way cheerfully, courageously, patiently, tenderly, all of which in a manner that will be pleasing to you, Lord. For all this, we ask in your holy name. Amen. I have some scouts from PAC and troop 817 to do the pledge if they come on up right now. Scouts salute. Pledge allegiance. To the flag of the United States of America, unto the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right, great job. How about you guys just introduce yourselves and tell us your rank and what you like about scouting. Not everyone at once. Well, my name is Alexander. I'm a tenderfoot. I'm a tenderfoot scout, which is the second rank in scoutings. And one of the things I like about scouting is that we get to go camping almost every month and that we get to do fun troop activities. Great. Pull the mic down a little bit. You can just say your name. We're all friends. My name is Mateo and I like to earn badges when I learn. Great. Good job. No? Anybody else? All right. Maybe next time. Thank you, everyone. Thank you very much. Next, we have up items submitted by the mayor. Before mayor begins, I do want to recognize Senator Osgood is here with us. Thank you very much, Senator Osgood, for being here with us. Mayor, the floor is yours. Our first proclamation is Overdose Awareness Day. Sponsored by Councilmember Horland. Thank you, Mayor. And I'd like to ask Senator Osgood and Phyllis Babrove and Jaden D'Onofrio to join me at the podium, please. If you can go outside tonight, you'll see City Hall is lit up in purple in honor of really to acknowledge International Overdose Awareness Day. And before I present this proclamation, this is just a start tonight. What we really want to do is be able to have a community conversation about drug addiction and overdose. Remove the stigma around it because so many families are fighting it. While the pill mills may have been closed, people are still being prescribed opiates to deal with real pain, and it's harming our community. So tonight, again, is the first step. Whereas the City of Plantation acknowledges the harm and hardship caused by drug overdose, and whereas the purpose of International Overdose Awareness Day is to remember loved ones lost to overdose, and to work with the community to reduce the risk and end the stigma of drug-related deaths, and whereas it is vital that we all play a part in reducing the toll of overdose in our community, which according to the Centers of Disease Control claimed the lives of more than 80,000 Americans in 2023, with Broward County accounting for 593 of those deaths. Whereas of those 593 overdose deaths, 80% were attributed to opioids, such as fentanyl, with 66 of Florida's 67 counties registering deaths by fentanyl in 2023. And whereas between 2019 and 2025, Plantation Fire EMS responded to 884 service calls for overdose and experienced 58 drug-related fatalities, mostly due to fentanyl. Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid up to 100 times more potent than morphine, which mirrors the effects of heroin. Whether used as a cheap filler in illicit drugs, or sold as a counterfeit pill made to look like prescription opioids, fentanyl is the leading contributor to overdose deaths in the United States. And whereas many overdoses have been reversed and lives saved due to the administration of Narcan by first responders, there's still much work to be done. And whereas the City Plantation resolves to play its part in reducing the toll of overdose in our community, and whereas that includes, but is not limited to, continuing to strengthen our own behavioral health workforce capacity, and working with community providers to build awareness around overdose prevention, especially amongst our children. And whereas we recognize that the people affected by overdose are our sons and daughters, our mothers and fathers, our brothers and sisters, all of whom are deserving of our love, compassion, and support. And now, therefore, Nick Sortel-Mair and the City Council of Plantation Florida do hereby proclaim August 31st, 2025, as International Overdose Awareness Day in the City of Plantation, and call upon the residents in Plantation to join us in this important observance. So Senator Osgood has to run, so before I introduce you to Phyllis and Jade, I'm going to ask her to say a few words. We're going to take a photo and then present the proclamation. Senator? Thank you, Mr. Mayor, and thank you, Commissioner. It is a delight to be here this afternoon to start this much-needed discussion in the City of Plantation. Substance use disorder disease is a disease like no other disease. It's the only disease that's criminalized and stigmatized. It is a real disease. There are individuals like myself that live with substance abuse disorder disease, a disease that impacts your brain and your behavior and leads to the inability to control the use of substance, legal or illegal. It is a serious matter. We have continued to incarcerate people with this disease, stigmatize people with this disease, and we continue to see our children, our loved ones, our spouses die from a disease that they can get help. I'm a living example. December 2nd, I will have 36 years drug and alcohol-free, and I attribute that to the amazing organizations like BARC and many others in this community, the love of my family, my church family, and all of the people that showed me a whole, whole, whole lot of love. So as we begin this conversation in education, it is my prayer that we will become the city that advocates the loudest for people that are living with substance use disorder disease, to make them aware of the services that we need, to put pressure on the federal and state government to fund needed programs and services that are a lot more cost-effective than imprison somebody. And who knows, we may save many lives, and one of those lives just might be our next state senator. God bless you. We're going to take a quick picture, and then we'll let you go. Phyllis and Jaden. Thank you for coming tonight. Okay. This is Phyllis Babaroff. Hi. I'd like to thank the mayor and the commissioners for passing this proclamation. I lost my daughter to an accidental fentanyl overdose in 2000 after, I'm sorry, in 2020 after she struggled with addiction issues from the age of 12 for over 30 years. I've since become an advocate for education and awareness for substance abuse overdose. I get the word out there to talk to parents, to kids, and I am very grateful to Plantation for passing this proclamation and doing whatever we can as a community to help save lives. So thank you very much. Jaden. Yeah, I also want to thank the council and Councilwoman Horlan for this. I had also lost someone in 2020 as a result of an accidental overdose, and it was my mother, unfortunately. And, you know, I think this is something that almost all of us are affected by in some fashion, whether it's friends or family. And for me, it was my mother. And I try to do everything I can to honor her, and I know that she would be grateful for this and for y'all making aware, making the public aware about this. So thank you. Councilmember Andreu, Hunger Action Month. Thank you. Is Gabriel Gomez here? Riella. So Hunger Action Month is in September, and the proclamation reads as follows. Whereas, Hunger Action Month takes place throughout the month of September to raise awareness about the global food crisis and inspire action to combat hunger. And September 9th is Hunger Action Day. And whereas, since 1981, Feeding South Florida has worked to address hunger and food insecurity in the city of Plantation by providing our community with immediate access to nutritious food and other vital resources and support. And whereas hunger does not discriminate, it knows no race, religion, or age. In South Florida, approximately 1 million individuals face hunger. Food should not be an impossible choice for the city of Plantation residents. And whereas, Feeding South Florida leads hunger and poverty advocacy efforts in our community while transforming lives through innovative programming and education that provides economic growth and overall well-being. And whereas, Plantation is therefore committed to supporting Feeding South Florida so that together, we can achieve a hunger-free South Florida. Now, therefore, Nick Sordle Mayor and the City of Plantation Council do hereby proclaim September 2025 as Hunger Action Month in the City of Plantation. And we encourage all of our residents to partner with us in volunteering at local food banks, donating, or helping provide meals, and raise awareness about hunger in America. Thank you. Hi, good evening. My name is Gabriela Gomes, and I'm the grant coordinator at Feeding South Florida. And on behalf of our team, I want to thank you, City of Plantation, for recognizing September as Hunger Action Month. Feeding South Florida is the leading hunger relief organization here in Broward County, as well as Palm Beach, Monroe, and Miami-Dade. And we serve approximately 1.2 million individuals annually. Locally, here in Plantation, we provide nutritious food and critical resources to thousands of families and individuals through a network of direct programs and partner agencies. Our work goes beyond food distribution. Through community food pantries and mobile pantries, we ensure families have access to fresh, nutritious groceries. And our school pantry program and summer meals for kids make sure that children don't go hungry in or out of the classroom. For older adults, we provide home delivered meals while benefits outreach helps families access programs like SNAP to stretch their budgets. We also invest in long-term stability with workforce training programs that prepare individuals for careers in culinary arts and warehouse and logistics. Together, these programs reflect our commitment, not just to feed families today, but also building a stronger, free South Florida tomorrow. We're deeply grateful to the City of Plantation for this recognition and your ongoing partnership in raising awareness, inspiring action, and helping us move closer to a community where no one has to wonder where their next meal will come from. Thank you. And we look forward to hosting more food distribution events in the very near future. Suzanne Plunsky, retirement. And you set this date because you wanted to retire before chief. Yes. That's how we were. It's been a long time. You got the goods. Police department people here, the chief. You got the goods. I know. I get to read this thing. Whereas Suzanne was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and moved to Florida in 1972. And whereas Suzanne began working for the City of Plantation on September 6th, 1988, serving under Mayor Frank Veltry and Police Chief Morris Meek, retiring in July 2025. And whereas Suzanne has been married for 36 years to mark, Suzanne has two sons, Daniel and Eric, along with their beautiful wives. Suzanne has one grandson and another grandbaby on the way. Yes. The time we typed this, it's still on the way. Okay. Well, Suzanne has felt it an honor and a privilege for the last 36 years to have worked at the PD as a police service aide, crime scene technician, and retire as the police fleet and facilities manager. The City of Plantation has met a second home and family. Suzanne is grateful for the opportunity to work with co-workers from each of the city departments, the plantation residents, business owners, and visitors to the City of Plantation. Suzanne's goal has always been to build a career and do her best job possible, starting with how can I help you, then completing the work. Now, therefore, I, Nick Soto Mayor, City Council Plantation, do hereby express our gratitude and appreciation to Suzanne Plunsky for her dedicated service. What's up? Do you want to talk to me? But you do get a key. Oh, excellent. I don't need another. I had so many keys. I know. We'll get you a key, a Schneider. That's a good reference. So, yeah, the key is yours. And I just want to say one thing. It's a pleasure to work for the City of Plantation, 36 years, 10 months. And I am so grateful. And it's not just one person, it's everybody. I got to work with everybody in the city. And that, over 36 plus years, was very rewarding. Thank you. A lot, a lot of people. A lot, a lot of people. Carry that back? Do you want me to be careful? Can we take a picture? Okay. Oh, yeah. I wish I'd have dressed up. Thank you. Congrats. A big time, big time, big time. Hopefully, you can come back as well. Yes, we'll sit there. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, you got it. And very good. And you're taking it easy on me, this go-round. There's only one service award. And it is for 10 years to Chris Willett, Parks and Rec. Is Chris here? Do you want to say anything? You don't have to put on the spot. Either way, you get the pin. Yeah. I appreciate it. Here's the 10 more. Great. I appreciate you. Thank you, sir. Thank you, sir. Oh, yeah. You're right. You're right. So, you guys were talking about the food drives. He was there every time at the food drives, and he helped. We had a lot of food and a lot of things. It certainly was. And we all went home tired when we did that. Appreciate you all. Okay. Thank you. Next up, we have Parks and Recreation update. And it does not look like Director O'Toole. Assistant Director Joel. Thank you. Joel Schick, Assistant Director of Parks and Recreation. Good evening, Council Mayor, City Attorney. So, upcoming Saturday, September 13th, we have our first Family Fit Fest that's going to be at Central Park from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. It is free and open to the public to come and enjoy. We've got a variety of events you can check out. The only one that is pre-registration is the 1k fun run. We also have two nature programs we're bringing back. Our Central Park Nature Pals, which registration is open for and begins September 13th. And bringing back our nature bio blitz on Sunday, September 21st from 12 to 2 at the Plantation Preserve Linear Trail. Registration for swim lessons opens this Sunday and registration for the American Red Cross Lifeguard Certification Class Friday, September 19th through Sunday, September 21st. Excuse me. Saturday, September 6th and 7th, we'll have the Heritage Horse Show at the Equestrian Center, 745 to 530 both days. Come and check it out. P.A.L. is currently registering for fall basketball and fall baseball, and then adult athletics, flag football, basketball, kickball, and softball. For more information, contact Parks and Recreation, 954-452-2510, or email plantationparks at plantation.org. Thank you. Thank you very much. Good job filling in. So we will now, let's see, we will now recess the City Council meeting, and we're going to call to order the CRA meeting at 6.24 p.m. Ms. Beggarrow, please call the roll for the CRA meeting. Commissioner Anderson? Here. Commissioner Andreu? Here. Commissioner Fadgen? Here. Commissioner Horland? Here. Commissioner Reinstein? Here. Commissioner Sortel? Here. City Attorney Ezra? Here. Thank you. The CRA consent agenda consists of items 1, 2, and 3, and may be approved with one motion. Does any member of the commission wish to pull an item? Seeing none. Does any member of the public wish to pull an item on the CRA? Seeing none. Do we have a motion? So moved. Second. We have a motion and a second. Seeing no discussion, Ms. Beggarrow on the consent agenda, if you could please call the roll. Commissioner Anderson? Yes. Commissioner Andreu? Yes. Commissioner Fadgen? Yes. Commissioner Horland? Yes. Commissioner Reinstein? Yes. Commissioner Sortel? Yes. Thank you. We now will have public requests of the commissioners regarding the CRA, and I have Mr. Conklin signed up, so we will call Mr. Conklin, please. Good evening. Dennis Conklin, 4581 Northwest Sixth Court. Heavenly hosts protect you and all of your families. We've already had some moments of silence. I received a call from Leanne Hillier two days ago, and she asked if I'd go see Lee, absolutely. And I spent yesterday about five hours with him. I'd ask for a moment of silence for Lee Hillier, for your prayers for him and for his wife. They're really going through a struggle right now. And without Lee, you would not be – I don't see your name tags up there – but you would not be CRA commissioners. So – and with that, I would like to say that I offered yesterday my morning mass and communing up for Lee, and today's morning mass and communing up for Lee and Leanne, and I yield back. Thank you, Mr. Conklin. Seeing no further public requests of the commissioners regarding the CRA, the CRA meeting is now adjourned at 6.26 p.m., and we will now reconvene the city council meeting at 6.26 p.m., and we will begin with public requests 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 state your name and address, and address your remarks to the council president, not the mayor, nor individual members of the council when you are called up to the podium. Please keep your remarks to the allotted three minutes, and we respectfully request that if you need additional time to conclude your remarks, that you ask for it at the end of your time as it's expiring and not at the beginning of your remarks. We will try and maintain the three minutes for each member of the public. First up, I have Mr. Conklin. You are back up, sir. Dennis Conklin, 4581 Northwest Sixth Court. And I wanted to let the council, administration, and the parents of eighth grade students in plantation know that the 917 Society, and that's www.the917society.org, began distribution for the third year in a row now to all the eighth graders, the Constitution of the United States. As you know, Florida passed a law that, golly, what a concept. Students actually have to read the United States Constitution now, not read about it or read what somebody else thought about it, so we're helping them all on their way. We've been doing it for all the known public schools, charter schools, parochial schools, private schools, and this year we're trying to reach out. If anybody knows about homeschool pods, we would like to reach out and to offer the same service for them. Let's see. It was 1,993 days ago that the public health emergency was declared with the lockdown, closings of Americans' houses of worship, mandatory masking and shots, officially called countermeasures, not vaccines, created essential and non-essential Americans, and the loss of our unalienable God-given individual rights. I mention this because the medical emergency has never been canceled. The national emergency was, so we're still under that. 690 days ago, the Hamas terrorist organization began its war with Israel. One day later, Hezbollah began, and they regret it because Israel wiped them out. 491 days ago, they brought the jihad to our college campuses here in America, spread across the country to the municipalities. Minneapolis was mentioned, and they've got problems of their own. They're running their mayoral elections in a foreign language. 411 and 347 days ago were the two assassination attempts on President Donald J. Trump. Gold closed today at $3,412 an ounce. From the CAFR just 11 months ago, it was $2,683.70 an ounce for a loss of purchasing power, 27.1%. With the city's mountain of money of over $330 million, that means they've lost, on that purchasing power, over $95 million of purchasing power. Thank you, Mr. Conklin. I'll yield back my time. You have no time to yield back. Mr. Buehler. Carl Buehler, 6831 Southwest 11th Street. I want to thank Council Member Andrea for the Hunger Action Month. That's a really important thing for not only our community, but worldwide. And I want to apologize to the Council Members for having sent some rude things to you guys in the past about turning a blind eye to the situation in Gaza. I shouldn't have done that. And I've spoken with some Council Members, and I was very gratified to hear that personally and privately they have great concern for the humanitarian crisis, and they would like to see that those people don't starve. And they suggested to me, rather than pursuing some stupid political resolution, that I promote World Central Kitchen, which is an organization that responds to meals in response to humanitarian, climate, and community crises worldwide. I contribute to ANERA, which is a similar organization, but now I'm contributing to World Central Kitchen. And I have printed up some flyers here, which I've distributed to the Council Members, and I will also leave these in the back of the room in case any other people here would like to pick them up and make a donation or distribute them in their local community. You know, the World Central Kitchen is totally volunteer. They're very brave to go into war zones and disaster areas and to provide nutritious meals for people who might otherwise starve. They provide freshly made, nutritious meals to communities impacted by disasters. And I would hope that you would distribute these or even contribute if they have the opportunity. You know, it's really important that as a nation, as a community, we recognize that even outside our own borders and even within our community, you know, there are people starving. And I can tell you when I was living in Milwaukee in the ghetto, I saw some things that were just crazy. I went to a house once with some little children, and I was trying to get some money for them to go on a field trip. I only charged $5 for a four-day field trip. It was just an amount of money just so parents felt involved. And there was no food in that house. I wonder why they were always coming over to my apartment, and we had cooking programs that were just so popular. The kids always came to those cooking programs because they learned how to follow directions and measure when they got to eat what they cooked. And when that mother opened up the refrigerator, there was nothing in there but a couple of six-packs of beer and a loaf of Wonder Bread and a bottle of ketchup. And the kids, they brought that up. That was going to be their supper. And I looked around. I thought, oh, my God. And then the dishes were all splattered on the counter, and I saw a rat going across the counter. I said, oh, no, look at that. And she just picked up the beer bottle and threw it at the counter, and it splattered. I mean, that was a very bad situation, you know. And I'm not saying, I mean, there's parents that are in need. There's parents that are just brought up wrong. But it's the children we got to feed. Thank you. Thank you. Last call for any other requests to speak from the Council Chamber regarding public requests of the Council regarding Municipal Affairs. Seeing none, public requests of the Council regarding Municipal Affairs are now closed. We will now move to the City Council Consent Agenda. The Consent Agenda consists of items 1 through 18 and may be approved with one motion. I'm going to pull 1, 3, and 6. Do I have any Council members that wish to pull any items? 7, 2, and 4. And I also have, from the public, 11, 16, and 17. Let's see. Let's do the math. I'll do it. Does 5 have to be excluded? I believe, so Council Member Fadgen just raised whether or not number 5 needed to be excluded. I believe that it was excluded on the agenda that was amended so that there is no number 5 actually on the agenda any longer. So you don't need to exclude it because it's already gone. I'll make the motion. Go ahead, Council Member Hoyland. I'll make a motion to approve items 1 through 18, minus 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 11, 16, and 17. Do we have a second? Second. Ms. Begaro, please call the roll. Council Member Anderson? Yes. Council Member Andreu? Yes. Council Member Fadgen? Yes. Council Member Horland? Yes. Council Member Reinstein? Yes. Thank you. Okay. So I'm going to ask everybody to bear with me on this meeting because we have a lot of items that have been pulled. And I have a number of members of the public that have already requested to speak on various items. The first one up is agenda item number one. I pulled this one. This is the city council meeting calendar. And as the public may or may not know, is that because this is something we're voting on, I've not had a chance to speak to my colleagues about it in advance. So this is the first time that I'm raising this with them. So if we look on our proposed council meeting calendar, we have scheduled a summer break, which we normally have scheduled, which is from June 24th through July 29th. So it's a full, essentially a full month between, between those meetings. Um, I was asked, I'd like to ask that my colleagues consider that instead of doing a, a four week summer break right there is that we have two separate smaller breaks. So that one would be after the May 27th meeting, which would be right at the end of the Broward County school calendar. So the Broward, last day of Broward County schools is June 3rd. And then we would go from May 27th to, we'd have a break. Then we go to June 17th. We'd have a, then second break, and then we would go to July 8th. And so this would give more people an opportunity to schedule any type of vacation during those times instead of during the, the one big, um, four week. Um, again, uh, open up if anybody has any thoughts on it. Council member Fadgen. Um, I, I prefer to keep the calendar as is, uh, the, my business phone slows down immensely in July. So I don't, I don't think a lot of people are, are doing business. I think it's good that we have the break when they're scheduled. And, um, I don't know, I'm kind of in the habit of what we've been doing. So that's my opinion. Council member Horland. Um, I want to clarify those dates because actually this is a more of a recent thing. I, we would often have like a, the three week, um, I, this is the only four weeks. So let me just clarify with you. You want to end on, you want to have, start the first break again. So we meet on May 27th. Correct. And then you would want to come back June 17th. Correct. We come back June 17th instead of the 10th. Correct. And then this, then after the June 17th, there would be the second break and it would be July 8th. We'd come back July 8th. And the primary reason for this is because, uh, the, the school calendar ends on June 3rd. So it would give an opportunity for families that like to attend our meetings, um, that after school gets out, whether it's a graduation or just the end of the school calendar, that, uh, the opportunity for a vacation would be right after the end of the school calendar. Sure. I, I understand your reasoning. I have no problem with the reasoning. Um, I think the July 8th is a little quick right after, uh, 4th of July. I would just work out this math. So it's 7th, 30th, 15th. What about coming back the 15th and then we're back again in two weeks on the 29th? How many weeks? I don't have a calendar. Yeah, so the, that's fine with me. The way that I had looked at it was that because the initial break was, um, was four weeks that this would, this would constitute still four weeks, but it would be two weeks between the May 27th and June 17th meeting. And then two weeks between the June 17th and July 8th meeting. So it was still the same amount of time. Wasn't any more time. Uh, it just was changing, um, instead of four, um, consecutive weeks, it was two and two. I still think I would like to come back after that instead of the 8th. I think it's too close to 4th of July for people. I would do the 15th. So I don't know how anybody else feels about that. Um, so I have, uh, uh, Councilmember Fadgen. I see you buzzed in next, but, um, can we go to Councilmember Andreo? Thank you. Thank you, president Reinstein. Um, I also liked the calendar the way it is and thank you to the city clerk, because we don't have a conflict also this year with spring break. Um, so I appreciated that. And, um, if we were to amend it, then I prefer Councilmember Horland's suggestion. I think that the 8th is too close to the 4th of July holiday. But I am in favor of the one presented. Councilmember Fadgen. I just have one question. Administration, is there more vacations being taken in that time period, the way that we have the schedule now? Are there conferences? Um, what kind of burden would this put on the city mayor? Mayor, sorry, I didn't see you buzz in, but go ahead, mayor. I reckon it didn't work. That's okay. Go ahead. Anecdotally, I've heard from some people, because your idea was floated, and anecdotally, I heard some people that they prefer it as it is because of conventions and conferences. But I don't have, I didn't poll everything. I don't have our data on that. Thank you, mayor. Uh, hearing that there is, uh, no, no great consensus, um, in, in favor of the move, um, I will just withdraw it and let us move along. Um, it's, it's not, uh, not the end of the world. But again, like I said, I couldn't have the discussion with my colleagues outside of our meeting. So I'll go ahead and make the motion to approve, uh, agenda item one. And I'll second it. Um, seeing no further discussion, Ms. Beggarow, if you could please call the roll. Councilmember Anderson? Yes. Councilmember Andreu? Yes. Councilmember Fajan? Yes. Councilmember Horland? Yes. Councilmember Reinstein? Yes. Thank you. Um, and for the record, you can let my wife know that I discussed it with counsel. Um, so the, the next item that, the next item that we have up before us is item number two. And Councilmember Andreu? Thank you, President Reinstein. Um, I just wanted to, for the record, confirm, I think that, um, Ms. Beggarow did send me a text right before our meeting, but there will not be a cost this year for the, well, for 2026, um, because we're not posing any questions. So, for us, for the municipal election, and per this agreement, there is no cost to the city. Is that accurate? That is how it appears. Because I know that in 2024, there were some price changes. So, those changes have been rescinded? Yeah, this contract is just different than the last one. And it was, yeah, it reflects zero charges for candidate-only ballots. Okay. Thank you. Motion to approve. Second. Prior to, uh, calling the question on that, I do have Mr. Conklin that wishes to speak on the item. Uh, Dennis Conklin, 4581 Northwest Sixth Court. I pulled, uh, page 11 of the, back up here, with the, uh, expenses. Um, my, uh, encore career after the March of the Marine was, uh, with the Broward County Supervisor of Elections. But before that, I was a strong advocate for moving the city out of the March odd-numbered year elections because of what happened, uh, as a result of the 2000 election, and Florida switched, uh, to machines for 2000. And the cost just went boom. Uh, back then, Plantation had 42 precincts because we actually constitutionally owned our elections. We ran our elections. When Florida went to machines, we no longer run our elections. We no longer own our elections. It's all proprietary ownership and copyright by the machine companies. And I didn't know that at the time because back then I was a civilian. I was in between careers. But once they got the machines in, they realized, oh, my gosh, these things are so doggone expensive. We can't have all the precincts that we had, which means all of us could run our own elections. So they started to chop down the number of precincts and expand the number of people in those precincts, which, what would that do? Make the lines go to hell's half acre. So it went from 42 to, uh, what was it, 30. And the costs keep going up for these machines and for the programming and so forth. So they've cut Plantation now down to 16 precincts. But what's happened? Our population has doubled. If we owned and ran our own elections, what should have been happening is as the population increased, the number of precincts should have increased so that we would be able to run them and not take in, take on these expenses. People don't know about it, but you can look it up. It's in the budget. Okay, we ran the elections before with the IBM cards, you know, punch and stuff like that. It cost practically nothing. And you didn't pay extravagant amounts, even though you had more precincts and more precinct workers. They even had to change the law to allow 16 and 17-year-olds to pre-register. I know because that happened while I was in the supervised elections, because people that were my parents' generation may extend 30 seconds. You can have 10 seconds, Mr. Conklin. Please conclude. My parents' generation ran the elections here when I came. My generation didn't get the chance because it was taken away. And the reason that they had that law passed was because the Depression, World War II generation, couldn't handle the technology. So they had to let the teenagers that couldn't vote become pre-registered, even though they can't vote, because they could be poll workers. I yield back. Thank you for allowing me to extend. Again, we've got to get back to owning our own elections and do away to these machines. Thank you, Mr. Conklin. The motion was made and seconded. Seeing no further discussion, Ms. Beggarrow, please call the roll. Council Member Anderson? Yes. Council Member Andreu? Yes. Council Member Fejan? Yes. Council Member Horland? Yes. Council Member Einstein? Yes. Thank you. So the next item up on the agenda is item number three. Number three is renewal of Banner Interlocal Agreement with the School Board of Broward County. This is an interesting one for me, personally, because I was the chair of the Educational Advisory Board when this issue first came to the city administration. And I want to correct something is that in the resolution where it says, whereas the school board of Broward County, Florida approached the city of Plantation's Education Advisory Board, that's not 100% correct. It wasn't the school board that approached the Educational Advisory Board, it was the schools. It was the school organizations that said to the Educational Advisory Board that they wish they didn't have to, but they don't have enough funds in order to support their programs. And the only way that they felt they could really help support their programs was fundraising, and they wanted to have banners up on the school fences, just like you see in schools really throughout the county and all over the country. As we know, the City of Plantation, we pride ourselves on our sign ordinance and on certain restrictions to make sure that everything is maintained the way that we want. There's actually going to be on the agenda later today some items regarding signs. So signs and the way that we maintain our city is important. However, I do believe that this particular interlocal agreement, both the initial one and the renewal one, goes beyond what is necessary. I'm not a fan of unnecessary regulation. And in this instance, particularly with information that the administration has provided us in the memo, that the City of Plantation is the only municipality that regulates school banners via an interlocal agreement, and the City of Plantation is the only municipality that has a cap on the number of banners. And taking that in light of the school policy that was just recently, the new policy number 1930 that was recently just approved, which I think provides a lot of the restrictions and concerns at the school board level as to signs on school property that we were concerned about. Some of those being that if there's any safety concerns, if there's any inappropriateness with the banner, that the banners have to be uniform in size and color, that's now in the school policy. So for the reason that the school board has clarified their policy, which is now a county-wide policy, I don't think that there's a necessity to continue the interlocal agreement. That being said, I'm going to open up to my colleagues. Council Member Fadgen. Oh, you pulled it. Did I, you also pulled, I'm sorry, you also pulled it. So, Council Member Andreu, I don't, I saw you had two and four. It was this one, three. Okay, well, I pulled it as well, so I went first. Go ahead. That's okay. I agree with you 100%, and I don't think it is needed. And if we want to continue, I was going to suggest the removal of the language in 2.04, limiting the number, as per our last discussion about this topic. Thank you. Council Member Fadgen. Thank you. I honestly don't feel the school board has demonstrated that they're, you know, they have the policy, but, you know, just because school's out doesn't mean that they get to deteriorate and start flapping in the wind. Now, I know we're in a new school year and everything's going to be anew, but what are these things going to be looking like at March? They really haven't shown that they're willing to govern this themselves, so what's our recourse if we don't have this in the, and I'm in agreement with the Council Member or President Reinstein that, you know, over regulation, but they haven't demonstrated that they want to do this and be good neighbors, and a lot of our schools are in the middle of the neighborhood. Now, one other comment regarding not limiting the signage, you know, in the memo, I believe Chief, it was specifically Chief Harrison was concerned about limiting visibility along the fence line, so I am still for limiting to the, I believe it's 15, but I don't think that, but regarding the regulation of it, they haven't demonstrated that they're going to regulate it, so I think it needs to be an interlocal agreement. Thank you. Thank you. Just one point on that is that the policy that was just voted and approved on by the school board is a new policy, taking into consideration the concerns that I think our city has raised primarily, if not other cities as well, so to just be fair to the school board is that they didn't have a policy in place, now they do. I would, I would, I would, that's fine. I would say until they prove that they're going to follow their policy, I think we need it in our interlocal agreement, is my opinion. Councilmember Hortland. Thank you, Mr. President. I don't want to rehash the comments from the last meeting, nor the 2019 meeting, because we spent a lot of time on this agreement, and for those who don't know, you and I both came from the same place on the EAB. We, at the time in 2019, I was the only one sitting up here who had actually fundraised for these banners as a parent, so I see it from both sides. However, I did raise the question at our last discussion about security, and I think Chief Harrison has weighed in on that, about being able to see through the fences. I know from being a former parent at the high school, we were able to get creative. You know, sports teams can have the banners around the football field, the lacrosse field. The elementary schools will often do it around, hang the banners around their car loop. So, while I don't want to prevent, and we know that funding is a dire need right now, I don't want to prevent that, but I think the role we're sitting in tonight is we need to uphold the standards of the city. So, I think that's why this interlocal agreement came to be. I can't speak for other cities, but I think, you know, we've talked about it when we talk about development projects. You know when you're in the city of Plantation, and I think I'd like to withhold those standards. So, I am comfortable with all the time that we put into this agreement in 2019 with continuing it as it reads. No, I didn't keep up with the consensus. I didn't speak yet. I was, I think, do you mind if I? Councilmember Anderson. Yeah, in the last ones, I figured, I didn't buzz, but. I was looking over. Yeah. Okay. I think it's strange we're the only city that has, that is asking for ILA. We're the only one left. The school board passed the policy, I think, in December. So, we're not even at a year yet to give them to enforce it. I can tell you from a school board member and my other role, school, working for the school district, they have come out saying banners can't be weathered and tattered and to remove them. And also, to start following the policy, they had to honor the closing of whatever commitment they had with existing banners and then take them down to start following the policy. So, they are starting the enforcement, as Councilmember Fadgen was hoping to see. I can see it through the communications. I can see it in my drives through other cities. Of course, you get an outlier or something. But I think principals want their school to look nice. I think we can trust them. I think this, I don't know. What? Well, I've spoken from, you are in the government. They want us to regulate. I could go either way. So, I didn't really count the math. Where are we here? You, well, just removing it all together, so. Right. So, I think what was discussed at the last meeting and what I think Councilmember Andreu has proposed is that if you look at 2.04, which is the only section that discusses limitations, that maintaining the rest of the ILA, but just removing 2.04, A and B. Well, I was, I'm in favor of not having an ILA. But as a compromise, since two of my colleagues feel like we should keep it, I suggested, if we're going to keep it, to remove that language in 2.04.01, having the limits. Because, again, this is, it's a revenue generating for the schools and limiting them. This puts a huge constraint on them. And I don't, and some have such large fence lines, 10 banners is nothing. And then to say, you know, 5 for the year, and who's policing this? Nobody. I mean, really, you have to be very egregious for code enforcement to get involved. I don't think they're going to go around and count how many banners that you've had up for the year. So, what's the real purpose? I would rather just remove the language. Councilmember Horland. Thank you. And in the school board agreement, it does say, if the school principal chooses to pursue sponsorship opportunities in 1A, temporary signage must adhere to all municipal county government zoning ordinances. So, what I'd like to do is ask a city attorney to weigh in. Because, Mr. Ezra, you were not here during the last discussion. But you were here when we kind of hammered this all out in 2019. So, there were legal considerations that we were concerned about with the ILA. So, my question to you is, if we were to just do away with the ILA, does that put us a better position legally for the concerns that we addressed 2019, or not? Well, you also have to go back in time because this matter was initiated before I arrived. I was dealing with a pretty significant memo from the former city attorney and the prior version of the agreement, and really, I just finished it up. So, since finishing it up in 2019, I've not really gone back and revisited the legal issues involved. But, as I recall, the issue was one of enforcement of the city's sign code. And at the time, administration was looking to take enforcement action against the school board for violating the city's sign code. My understanding is that the ILA was a way of resolving that dispute and a compromise. So, naturally, I'm typically in favor of compromises, especially when they are, you know, mutually beneficial or, you know, a bad agreement, settlement agreement is better than a good lawsuit. So, I'm usually in favor of resolution, especially when it comes to government entities. I am not aware of any discussions at a staff level about enforcement action since the last ILA. I can't tell you how administration would handle the matter if there were no ILA, if there were violations of the city's sign code. And my concern wasn't necessarily about the enforcement, though it should be, I guess, if we have the ILA. But my recollection, and it's been six years, that you and I had a conversation about precedence. And in going forward with the ILA, and correct me if I'm wrong, is, you know, what does that open us up to, that we have this agreement with one entity? So, that's kind of where I was getting at. We have one agreement with one entity for temporary signage. You know, what does that leave us open to if somebody else wants to do the same? Not to even use this specific example, but generally, you know, when you create exceptions to your code, you open up the potential Pandora's box for others to say, why not treat me the same as you are treating somebody else? That was what I was getting at. I mean, that's not only in this instance, it's in all instances. Sure, in all instances. Thank you, Mr. Ezra. So, let me raise another question, and maybe Mr. Holmes or Mr. Albert can assist here, is that I know that in some prior discussions, I don't recall if they were from the dais or maybe separate, that we've had regarding your work on revising our sign ordinance, is if in our sign ordinance we were to have some discussion that would cover this concern regarding the rights of other government entities on their property, something that shows that that's the reason why we're allowing their policies to assist us in how we govern signs. I mean, is there a way to revise as you're working on our sign ordinance to help deal with some of these concerns? For the record, Dan Holmes, Planning and Zoning, Economic Development Director. We can absolutely write provisions within the sign code that sort of govern the signage, but legally, I mean, I still have to defer to the city attorney as to the legality of it, but it would not be a problem for us to put those provisions within the sign code. I mean, my thought in that regard is that if, since the city attorney has, I think what I heard is that since the last time that you fully researched this item, it's been quite some time, maybe if the city attorney and Mr. Holmes and your department had a chance to further consider this, then we wouldn't have to create new regulation in terms of this ILA or renew this one because we would handle it as part of our sign ordinance. I see Mr. Nunamaker behind you, so I'll give him an opportunity. Jason Nunamaker, CAO. That's the exact issue we visited before, and the advice we received previously, and we can certainly revisit it, was that if we did that through our ordinance, that that we'd be opening ourselves up, and we may undermine the credibility of the sign code. You know, we followed up based on feedback from the last meeting on those issues as far as the number. In talking to the chief, and I invite him, he can speak for himself on this, but one of the things he did say that if you are of a mind to reduce the limit on the banners, he would work with his SROs, which, as y'all know, are embedded in all the schools, so they could work on those sightline issues. So if y'all have a mind to do away with the cap on it, we'd prefer that y'all do it within the ILA, and then we'd adjust accordingly. And then if you want to hear from the chief on that, he's certainly available for y'all. You know, based on those concerns, I'm not against the alternative compromise removing the numbers. I'm seeing that in the school board policy that I don't think we've given them much of a chance to enforce if it has been necessary, is that there is a section that says the temporary signage must not obstruct sight of school facilities or interfere with school activities. So I feel like if there was a concern from our police department, I think the principals would be very concerned that our police department felt that that was unsafe. I mean, given the way you opened the meeting, I think they would absolutely be sensitive to that. Yeah, I do too. Thank you. May I make a motion? Please. Motion to approve amending section 2.2.1, 2.04. .01. Second. So we have a first and we have a motion made and a second. May I? You said amending. So it's to remove 2.04.01, correct? And then renumbering accordingly. Correct. So the motion has been made and it's been seconded. If there's no further discussion, I'll ask City Clerk, please call the roll. Council Member Anderson? Yes. Council Member Andreu? Yes. Council Member Fadgen? No. Council Member Horland? No. Council Member Reinstein? Yes. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next move, Council Member Andreu, I apologize. I had you written down as 2 and 4. Was it only 2 and 3? All of the above. All of the above. Okay. So you're up with number 4. Thank you. Thank you, President Reinstein. Just a quick question regarding these changes and this being now administratively approved. Will the council be notified in writing similar to the conditional use notifications and possibly have a call-up procedure if there is a concern? Yes and no. On the first part, yes. We spoke to Mr. Holmes. He said it would not be a problem to make sure that you all are aware of those. From my understanding, and I defer to Mr. Holmes or Mr. Ezra on this, it won't be callable because we've been directed, the statutory guidance is that these are now administrative. Unfortunately, that is not the interpretation of the county as it applies to them, I believe, because they're a chartered county. So while you all can't call it, it still has to go through the county process. So I don't know if that gives you more comfort or less comfort, but we at least will make you all aware of it. Thank you. Thank you, President Reinstein. That was my only concern. And you can do that via email. We don't need hard copies. Do we have a motion? Motion to approve item number 4. Second. We have a motion and a second. Seeing no further discussion, Ms. Beggarro, please call the roll. Councilmember Anderson? Yes. Councilmember Andreu? Yes. Councilmember Fajan? Yes. Councilmember Horland? Yes. Councilmember Reinstein? Yes. Thank you. I wonder if also, since it's going to go to the county, that we can make sure that we get notice of it when the county is going to hear it, so that if we had some concerns that we wanted to bring to the county on behalf of the city, that that would be possible. Sure, we can do that. You know, a good example would be the Peters Road Project, because in that circumstance, you all might want to lobby that in favor of. Great. And we do have a representative on Planning Council. Yes. Okay. Thank you. So, okay, moving right along, we've already discussed that five was already removed prior to the beginning of the meeting, and that was noticed properly of its removal. We are now up to six, and I pulled six. So, six is the design services of pedestrian hybrid beacon on Cleary Boulevard at Northwest 91st Avenue. I want to also thank Mr. Nguyen, who also has asked to speak on it, because he had sent an email, I think, to all council, and it caused me to research this a little further, because I didn't really know what a pedestrian hybrid beacon was. And I want to first ask if the administration can answer the question that, based on all the discussions we've had as to Cleary and potentially the road diet and narrowing Cleary, as well as the roundabout on Cleary, how would this, if it was to pass as presented, would that affect in any way what we're, what we've been talking about for future plans for Cleary? I don't believe so, for a couple reasons, and I would defer to the city engineer to comment further. But one, those improvements aren't going to be made for some time, so the ability to get folks from one side of the road to the other would still be pertinent. And then, if we do a lane reduction, we still have that same need. And then, even if we do the roundabouts, that slows traffic, but again, we want a safe path of travel for residents, for pedestrians. So, as to, just as to your response, completely agree that no matter what, we still want a safe way to cross, and there's a lot of space, a lot of places where we could use more safe crossing. I'm just wondering, though, is that if we're investing in a pedestrian hybrid beacon, which is something that is going to be installed, but our plan, even though it's in the future, but we have a plan that we've been discussing for narrowing the road and for a potential roundabout that's just going to be, what, 50 feet, maybe to the west, give or take, 50 to 100 feet. And so, I'm wondering, is that in talking about the necessity for the beacon, for that kind of device, how that comes into play with the other items, not the need for a crosswalk still? No, it's a great point, and I think, and I think the city engineer will cover this, that part of the analysis will be to take in that context. So, I don't believe it has to be the beacon necessarily. So, she'll entertain that discussion, and I think it might address that on point. Perfect. So, I'm going to ask before you comment is that, so I did look up some other things in regards to this pedestrian hybrid beacon, and when the first thing that I found was the United States Department of Transportation speaking in favor of the hybrid beacon, and then realizing that that article was from 2014. And, the next thing that I came up with was, happens to be the New Jersey Department of Transportation that was talking specifically about the beacons. And, they were very concerned about the effectiveness because of the confusing messaging. And, admittedly, I didn't know what that meant until I, again, researched it further, that it's not simply a stop or go, that the messaging is a little bit different. And, yeah, I had asked for this particular one to go up, only because of looking at where we were doing the narrowing, and where we were potentially doing the roundabout. I'm going to go through a couple more, was that, you know, again, looking to see, well, what comes up when I pull up this information. And, there just happens to be in Minnesota. We were talking about Minnesota earlier today, tonight, is that they're doing a study right now, and their project start date on their study was last July, and it's supposed to conclude any time now. So, they're doing, they did an entire study to determine the, whether the hybrid beacon was, was best for, for their use. Last but not least, this is from a magazine called Science Direct, and it is, this just came out in February of 2025, and it's Accident Analysis and Prevention, and it's evaluating the safety impact of mid-block pedestrian signals, particularly this type of signal. And, and, and from this one, they're talking about the mid-block, the pedestrian signals, and that it displays a flashing red indication in place of a solid red indication during the pedestrian interval to cross, and that, essentially, they're talking about that it's confusing, that the hybrid beacon is confusing. So, you probably are familiar with all of this research, but it was the first time I read it. So, could you elucidate us a little further? Good evening, council, city attorney, mayor, Samira Shalant, city engineer. So, before I go into a little bit detail on the hybrid beacon, I just want to explain how the project was conceived. The MPO, the Metropolitan Planning Organization, had slotted some safety study funds, and they conducted a comprehensive safety audit on Cleary Boulevard. Throughout the audit process, there was a walkthrough. Broward County Traffic Engineering, Broward County Planning, city staff, which includes engineering, police department, and park staff, in addition to FDUTE staff, had accompanied the MPO staff in this safety audit. As of which, as a result of that, there was a safety audit report that was issued part of that with recommendation. That hybrid beacon was one of the short-term recommendation part of that safety audit. Since then, MPO had worked with FDUTE to advance this project into construction and secured half a million dollars toward the construction of safety improvement, potentially traffic signal, at the location of 91st and Cleary Boulevard. And our request today is to advance the traffic study, which requires a warrant study and coordination with Broward County. So, there is certain traffic parameters that are going to be studied in advance of the design. There will be coordination with the regulatory agency, which is Broward County Traffic Engineering, on that matter. So, I just want to explain that subject. Number two, what we see on the screen over here, what the city clerk is displaying, is an excerpt from the FHWA, which is for traffic engineers, that the highest Bible, if you allow me, to, as our, there's no other word as the Bible, to traffic engineering standards. I want to just take a brief moment to explain the logistics of the hybrid beacon. So, the hybrid beacon is a signal with a mast arm. All the time, it's going to be black. So, the first, if you allow me to the left, there will be black. So, the traffic on Cleary Boulevard is going to continue as is until a pedestrian will be crossing or decides to cross, they will push a button. When they push the button, the signal will be activated, and it will activate by a flashing yellow. So, as a driver, it will give me that signal to slow down. So, slow down, driver, there's a pedestrian about to cross. Then, the flashing yellow is going to turn into steady yellow, which tells the driver, hey, driver, try to slow down to the stop sign that it's on the pavement marking. Then, the signal is going to turn into red. Double red signal is going to be steady all through the pedestrian crossing. Once the pedestrian, and there is some traffic engineering and programming part of that signal, they calculate how many seconds needed for that crosswalks based on the width of the road and the right of way, the available right of way. Once the pedestrian cross safely, then there will be a flashing red telling the driver, hey, driver, start cracking your engine because you're going to start driving again. Then, the signal will go black. What usually happens when cities or municipalities install these signals, there will be some learning curves like roundabouts. You know, at the beginning, drivers will be confused. So, I will not eliminate the confusion part, but there will be some specific instruction throughout. We will be working with administration on public education, throughout our social media, throughout our website to engage the public. If this item passes, this is what will be, and educate the public on the behavior of driving. Ultimately, we're going to get it. I'm a frequent driver on Cleary Boulevard. I drive the corridor three, four times a day because that's my commute from home to work, from work to home. So, I'm going to learn it. To answer your question about the effectiveness, going into this brochure, safety benefit identified in this brochure as 55% reduction in pedestrian crashes, 29% reduction in fatal crashes, and 15% in fatal and, I'm sorry, I can't read. It's too far. It's too far. Serious injury. Serious injury. Thank you. Broward County just installed, not just, like two years ago, installed similar signal on Flamingo Road just before State Road 84, where the public's on Flamingo, just close to 595 there, there is similar signal. So, it is approved by the county, approved by the state, and my tenure in City of Plantation, I didn't hear any confusion on the operation of that particular signal. Leo and I, we were talking in the back, knowing that you guys are going to pull this item. Leo had found an article that FDUT just installed the same signal on A1A on Armond Beach. So, if it have some negative effect, I don't think regulatory agencies such as Broward County or FDUT will continue to install them. So, before I call my colleagues, I just, a couple follow-ups. I'm not so sure that just because that some government agencies do things that it doesn't mean that, you know, we can't question it or criticize it. I will tell you that the one that you're referring to on Flamingo, if you haven't heard, at least anecdotally, of any issues or concerns, I could tell you personally is that when we, when I've been with my son riding our bicycle along that route. And, and there are people that run through that because they still don't understand what the, the flashing, is flashing yield or is flashing, you know, it, when you get to red usually means stop, but what does flashing red mean? Flashing red means you look at it, but then you keep going. I guess really my only question to you is that understanding that safety is our number one concern and there are other alternatives to this beacon that are much more static, that whether it's red means stop, the black or green means go. So I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm wondering is that are there alternatives that you find would be equally, if not more effective that wouldn't require the education that you're talking about? Because you actually, quite a bit of what you just described was that we're going to have to teach them, we're going to have to educate them. Um, and you know, when, when, when there's a risk of a, a period of education, um, I'm concerned that we're actually increasing the danger because people are not understanding what those signs are in the interim, um, when, um, so anyway, there are alternatives, correct? Uh, the alternative is a full traffic signal, a full traffic signal will not be warrant at that intersection because of the proximity of Pine Island and Central Park. There's no crosswalk. There's no other options. There is crosswalk, but bear in mind, it's four lane divided major, um, collected roadway, Cleary Boulevard. So crosswalk mid block crossing without signals can be. What if it was two lanes and not four lanes? Would that make a difference in your opinion? Again, if we widen the median and make a bike lane, maybe so. So if we narrow Cleary as we're talking about in the future occurring, it actually could change your. In the future. But now, again, the right of way of Cleary from sidewalk to sidewalk, whatever we're doing with the, with the lanes of Cleary, going to continue the same. You had me at bike lanes. We've talked about quite a bit from here, the importance of, um, of safe bike lanes. So if that is, uh, what we need to do in order to make Cleary even safer, um, I'm, I'm all for that is for the safe bike lanes. But before I let you continue, let me, um, let me jump to a council member Andreu and then council member Fadgen, please. Thank you. So I too find it confusing. And I just, I thought council member Reinstein was going in a different direction. Um, because I was concerned about the fee schedule that was here. And I know that, um, Mr. Spencer probably has a continuing services agreement with this engineering firm. I did not pull that agreement that came before us previously, but I did not remember that agreement having, um, these types of fees for meetings and conference calls. So I'm more concerned about the price of this, uh, particular hybrid beacon and the return on investment, because as president Reinstein said, um, we do have a long range plan. So are we spending, uh, this $73,000 to solve a problem that, and again, I travel that way every day as well. At part of my commute, have we, do we have data to support the need for this? We have, we had some pedestrian incidents and so part of the, uh, road safety audit, there was crash report, um, um, statistic part of that, which I don't have the detail right now in front of me. Uh, they will not do the recommendation on until it's warranted part of the 73,000 will fund a traffic study, a traffic warrant study. Okay, that's not here. It is because there is hourly rate for traffic engineers and... The analysis, is that the study? Task number one is the traffic analysis and coordination with Broward County traffic engineering. So there will be kind of phase one of the project, which is the traffic warrant analysis. If the beacon is warranted, then they will continue to the design. That's how it is programmed. So if it's not, well, they are the ones that will do the study and then determine if it's warranted. They will do the study provided to Broward County traffic engineering for, to the city and Broward County traffic engineering for review. So let me ask you this final question. Could we bifurcate this item tonight and just approve task number one? Which is the traffic study element of it. Correct. And then bring that information, that data back, and then we can move forward and say, yes, we want this hybrid beacon. I will say yes. The only caveat with that, MPO had slotted the construction money of half a million dollars to this intersection for their FY27, which starts July 1st of 26. So splitting it into two items will be just a bit tight from schedule. That's the only thing I can bring to the table. Because I'm with Council President Reinstein, too, that there might be other options that aren't as confusing and as costly. So that would be my suggestion to only approve task number one, the analysis. Thank you. Councilmember Fadgen. Thank you, President Reinstein. Peters Road, just west of East Tropical Way, there's a four-lane stoplight that's activated when you press the button. I used to press it when I would drive my bike to Tropical Elementary. It seems to work fine. It's not confusing. I guess I don't understand. I kind of feel like, if I remember correctly, where this walkway across, it's going to be on the west side. So I envision, like, it gets activated, it goes to solid red, and then people are going to be making left-hand turns into 91st to get in the Central Park, not stopping and waiting. I just find it confusing. I just don't understand why a traffic light that's activated on demand on Peters Road wouldn't work here as well and actually be more effective because of the turning of people turning left out of Central Park, turning left into Central Park. I think there's a whole slew of problems that come up with this. I don't think it's the right area for this section. As I said, there will be a traffic study, a traffic warrant study, and also the traffic engineer, Kim Lee Horn, is the same traffic engineer for Central Park Drive. So the traffic study would incorporate the effectiveness of it with the uniqueness of that intersection? Correct. I think it's unique. I was kind of looking at it, and I don't really feel like it would work. That's why we selected this particular firm because they're going to connect the dots. If it's possible, I think we should do the first task before we go too far down the pathway of no return. I just want to answer one thing about what's the difference between Peters and over here. This corridor is high pedestrian. You have the park. You have the apartment. So, yes, Peter is high pedestrian, but this is higher pedestrian. I don't have the statistics to show in front of me to show you what is the difference, but this is a very high pedestrian crossing area. Can you put back up the map for a second, please? So in recognizing that it's a high pedestrian crossing area, and, again, I'm on Cleary all the time as well, so I know exactly, I know this area so well, not just from driving it, but from biking it and from walking it. Because the light is not that far away, you know, my initial thought was that if we spent more time turning that intersection where the light is into a safer place to walk so that it is lit up better, so that there's the ground is, has the, you know, those lightings on the ground so that, you know, we're encouraging people on a regular basis that if you're going to cross the street, cross it at where the light is. But we are. As you recall, this particular intersection, which is Central Park Drive and Cleary Boulevard, going to be turning into roundabouts. That's exactly, that's part of my point, right, is that we have this big plan where we're considering the roundabouts. So I'm not against that if the motion is made to move forward with part one for the analysis and assessment, but to hold back on the rest of it. Any other council members wish to speak on it? I see Councilmember Anderson, please. Could you remind me, Michelle, when would the road diet and roundabouts, what was the time for it? That's a long range. That's not planned at all at this point. It was just conceptual? It was conceptual. Let's move on that quicker. Yes. Leo had mentioned something. No, I just, just quickly, I just wanted to mention quickly. Tell us who you are, please. Leonard Donovan, assistant city engineer. Thank you. In regards to the flashing, because, and I know you guys have concerns, and I just wanted to mention that, because we've seen these being, even, like, with the county, because county is the one, like, responsible for all the traffic signals. Like, when you, like, the turning on the arrows, more and more now we see, like, the counties now are going into, like, having them being, like, flashing, flashing yellows and flashing reds. So all in all, what I want to say is, like, you know, the learning curve, somebody, like, we would have to kind of learn this system moving forward, because it seems like that's the direction, like, Broad County is taking, even with the traffic, like, when you're making a left, and then when you're making a right, when you have, like, those steady green and steady yellow, moving forward, it seems like they're going to become more, like, flashing, similar to what we're seeing on those PHBs. So ultimately, people have to learn. Thank you very much. Appreciate adding that information. I see Councilmember Hortlander. Thank you. Very quickly, I just want to clarify something you said, because I am concerned about the price, too. I think that the price is very high for this engineering study. Did you say that the matching dollar, that this project total is going to be half a million dollars for this? Yeah, it is a mast arm signal, total mast arm signal. So that's what the construction. The construction is half a million dollars. That traffic study and design element. Now, bear in mind, when we have a mast arm, there's structural engineer involved, because it's wind load calculation. There is electrical engineer involved, because of the electrical controller to the signal. So it's a full-blown design with different elements. Understanding all that as a layman, that just seems like an awful lot of money when we're talking about so many other projects we want to do on that road. But I understand it's matching funds. So I concur with the Council. I would be more comfortable with bifurcating the agreement, if that's not going to set you back too far. Councilmember, did you wish to say? I thought I saw you. No. I wanted to ask that question, but if you want me to say, yes, I agree with the consensus to bifurcate it. I think the price tag is very high. I would want more information before I move forward. Very good. I pulled the item, but Councilmember Andreo, I think you had the suggestion. Do you want to make the motion? Motion to amend item number six to revise the agreement to only include the design surfaces, the task one, pedestrian crosswalk warrant analysis. Second. We have a motion and we have a second. Seeing no, actually, I'm sorry. We do have, Mr. Wynn, do you still wish to speak on it? Please. I felt like I shared some of what you had shared, so I forgot you still were listed there. Thank you. Yeah, sure. Thank you. Joe Wynn, 944 Northwest 92nd Terrace. Thank you for all the discussion. Thank you, Engineer. Sean, and for the Council as well for diving into this. I really didn't think it would become a whole discussion topic. So I do appreciate everybody's focus and care about not only that roadway, but also the safety of the people that are attending the park and the residents that are there. Just a few pieces of clarification. Just from my experience, we're all sharing a little bit of anecdotal, hence the importance of a full study. A lot of the people who tend to be crossing there seem to be coming from the pickleball courts or the batting cages, which lean towards that side of the park, hence they would be less likely to walk all the way over to Central Park Drive to make the crossing. Additionally, in terms of the beacon itself, I believe the history of it is that it was created as a way to skirt full traffic signal warrants, so that essentially when they came back with a study and said you can't get a traffic signal here, they designed that unit as, well, this isn't a full traffic signal. This is something a little less, so therefore it doesn't need that full load qualification. There is, as I shared with counsel, there is an alternative that FDOT has been using, which they call a modified pedestrian signal, I believe. It very much appears to be a traffic signal. The main challenge of the hybrid beacons is the confusion, the education. I don't want to, or anybody else, to be crossing as a vulnerable road user and have to wonder, is that vehicle coming up educated? As far as a roundabout goes in education, you mess up, that's your car that you just rolled over the median or something. I mean, figure that one out, guys. But as far as stopping at a line and knowing when to go, it's not what we expect people to do because it's creating different variations of standards. Real quick, standard mode is off. As South Floridians in the summer, what do we encourage people to do at a traffic signal when it is off? Treat it as a stop sign. This one, we say treat it as nothing. A signal that has flashing red lights, if you go downtown, we say treat it as a absolutely do not go, there's a train. But here, we say it's a stop sign, but maybe you can go through. It's just confusing, and that's not an experience that is a pedestrian you want to be subjecting yourself to or others that you're with. Really, that's pretty much the main thing. Obviously, I fully support having some sort of crossing assistance in that area, and whatever we can do and whatever mode and approach that we can do it that is the most economical and the most time-sensitive would be the best for it. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Wayne. We have a hand raised in the back. Mr. Carreras. It's okay. Come forward. If you can turn that in afterwards, just state your name and address. My name is Frank Carreras, 701 North Victory Lane. So the obvious thing here, I think, is an interesting point that Mr. Badger brought up, the cross at Peters, and I do drive all around the county, and I've never seen anything like this before. I just haven't. I haven't come across, and I see a lot of roads. But if you want to see the impact of a change, of an intersection that's been in place for many, multiple years, go to 441 in Broward. The medians are destroyed. The poles have come down. The yellow poles go up. The yellow poles go down. They finally had to set them back, and even still, they went down. So, you know, I know somebody personally who've run over that median and says, I'm just not used to it out of frustration, and others who say it becomes a very tight turn. So think about what was just said. Is that person educated? How many years has this road been in place without that signal there? And I actually think of a crossing that's such a simple thing of push a button and stop people would be practical. I don't know the laws and so forth that restrict it, but I find that to be much more practical in coming up with something that people are not used to. All right? So with that. Thank you, sir. Seeing no further discussion from the dais or the public on the item, the motion's been made and seconded. Ms. Beggarow, please call the roll. Council Member Anderson? Yes. Council Member Andreu? Yes. Council Member Fadgen? Yes. Council Member Horland? Yes. Council Member Reinstein? Yes. Thank you. Next up, we have item seven. Council Member Fadgen? Thank you. So this is the third amendment, and they propose a 19% increase. We came back with a 15% increase. So my question is, is like, what was the basis of that? It was more just sort of based on our research, but there was nothing to substantiate what was our rationale or our thought process for accepting 15% as the proper increase? Sure. I'm Charles Spencer, procurement director. When they offered a 19%, I did some research on the CPI, the E&R, and realized truthfully what they were asking for aligns with what has increased through the CPI, E&R. But based on some potential budgetary constraints by the city and stewardship of good partnership with the company, I went back to them with the 15%, which they accepted. But when you look at the CPI and the E&R across the board from 2021 until today, 19% was truly warranted. Okay, so what I would request in the future for this is let's reference what we're hanging our hat on. Sure. And then this isn't necessarily – this is more maybe a comment or a question for consideration or thought. Is it in our interest to define what the increases should be as opposed to be undefined? Are we getting the better end of the deal by having it undefined like this? And we might be. We are. We experienced this when COVID came around, and we had defined increases, and we realized at that point the increases was well above what we had defined, so we had to represent information back to council because it was actually in the reverse effect. It was defined during COVID, so therefore the CPI went through the roof. Yes. So how often does the CPI go through the roof? Because that's like hopefully a once-in-a-lifetime situation. It's really unknown. So even when the petroleum industry is very volatile, depending on the product and services that we're receiving, we try to look at CPI ENRs, and we also use some best practice experiences with what's happening in the field in order to make a determination. And I'm not hard on getting – to have it defined, but I do think that we need to make sure that, you know, in the backup that we're substantiating where we're coming from, why we feel this is good, and then so we're making sure we're getting the best deal. So with that, I'll make a motion to approve. Do we have a second? Second. Seeing no further discussion, no further comments, Ms. Beggarro, please call the roll. Councilmember Anderson. Yes. Councilmember Andreu. Yes. Councilmember Fajan. Yes. Councilmember Horland. Yes. Councilmember Reinstein. Yes. Thank you. Next up, we have item 11, and I see that Mr. Nguyen is asked to speak on item 11. Mr. Nguyen, leave the building. Oh, sorry. There you are. You hunkered down for a second, and I didn't see you. If you don't remember, you can't speak on it. Joe Nguyen, 944 North S92nd Terrace. I just had a question on it more so than a comment. And obviously, I'm in support of things that make efforts to more quickly slow down traffic in areas, provide compression and all that. I saw that it's a one-year contract concept with a possibility of a four-year extension. However, if you scale out all of the items and installation in it, not even accounting for inflation or increased labor costs or increased product costs, it would be over a dozen years to pay for all of those things. So I was just trying to understand what time frame, what amount was it looked like. Were these being stockpiled or what? I was just trying to – does that make sense? Thank you. Good evening again. Samira Shalan, city engineer. So the city of Plantation have a traffic calming policy program approved by council. We receive traffic calming applications. As we receive the applications and they meet the requirements, we deploy these devices. In addition, during our analysis of our traffic operations throughout the city, we had implemented several traffic safety measures, such as removing and replacing some critical areas with flashing stop signs. We just recently installed some of these stop signs in Lauderdale West. So this contract is to provide these devices as needed, when needed. This is a four-year, one-year initial term plus four years that include the delivery and option of installation of such devices. So it is, to answer your question, it is when needed and how many needed throughout the city. Thank you, Ms. Shailen. Mr. Wayne? Yeah, that pretty much makes sense so that it's not that we're getting all of them all at once for unknown purposes. All right. Thank you. Good. Thank you. And I think Mr. Spencer is happy he didn't have to speak on that one. So seeing no further discussion, go ahead. Motion, please. Motion to approve item number 11. Second. We have a motion. We have a second. Seeing no further discussion, no further comments. Ms. Beggarow, if you could please call the roll. Council Member Anderson? Yes. Council Member Andreu? Yes. Council Member Fadgen? Yes. Council Member Portland? Yes. Council Member Reinstein? Yes. Thank you. Next up, we have item 16. I see that Mr. Buehler wished to speak on it. And following that, it's Mr. Conklin on 17. Mr. Conklin, you can come up to the side here, just so you're ready. Carl Buehler, 6831 Southwest 11th Street. I want to agree with Louis Reinstein about the concern for these killings, gun violence. This is a preference to my remarks about the budget. I was just talking with former plantation resident, Nancy Frye, yesterday. And she was the Mothers Against Guns, founded that here in plantation. And she was lamenting the fact that legally, we can't even do anything here in plantation to improve gun regulation or registration, because that's preemptive by the state and federal government. And I've spoken with Kerry years ago, and he says, yeah. Mr. Buehler, is this on the expenditure report? Yeah, it is. I'm getting to that. But I just wanted to preference that remark about how we can't do anything, no matter how much money we want to spend. Now, in the expenditure report, that's $87,000 for an indeterminate period. It doesn't show the time frame. It's not a lot of money for legal fees, trust me. You can spend $30,000 on just one little case. I was just looking, though, to see how it was broken down. And $77,000 was for our city attorney's firm and $10,000 for another firm. And in the $77,000 for our city firm, I noticed most of those fees are contracted fees for a consultation. And I was just wondering if this was in addition to the monthly fee. I'm not sure what the monthly fee is for the city attorney. I don't know. Is it $10,000, $15,000? I'm not sure. And then I was just wondering, too, if there is any insurance to account for some of these fees if there's litigation. And I know there's a concern about the possibility of the city facing some legal action from the former mayor. If the state attorney were to drop the charges, she might apparently come after the city for her legal fees. And if that were the case, I just wonder, do we have a D&O policy to cover that, or is that somehow going to be in the budget, the legal budget? And also, I know just in general, again, in litigation today, it seems like $35,000 is the payout for a nuisance suit. There's just not much defense on that. And I'm just wondering, you know, in terms of these legal expenses, how much is in the consulting and all that? Are we taking into consideration? Do we have to really just automatically make a payout on a nuisance suit? Or is there a way – I mean, I know it's a budget consideration. I've been told by underwriters it's a business decision. It used to be $15,000. Now it's $35,000. You sue for $35,000, maybe you're just going to get it without any evidence. It's pretty bad. And those are my questions in regard to the budget expenses. Thank you. It seemed some of those may be outside the purview or the parameters of these legal expenditures. But, Mr. Nunamaker, was there anything in particular that you wanted to respond to here? Otherwise, I'd ask you to speak to Mr. Buehler separately. Just quickly, we don't have a retainer agreement, so all those expenses reflect actual work. It's not in addition to any lump sum payments. And I'd be happy to answer other questions offline. Great. Thank you very much. Do we have a motion? Motion to approve. Do we have a second? Second. Seeing no further discussion, no further comments, can we call the roll, please? Councilmember Anderson? Yes. Councilmember Andreu? Yes. Councilmember Fadgen? Yes. Councilmember Horland? Yes. Councilmember Reinstein? Yes. Thank you. Mr. Conklin, on Item 17, please. Dennis Conklin, 4581 Northwest Sixth Court. With regard to the Week 1 statement, again, I want to draw your attention that you're spending over $1,000 a week out of the extra millage rate assigned to the same boundary lines as your CRA commission district. And I believe that this is a cost that should be rolled over to that debit sheet and that the gateway should not have the extra millage rate because they already pay the regular plantation property tax millage rate. It's an interesting sort of an interesting sort of historical thing. The gateway 7 was founded, and I brought up Lee Hillier. He fought administration for years to get the CDBG money approved. The city was refusing to collect some of our tax dollars from the federal government. And eventually, he was able to convince enough for the rest of his cohorts on the council to approve CDBG. And then it kind of broke my heart because the city relinquished the administration fees, which is basically 20% of the CDBG to the county. So when you, as the existing council, grab those back, finally, after several years, I just want to hat tip to you. So just a little history there. Without Lee Hillier, no CDBG money for all these years and no CRA TIF. It's tens and tens of millions of dollars. And I yield back. Thank you, Mr. Conklin. Do we have a motion on item 17? Motion to approve. Do we have a second? Second. Seeing no further comments, no further discussion on item 17, Ms. Begaro, please call the roll. Council Member Anderson. Yes. Council Member Andreu. Yes. Council Member Fajan. Yes. Council Member Horland. Yes. Council Member Reinstein. Yes. Thank you. Next up, item 19, legislative item. An ordinance providing for a student representative on the Sustainability and Resiliency Advisory Board. Mr. Ezra. Yes, sir. An ordinance of the City of Plantation, Florida, amending Chapter 2 of the City Code of Ordinances for the City of Plantation Administration, by amending Section 2-73 membership appointments and staggered terms quorum to provide for a student representative on the Sustainability and Resiliency Advisory Board providing for codification, conflict, severability, and an effective date. Thank you very much. I do have one question, really, and I apologize because I didn't discuss it with administration in advance. But if we could look at the proposed ordinance and the language for the membership appointment and staggered terms, Part B. So if we look at B, it says the student member. First of all, I think it's a great idea that there's a student member. I actually think maybe a student member in all of our advisory boards would be a, there could be a great place for them. Here the language says the student member of the advisory board shall, it says, shall be, serve, a one-year term and is eligible to apply to serve an additional term. The student member, it says, must live in the City of Plantation and attend schools in the city. While in a first read of that, that makes perfect sense, but my concern is that we have a lot of great students that live in the City of Plantation that attend St. Thomas, Cardinal Gibbons, Posnack, Pinecrest, they attend other schools, and I'm not sure the notion of restricting their ability to serve, serves the best interests of our city. I would love if there's an overwhelming number of students from all of our schools that apply, but the idea that if you live in our city and you're a student who wants to serve as this student member, but you are maybe blessed to go to one of these other schools that you can't have an opportunity to serve. So, I would like to see that that language is removed. I would just ask the City Attorney, is there any necessity based on the reason why this language was put in that it's necessary? No, sir. And I see some of my colleagues have before, unless the administration has something they want to add, Council Member Fadgen. I agree with that. Residency should be the main criteria. We're not asking the board members to actually work in the city. So, I do have a question. So, is there no rotating member? Is this a change where we're saying that the council selects the seventh member? Because it's seven plus the student, correct? No, I know they're not a voting member, but it's seven members plus the student. And it says, like, each council member gets one appointment, the mayor gets an appointment, so that's six. And then the majority of the city council and the mayor shall appoint the seventh. Is that how it's been? Yes. Because I just question whether, you know, sometimes names get thrown out, and I have no idea who they are, or you might not know whose names put out there. So, I kind of feel like if that's the way we're going to do it, I think we need to, you know, get them on the agenda within a resume so that they can be a thoughtful discussion, as opposed to if there's, like, three of us that know somebody that we're trying to appoint to a board, and the other three members don't have any idea who they are, you know, kind of sort of just be bullied in there. I'm not talking about this council, of course, but future council. Just quickly. Who are you, please? Carol Morris. I wear a lot of hats, but one of them is staff liaison to this board. And the intent with the student member is that we will solicit applications, and the applications will then come to you for review and selection of an appointment. So, you would each have an opportunity to review them and get to know the students. Obviously, we don't know how many applications we'll receive. I'm going to suspect it's probably not going to be an unwieldy number. And I think that's good. I was specifically talking to the seventh member, but I think that's a good idea for the student member as well. And that is, you know, as I'm sure April can attest, that is essentially what we have done with the sustainability board member appointments. And you're correct. There is no rotating member on this board. Okay. Thank you. Next up, Council Member Andreu. Thank you, President Reinstein. I'm okay with removing that language, but in the case that we do have several students that want to join this committee, I think that it should be weighted for students who do attend a plantation school. Many of the initiatives that the Sierra Youth Group might be presenting or this particular board, we want students who can take that back to their schools and then implement it and share it. And if they do reside or go to school outside of plantation, that won't be able to happen, right, with their school community. So I think that might be why it was put in here. So I would just like to see preference given to a student that does attend one of our schools. I would just say that if we're given the opportunity to review their entire resume, that we should consider the entirety of who they are and what they're able to offer and not necessarily the school that their parents choose to send them. I, you know, I totally understand, but those, if they live in plantation, I, we would, we would encourage them. And by their attending the meetings, I think their whole purpose of being here would be to bring it back to bring it back to the city specifically. But point taken. Thank you. Mayor, I think you would like to speak. No, you would not. Okay. I don't see any other, any other council members wishing to speak. So I would make the motion that we approve it with the removal of the language and attend school in the city. And I think there's the Scrivener's error with the word, with the article B. It says shall be, sir, it should just be shall serve a one year. So we'll, we'll fix that and remove and attend school in the city. Second. Mr. Buehler, you'd like to speak on the, on the matter. Yes. All right, Buehler, 6831 Southwest 11th Street. Go ahead. I appreciate, you know, the comments you guys have been making. You've been, you know, those are very good comments, thinking about residency and the selection of schools. There's only one thing in here, and I don't understand, and maybe Carrie can explain it, is why the student cannot vote. I don't know if there's a legal reason why. And I'm so happy to hear that we are getting the young people involved. I mean, this is a very, very, very important committee. I think environmental concerns are probably more important than anything in our future. I mean, the very survival of our species and the survival of this town and whether we're going to be underwater or destroyed by hurricanes, it depends on the environment and how we treat it. And I know there's students out there who are really concerned. So if you're going to have a student come on this committee, but you're not even going to count them for quorum, number one, and then they're not even going to have the right to vote. But I don't understand why. It's not a legal vote. It's not binding on the city. It has nothing to do with an ordinance, basically. I mean, when you vote, your vote is city business. Their vote is purely an opinion. It's advisory. It has no actual power. So if that student's down there and he's going to come to those meetings and he's going to take that information back to his school, but he can't vote, it doesn't seem like you're allowing that person responsibility and respect. You're just saying, well, you know, you're just here to watch and observe and maybe you can say something, but, you know, your voice doesn't count. So I just think you would remove – I don't know why, if it's possible, that you could remove that restriction. I don't understand what the objective of that restriction is or the logic of it. Thank you. Thank you very much. We have a motion. A motion has been made and seconded unless there's any further discussion on the dais. Ms. Beggarro, please call the roll. Council Member Anderson? Yes. Council Member Andrew? Yes. Council Member Fajan? Yes. Council Member Horland? Yes. Council Member Reinstein? Yes. Thank you. Next up, we have administrative discussion items. These are not items that take comment from the public. These are administrative items. So I will turn to the administration beginning with item 20. April. Good evening again. Samira Shalan, the city engineer. I have with me today Belinda Pell from Winningham and Fradley. We're going to present to you a progress on 46th and 5th traffic management plan. Those are two corridors that have been identified in the multimodal transportation plan for roadway improvement and safety improvement. We prepared a brief presentation to you. Belinda is going to lead some slides and I'm going to end up the presentation. Belinda? Yes. Good evening. My name is Belinda Pell and I'm a licensed engineer with Winningham and Fradley. Welcome. Thank you. I've been working with the city now for about a year on this project. It's actually two projects combined to one for this presentation. My team consists of the engineers in my office as well as our traffic consultant, which is Lisa Bernstein. She's here this evening. I know many of you know her. The phase A of this, it's in two phases. Phase A is a preliminary conceptual study. And phase B is the final drawings and construction and bidding and that kind of thing. So we're talking about phase A this evening. We go ahead and go to the second slide. So the project boundaries are on the, if you look to the east there, you can see State Road. Sorry, can't really read it. 441. We're looking at Northwest 46th Avenue and Northwest 5th Street. And if you look at the little black boxes there, those are the focus areas that we really took a look at. We looked at speeds and volumes up and down the roadways and in the intersections. We also looked at the crash data for the last four years. We made some, after we studied and analyzed everything, we made some recommendations. You know, we're working with Samira and Leo on that. And we're going to go through that tonight. We looked at the intersections and how we can improve that for reducing speeds, et cetera. And then the city is going to be talking about the Park East Traffic Management Plan. It's important to note that our team met with the Park East Homeowners Association on April 15th for a public meeting for their input earlier this year. So this presentation is going to be about 15 minutes. And then we'll go through everything. And then maybe 15 minutes after that, we're going to have questions. So if you have any questions, we can get to that at the end. So here's the first focus area for Northwest 46th Avenue. We've got the intersection at Northwest 3rd Court. Right now you can see that there are no existing signalization. There's no stop signs. The crosswalks are, there's stripes there, but they're low visibility. We'll get into how we can enhance that and make it safer for pedestrians. And we move on to 4th Street, 5th, and 6th Court. Here we have no traffic calming. We have low visibility crosswalks and no detectable warning mats. Detectable warning mats are placed at areas where people that are visually impaired, they can detect a surface change, like a drop. So if there's none there, it's not very safe for them. Then we move on to Northwest 8th Street. You can see in that photograph there that we have deteriorated traffic markings. And if you look to the right and to the left of the photo, there aren't any crosswalk markings. They're very little. And here we have Northwest 9th Court and 9th Drive. The city did some work there and improved and enhanced the crosswalk. There's a little bit of limited lighting here. We're going to request that or make a recommendation to add some lighting. We're going to move on to 5th Street here. So this is the intersection of Northwest 2nd and 5th. Again, much like the other crosswalk, or excuse me, intersections, we've got low visibility, no detectable warning mats. Again, 43rd Avenue, 46th, very much the same, no traffic calming. We've got existing four-way stops there, low visibility crosswalks. And just like the other intersections, there are no warning mats. And here we took a look at, we gathered data for the speed and the traffic volumes, as I mentioned earlier, for 46th Avenue and 5th. We also made some crash data diagrams. We got the crash data to put that together. And here, this is going to be, it's not, there's an error on the screen. It says average speed, but it's supposed to be 85th percentile. It means 85% of the drivers on the road are going at or below the speed limit. That means 15% are going above the speed limit. So if you look at Northwest 5th Street here, if you're moving east, you can see 32 miles per hour. West is 32 miles per hour. And the posted speed limit is 25 miles per hour. So there's speeding going on on this road. Go ahead and move next. Here we have for, similar to 5th, this is Northwest 46th on the roadway here. We've got speeds of 31, 36, and 37 going north to south. Coming back, the other, going up the top, Northwest 9th Court, we've got 28, 27. And where Samir is pointing her arrow, you can see that there's speeds of pretty high of 43 when it should be 25 miles per hour. Here is the traffic volumes. We took a look at all the intersections within this project, but we're only going to focus right here on these two just as an example to keep things very simple for you. If you look at the top, the left there, the left top bubble in the yellow, the top right quadrant and how that reads, there you go up. So if you see 122 there, that means that 122 vehicles are making a right turn on a Northwest 46th Avenue in the morning in between the hours of 7 and 9 a.m. And then they're making right turns. And the evening time from 4 to 6 p.m., there's 168 there. And that's how you read those diagrams. Keep going. And then after we took a look at the crash data, analyzed that, gathered everything up, the total number of crashes for the last four years from 2021 to 2024 was 15 for this particular intersection. And the most contributing factor we found was right angles. If you look in the middle of the intersection there, you can see the two arrows perpendicular. I mean, somebody's running a stop sign and the other one's crashing on the side of the vehicle. In other words, people are T-boning each other. So here's our recommendations for this area, 46th and 5th again. We were proposing to install traffic-calming devices such as roundabouts and increase markage and signage. And here is Northwest 3rd Court. We're going to propose to install two speed humps there with a raised crosswalk that makes it safer for the pedestrians. We're going to move the stop bars back a bit further. That's just a quick summary. Here's the roundabout, proposed roundabout for Northwest 4th Street. You can see that we're adding some sidewalk around there, some street lighting to make it safer. We're also adding crosswalks and new traffic markings. And then we have the traffic circle in the middle so that we can calm the traffic, but it can still continue to flow throughout this intersection. And it's the same recommendation with also traffic marking signs, new ones. It's fluorescent, yellow fluorescent versus the yellow dull. It makes it a bit more visible for everyone. So we're changing again from the existing four-way stop sign to include the roundabout. And this is, again, another traffic circle on Northwest 6th Court. And here we are on the intersection of Northwest 8th Street. So I mentioned earlier that there are no or little traffic markings, excuse me, crosswalk markings for the pedestrians on Northwest 8th and 9th Drive. We're proposing there. We're also proposing to remove a little piece of a median there on the south because cars are hitting that. We're going to increase the traffic markings. And then we're going to add some, we propose to add some street lighting where currently it doesn't exist. And here I mentioned earlier that the city has already enhanced this crosswalk. So we're just proposing to add a street light there. And for this intersection, Northwest 5th and 42nd, we are going to just add some more sidewalk and detectable warning mats, as I mentioned before. And then additional crosswalk striping. And then we have another roundabout on 5th and 43rd, proposed. Again, on 5th and 46th. And here is, I put together this aerial. We have, as I mentioned before, there was a public meeting with our team, with Samira and Leo at the Park East Homeowners Association. And then Samira is going to talk about the Park East Traffic Management Plan. And after that, the city has completed their presentation. And we'll take the questions after that. Thank you. Thank you. So during the public engagement meeting with Park East Community, a few residents had expressed some concerns about their other roadway throughout the Park East Community, including 42nd, 48th, 43rd. That wasn't included in the study. And through the traffic calming policy of City of Plantation, we presented this exhibit that's going to include other enhancement, traffic safety enhancement on temporary measures, because we don't want to fix one corridor and create the traffic to stroll into the other corridors and create a major issue. So in concurrent with this project, there will be some other safety enhancement to the adjacent corridor. With that said, if you have any questions regarding what was presented, myself or the consultant team can answer. Thank you very much. I don't see any pedestrian hybrid beacons planned, right? Not on this one. Not on this one. Anybody from the council? Thank you very much for the presentations. Thank you. Very good. Thank you. Next up, we are item 21. We're not taking any motions on that, so that was just discussion. Item 21, I know that was pulled by staff. For this item, I'd recommend regarding the localized TIF, you may want to defer consideration, let staff and the applicant make their presentation. We're happy to dovetail with that. Okay. Very good. Thank you. I just wanted to clarify on that. So we're going to move into our quasi-judicial proceedings, and I will turn it over to our city attorney, Ezra, to please read the procedures for the quasi-judicial hearings. Yes, sir. Thank you. The city clerk will swear on all witnesses before speaking. Please state your name and whether you have been administered an oath. Any speaker may be cross-examined. If you refuse to be cross-examined, your testimony may not be considered. Cross-examination shall be conducted in a courteous manner. The material in the city clerk's agenda packet will be made part of the record. The city staff will make the first presentation, followed by presentations from the applicant, any affected parties, and the public. The elected officials may set reasonable time limits for speakers. The hearing will then be closed and the matter decided. The city council's decision will be delineated in its motion and rendered in writing by way of a development order, resolution, or ordinance evidencing its decision. City council may also decide to continue the matter to a designated time to allow for the additional research or review. Thank you. Ms. Beggarow, please swear in any and all witnesses, all who wish to speak. Everybody wishing to speak on the quasi-judicial proceedings items, please stand up and raise your right hand. If you want to speak, stand up. Raise your right hand. All right. 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? Thank you. There were some people I saw, they were tentative. They weren't sure if they should stand up or not. If you didn't stand up and raise your hand and swear, I just ask that if you do decide to speak at a later point in time, please just let us know and we'll swear you in again. I'm looking at a few people that I see that look like they weren't sure. I already have some people that have requested to speak on items 25, 26, and 27. I don't see anybody that has requested to speak on 22, 23, or 24. Does anybody from council wish to hear a presentation on 22? Does anybody from council wish to hear a presentation on 23? Does anybody from council wish to hear a presentation on 24? Seeing none, and I don't have anybody from the public who has asked to speak, but I'll open that up. Is there anybody from the public that wishes to speak on item 22? Seeing none, is there anybody from the public that wishes to, I'm sorry, anybody in the back on 22? One more chance, I want to make sure. Anybody on 23? Is there anybody from the public that will wish to speak on 24? Okay, seeing none, just want to make sure everybody has a full opportunity. Do we have a motion on 22? Motion to approve item 22. Second. We have a motion, we have a second. We have nobody from the public that wishes to speak on item 22. Ms. Bedgrove, please call the roll. Council Member Anderson. Yes. Council Member Andreu. Yes. Council Member Fajan. Yes. Council Member Horland. Yes. Council Member Reinstein. Yes. Thank you. Item 23, again, seeing nobody from the public that wishes to speak on item 23, do we have a motion? Motion to approve. Do we have a second? Second. Council Member Andreu for the second. Seeing no further discussion, Ms. Bedgrove, on item 23, please call the roll. Council Member Anderson. Yes. Council Member Andreu. Yes. Council Member Fajan. Yes. Council Member Horland. Yes. Council Member Reinstein. Yes. Thank you. Item 24, again, seeing nobody from the public that wishes to speak on item 24, and no further discussion from the dais. Do we have a motion? Motion to approve item 25. 24. Four. And do we have a second? Second. And we have a second. Ms. Bedgrove, please call the roll. Council Member Anderson. Yes. Council Member Andreu. Yes. Council Member Fajan. Yes. Council Member Horland. Yes. Council Member Einstein. Yes. So those of you that were here on items 22, 23, and 24, thank you. You do not have to stay if you would do not like to. Otherwise, good luck with those signs. Have a great evening. Good to see you all. Council Member Andreu, did you want to jump in? Just as we are having people exit, can I make my Jennings disclosure that I did meet with the applicant, it would not affect my vote? I'd like to make the same Jennings disclosure. I'm going to make my Jennings disclosure, and it will not affect my vote. And I will also make that Jennings disclosure that I've spoken to the applicant and the representatives, and it will not affect my vote. So we are now moving forward on items 25, 26, and 27. Again, I have a number of members from the public, but we'll begin with a presentation from the city. Mr. Holmes? Just to clarify, it looks like are you going to be presenting on 25, 26, and 27 together? That's correct. Okay. So we will take each one separately for a vote, but the presentation will be together. So I'm also going to make mention is that when I do call up people who would wish to speak, we're going to ask that you make your comments in regards to all three of them together, since they're being presented together. Go ahead. Thank you. Okay. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chair. For the record, Dan Holmes, Planning, Zoning, and Economic Development Director. As indicated, we're going to present on applications number 25 through 27. These will be applications PP24-0003 and PP24-0004. There are basically three different types of requests that are things being requested here. The first consideration is conditional use approval to allow multifamily residential development and selected commercial uses within a B7Q plan commercial zoning district. The second request is for approval of site plan elevation landscape plan approval to construct a freestanding multi-tenant building to include a bank drive-thru with eight stories, 307 units. And then finally, there are seven zoning waivers and two landscape waivers associated with the request. So that's the third item that will be under review. So this is a location map for the city. The project is located along West Sunrise Boulevard, just pretty much at the southwest corner of University Drive and Sunrise Boulevard. The addresses include 8190 West Sunrise Boulevard, 8020 to 8150 West Sunrise Boulevard, and also 1723 through 1797 North University Drive. The owner of the property is MMG Plantation Square, LLC. The agent is William Laestrom. The size of the parcel is 5.53 acres. Again, underlying zoning, B7Q. The existing use is a Bank of America building, and also the land use. You'll recall that you recently approved land use and changes is a dash-lined area commercial with a regular residential. The adjacent zoning districts include B2P to the north, B7Q to the south, B7Q to the east, and B2P to the west. This is an aerial map kind of showing the area. Again, the subject of the request is highlighted there in blue. And the area is characterized by the following uses. To the north, there's Sunrise Boulevard and the Jacarenda Plaza Shopping Center. To the east is the Plantation Square Shopping Center. To the south is Northwest 17th Court and the Lena Apartment Complex. To the west is Medical Office Buildings, known as the University Professional Plaza. You'll see the purple line there around the site. That is the public notification boundary for the applications that are being proposed at night. The required boundary was 500 feet. And within that 500-foot radius, there were 266 notices mailed to surrounding property owners. The proposed use is within the B7Q zoning district. The B7Q zoning district is one of three kinds of planned community development zoning districts Pursuant to Section 2792, this outlines several criteria for properties that are within the B7Q zoning district. Staff makes the findings and conclusions for adding a 307-unit multifamily residential development as a B7Q candidate conditional use. So I'll just kind of touch on some of those requirements within the B7Q district. First, Section 2792A, the applicant must demonstrate that the proposed site plan is orderly and creative arrangement of all uses. Staff finds that the applicant has met this criteria. Second, under Section 2792A, the applicant must also demonstrate compliance with certain architectural standards and aesthetic qualities. We also find that the application, as submitted, has met these criteria. Under Section 2792A6C, the applicant must demonstrate that the proposed development is in harmony with adjacent development. We have found that the application is consistent with this criteria. The applicant must also demonstrate under Section 2792A-F1 that the project is located appropriately with respect to arterial and major streets. We found that the applicant has met this criteria. And then finally, the applicant has demonstrated compliance with Section 2792A-H, which deals with the amount of open space required for the project. We found that the applicant has demonstrated compliance with that criteria as well. So, again, three different things that we're looking at tonight. The first is the site plan, elevation and landscape plan for approval of the multi-tenant building, the eight-story multifamily residential development with 307 units. This is the site plan as submitted by the applicant. Again, you can see that existing on the site now is a pretty large bank building, Bank of America. That building is going to be demolished, and a new building will be developed, a new bank building will be developed on the parcel to the north, on the north end of the property. You see West Sunrise Boulevard located here. There are a couple of drive-through lanes that are proposed. And then to the rear of the site, you'll see the residential development that's being proposed here. And then you'll see the parking garage, which is seven-story proposed here. The residential buildings are proposed at eight stories. There is also, I note, as we discussed during the Development Review Committee, a pedestrian access way that was provided here to provide access from the proposed development to the shopping center to the right. With regard to the elevations for the site, on the top, you see the elevations for the north. So if you were driving along Sunrise Boulevard, this is the elevation that you would see up top. The bottom is elevations from the west. So if you were visiting the medical office building to the west and looking back at the property, this is the elevation of the site that you would see. And then finally, for the rear, if you were traveling along Northwest 17th Court, looking north, this is the elevation that you would see. And then finally, the east elevation is the elevation that you would see if you were looking at the development from the shopping center. These are the materials that are proposed for the site. So you can see the color schemes and the various materials that are proposed as well. And then with regard to the actual multi-tenant building, which will house the bank, this is the northern elevation on top. So again, if you're driving along Sunrise Boulevard, that's the elevation that you would see. If you were on the west of the property, looking back at the medical office building, this is the elevation of the multi-tenant building. And if you were at the south of this building, basically looking back from the proposed residential itself, this is the elevation that you would see up top. And then the east elevation, again, if you were looking at this building from the commercial establishment to the east, this is the elevation that you would see. Again, you'll see the drive-through lanes here and the ATMs that are located there as well. And again, this is the material color palette for the bank building. To go out to the landscape plan, this is the landscape plan that has been proposed for the site and the floor plans. There are several models of floor plans. There is one studio being proposed. And let me go back, if I could, for a second. As indicated, there are 307 dwelling units proposed for this site. The applicant is proposing a total of 40% at affordable. That's either 80% AMI or 120. So of that 307 units, a total of 123 units will be provided. Studios, there are 77 studio units proposed at 80% AMI. 70 of the studio units will be proposed at 80% AMI. And then there are 46 units that will be provided at 120% AMI. This is the floor plan for the one-bedroom units. There are basically four different plans for the one-bedroom units. 77 of the one-bedroom units at 80% AMI. And then there are seven one-bedroom units. I'm sorry, there's going to be seven one-bedroom units at 80% AMI. This is the two-bedroom unit that's proposed within the project. And then this is the floor plan for the three-bedroom unit. The multi-tenant bank building, this is the floor plan for the multi-tenant bank building. Again, there's the proposed Bank of America that will be relocated here. And it will occupy the space, as you see there in green. And then there is an additional tenant space that will be available as well. And you see that highlighted there in blue. That's just a bigger layout of the floor plan. With regard to parking, the city has, with regard to the different units, the city has different parking requirements for the different units. So as you go from studio down to the three-bedroom, you'll notice that the parking ratio changes. And then for the commercial is one to 300. Added together, the total parking requirement is 679 spaces. The applicant is proposing to provide 540 spaces. So that's 139 spaces or a 20.5% reduction. This is one of the waivers that you'll see requested within the application. And you can just see here kind of the breakdown, 433 garage spaces, 88 surface parking, and 7 off-site parking, and 12 EV spaces installed. And of the total, 540, 16 will be reserved for handicapped spaces. Traffic study recommendations. So as this kind of made its way through the Development Review Committee, we did require the applicant to undertake a traffic study. So there are some recommendations that did come out of the traffic study. But first, just to give you a summary of the traffic study, based upon the analysis, 621 daily new trips were identified. Of those 621 trips, 112 trips you'll see during the a.m. peak hour period. 65 will be the height during the p.m. peak hour period. And this is just the table that's provided. Again, if you look here at the bottom, that 112, 65, 621, those are basically the daily trips, a.m. and p.m. peak hours. In terms of access management or ingress and egress into and out of the site, off of Sunrise Boulevard, if you're coming from the west, there is ingress and egress in and out of the site here, that you see with these arrows here. If you were leaving the drive-thru here, there is a right turn out from the drive-thru. And then from Northwest 17th Court, both from the west and from the east portion, there is left in, left out onto Northwest 17th Court. And we also looked at pedestrian circulation for the project. In yellow, we kind of showed the existing sidewalks that are in place right now, and so we wanted to make sure that we were providing appropriate pedestrian connectivity and movement about the site. So what you see in blue there is the new pedestrian routes. You can see that we tried to make sure that there was connection to the existing sidewalk network as well. So traffic study recommendations, we've talked about, and the city engineer kind of alluded earlier to the multimodal transportation plan that the city did several months ago. With regard to the two roadways in terms of University Drive and Sunrise Boulevard, with regard to those areas, the city is requesting that this development contribute to the identified improvements within those two corridors or any local roadway improvements. The applicant has agreed to traffic improvement cost sharing in the amount of $119,143 to fund improvements identified within the MMTP and the traffic management plan within the Lauderdale West community in Northwest 17th Court. We do sort of provide a graphic here. Some of the improvements you see here, some of them are actually existing and others are proposed, but we just wanted to kind of give you a feel for some of the traffic measures that are being put in place to kind of control the traffic flow. And just to orient you, this is Sunrise and this is University here, and so the project is located roughly at that point, and you can see 17th Court to the rear of the project there. Other traffic study recommendations, one of the things that was recommended that once the residential project is completed and occupied that the development team contact Broward County Traffic Engineering Division to request signal timing of Sunrise Boulevard at North Pine Island Road and Sunrise Boulevard at North University Drive. The applicant would also coordinate with the Broward County Traffic Engineering Division on the feasibility of a mid-block crosswalk along Sunrise Boulevard as well. So I don't know if that's going to give you your flashing beacon or not. And then we have the traffic study recommendations. The applicant must obtain a Transportation Concurrency Satisfaction Certificate from Broward County. We just wanted to point that out. And also the revenues from the Transportation Concurrency Assessments for this concurrency district are used to fund transit enhancements for that particular district. And then with regard to the conditional use approval to allow the multifamily development in the B7Q zoning district, there are several criteria within the code under Section 2745. And we just wanted to point out that we did find that the applicant did meet each of these criteria. And I'll just bring up here. Again, it's basically with regard to the surrounding properties, that it's consistent with the comprehensive plan, that it would not be detrimental to surrounding properties, that it's not adversely affected the neighborhood in any way, that there's appropriate public infrastructure in place, that it's consistent with other sections of the code, and that they have disclosed the square footage, which has been disclosed as part of the site plan. So we find that they meet each of those criteria. And then also with regard to the B7Q district, the B7Q district is very different than most of the other zoning districts. So every time that there's a B7Q district approved, the council has to approve the uses that are permitted within that district. So under Exhibit G, we've identified the uses that are being proposed for this particular B7Q district. And then with regard to the waivers, the first zoning waiver, zoning waiver request number one is from Section 2792A5B23. This requires the height of all buildings containing residential use to not exceed five stories with a maximum of 65 feet. The applicant is requesting to allow the building height to eight stories or 93 feet. Zoning waiver request number two deals with setbacks under Section 2792A7C. It requires a setback based on one and one-half times the height of the building and based upon the proposed site plan to the south will require a 101.7-foot setback. The east will require a 131.5-foot setback, and the west will require a 139.5-foot setback. So you can see the applicant is requesting to the south to provide 53.6 feet, to the east 18.5 feet, and then to the west 74.8-foot setback. Zoning waiver request number three deals with the minimum net floor area per dwelling unit. Pursuant to the city's code, the studio units are required at 600 square feet, one bedroom at 750 square feet, and the two-bedroom units at 950 square feet. The applicant is requesting to reduce the minimum floor area for the studio efficiencies to 509 square feet. As indicated, there are several different one-bedroom units, so they're requesting a variance for the one-bedrooms between 615 to 725 square feet, and then for the two-bedroom to reduce it from 950 square feet to 878 square feet. Zoning waiver number four requires 679 parking spaces for the proposed residential and commercial building uses. I did provide you the parking chart early in the presentation, and so the applicant is requesting here to reduce the parking from the 679 required parking spaces pursuant to the code to 540 parking spaces. Zoning waiver request number five requires six off-street loading zones for the multi-family residential building. The applicant is requesting to provide two off-street loading zones for multi-family, and you see the two loading zone areas highlighted there in red on the site plan. And then finally, zoning waiver number six, which deals with the floor area ratio and maximum lot and ground coverage. And this is kind of broken down based upon the multi-tenant building and then the seven-story garage and then the multi-family residential. So with regard to the multi-tenant bank building, this requires a maximum floor area of 0.3 and a maximum lot ground coverage of 0.3. The applicant is requesting to allow the floor at 1.7 and a lot ground coverage at 0.35. With regard to the seven-story building, requires a maximum lot ground coverage of 0.23. The applicant is requesting to allow the seven-story building to have a maximum lot ground coverage of 0.35. And then finally, with regard to the eight-story multi-family residential building, this would require a floor area ratio of 1.18 and a maximum lot ground coverage of 0.21. The applicant is requesting to allow the eight-story building to have a maximum far of 1.4 and a lot ground coverage of 0.34. Zoning waiver request number seven is with regard to the two-way drive aisles. Pursuant to section 27-122B, the two-way drive aisles are required to be built at 25 feet for 90-degree angled parking. The applicant is requesting to reduce the two-way drive aisle width to 24 feet in the parking garage. Now, with regard to the landscape waivers, section 27-255B1 deals with buffer yards for developments. The applicant is requesting to reduce the portion of the buffer yard. And you see the buffer yard kind of highlighted there in yellow across the front of the building here. To reduce the buffer yard from 20 feet in width to 11.8, between 11.8 and 13.9. You can see the 13.9 area here, 11.8 that they're requesting there. And then there's another area here at 12.6 feet. And that's because the way the site plan is and the way the building sort of meanders a bit, that that buffer changes. Landscape waiver number two deals with the landscape pedestrian zone. Landscape pedestrian zone for the residential building to the north is required at 30 feet. The residential building to the east is required at 30 feet. Residential building to the west side at 30 feet. And the bank building at 10.75 feet. The applicant is requesting to reduce the LPZ for the residential building on the north from 30 to 28 feet, 2 inches. Residential building on the east from 30 to 18.3 feet to 7.5 feet. Residential building to the west from 30 to 17.9 to 4.2. And then the bank building on the west from 10.75 feet to 4.1. Also, within that landscape pedestrian zone, there are required trees within that. And the requirement under 27.255 D.5 is that the applicant provide one shade tree for every 30 lineal feet within the LPZ. So on the west side of the bank building, it will be required to provide three shade trees. And on the residential building to the east, it will be required to provide 10 shade trees. They're requesting to reduce, with regard to the bank building on the west, from three shade trees to no shade trees. And the residential building to the east within that LPZ from 10 shade trees down to eight. And this just kind of shows you all of the waivers relevant to the landscape. Again, there's the buffer here. There's the landscape pedestrian zones, as you kind of see here, in light green. And then there's this darker green here deals with the shade trees that are being requested. So the applicant did hold a community meeting on June 9, 2025. Based upon that meeting, there was one person in attendance at the meeting. Staff did receive, I'm sorry, staff did not receive any emails or phone calls objecting to this application. And then finally, we do note that there is one code violation on the adjacent Plantation Square Shopping Center, which is owned by the applicant and is in violation status. The violation is CE25-02312, and it's for operating an alarm without the required permit. The applicant is in the process of correcting that violation. So in terms of staff's analysis, we do find that the application is compatible with the surrounding development pattern and zoning, and that it meets that criteria. It is compatible with the comprehensive plan and that the applicant's request. We do find that it is consistent with a couple of goals, objectives, and policies of the comprehensive plan. With regard to the future land use element, we find that it is in compliance of policy 1.7.5 and policy 1.7.7. And with regard to the housing element, policy 1.7.1 and 1.7.4. And then in terms of consistency with the zoning code, we find that the application does meet the site development plan's efficiency. Development plans for PCD, as I went over at the beginning, it's in compliance with those criteria. It's in compliance with the conditional use criteria, and it's in compliance with the practical difficulty waiver criteria. And so in conclusion, staff is recommending approval of the proposed site plan. The applicant is here, and staff is available to answer any questions that you might have. Thank you very much. That was a 51-page PowerPoint, and it was very thorough. So thank you very much for covering quite a bit of information. I do have one question of you before we move on. Is that there was one slide that referenced the additional tenant space abutting the bank, and I know that one of the pictures showed Merrill Lynch, but that looked like that was part of the bank. Is that the additional? I see, yes, I see Mr. Laysom shaking his head. So I just wanted to confirm because I saw it named in the picture, but I didn't see you reference it in your discussion of that there would be an additional tenant space. I wanted to make sure we weren't approving some, you know, vague approval for an additional tenant space that wouldn't fit the space itself. Yes, yes, sir. Thank you very much. I know, let's see, does anybody else from Council have any questions of Mr. Holmes before we, yes, Councilmember Hortland. Quickly, Mr. Holmes, can you go back to page 29 of the PowerPoint, please? Let's see how quickly we can get back to that. 27, you said? 29. 29. That's it right there. Thank you. I just want to look at 17th Court for a minute. So right in, right out. So my question is, we had spoken previously when we approved the Lupa for this. Are you going to be able to make a right going down 17th Court out of that? You mean as if you were, in terms of egress, out of a— Uh-huh, if I'm at the back of the development, and I think that one of the things we had spoken to the applicant about is we were concerned about Lauderdale West is the inability to make a right turn there. Right. You— The traffic analysis show. That would be one of the things that we looked at with regard, and I'm trying to go back to the traffic stuff, because there are several— Because we hadn't had the traffic study at that point. Right. And I know there are several— Okay. Oh, I think I'm going the wrong way. Yes, your memory served you very well on that. It was discussed that potential looking into studying eliminating the right turn of 17th Court to Lauderdale West. It was studied part of the traffic study, and it was determined that the safest—the safest recommendation is to keep it as ingress, egress, because if it is eliminated, then you're forcing the entire egress to go to 17th Court left to go to University Drive. University Drive at 17, you cannot do—you cannot—you have to go to the next signal, and then you turn. So there will be stacking issue. There will be multiple issue of doing so. So the safest maneuver is to keep it ingress, egress, and then go through the signal at sunrise and 85th. And that's why we rely on the traffic engineers. Yes. Thank you. And I'm assuming that's why we're putting the other traffic calming devices in to protect the community. Correct. There will be a radar sign, and those elements are temporary. Once the community is fully occupied, the retail and the bank is fully occupied, the radar sign will give us a real-time indication of the data, and then we can invest the 119 that the developer is sharing with us to do other traffic calming—permanent. Thank you, Ms. Shailant. Ms. Shailant, maybe also before you leave, I don't know if this is for you or for Mr. Holmes, but I did have a question. One of the waivers requested, I think it's in the garage, from a two-way drive—25 feet to 24 feet. While it's only one foot, there must be a reason why 25 is recommended. Can you speak to that? Yes, because it is our code that was established in 1975. Actually, the code was— So you have no objection. I mean, I know you didn't set forth an objection. I didn't see one, but I just wanted to bring that up to make sure that there was no concerns with the smaller radius there. No, the code was revised for surface parking, but it wasn't revised for parking garage, and Mr. Albert is working on that revision as we speak. I know it's a big task, but thank you. Okay, great. And I see—who is that? That's the mayor. Thank you. So this has piqued my interest now. So we're saying that we are allowing people to make a right on the southbound on 17th— All right. To alleviate traffic that would otherwise go left on 17th to university. No. So the— Oh, on the sunrise. Can you put— Yeah, because, I mean, the traffic that's going right is trying to go either west or south is the desired spot. West or east. Yeah, if you're going south out of the department, you're trying to make a right on 17th toward Lauderdale West. Correct. You're either trying to go west or you're trying to go south is your final destination. Correct. And you were—I thought you said that if we block that off, it's going to cause too much traffic to veer east. Correct. And then go which way? Then you're going to—you have no choice but to go to south, then make a U-turn on University Drive to go to Sunrise Boulevard. But the people going west—the people that you're allowing to go west and south have no desire to go east and north. Not necessarily. So you're saying you're stopping from going this way to going up to the Arby's. No. Agree, Eric, or not? Not necessarily. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. This maneuver over here. Right, right. So if I'm—so if I'm a user of the bank or I live in the apartment and I elect to leave the site, I will leave the site. I have the options—I have the option— Of going either east or west. Either to go east or west. East or west. Yes. Yeah. So if I eliminate—the study that was requested during the LUPA is to study eliminating going west. Correct. So if—what we studied is if we eliminate going west, then we're forcing everybody exiting the site to go east on 17th Court to University Drive, then you have no choice but to do U-turn or, I think, around Lena Apartment, then you go Lauderdale West. Right. But if you're exiting to go west, you're trying to go to Central Park. If you're exiting left to go north, you're trying to go to Sunrise. So shutting that off doesn't really make any difference. I'm sorry. I'm confused. Okay. Nobody else gets it, and so I must be wrong, and I'll take the—you see what I'm saying? That doesn't have anything to do with trying to go there. Let it go. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Yeah, let it go. Does anybody else from the Council have any further questions at the moment? Otherwise, we can hear from—would you like to hear from the applicant or applicant now? So let's hear from the applicant. Thank you. Good evening, Council. Thank you. It's been a long time coming to get here, and it's been a long evening, so I will try and hurry this up. I know everybody would like to go home. You just introduce yourself and remind us that you have been sworn in and agreed to the rules. Yes, sir. Marcos Puente, 8190 West Sunrise Boulevard, MMG Plantation 2, LLC. I have been sworn in and agreed to abide by the rules. Thank you very much. Thank you. So we went over a lot of this with Danny, but I'll point out again, the property sits on a critical major intersection in Plantation. There's nearly 100,000 cars a day. This is Maine, Maine. You have 39,000 vehicles per day on Sunrise, 54,500 vehicles per day on University Drive per the most recent FDOD counts. This is—we're predominantly a shopping center owner-operator, but that's our roots. This is what you call a billboard site. Any tenant that has their sign on Sunrise, that has their sign on University, has nearly 100,000 vehicles per day passing by seeing it. It's important to know the surrounding area more in detail what's there, all of the shopping centers. So you have Publix right across the street, Jacaranda Plaza, Ross, Five Below, a host of national retailers, the Bank of America on our site, the Lean Apartments in the rear, Magic Leap and Chewy's headquarters right across the street, along with the new Chick-fil-A, Just Salad, First Watch, Chipotle, a number of restaurants, Starbucks, Walgreens, et cetera. So this is a major commercial intersection. As of recent, you know, when we first were heard for land use and zoning back in October of 23, Live Local had just passed. So under the state legislature, areas like these are what that bill is targeting for apartments. So, from a use perspective, this is where the state and this is where, you know, comp plans should have their density. And the reason for it is, if you're seeking to take traffic off of the roads from inside the neighborhoods, you want to put your apartment buildings on the main roads. Further, this is the Broward Transit Primo Corridor, just to show the significance of this intersection. So the pointer right there is our property. If you see the pink or fuchsia and blue lines, that's light rail transit, which is the Broward Boulevard light rail transit, and the bus rapid transit that goes north and south on University, in addition to an additional blue line, which is the Sunrise bus rapid transit. So, this intersection is where the Broward County is working on implementing its rapid transit. And this isn't just, you know, a far-off idea. I mean, this has been funded, and it's currently in conceptual design and planning. So, renters at this property will be able to take good advantage of this to be able to get downtown wherever it may be around town. So, this is the history of the project. So, in May of 21, we purchased the shopping center parcel. In 22, we purchased the Bank of America parcel. In July of 23, we started on the facade remodel for the shopping center. First reading land use was in October of 23. Second reading, April of 23. I mean, I'm sorry, April of 25. May of 25, we concluded the facade remodel of the shopping center, and we are now in the process of upgrading the infrastructure, the site work, landscape, curbing, et cetera, which will be a 12-month process from here on out. And today, we sit for you for everything else. So, this was the property when we purchased it, the shopping center. As you see, Lena plantation in the rear was not there yet. This is, as of two months ago, what the intersection looks like, $4 million of improvements into the shopping center. This is the Bank of America parcel at the time that we purchased it. And here's the proposal for this parcel. So, this project's gone through numerous iterations since we first started. As you'll note, the building got taller, but we shrunk the footprint of the building, and I'll get into the development program now. So, we were very thoughtful in how we were designing this. We started with the affordability in mind, and how can we make this work to grant the affordability that was requested. And I'll get into what I found as I went through that rabbit hole later on in the presentation. But the building is, it's actually six stories in the rear. The seventh story is because there's rooftop parking on the garage. So, that's why it's deemed seven stories. But from a height perspective, it's what's generally six stories. And then it steps up to eight stories in the middle of the site. So, we did this to provide a more efficient site with better circulation for vehicles, for pedestrians. We gave it more of that town center feel to make it more aesthetically pleasing. It was designed really to mimic American Expressway in Midtown with all of the pervious pavers, parallel parking spaces around. And also, it was a very thoughtful integration of keeping a lot of the existing landscaping as I mentioned. As I mentioned, this site, it's been built since, or it was built in the early 80s. There's a lot of mature canopy trees along the site, especially along the western border and the rear along 17th Court. This iteration has us preserving all of those trees, or, well, not all of them, but the majority of those trees. There's a total of five access points to Sunrise Boulevard throughout the entire site. We're now opening connectivity between the apartment building and the Bank of America parcel on the shopping center. So, it's one cohesive site. And there's also four access points onto University Drive. So, this helps capture traffic within the parcel. People now from the apartment building can exit, go through directly to the apartment parcel, the shopping center parcel, excuse me, get out onto University Drive. It's the Bank of America replacement, as Dan noted earlier. The studios, we went over that in staff's presentation. And here is the height, which I'll provide better visuals shortly to see. So, here's the setbacks and buffers. So, as you see, in the rear, there's a 171-foot setback to the eight-story portion of the building from 17th Court. It steps up to the eight stories in the middle. There's a 515-foot setback from University Drive to the building. So, from University Drive, and there's a number of existing canopy trees along University Drive that are in existence today, you can barely see this building. You can barely see the height. 204 feet from Sunrise Boulevard. In addition to that, through, you know, discussions with the neighbors in the back, we proposed a 10-foot Clusia hedge in the rear to match a lot of the existing landscaping that is on that road today. Park Village, one of my neighbors in the rear, the association, they have about a 10-12-foot Clusia hedge. So, I'd like to continue that hedge not only in the rear of the apartment parcel, but all the way through the shopping center parcel just to create a more cohesive and aesthetically pleasing, you know, resident-neighbor experience in that area. So, here you can see is a good visual of the canopy trees along the western property line. So, the property, the current bank property, this is the medical association building on our west. So, it's all of these mature canopy trees that are existing, and these are the trees along 17th Court that currently exist today. We're keeping all of these, but for some in the front to provide our neighbors a new access point, that was through working together with them that we are now preserving that access point that's there. However, we're just moving it, so we have to get rid of a couple of the trees that are there in order to provide them that access. So, these are line-of-sight renderings to give you an idea. You'll see on the top, those are photos today of what's there. On the bottom is the rendering. This is from University Drive. You can barely see the apartment building, but that's it back there, peeping its head out behind the Denny's. Here's another rendering from University Drive, existing up top, proposed on the bottom. Again, barely see the apartment building. From Sunrise, you can see it a little bit more, but it has its setback, and at the same time, because there's a lot of existing mature canopy trees all along Sunrise Boulevard, it still seems further setback and doesn't appear as tall as it otherwise would be if it's not right in your face. This is heading eastbound on Sunrise Boulevard. Same thing. So, you see the trees existing up top. Those are the trees that we're preserving. Rendering is down at the bottom. And this would be 17th Court in the rear. Sorry for the photo. It's taken from different angles, but that said, it gives you an idea of what's there up top today. We're preserving all of those canopy trees. And in addition, the Clusia hedge, which will help block visibility and provide that experience in the rear. So, when going through this, and this was a really large collaborative effort with all of my neighbors and, you know, our tenants or, you know, the Medical Association to the west of us, the two major associations behind us, Lauderdale West, Park Village, traffic was a huge concern. So, I really dug into this and started to understand, okay, what's causing the traffic? Why? So, in order to do that, I had to take many different data points to try and understand it. And as I took the data, it evolved. So, I'm going to attempt to explain some of it to you all. So, Placer AI is, yeah. Oh, okay. You all have? Okay. Okay. Great. Yeah. So, you know, national retailers all across the U.S. use this and, you know, it informs their decisions as to where to open locations and whatnot. Being in the shopping center business, this is something that a lot of our tenants use and we're very accustomed to having conversations around this based on the data. It's based off of the cell phone data and it tracks it. So, they're actually tracking apartment buildings now as well. The Lena Plantation Apartments that's right behind us, it's 306 units. We're going to be 307 units. However, one interesting stat, while they actually have more beds than we do, because we took the traffic counts that, from what our traffic engineer says, or what our traffic study says our project will generate, and we compared it to Lena's and theirs was higher. Wondered why. Well, it's the fact that we have a lot more studios now. So, that was one of the items that we did to be able to increase the affordability. We shrunk the size of the units. With that, you can charge less rent as an entire monthly check. It's a smaller check every month for everybody. So, we have 89 units. They don't have any. They have 124 one-bedrooms, 162 bedrooms, and 22 three-bedrooms. So, in total, they have 510 beds. We have 438 beds. So, right there, that's less traffic. That's 100 less people. So, as is, the Lena Plantation Apartments generates 825 visits per day. So, that's 825 cars coming, 825 cars going on average. And then, if you look at the data for the properties across the street, the Chick-fil-A alone, out of that little 5,000 square foot building, is 2,400 people per day. Jacaranda Plaza is 7,000 people per day. The Publix alone across the street, the data's not here because I didn't have enough in the slide, but it's a 44,000 square foot Publix, about 2,500 people a day per the Placer data. So, and the LA Fitness and Sawgrass, I note this because we previously had a gym interested in this parcel before we decided to do apartments. That's 1,100 vehicles per day. I think we looked at our traffic study and it was 714 trips a day, I believe the number was. So, this data is pretty correct and it nearly matches what the traffic study says. Now, if you take a look, Placer has some interesting, it's the visitor routes. So, I took it for Lina. It shows you where the visitors are coming from in the prior above and where the visitors are going in the post below. And I did the same for Jacaranda Plaza. So, you'll see at Lina, yeah, there's about 2.8% of those roughly 825 trips are heading west on 17th Court. And further, I took a trip generation at Lina to understand if they are going west, where are they going? Are they going north or are they going south into Lauderdale West? And I'll get to that shortly. But long and short is the point I'm making on this one is it's not that many trips. I mean, you're talking it's 2.8% of 825 is not many. Now, when you look at Jacaranda Plaza, you see very clearly that red line is people where they're coming from into Jacaranda Plaza. So, that's 4% of 7,000 people. So, that's 280 trips going directly through Lauderdale West and 5.1% after they leave Jacaranda Plaza going to Lauderdale West and through Lauderdale West. So, it's a total of 637 daily trips through Lauderdale West from your commercial. And this is right across the street. Now, this is the traffic study, or excuse me, the trip generation average volumes that we took peak hour average volumes. Who's coming out of that blue dot intersection from the Lina apartment buildings and who's going towards the green dot, which is into Lauderdale West, and vice versa. So, who's going in, who's going out? And then same thing, blue dot to the red dot over here. So, effectively, who's taking 17th Court to go out to sunrise? So, there's an average of 92 vehicles per day during those peak hours, and this is both morning and afternoon peak hours. So, two hours in the morning at peak hour, two hours in the afternoon at peak hour. That's 92 vehicles per day that are leaving Lina and heading up towards the light to get to sunrise. There's only 10 vehicles per day that are going into Lauderdale West. So, compared to this slide, that's significant. So, the point I'm trying to make here is it's not the apartments that are causing the traffic to our neighbors. And I sympathize with them because it's an issue. And I go through, you know, and I've worked with them closely over the last few years. And what I've gathered from all of this analysis, if you would, this is the problem. It's beyond any apartment buildings. It's beyond the commercial is really what's driving the traffic, but the problem is the population growth. So, this is Broward County. So, you have the 2019 population and the 2024 population right here. You have 110,000 people. This is not just plantation. This is all of Broward County. And in terms of the housing units, in 2019, you had 863,000 units. You only had a growth of about 5,000 units throughout the county in 2024. A hundred and some thousand more people and only 5,000 units. I mean, that's just more people cramming into the same spaces. So, that's all causing more traffic. And it's beyond any one apartment building. But I do sympathize with them. And they need help. It's a retirement community directly behind our apartment building. And, you know, in front of them, they have new apartments. I mean, there's people coming from everywhere, not just plantation, right? And I do think that it merits a closer look at their roads on Cleary and 85th Ave, namely. I know that in times past, there was a roundabout there looked at, and nothing ever happened. That was something that was done at the county, according to my traffic engineer. That's something that I need to continue working with them on. And, you know, I believe in my heart of hearts that this council should continue working with them on as well. Because it's necessary, and it's beyond what any impact that our apartment building is going to have. The traffic is coming, and the traffic is there. And it's just growing. And these numbers, you know, when you look at the data, this is the inference that I can make from it. So, again, this is our contribution, in addition to, you know, the soft contribution of, you know, the relationships that I've created throughout there and the work that I'm, you know, going to continue to do with them. To both of my neighbors in the back, you know, Park Village, Lauderdale West, the Medical Association to the rear, excuse me, to the west. And now we get into the affordability proposal. So, this was the slide that I had back in 2023. It had come out the week of our zoning and land use presentation. It remains the same. Very challenging to purchase a home in the high interest rate environment that we are, especially condos, which come with their assessments. It's very hard to qualify. And prices remain elevated due to inflation. So, there's a significant need for housing, as you see via the population growth before. But as I dug into the affordability and how to provide this, this is when my eyes started to open up and why I have significantly increased the amount of units and reduced the income needed for the, to qualify for some of the units. Because there's a real need. So, this was the Howard, excuse me, Broward 10-year affordable housing master plan done in March of 24. It shows City of Plantation is 4,013 units shy of affordable units. You know, and I know that supply, you know, you can solve this via supply, but it's hard to approve 4,000 units. So, our affordability proposal is 25% of the units at 77, 25% of the units, which is 77 of the 307, is proposed to renters earning 80% of the area median income. To give you an idea of the magnitude of the issue, 80% of AMI, and this was, I think, the 2024 number, the 2025 numbers came out, and it's 64,000-year income that you would be capped at to be able to qualify for one of those studio units. I started looking into the different municipal employers, and I started with Broward schools, and what I found that in 2024, they had over 24,000, just over 24,000 employees. When you pull the tape, it's 17,000 of those employees would qualify for these units. That's a staggering 7 of 10 employees within Broward County Public Schools. I mean, those are staggering numbers. It's, these are the folks that are educating our children. Plantation has a volunteer fire department that also benefits to, residents here benefit to keep property taxes low. And in general, just all of our local hometown heroes, if you would, I, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's a great need. And, and, and this, this issue is, is, is, is beyond, it's, it's beyond anything that one project can solve. But, I mean, we can sure help with, alleviate it with this. Now, one of the other items that I'm offering as part of this proposal is, under State Bill 1730, it reads, it is the policy of the state to support housing for employees of hospitals, healthcare facilities, and governmental entities, and to allow for developers in receipt of local or state funds or other sources of fundings available to finance the development of affordable housing to create a preference for housing for such employees. Such preference must conform to the rules of Section 42 G9 of the Internal Revenue Code. So, that verbiage is going to be placed into the affordability government that I'm offering. And, and, and, and it's, it's, it's an interesting way. So, the state has recognized that we had this issue, and that's why they passed live local. That's, that's why they passed this, uh, State Bill 1730, I believe it was. Um, so, so, so, you know, I, I, I do think that via this, this, uh, this, uh, this proposal that, that, that, that it meets the intent of all of that. And, and further, in, in order to do that, states, uh, excuse me, live local calls for, uh, tax rebates. It allows 75% of the taxes paid, uh, under, for any one unit restricted to 120% AMI or 90% of market rate to be abated. We're requesting $6 million of gap funding, uh, in project-specific tax increment funding by the City of Plantation. Um, I, you know, I'll, I'll go into why I think this is a better deal, uh, than the live local tax abatement. It's roughly the same, so the abatement is already there under the state legislature. The, the, the TIF agreement is, is, is, is, is, is a separate way to achieve the same ends and provide deeper affordability than we otherwise would be able to get, or provide, excuse me, under live local. So, if, if we are able to do the TIF agreement, we will agree via the covenant to not apply for the live local tax rebates as well. Again, no double dipping. There's precedent for this in Broward County. Broward County and the City of Fort Lauderdale has done a number of them. So, the way it would work is, currently, the, the, the assessed value on the entire bank parcel is $3,435,000. So, we estimate that the, the tax assessment of the apartment building, and this was under a study that Walter Duke and Partners did, would be $87,000,000, excuse me, $87,136,000, that doesn't include the, the separate bank parcel, presumably that will still have the same $3,435,000 assessment. So, the TIF rebate, it's, it's, it's basically a rebate of 50% of the property taxes, so on 50% of the increased assessment. So, the city would still recognize an increased assessment of approximately $41, $42,000,000, and this TIF rebate would last over, over approximately 19 years until that $6,000,000 threshold is met. So, there's no funding that comes out of it, this just allows me to go to my lender and say, hey, I, I know Live Local is, is, is, is, is, is a general rebate, but, you know, here's an agreement with the city, and if I provide this affordability, you know, they've agreed to rebate my taxes after I pay them every year, or rebate a portion of my taxes after I pay them every year. So, this is how we're threading that needle to be able to provide the 77, 80% AMI units, and in addition, the 46 units restricted to 120% AMI. And here are the rents, to give you an idea, under the Live Local scenario, if 40% of my units, 123 of the units, are rented at the lesser of 90% of market rate or 120% of AMI, it's an average approximate rent reduction of $112 for those units, and I'm able to achieve a 30-year city tax rebate and county tax rebate. So, that, when you run those numbers over the 30 years, it's approximately $7.2 million in rebate for what today would be an average of $112 a month rent reduction. And this is what it looks like with the TIF. So, there's a significantly larger rent reduction on a monthly basis for those 123 units, and it's only over 19 years. It's a total of $6 million. So, this is just comparing the two, and, you know, I think it's worthy of comparison because, again, it's already allowed technically under state legislature. It's just the city gets a more bang for its buck, and the developer is able to get the financing it needs to get this project built. So, I'm here to answer any questions. I'm sure there's a lot, especially on this latter piece. But, I want to thank you all and everybody in the audience for bearing with me for these 21 minutes that I've been talking up here. Thank you, Mr. Puente. Thank you very much. Council, before we call from the public, does anybody have any comments at the questions at the moment? Council Member Fadgen. Thank you for your presentation. Thank you. Appreciate all the work. It's been a long haul. What's the height of the parking garage? Permit me one second, Council Member Fadgen. So, the height of the parking garage is right here. So, it's 58 feet to the top of the sixth story, 63, 64 feet, call it, to the top of the parapet, so the overhang so the cars don't fall off the side. So, when we did the rezoning, and you were bringing up a conceptual site plan, so we have an idea why we are approving the rezoning, your preliminary proposal is for six stories and 20%. You were offering 10%, and my recollection was Council Member Andreu wanted more, and then you impressively accommodated that at the podium. I don't think any of us was expecting you to agree to that. I thought that was something you were going to come back to us. And you generated some conversation, because we asked for more, and you agreed to it at that podium. So, what happened to the six-story, 20% affordable housing? Why can't we build that building? So, at the time, and again, it's difficult to agree to something. That's why it's difficult to agree to something on the fly, because when… That's my point. Right. I mean, because we spent a lot of time with the rezoning and the land use. Right. And we're trying to operate in good faith, and we expect our applicants and developers and people who want to invest in our city, because we care about this city, to operate in good faith, and I think you rationally agreed to the 20%, and I didn't let you answer the question. So, why can't we get the six-story, 20% affordable housing building, like you suggested that we could when we did the rezoning and the land use? So, that building was not financeable. Okay. And that's what I thought. I'm a CPA. I understand those numbers, and I was surprised that you offered that. That was my bad math in my mind. Yeah. I'm sorry. And I will point out one thing. I was hoping you were right. I was hoping as well. I didn't mean you. And I apologize for that, Councilman, but I will point out one thing. That building was, and this is why I believe this is a better project, that building was about, if I'm not mistaken, 76 feet tall, and 76 feet tall, but the setback was very limited. It was about 76 feet tall from this level on, at the bottom of that circle. So, there was very, very little setback, and the building was also a lot bulkier building that encompassed a bigger portion of the site. So, with this building, you're getting less height in the rear, so it's a larger setback from the property line, and it's less height in the rear. So, as you know, it's 63 feet at the highest point rather than the 76 or whatever, however tall the other building was further out to the street. And the eight stories only starts, I believe I mentioned it was 155 feet, if I'm not mistaken, from the property line. So, we were thoughtful about that, and in order to do that, we had to add a stairwell over here, which, and we also have a stairwell in the rear. So, that adds, you know, another good amount of cost to the building, but it was deliberate in order to try and set back the height. And one of the questions that I was going to ask, and you put it up there, like the east facade, and, I mean, they are pretty convincing for your position that you're not really going to see it. I have a hard time believing we're not going to be able to see this building on the southbound and the northbound University Drive, particularly the parking garage on the east facade. I mean, I just don't think it's going to be that hidden. So, these renderings, if I may, these renderings were done to scale, and it's done to scale. And if you see, you know, the picture above, and this is why I noted the current versus the proposed, the scale of those trees is very similar, right? And it is exactly that point that I'm trying to make, that those trees are what is, what are going to be covering that garage. So, that's a benefit that we have from having an already built site with the mature landscaping and preserving it. I hope so. So, the height that you're asking for, 93 feet, is a, in your applicant response, you say the increase in height is not substantial. And the increase in height from the maximum allowed of 65 feet, that's a 43% increase above the 65 feet to get to 93 feet. I find that substantial, so I disagree with the applicant response in waiver number one. This building would be the ninth tallest building in the city, and it would be the second largest building not in Midtown. The tallest building not in Midtown is 95 feet. Your building is 93 feet. Eight of the top ten tallest buildings in the city reside in Midtown. And looking at the heights at some of the other buildings outside of Midtown, none of them are over 79 feet. And I'm thinking about that. The core, I think we should be considering, that's worthy of consideration. Outside, the core being our Midtown, outside of our core, in order for us to be true to what we believe plantation is, my opinion, I don't know. We'll find out what other people, what my colleagues feel in a little bit. I think that 80 feet mark is important. 86.01, they're coming back to us. They're ramping. They're pulling back what we recently, I don't know if it was recently, this all merges together at this point. They're coming back down from eight stories, I believe, to get down to six stories with a proposed height of 79 feet. Plantation Point Midtown, I met with them. They're proposing a six story, 61 foot height. So I really feel like this is not in character of the neighborhood. You are, I had the Lena number. 76 feet. Yeah, I had the percentage. Bear with me. Well, they're at 77 feet. So that's kind of, you know, 16 more feet than your neighbor across the street. So I have significant concerns about the height. I feel like it's out of place. Are we going to go through these items and then come back to the TIF, or should I ask my TIF questions now? I believe you should ask them now, please. So right now the property is $3.4 million. Yes. Okay. The estimated redeveloped of the property is $87 million. So the TIF is going to be based on 50% of the difference between the existing 3.4 to this 87? Correct. Or in whatever it actually gets done. Okay. So it's 50% at that point. So, okay. Is the bank parcel about included in the TIF? No. Okay. That's separate. Correct. So it's $6 million from the city, and it's $6 million from the county? Correct. Okay. At one point, I thought I was told it was going to be 12 years. Now it's 19 years? Yes. After discussing with the city, we determined that 12 years would have been rebating 100% of the increment in order to increase the tax base. And so the city sees some additional revenue from this project, keeping it at 50% elongated it. The agreement would include requirements to provide preferential, not exclusive opportunities to state residents. So are we going to be able to, and maybe this is a question for Danny or Jason, are we going to be able to open it up to our firefighters first, you know, before we get down to just the general masses, the firefighters, our city employees, and then? Yes, sir. That's something we would certainly coordinate with the applicant on. I mean, he's demonstrated a complete openness and willingness to collaborate any way we can to have that preferencing. And I think even before we referenced that statute, there was already conversation about the volunteer firefighters. But that's one of the things that excited us about this was the opportunity to serve the health care workers and governmental employees, because that's something we've also heard from HCA, which I know you all have heard as well. So after the building's initially leased out, future openings, it would be offered to the firefighters first. It would always go through the hierarchy that we're going to establish under this restriction? I believe that preferencing is on a rolling basis. It's a novel exercise for us. We've never dipped our toe in that water, and my understanding of that statute is new. I think it was passed this last session. So it'll be our first experience with it. Okay, so I'm just saying it's not just for the opening of the building. I mean, as there's vacancies that come available, they'll be offered to whatever hierarchy that we want to offer it to you. Yeah, that's my understanding, is they get the preference. We can't be exclusionary, but we can be preferential. Okay. All right. Thank you. Councilman, for what it's worth, for example, with Broward County Schools, I've been in touch with Mr. Chris Akagbosu. And what we have discussed is at the onset, I will provide 90 days of notice of when these units are available. And on a rolling basis, you know, let's say once the building is 100% occupied, 95% occupies, whatever it may be. Whenever one of those units comes available or I get notice that one of those units is going to be vacated, I will provide 30 days of notice. What generally is the notice for someone to vacate their apartment? Like if they're coming up at the end of their term? Because would you be able to give the 90 days? Because that would be a lot of time for an apartment to be empty waiting for you to go through that criteria. 30 days on a rolling basis. Okay. So 90 days at the onset, 30 days on a rolling basis. And again, I'm happy to work with the city for the same. We're long-term holders, so we're not going anywhere. You're welcome. Councilman Maranjayo. Thank you. I know you've done a lot of work. You've met with probably all of us several, multiple times. And I appreciate that, your passion for the project. Do you know what the capacity is, the occupancy is at LENA right now? I believe they are 95% occupied, if I'm not mistaken. So I don't like the height either, to Councilman Vagin's point, but I can compromise because of the 40% in terms of affordability. So, you know, we started at 20. I was really excited about 20 because it was the largest that we've seen in the city, and now we're at 40. So, although the height, and I think I do feel like, again, I travel that route every day. I do feel like the setback with that, it won't appear as tall, as high. So I'm willing to compromise on that because of that affordability piece. Thank you. I think that is the biggest factor, and it's huge for our, I can see the teachers at Plantation Middle and Plantation High, our hospital workers at HCA, our police and fire department. They would really be able to save money if they wanted to eventually purchase their own home. Students who want to come back, which I hope mine will after four years, right, and not live with me and be able to afford their own residence. And so, that's the piece that most excites me. Thank you. So, you know, I was very concerned about the traffic. I appreciate the thorough traffic study that you did. We don't see that level sometimes of thoroughness. So, again, I can compromise because I think at the end of the day, we have more wins than losses. Thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you. I have some comments, and Councilmember Horland has also chimed in. Councilmember Fajan said that he has a quick question to the city attorney. Yeah, I forgot. I spoke to city attorney Ezra earlier today and got an answer, got a correction, got another answer, and now I'm confused. So, my question was with Live Local, if we go to 93 feet, does that enable another building across the street to go to 93 feet? This is not a Live Local project. Under the 2024 amendments to Live Local, projects approved under Live Local or projects that are approved and given a bonus height for incentive purposes are not included in the maximum that a Live Local project could be approved. It's a carve-out, right? All right. Thank you. Thank you. So, I want to echo a few things that Councilmember Andreu said because I think probably in just about every project or development that's come for the city since I've been on the council, I've questioned the height, and the height's been a major concern, and especially when talking about that we're outside of Midtown. And so, I really appreciate how much time you've spent on not just the setback but the landscaping because the concern with the height has always been that we don't want to be a concrete jungle, right? We don't want to be the places, the cities, with all love and respect to Fort Lauderdale. We don't want to be Fort Lauderdale. We want to be plantation. And too many big buildings too close together doesn't serve that. I think it's contrary to what we're trying to maintain in plantation. The setbacks, though, I think do make a big difference. The landscaping, I think, does make a big difference. And, you know, one of the things we talk about all the time with Midtown is that we want people to really be able to walk and bike from where they live to where they're going to eat and shop, and I appreciate that you own the shopping center right next to it. And, you know, it has a lot of great shops and restaurants in that shopping center. And so providing the walkthrough and providing the renovated walking space, the new paths around the entirety of the complex, I think, does some of what we've been talking about. This comment that I'm going to make is probably not for you, but it's a general one for our city, is that with new people moving, if this passes and we have all these new residents there, one of the things that I've realized is that if you look at the front of the shopping center and you look at where the bus stop is and then you look at how many people get off that bus stop and then try and cross right in the middle of the street because now we have across the street all of these great restaurants that so many people are going to, and I really fear that that's going to become one of the most dangerous crossing places in our city. And I think that's a different issue for the administration and the county to really be looking at. You know, we were talking about crosswalks and talking about the different ways to make safe in very narrow streets and, you know, compared to, you know, University Drive compared to Cleary, right, it's apples and oranges, but on the other hand, so I just bring it up now because I think it only is going to really be something further that we have to deal with if there's additional residences there. So I did want to say that I feel better. I don't feel great, but I feel better about the height with the setbacks and based on, you know, as Councilmember Andreu mentioned, the 40% and what we've talked a lot about trying to bring down the costs and you showed us the numbers that we don't want to have to approve that many units in order to statistically possibly bring down the costs, right? So by getting people such as yourself to agree to it with this type of agreement, it's really helpful. So I did have one question in terms of one of the waivers. It was on, I wrote down, Bank West LPZ, where you're removing the shade trees. There was potentially... Oh, yes. We, since... Okay, so in that we couldn't, currently as the site exists, and I think I have a visual of this here somewhere. Okay. Because I thought you were adding more to the front of Bank of America in terms of helping to block, you know, the view, so to speak. So, yeah, so the, that entry point that you see on the right-hand side, so currently if you're coming eastbound on Sunrise, so eastbound would be this, coming this way. So, I mean, you almost have to make a U-turn right there. That's a very dangerous traffic maneuver. So in order to do that, we had to add a throat distance into the plan. So, you know, it's... And by doing that on both sides, you effectively have two dead ends. So we have to get rid of the existing trees that are there in order to accommodate that. So I'll show you. So that... Right. From that view, it looked like you were keeping the same number or adding more trees. That's why I didn't understand. Yes. So palms do not count as shade trees. So, unfortunately, but even though I beg to differ, I think that they do provide some, some shade shade. But these specific palms we put in there as well to also offset the height because these palms, they grow about two, three feet annually. These are, I think, Sylvester palms, if I'm not mistaken. I think I understand. So you do add more trees to deal with the setback and the height, but they're palm trees, not shade trees, so they don't count, which is why you're asking for the waiver. Okay. Understood. Thank you so much. Thank you, Mr. President. I have a question, but I have a lot of comments. And I think it goes to not just, you know, my colleagues up here who all understand what you've gone through with this project, but I think for any of the projects that come before us. So you boxed yourself in that night at our behest, but you found a way out. And I don't believe we've ever had an applicant who's dug in the way you have to find solutions. And it's really been admirable to watch the last couple of years because you've asked questions. I've never seen anyone engage with the school board the way that you have and all of us and multiple times and the community. And that's valuable. It also goes to the point of, you've mentioned the shopping center. Any time during that remodel that there was a question with the tenant, there was some misinformation out there or a concern, Mr. Puentes was immediately accessible and, you know, would go out there to allay fear. So I think that's really important that your investment in the community over these past two years has shown. Thank you. I just want to confirm because you said you're in this for the long haul. Understanding that MMG is not a charitable organization, you want to return on investment, but you're not set up as an investment fund, correct? Correct. No, we're a family office. And that's important because you tend to keep your properties, you know, given market conditions, but your business model is typically not to develop turnaround for investment and make a profit and sell. No, correct. And I bring that up again because of the investment with the shopping center, and I think it's important to know that this is an applicant who's here for the long term. We all have our struggles with the height, but, again, this is the very first project in this city to deal with affordability. And I told everybody at Broward Planning Council, they actually applauded the city of Plantasia when the loop became because everybody's been waiting in Broward County for the city of Plantasia to do something. We're not going to be able to solve the affordability problem all on our own, but this, you know, helps us to put a little bit of a dent in, and I think that you've addressed that. You know, why is that all important? One, because the burden of affording attainable housing for our workforce, ensuring our infrastructure can be maintained or improved in such a way as to meet increased demands and our quality of life, has fallen on this council in 2025. It had not been here to address. And you've heard a little bit mention of Live Local. I don't know if the residents all know exactly what that bill does. The 411 municipalities and state have an additional challenge now, and it's the sword of Live Local dangling over our heads. And I think what's important, as you see projects come before us, you know, we've been able to negotiate and compromise with Mr. Puentes on improvements, the Calusia hedges, all of that. With Live Local, a developer can come in and there is no public input, there is no council approval, which is anathema to the way we govern, right, by the people, for the people. So that process and that has been taken away from us. So I think it's really even more incumbent upon this council and administration and staff to be able to work with developers to try to compromise and get the projects we want. Because I know there is a city in several cities, Broward County right now, where projects have come in and staff has not been receptive, and the developer said, fine, we're going to Live Local you. And that's how they're using it, as a, you know, as a stick. So, you know, we're getting, we're compromising, we're getting the affordability, we're getting the improvements that we want, and I think it's really important to keep that in mind, especially when we're looking at the TIF. Because my understanding, Live Local would be 75 to 100% tax abatement, correct? Correct. And it's a longer amount of time, so we're talking about reducing that, where it's 50% for 19 years, and I think that's important to keep in mind. So just, again, thank you for the work that you put into this. I know that we have, you know, some Anjana about some of, you know, the height things, but I really, I'm excited to see you move forward with this, because I think it's going to be a real benefit to the community. Thank you, Council Member. Thank you very much. I don't see any further questions or comments from, from Council, so I think we're going to, we're going to move into calling on our residents. What I'm going to do is that I'm going to call the first resident up. I'm also going to announce who is the second and the third resident after them, so that they are ready to go. You're also welcome that if you're the next one on deck, please move, move forward to the, to the front, find a spot towards the front so we can move this along. Uh, first up, uh, Stephen Rose, please. And just remember, please, that, uh, uh, if you ask to speak on 25, 26 and 27, you're here to speak about all of them. You have three minutes and please say your name, your address, and that you've been sworn in and you agree to the rules. I am Stephen Rose, address 1062 Northwest 88th Avenue, Lauderdale West. I have been sworn in and agree to all of those whatever's rules. Welcome. So, um, we also have spent a tremendous amount of time with Mr. Puentes. I will tell you the traffic studies have been tremendous for Lauderdale West. The amount of data that we have seen has really made a huge difference in our opinion as to how this project will not impact, actually, very much Lauderdale West, which has been tremendous. Uh, Mayor Sordo, if I can answer your question, as long as you come out, make a right on 17th Court, go down to where Five Star is, and then make a right to get to Sunrise. That's the only way you can really get to Pine Island and go west on Sunrise. If you restricted it, as was said, only to go out to university, you make the right, go down to Marcano, you have to make a U-turn, come back up, make a left on Sunrise, and work your way through. So that's why. So you're saying that that works? That works perfectly. Okay. In my view. I think the council, I understand the issue with respect to the height. I travel that every day, basically. Personally, I, from what I've seen with respect to the trees, both along Sunrise and along university, I think that Mr. Puentes has done a good job, and his crew have done a good job with what it really is, and then done the photo, whatever they call it, to show. Is it going to show some? Of course it's going to show some. No doubt. Personally, I don't think that it's going to be that much of an issue. I think considering what they've done with respect to the shopping center, how they have planned out the area, the egress, ingress, and the bank building, I think it all fits perfectly with what should be happening, and the issue of affordable housing is tremendous. I know a lot of people who work at the hospital west side. I know people who are teachers, and the bottom line is this is absolutely necessary for all of that group, firefighters, first responders as well. I applaud all that they have done, and personally am in favor of it, and that's my answer. Thank you very much. I said I was going to say who was on deck, and I forgot. Mr. Conklin, you're up. Mr. Wynn, you're on deck, and Christy Woods following. So Mr. Conklin, please. Mr. Rose, I was so excited to call you that I forgot who to call, who to mention for after you. Mr. Conklin, followed by Mr. Wynn. Dennis Conklin, 4581 Northwestern's Court. I've been sworn I understand the rules. A lot has been spoken about the TIF, and that basically came up in item 21, which was not able to comment on. But anyways, it was mentioned that the city can't solve this problem on its own. It really can't be solved unless we do something about the federal government because that's basically we're in this problem because we're on a fiat currency. We went off the gold standard. I've been in here several times. I've explained it. Actions were taken this legislative session with a special session because in the legislative session, they did not pass the constitutional gold and bullionic currency legal tender, and they did it in the special session. That, in a way, is the only way out of this affordability, and that is as soon as people get paid, they put their money into the gold and bullion exchange, which it's been established. I guess it's going to be Brinks in Miami for the whole state. And you're on the escalator then of the inflation because the wages cannot keep up with the inflation. It hasn't. So they've destroyed the value, the purchasing value of the dollar. I bought in Plantation Park East because it was under $100,000 if you're on the east side of the turnpike, and there were no HOAs there. $87,000. 210 ounces of gold at 400 and umpity ump, I forget exactly, an ounce. That bought my house. 210 ounces of gold today at what I read off, the value of gold closing today, over $500,000. And that's what the houses are going for across the street from me. I live on a corner. We've had two houses, so one in front of me and one beside me on 46th Avenue. So that's what they're going for there. So this is unsolvable by the city it was mentioned. So I'm just saying, and the height I'm not happy with, what can you do? I yield back. Thank you, Mr. Conklin. There's no yielding back. Mr. Nguyen, Christy Woods on deck. Good evening, Joe Nguyen, 944, Northwest 92nd Terrace. I want to try to keep this quick, because I know a lot of the residents in that area are here tonight, and like me, they're probably a little tired and exhausted, so if they want to share their things as well. Just really quickly, thinking of the ideas on the parking reduction, the parking reduction of the building not only reduces the size of that, so view lines and sight lines, but it also reduces the cost of the construction by probably a couple to up to $5 million, depending on, based on required parking. But it also reduces the driving that occurs there, because there are fewer people that are going to be having cars, and that actually is beneficial. This is a massive corridor of transit. You have 36 on Sunrise, that has 83,000 riders a month, and two on University, which has 95,000 riders a month. If we imagine being able to shift more people onto those as they improve those networks, that would also improve the ability of that area to be walkable and connected. If you see the building, and you happen to see it as you're driving by, and you go, oh, man, why do I have to see a building? Just think, what you're seeing is affordability, because the six-story won't pencil. So if you see the building and you go, darn, just think, wow, some of our firefighters, some of our first responders, some of our teachers are able to live there now, and maybe they're saving, like Council Member Andrea mentioned, to be able to buy a place, and hopefully they can come and live in plantation. The more housing we have here, the more we're allowing the affordability for more owned properties or for rented, whatever people prefer and what they're able to do. So thank you. I'll let other people share their input as well. Appreciate it. Have a great night. Thank you very much. Next up, Christy Woods, followed by Gail Sikora, and then Carol Sword. Christy Woods, 8642 Northwest Tenth Court Plantation in Lauderdale West. I've been sworn in. I know the rules. Thank you. I am on the board currently at Lauderdale West, but I also was on the board when Mr. Puentes first came to us. So I have been seeing this through along with him and along with all of you. And I told him from the beginning that I was not in favor of what he was wanting to do when we first started many years ago. Some of it was height. Some of it was the aesthetics. Much of it had to do with how it would impact our community because that's the foremost thing that I'm concerned about. And over the years, he has done many things. As you said, he has dug in. And the things that we objected to, he has worked on and he has corrected. Things that we have asked him for, he has done. He's been very open about what they're doing. And he's been very open listening to our concerns. And has met with each of us directors in many instances to go over everything. I, too, was not thrilled about the height. But that's the way it is. And I know there's a hotel just on the other side of the current complex, which I think may be taller. I don't know. But everything that we have asked him to do, he has done. So one of the things I'm really happy about is the landscaping. I think that that is going to play a huge role. And if you're concerned about seeing the building from university, you need to look at the medical complex that's on Sunrise Boulevard that's adjacent to him on the west. I would hope that code enforcement gets over there because the building, the landscaping, it's a mess. And with what, even in construction, it looks better than, you know, that. So I am very much now for what he is going to do for the community. And I hope that you approve this because I think it will be an asset. And he has proven that he is going to be a good partner in our community. Thank you. Thank you very much, Ms. Woods. Gail Socorro is next, followed by Carol Sword. Are they speaking or just they're just there for support, moral support behind you? Yeah, moral support. Okay. I'm talking for everyone. So your name, address? I'm Gail Socorro. I live at Park Village, 1706 Northwest 81st Way. I'm the president of the association. And you've been sworn in and you know the rules. I have been sworn in and I agree to abide by the rules. Thank you. So I'm living there 31 years. And truthfully, the neglect that has been in the community, in that whole area on 17th Court, is very depressing. So the fact that we're now going to get a beautiful apartment complex with beautiful landscaping, we're going to get rid of that ugly Bank of America building, they've done a huge facelift for the shopping center on the corner, that makes a big difference. In my opinion, I don't really care how tall the building is. And truthfully, if you're walking by or driving by, are you really paying that much attention to how tall the building is or just looking at it and go, well, that's really beautiful. And that does a really nice thing for the whole area. It makes it look cleaner, neater, prettier, more richer looking. It increases our value of our property. And so to not do this and to stick us still with that horrendous Bank of America parking lot, which, by the way, I fell in, broke my kneecap five years ago. It's neglected. It's disgusting. And why should we have to look at that when we can look at something beautiful and the affordability for these first responder people? That's a big deal for me, a really big deal. So please approve this for us so that we don't have to look at neglected property any longer. And we can also get rid of all the bums that hang out in that area because they come right across the street into our property. They steal our fire extinguishers. They run around the complex. They ring people's doorbells at 3 o'clock in the morning. And I'm right there. I live right in that back courtyard that's right opposite 17th Court. So they come right into my courtyard. Not good. So, and Marcus has been wonderful. He is always available and always ready to help, answer a question, whatever it is. I think it's the best thing for this community, truthfully. Anybody want to add anything? Thank you very much. If you want to just introduce them so we have their names on the record. Okay, so this is James Thomas Nichols. He's our vice president. This is Linda Marcus, our treasurer. And this is Marcia Rossa, one of our directors. Thank you. The rest of the board was unable to make it tonight. But thank you very much for speaking tonight on behalf of all of them. Please approve this for us. Thank you very much. You're welcome. And Mr. Ponte has been a mensch, so we do appreciate that. Carol Sword. My name is Carol Sword. I live at 1621 Northwest 82nd Avenue. I've been sworn in and I agree to the rules. I would like to start by saying that although I am still concerned about traffic and density due to the location of the project, I realize that Plantation is becoming more crowded as it changes from a town to a city. Since we cannot stop progress, the only thing we can do is to try to find improvements on the project. Mr. Ponte deserves credit for reaching out and sharing conversations to find those improvements. An improvement on this project would be the addition of a Clutia hedge while walking along the park village side of 17th Court, I noticed that their Clutia hedge not only gave their residents privacy, but due to its height, it forced me to look ahead so that I did not see the buildings behind it. A similar hedge behind the parking garage of the project would hide the garage, and as an added benefit, it would reduce any unwanted noise. If the hedge were continued to the access drive at Denny's, it would block the view of the back of the retail buildings and the large trash bins behind them. A hedge could replace the trees whose roots have overrun the sidewalk and created cracks that are hazardous to pedestrians. Finally, having a Clutia hedge on both sides of 17th Court would create a nice symmetry that would help beautify the street. Hopefully, the City Council will take this suggestion into consideration. Thank you. Thank you very much. I don't have anybody else listed here signed up to speak. Is there anybody else from the public that still wishes to speak? Come forward, sir. And we'll let this gentleman first follow you. My name is William Duin. I've been sworn, and I understand the rules. Thank you. And I'm just going to ask you one. If you don't mind, before you leave here, if you just fill out one of the forms so we just can include it with the reference. Definitely. I'm a licensed optician with the state of Florida, and I also own a 2020 Optical. There has been a tenant at 1767 North University Drive. We actually, the longest and surviving business on that shopping center, we've been there since 1979 when I opened the store. And I just would like, I made time to come here today because I see that the building, this eight-floor building that's going to be set up behind our stores, will bring a tremendous amount of benefit to our community and to our shopping center as well. And also to let you know that the dealings that I had with the MG, the building company, the shopping center owner, has been very positive. I've been there, and I had to deal with about six different ownerships. And this has been the ownership that really has an interest and has invested and has taken a decrepit building and made it into a modern facility that we are very excited about it. We also saw a diminishing on the problem of homelessness that affects our retail business tremendously. You know, we feel for, but it does affect us tremendously. And so that's why I came here today, and I'm happy to fill up the paperwork. Thank you. Thank you. Have you ever come to a council meeting before? Yes, I have. And I came in, but I never testified. I came in to see what was that, the company that had just bought us, what they were all about, and what they were telling you that they were going to do. And I was also concerned with my clients that live in Laredo West, because by being, since 79, I have a lot of friends of, you know, a lot of the West. And so I came in just to see. I just want to say thank you very much for coming here. We really appreciate you coming and speaking. It is important for us to hear that, so thank you. Thank you. And Mr. Plante is the honorable person. Thank you so much. He needs a proclamation for 50 years in four months. He's insane. Yes. Hi, I'm Andre Grenier, 8200 West Sunrise Boulevard. And I've sworn in and heard the rules. And basically at this point, just reiterating the same thing that everybody has been saying, the current Bank of America building is not a good-looking building. This is going to be, regardless of the height, a considerable aesthetic improvement that will help with the homeless that have been causing issues and problems in the area, and just bringing in proper housing for people that need to be able to afford the housing and let them integrate into the community that we have there. You know, it just sounds like everything about the project is very positive. So I just wanted to reiterate again what everybody else was saying there. Thank you very much. Thank you for sticking around, and we do appreciate hearing your opinion. Thank you, everybody who has spoken. It actually, we do appreciate, we do listen, and we get emails, too, from residents, and we do listen to those. We do read those very carefully. So you're always welcome to share your opinions via email as well. Any further, I don't see any further discussion from the dais. I see no further comments from the public. So we'll take up item 25 first. Do we have a motion? Motion to approve. Do we have a second? Second. Hearing a motion and a second, and again, seeing no further discussion, Ms. Begrove, for item 25, can you please call the roll? Council Member Anderson. Very conflicted, but I'll say yes. Council Member Andreu? Yes. Council Member Fadgen? No. Council Member Horland? Yes. Council Member Reinstein? Yes. Item 26. Motion to approve. Do we have a second? Second. Again, seeing no further discussion, no further comments, item 26, Ms. Begrove, please call the roll. Council Member Anderson? Yes. Council Member Andreu? Yes. Council Member Fadgen? No. Council Member Horland? Yes. Council Member Reinstein? Yes. Item number 27. Do we have a motion? Motion to approve. Do we have a second? Second. Having a motion and a second, seeing no further discussion, no further comments, Ms. Begrove, please call the roll. Council Member Anderson? Yes. Council Member Andreu? Yes. Council Member Fadgen? No. Council Member Horland? Yes. Council Member Reinstein? Yes. Take a deep sigh there, right? You've worked very hard on that. Mr. Neenamaker. If it pleases, can you all revisit item 21? Yes. It's a resolution. 21 is an administrative discussion item. I thought we had kind of discussed it as part of everything that we had been discussing. Yes, sir. Is there any further discussion on item 21 that anybody wishes to have? Mr. Ezra, do you? You don't need to read it if you're welcome to have a further discussion, or you can vote to approve the resolution. So I think I'll make one comment just because I did not speak to administration in advance, but if you look at the resolution, I think there's one Scrivener's error. It mentions the April 10th, 2025 City Council, that City Council adopted, but I think it was April 9th, 2025. So we'll double check that. Yes, sir. So if that needs to be corrected, then that would be part of, I would request whoever's making the motion to include that. Seeing no further discussion, do we have a motion on item 21? Motion to approve. Second. And there's, although we labeled this an administrative item because it's a resolution, is there anybody from the public that wishes to speak on item 21? I will allow it. Mr. Conklin, please. I know, but because it was labeled as an administrative item, we weren't going to take any questions. But since it's a resolution, I am taking questions. So go ahead. Thank you. And I, Dennis Conklin, 4581 Northwest Sixth Court. I mentioned it in my comments under sworn quasi-judicial, the TIF is so important for the Gateway 7 and now CRA that you can see the importance of it, particularly allowing the affordability because of that extra number of units that swung, as was mentioned, 40 percent was affordable. So I just wanted to draw on that because I'm always speaking about the TIF. Yes, you are. And this is only for a single property. So I didn't know that you could do it individually. I thought it had to be done. So you are supportive? I support. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Conklin. Seeing no further discussion, no further comments from the public, we had a motion and we had a second. So, Ms. Begaro, please call the roll. Council Member Anderson? Yes. Council Member Andreu? Yes. Council Member Fadgen? No. Council Member Horland? Yes. Council Member Einstein? Yes. Thank you. We are now moving ahead to comments by the Mayor. I have no comments. I will mention that there were Advisory Board reports that were provided. Those are just for everybody's benefit for review. We're next going to move to comments from Council Members. I will mention that there are a couple appointments that may need to be made. I think Council Member Fadgen and I have one as well because there were some vacated positions on some of the boards. So, Council Member Fadgen, why don't you begin? One of my appointees on Parks and Rec, he passed away, Mark Morgenstern. So, he was a long-time resident of the city and passionate about tennis and got the wheelchair tennis started. And he's going to be sorely missed. My mom loved him dearly. And so, he was my appointee for Parks and Rec. I will be moving Frank Carreras, who's my alternate, to the actual appointee position. And then I will be filling the alternate position at a later time. Do we need a motion for that, Ms. Beggereau? I'm sorry, for which board? Parks and Rec. Parks and Rec. We typically do. So, on the safer side, I would say let's... Motion to approve. Second. Seeing no further discussion, Ms. Beggereau? Council Member Anderson? Yes. Council Member Andreu? Yes. Council Member Fadgen? Yes. Council Member Horland? Yes. Council Member Einstein? Yes. Thank you. Anything further, Council Member Fadgen? You want me to do my comment? Yes, please. Okay. So, I just wanted to also say my condolences to Norma, our oldest employee and one of our longest-serving employees. She passed away, I believe, Monday or Sunday? Tuesday. Tuesday. So, also a good friend of my mom in the tennis court, so she'll be dearly missed. And my condolences. Thank you. Council Member Andreu? Thank you, President Reinstein. Just a reminder that Friday, there is the tip-a-noop at Anthony's Cold Firestone Pizza and Wings on Pine Island, benefiting St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital. So, go have lunch or dinner there. Also, there is a homelessness and lack of affordable housing workshop Saturday, September 6th at West Regional Library at noon. I am going to try to attend that, so I know that Mr. Alpert and Mr. Holmes will probably be there, and they've shared it with the members of the committee. Also, our budget public hearing is Wednesday, September 10th at 5 p.m. So, start, get here a little bit earlier to talk about the budget. And I wanted to know if anybody, any of my colleagues, were planning on attending the public briefing at the Broward County Commission Chamber Friday at 9 a.m. Is anybody going to that? I don't think I'm going to be able to make it. I cannot attend either. I wasn't sure if we would have representation, though. Okay, that's unfortunate. Maybe somebody that is about H.R. 1 and the budget cuts, Florida, to the state budget cuts. So, maybe we can have some admin or somebody so that we are represented. And that concludes all of my announcements. Thank you. Great. Thank you very much. I'm going to go next, and then we'll follow by Council Member Horland and Council Member Anderson. A couple things. One, on Sunday, this Sunday, Jeremiah's Italian Ice is having a special VIP day and Sweet Treats special. I don't know if it's actually their grand opening or it's just a special event they're happening. So, I thought I'd mention that, Jeremiah's Italian Ice. I also wanted to make mention that American Heritage Schools, their girls soccer coach, Cindy Marcial, and their boys football coach, Mike Smith, have both been named Miami Herald's Broward County Overall Sports Coaches of the Year. And Coach Marcial guided the Patriots to their seventh state title, and Coach Smith guided the football team to a state championship. So, I wanted to give them some credit because they deserve it. They are in our city and are proud members of our city. I also want to add that this morning I had an opportunity to go to a special program that the school board was hosting for – it was a nonprofit forum. And one of the discussions amongst all of the nonprofits that were there, along with our very own Jesse Valenzuela, who was there, who's an active member of our Educational Advisory Board and some of the PTAs in our city, is that all of those nonprofits that are ready and willing to help our students in our schools sometimes just need a foothold into the schools and the schools need to know they're there and they need to know who to speak to. And so, one of the discussions was working with the city so that we can do a better job of kind of cross-marketing so that maybe on our own website where we're talking about particularly the Educational Advisory Board that we can have some links to some of these schools and the different nonprofit availabilities to help them. So, I – we can flesh it out more as time goes on, but just wanted to bring that up that – that was this morning. Last thing is that I also do have an appointment to make. My alternate for the Planning and Zoning Board, who was a – an architect, I believe was her position, as an alternate she had to resign because of a – of a conflict. So, I wanted to recommend for appointment Kelly Ann Ray. She is a urban planner currently with Greenspoon Martyr and I'd like for her to be my nominee – my nominee as an alternate for the Planning and Zoning. Motion to approve. Second. Any discussion on – on that? Seeing none, I'd ask if Ms. Bedgrove will call the roll. Councilmember Anderson? Yes. Councilmember Andrew? Yes. Councilmember Fajan? Yes. Councilmember Horland? Yes. Councilmember Reinstein? Yes. Last thing, Mr. Wynn, you're still here. I have a question for you. It's a very quick one. I know you normally bike to City Hall. Is that correct? Yes. Where do you – where do you park your bike? The lobby. Okay. So, just the other day I was also – I was here at City Hall for a meeting and I saw somebody else that was biking to City Hall and it wasn't you. It was somebody else. It was somebody else. And it – I looked around to see where he was parking his bicycle and I realized that we don't have a bike rack in front of City Hall. It would seem like it could be a really easy – we don't have one in the front of City Hall. There's no one in the front. Maybe I'll say it that way. That's correct. Right? But you did this very dramatically. Yes. Because I didn't know about the side one. But apparently the people that are parking their bikes in the front of City Hall and the lobby aren't using the side one. So – except for some people. It just seemed like there would be a good opportunity that we're talking a lot about bikeability and walkability. There's definitely a lot of places along the front line somewhere for – and I just ask you to take a look and see if there's a place for it. Why don't you use the side? Theft. Yeah. It's not – no. The front of City Hall. It's not – it's on the front of the – maybe on 5th, but not the front of City Hall, where people are actually entering. No, no. Towards the mayor by the handicapped entrance. But Pete – people aren't using it. So my only point – my only point is that if we can take a look to make it more convenient. So we can be more – make it more convenient for bikeability. Okay. This shouldn't be a very complicated ask, but just to look for it. Thank you. That's it. Okay. Councilmember Horland. Thank you. I'll try to make this – Can I touch the bike thing real quick? No. I'll try to make this quick. My bike's $2,000. I'm not parking over there. I'm bringing it in here. His is about the same thing. Okay. Bring it in here and park it. Councilmember Horland. I want to thank our partners at HCA. I happened to casually mention that I had been collecting books for Plantation – for the literary coach at Plantation Elementary at a chamber at luncheon, and they were collecting school supplies. So they met me there on Monday. They were going to celebrate that Plantation Elementary is an A school for the first time in its history, and they received some books and some much-needed school supplies. Now we're working on trying to get them some money for their AR program, so we're going to work on that. But anyway, I just want to thank HCA. They're a great community partner. The mayor and I attended the Florida League of Cities Conference in Orlando, getting ready for a legislative session, which is going to be here quicker than you can blink an eye. We sat through the DOGE presentation, which Mr. Nunnamaker has shared with everyone. It was a difficult presentation to sit through, but I think it was important to understand where this was coming from. I think the city's in good shape with the way we handle our finances, but it was very important to know. There was a little thread about Justice Department showing up on people's doorsteps, which I didn't think was appropriate, but I wasn't giving the presentation. Awesome. Also, there was a toolkit created by the Florida League of Cities about ad valorem taxes. We're really trying to get everybody speaking with the same voice as we go into session, and ahead of something heading up onto the ballot in 2026. So I did not send that to staff yet. I really want to talk to Mr. Nunnamaker. We have a meeting about the budget tomorrow in person, but they've created a video, and it's really about us telling our story, telling our story to the residents about what would be impacted if there were cuts to ad valorem taxes. So I think it's a very important initiative that I hope everybody will be able to get behind. Very quickly, Broward Schools, Reimagining Schools. I don't know if anyone was able to. Some of you may have attended the school board meeting yesterday, but if you were able to listen to that. I think we have a real opportunity for the first time in 20 years to deal with the challenges that face us with Plantation Middle. I think the superintendent has stated, you know, nothing's off the table. My only concern with the conversation is I want to make sure that this council is involved in the conversation, because I know that they're going to be setting up cities with municipalities, but Superintendent Hepburn said that that will be with city managers, of course our CAO and our mayor. But I think we all have different perspectives. You have two former EAB members. You have two former principals up here. We all have different perspectives and history with those two schools. Two of my children attended Plantation Middle. As you know, I was part of the group of parents that brought the IB program there, and you know, it just really wasn't able to sustain itself. So I think we have an opportunity, but there may need to be some boundary changes along with that. So somehow, what I think I'd like Mr. Noonemaker, as I heard Chair Hickson say at the end of the meeting, that she would like that perhaps that initial meeting is with you and the superintendent, but then there would be a public meeting. Perhaps they're invited to a council meeting so that we can partake, because I think it would be very important to hear those perspectives. And when the community outreach happens, I think we all need to get on board with that, because we need to hear from the acres and Jacaranda Lakes and Central Park parents about what they want and why they're no longer in the school and what would bring them to a middle school implantation. So it's very important, but I think we have a real opportunity, so I just wanted to say that. So thank you, and sorry, directors, we're keeping you so late, but we're almost done. Thanks very much, Mr. President. Councilmember Anderson. Can I just double-check, Councilmember Andre, I think you said the budget meeting on September 10th was at 5? Did you say 5? So my calendar says 5.30. Mine says 5.30 with the council meeting at 7.00. Is that 5.01? 5.01. 6.30. Okay. Other than that, yeah, 5.01. If I'm there at 5, I'm on time, right? Okay. That's it. No other comments. Thanks for sticking with us, people. 10.24 p.m. Meeting adjourned. Thank you.