City Council — Aug 7, 2024

Good evening and welcome. The Wednesday, August 7th, 2024 City of Plantation City Council meeting is now called to order at 6.10 p.m. Ms. Beggaroe, please call the roll. Councilmember Anderson? Here. Councilmember Andrew? Here. Councilmember Fratchett? Here. Councilmember Horland? Yes. Councilmember Reinstein? Here. Mayor Sortel? Here. Assistant City Attorney Morgan? Here. Thank you. Thank you. Tonight's opening remarks and pledge of allegiance will be provided by Councilmember Anderson. Good evening, everybody. I was pondering what to write about, and I was thinking about the start of another school year and also sitting there watching the Olympics, so I'm combining the two. So think about how the Olympians and the Paralympians have been training most of their lives even to just qualify for the Olympics, let alone to just achieve a medal. Think about the amount of grit and determination Olympians must display. It's just astounding. What happens after they achieve that medal, though? They have two options. They can take it and celebrate and move on in life, or they can start over and continue training and strive to create better versions of themselves. The Olympians set examples for us through their competitive efforts, but also equally important is how they display sportsmanship and goodwill. They inspire us to keep recreating our best selves and keep improving our lives. Hopefully, they inspire us to also help those around us improve their lives, despite the challenges we all face. The same can be said about our students who worked all school year long to achieve their best grades, and most took the summer off, and now they're ready to start a new year over, making the best efforts to achieve their academic success. And speaking of Olympics in schools, did you hear that Broward County Public Schools is an A-rated school district, with no DNF schools? And also six out of ten plantation schools either improved their letter grade or maintained their A-grade. This year, Peters Elementary jumped from a C to an A, joining Central Park and Tropical Elementary, who both earned A's. Muir Lake, Plantation Park, and Plantation Elementary all received B's. Seminole Middle improved to a B, and Plantation Middle maintains its C status, and both our high schools, Plantation High School and South Plantation High School, each improved to earning B's. And then also with our Olympic updates that kind of touch Plantation, we have a former Plantation resident. It also said she was born here, so I assume she was born at Plantation General. I don't know that for a fact, but the Wikipedia said she was born in Plantation. But former Plantation resident Olympian Cassidy Cook won the very first medal of the Olympics, at least USA's first medal, for the 2024 Summer Olympics. She won a silver in the three-meter synchronized diving in pairs. It's the pair synchronized diving. And we're also eagerly anticipating our utility department field maintenance supervisor, Nicholas Butler's daughter, Aaliyah Butler, who's competing in the track and field 400-meter and 4x4 relay events. Let's go, Aaliyah. She did place second in her qualifying round, and now it keeps on going because there's so many heats they have to do. So let's cheer her on. And with that, let's stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. Aye. Pledge of Allegiance of the United States. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Mr. Mayor, you're up. I looked like before, about two hours before, did she? Yeah, she did. So I updated Councilmember Anderson. It looked like Aaliyah got seventh in her heat in the next round, which was the semifinals. You have to be in the top two to advance. Sixth. Sixth. That's right, sixth. I Googled around one. What time does that? I Googled around 2.45. Okay, no wonder I got it. She went off at 2.45. But she's still a piece of the 4x400 relay. That's right. She's got another one. Because the rounds will be going through on that. I have two proclamations, but Mr. Reinstein drove the bus on both of them. So thank you for honoring the purple shirt thing, and we're good. The floor is yours. Thank you very much. Whoa, that was loud. Sorry. So the first proclamation was caused by a few weeks ago. My wife and I were driving north through Florida and South Carolina and North Carolina, and as we're driving, we see that a lot of cities are Purple Heart cities. And we started talking and said, well, why isn't the city of Plantation a Purple Heart city? And we started reading what does it take to be a Purple Heart city and started Googling City of Plantation and Purple Heart. And as we are searching, we come across a 2015 Sun Sentinel article that talked about a Purple Heart recipient from right here in the city of Plantation. And we are reading the article as we're driving, and we were out of town for a few days, and so we really didn't know exactly what to make of it until we get back in town and we look up this person and look up on the property appraiser's website and knock on the door, thinking maybe it's the right person, maybe it's the same person. And we are very fortunate to have with us today Patrick Olive, if you'll come forward. And Patrick Olive is here to accept the proclamation for Purple Heart Day. So if everybody can please recognize Specialist Patrick Olive. So I'm going to start with, I'm going to read the proclamation for Purple Heart Day. So Purple Heart Day is a day to thank and honor military personnel for their bravery and selfless service to our nation. Whereas in the city of Plantation, we honor our military veterans of all of the U.S. Armed Forces, and we observe Veterans Day and Memorial Day in the city of Plantation. And whereas on Purple Heart Day, observed every year on August 7th, we honor and remember the brave current and former service members who were wounded or killed in action while serving in the U.S. Armed Forces. At the very first and oldest military medal, the Purple Heart was established by George Washington in 1782. Whereas the Purple Heart military distinction dates all the way back to the time of General George Washington, originally calling it the Badge of Merit. The distinction became known for its design, prominently featuring a Purple Heart medallion with merit included in silver thread. Washington wrote about the distinction in 1782. Let it be known that he who wears the military order of the Purple Heart has given of his blood in the defense of his homeland and shall forever be revered by his fellow countrymen. Whereas while it is one of the most recognizable military honors today, the Purple Heart was not brought back into the public lexicon until General Douglas MacArthur established the order of the Purple Heart through the U.S. War Department. Whereas observing Purple Heart Day helps raise awareness about the impacts of war on veterans and their families, highlighting the importance of providing them with the support and resources they need to lead a fulfilling life after their service. Now, therefore, I, Nick Sortal Mayor and the City of Plantation, do hereby proclaim Wednesday, August 7, 2024, as Purple Heart Day. And before I finish, so I told Mr. Olive when I met him that I wanted to do this special proclamation for Purple Heart Day. But what I didn't tell him at the time is that we have another proclamation. This proclamation is just for you. Whereas Specialist Patrick C. Olive has honorably served in the United States Army, whereas Patrick C. Olive has lived in the City of Plantation for over 30 years with his wife Evelyn Olive, and whereas Patrick C. Olive has displayed extraordinary bravery and sacrifice in the face of danger, earning the distinguished honor of the Purple Heart Medal for injuries sustained in the line of duty, whereas the Purple Heart is awarded to members of the United States Armed Forces who have been wounded or killed while serving our country, reflecting a profound commitment to the values of courage, dedication, and patriotism, whereas Patrick C. Olive was wounded in June of 1969 while serving in the 25th Infantry Division of the United States Army in the Republic of Vietnam, and whereas Patrick C. Olive's courage and sacrifice serve as an inspiration to all citizens, exemplifying the true spirit of service and dedication to the nation, whereas it is fitting and proper to recognize and honor for his selfless service, City of Plantation resident Patrick C. Olive on Purple Heart Day in the City of Plantation, and to extend our deepest gratitude and respect. Now, therefore, I, Nick Sertel, Mayor, and the City of Council of Plantation, Florida, do hereby proclaim Wednesday, August 7, 2024, as Patrick Olive Day, a day to honor Plantation resident Patrick Olive, a Purple Heart recipient, and encourage all citizens to join in recognizing his sacrifice and dedication to our country. Look on the screen, see some pictures. I don't know. One right there is the letter from the American Red Cross that was sent to his parents to let them know that he was okay. There we go. These are for you, sir. Thank you for your service. Want to say anything? Want to say anything? No. Okay. You sure? Want to say a moment? You got a moment? No. No. He doesn't. Okay. Okay. This is not my best. Okay, let me start over again. No, I just want to thank Louis for the invitation and the receiving of this honor, which I never suspected this what it would be. It's been a long haul. I'm still suffering from after effects. Right now, I have two surgery pending, one on my lower back and one on my knee. So I don't know if I'm 75 years old, and I can't make up my mind whether to go forward with the surgery or not. So I guess I'll second opinion and see what happens. Thanks again, and God bless you all. How about you, sir? Well, this is tough to follow. Good evening, Mayor and City Council members. I'm Laura Karpavichuda, Assistant City Administrator for the record. I am excited about tonight and the upcoming survey result presentation. First, I wanted to give you all on a day a lot of credit for wanting to do this and for wanting to do this for the right reasons so that we know what our community wants us to do better, and we can do better on that. I'm pleased with the results. I hope you will be, too. Ninety-two percent of our residents think the city of Plantation is a good place to live. This is amazing. It's light years ahead of any state or national averages. And overall, we got really good scores for our police, fire, library, parks and recreation, and really most of our services. And even for services where we didn't score as highly, with only maybe one or two exceptions, we met or exceeded state and national averages. So, again, these scores, I think, are a testament of how well you, the city department heads and city staff, listen to the community and act on the community concerns. You will also hear tonight the priorities that our community identified for improvement, and, again, to me, the list of those priorities is, again, just underscores how well you've done listening. Because most of those are already in the strategic plan and on our radar and in the works. You know, you know stormwater, and you know how much the Mira has done last year to improve maintenance and, you know, acting on issues that require immediate attention as well as longer-term projects with a master plan. Traffic is a big concern, which is no surprise, and, you know, Carol has a midtown bridge project that's in the works that's meant to alleviate some of those issues. Sidewalks and pedestrian infrastructure, again, you're going to be discussing trees versus sidewalks and trying to find the ultimate solution to find the right balance for keeping our sidewalks for keeping our sidewalks in good maintenance while preserving the tree canopy where possible, and we have the multi-modal master transportation plan that will also help improve pedestrian and bicyclist facilities throughout this city. And another big topic that came up is affordable housing, and as you know right now, any development project that comes to this city, developers are being asked, you know, are there any opportunities for affordable housing? So, again, I think this is a testament of how well the city has been listening, and it should be reassuring to you that we are in tune with what the community wants. As you know, we hired ATC Institute to conduct our survey. They're an independent, third-party company. They do these surveys nationwide. They are experts in the field. They see the trends in the nation, but, you know, and they're really our experts to help us interpret the results. So, with that, I wanted to introduce Derek Harvey from ATC Institute, who will present the results to you and is here to answer any questions. Thank you. Perfect. Well, like Laura said, I'm Derek Harvey. I'm from ATC Institute. It's a pleasure to be here tonight with you, council, and with you, mayor, to present your results. And as Laura said, these are the fun results to present. You guys have done a great job, and I think these results are going to speak to that. And like Laura said, you guys have already planned for some of these issues that did come up in the survey, and that means you guys are ahead of the game when it comes to that. The purpose of this survey was to assess resident satisfaction with city services. It was also to compare the city's performance with state and national averages that ATC Institute keeps in-house ourselves. We conduct a national survey of about 10,000 residents across the nation, and that's where that national average comes from. Once we do that, we want to determine important satisfaction priorities for the city, and we do that with our important satisfaction analysis. And I will show you how we do that with how we build out the survey with Laura's help, and then that will come up once we get to those graphs. For the methodology and how we did it, this was the first community survey that ETC has done for plantation. We had a goal to complete 600 surveys for the city of residents. We completed that with 649. That shows that you guys had a great response rate. The residents wanted to give their feedback. We have some communities where it's a struggle even to get 300, so to get 649 is really a testament to your residents wanting to give that feedback. Our margin of error was at 3.83% at the 95% confidence level. That means that of these results, we would expect them to be within 3.83% if we did this survey many, many times. So if we did this survey 100 times, we would expect 95 of those surveys to come back within this margin of error of the results we got today. We did this survey with the mail-in online. On mail, we sent out the mail survey envelope. It complained to the survey. It had everything in it. It had an envelope for them to send it back. It also told them how to get to the survey online if they wanted to complete it there. As you can see, mail only had about 178 completed, and most of your residents wanted to complete it online. For language, we did English and Spanish. For English, we mailed it, had it online, and phone. For Spanish, we had online and phone. For Spanish, on the covered letter of the survey that was sent out that explained it, we did include a line on there that said, if you would prefer to take this in another language, call this number, or you can go online to take the survey. When I looked at the results, I think we had about 10 people that completed the survey all the way through in Spanish, and that is about a typical number that we see with residents. The location of the respondents, this is a GIS map that Laura shared with us that shows your city boundaries. What we want to look for on here is a good representation of residents throughout the city. That is the red dots on the map, and as you can see, we did achieve that. The home addresses on here are all geocoded to a block level, so we geocode it to the nearest corner so that the respondents keep their anonymity. The boundaries displayed are the census block groups. We merged them as needed, but on this one, we did not have to merge any. The key demographics for the survey, when we put out the survey, we monitor the race and ethnicity very closely. This is one of our major areas that we keep a close eye on. We try to measure it to the 2020 census. That is the data we go off of. As you can see, we did a very good job on this survey. Usually what we see is we will get a lot more white or Caucasian will submit earlier, and then we have to go after those other groups, and then we use that by targeting them on Facebook. We send out more postcards to those groups, and that's how we are able to achieve representation that matches what the city looks like. For gender, we always try to keep that male-female 50% split. We did achieve that. On age, we're not really looking to match the discrepancy of age throughout the city here. What we're really looking for is to make sure that each age group we have responded at the same rate. So what we know is that 18 to 34 age range usually is harder to get surveys completed from. So that's really what we're trying to get, and as you can see through all these age groups, we were about at 20%. This last one I like to put in here, 47% of your residents have lived in plantation for more than 21 years. As we go through the survey, I think it's going to be pretty clear of why your residents have decided to stay here for so long. The key takeaways, I like to put this slide in here just to make sure that if you don't remember anything else about this survey, remember this slide. 92% of your residents rate plantation as an excellent or good place to live. That was 40 points higher than the state and national average that ETC keeps. When it comes to a place to raise children, 83% of your residents rated it as an excellent or good place, and that was 20 points higher than the national and state averages. When we look at perceptions of the city, 86% of your residents are very satisfied or satisfied with the quality of life in the city, and 78% are satisfied with the overall quality of services that the city provide. And when we look at the benchmarking, for the state averages, 48 out of the 49 areas that we benchmarked plantation met or exceeded those state averages. When we look at the national averages, it was 47 out of 49 items. We'll jump into the overall ratings and perceptions of plantation. The one thing I wanted to point out is residents have a very positive perception or rate your city very highly. That's going to be evident here in a minute. But when we jump into the ratings, as you can see, every area on here received an excellent or good rating over 50%. 92% of your residents said it was an excellent or good place to live, and that goes all the way down to raising children, to work, to visit, to retire, and as a place where you would buy your next home. When we look at the benchmarking, you can see that plantation is the green bar, and plantation rates higher are on par with all the state or national averages when it comes to ratings of the city. The only one that is about on par is as a place where you would buy your next home. I believe that is due to the affordable housing issues that we have seen and all communities around the nation have seen as well. And that's why that rating is also very low for the national as well. When we look at perception, residents are highly satisfied with the quality of life, the appearance and image of the city. 78% of residents are satisfied with the quality of service the city has provided. And then planning for the future and managing growth are those areas that are among concerns, or areas of concern among residents. We'll look at the benchmarks here in a second on those. Perception, plantation rated higher than or on par with most of the state and national averages. Plantation's not alone, though, when it comes to managing and growth. That's an area of concern among all nations right now, or among the nation. As you can see, that national rating is at 39%. You guys are at 36%, which is still higher than the state average of 28%, though. The next area we looked at on the survey was major city services. This will jump into our important satisfaction analysis, and we'll get to our areas of high priority moving forward. So the first thing we did is we asked your residents to rate their satisfaction with the major city services that we had on the survey. First responders and emergency preparedness are among the highest rated services in a plantation. The plantation library and museum services and park and recs are also extremely high on this list. Continued, flow of traffic, which one? Yep. This is the major city services. Continued. As we see once we get on here, flow of traffic and pedestrian and bicycle mobility are the top concerns for residents. Like Laura mentioned earlier, 45% of your residents are dissatisfied with the flow of traffic on major roadways. The good news is, though, it sounds like you guys are already in the works on plans to address this issue. Now, next on the survey, once we ask all the residents to rank their satisfaction with these, we immediately ask them, which services should receive the most emphasis from the city over the next two years? This allows them to rank their satisfaction with all the city services. But then we ask them, hey, out of these city services, which three do you think should receive the most emphasis? And as you can see, flow of traffic on major roadways is a clear, most important one for residents, followed by maintenance of city streets and flow of traffic on city streets in your communities. Now, using this method, we are able to do our important satisfaction analysis. The top three services that residents think the city should emphasize are also highest priority items in our important satisfaction analysis. Our important satisfaction analysis takes the most important rating and rates that against the satisfaction percentage. An item with a high importance rating and low satisfaction will move to the top and vice versa. If it has a high satisfaction percentage and a low importance rating, it will move towards the bottom. That is why you will see the plantation library and museum services. High satisfaction there, low importance when it comes to ranking those other items there. But as we can see, the first one on there is the flow of traffic on major roadways, the flow of traffic on city streets and your communities, and the maintenance of city streets, medians, and sidewalks. When we look at the benchmarking for these, though, plantation rated higher than the state and national averages in all the service areas that were assessed. I put the arrow next to the two for the benchmarking that we had that were high priority items in our analysis. And even there, you can see that your ratings are higher than both the state and national averages. So this is a good thing to put in context. Like, yes, we do have our issues, but if we put it in context of our state and national rankings, you guys are still doing well with plans to keep improving for your residents. The next area we looked at was sustainability services. Residents are highly satisfied with the number of trees and open spaces in the city. 64% are satisfied with the city's commitment to green and sustainable practices. And then, as you can see at the bottom, affordable housing is the top area of concern with residents. Plantation is not alone. Affordable housing is a top concern for residents nationwide. It's something we see in every survey that we conduct right now. When we asked them to rank the sustainability services that received the most emphasis, affordable housing came to the top, quality of pedestrian infrastructure, and the number of trees and green spaces throughout the city was also up there. But when we look at our analysis here, only two of those were high priority items. That was the affordable housing and the quality of pedestrian infrastructure. The number of trees and green spaces, although an emphasis for the residents, was lower on the important satisfaction analysis, and that was due to the high satisfaction percentage and this low most important percentage compared to affordable housing. When we look at the benchmarking for these, plantation rated higher on par with both the state and national averages in almost all the service areas. You're going to hear me say that a lot tonight because it's true. Once again, I put an arrow next to one of those. That was the high priority items. As you can see, plantation still rates higher than both the state and national averages in that area. Public safety services was the next area on the survey. Once again, we asked the residents to rank their satisfaction with all these services in public safety. Response time among all departments was among the highest rated services. Visibility of police and the enforcement of local traffic laws were the lowest rated services. I think those are somewhat tied together. If you see somebody speeding, I don't know about you guys, but I always think, wow, I wish there was a cop ahead to find him or stop him. So I kind of tie that one with the visibility of police in areas. When we asked them to rate the ones that should receive the most emphasis, it was the same top three. That was the lowest one, enforcement of local traffic, visibility of police. And when we did our analysis, it was also those top three as well. When we looked at the benchmarking, though, those top three are up there. And as you can see, plantation still rated on par or exceeded the state and national averages as they did for the other ones as well. When we looked at maintenance services, eight out of the ten residents are satisfied with mowing and tree trimming along city streets and public areas and maintenance of public buildings and facilities. All the areas that we looked at with maintenance received above 50% satisfaction scores. When we looked at the services that they thought should receive the most emphasis, stormwater infrastructure and canal maintenance came to the top, as well as adequate street lighting and then condition of sidewalks as well. Condition of streets in your neighborhood was also right there, and so is condition of major streets. When we go to look at the important satisfaction analysis, all of those top three that the city said or the residents said was one they wanted to emphasize going forward were also our three high-priority items, but I wanted to note the condition of streets in your neighborhood because the satisfaction score is very high, and it is almost up there to a high-priority item, so that's an area where you need to watch out because if that satisfaction score dips a little or the most important percentage goes up, it will jump up there, and it's just an area that we want to take a look at. Once again, when we look at the benchmarking for these, plantation rated higher than both the state and national averages in all the maintenance areas we surveyed, especially the two that we looked at, what were high-priority items, street lighting in your community, condition of sidewalks, plantation rated the same with street lighting as the national average and higher on the condition of sidewalks. When we looked at parks and rec services, parks and rec had some of the highest ratings of the survey. All those top ones there are above 85% satisfaction, extremely high score. When we looked at all the park services, equestrian programs was the only service that received below a 50% satisfaction score, and that was driven by that they received 52% neutral ratings. That just tells me that maybe residents aren't aware of what to compare an equestrian program to to other cities, so they don't really know if it's good or bad or above what they should be expecting. When we asked them to rate their emphasis for these, there were a top three community and neighborhood parks, playgrounds and city parks, and major city parks, but I want to point out that if you look at this list, you can see there is not very much difference between the middle of the pack and the top of the pack, and when we get that on these surveys, what usually happens is when we look at our important satisfaction analysis, none of the areas have become high-priority items, which means that we need to maintain emphasis and priority right now for all of those. It means you guys are meeting what residents expect for those services, so you should keep maintaining that and continue what you're doing. The last thing I wanted to end on is communication. One of the questions we ask your residents, where do they currently get information about the city, services, programs, information? There is a clear top two of the city social media accounts and word of mouth. Right after this question, though, we asked them, where would you prefer to get information about the city? And as you can see, city social media still was the top option, but word of mouth fell down the list, and a couple newsletters ran up. The city website became a top priority. This tells me residents prefer to get their information from the city if it's about the city than from neighbors or friends. They want the official account to say something so they know that it's true and what they can rely on. When we looked at communication services, they all rated above 50% satisfaction. Communication is one of those areas ETC looks at because during COVID, when a lot of cities were not doing surveys, we sent about 20 years of data to K-State University and their data analytics team to run through it. What they found was that communication correlates to high city service ratings. As communication scores go up, we see satisfaction scores go up and vice versa. If communication scores go down, that means that our city services scores usually will go down as well. And then when we look at benchmarking, once again, plantation rated higher than both the state and national averages. And I wanted to point this out because there was an area for improvement between where your residents currently get their information and where they would prefer to get it, so there's more an opportunity for improvement to increase in awareness around those other avenues of information for them, and that would increase your communication scores. Do you have any questions? So this was our first survey. Typically, how often do cities get these surveys? We recommend every two years. In that way, it allows for the city to implement any initiatives that they want to, and then it allows us to measure that as well. We can see the improvement after two years. One year is just typically too short of a time period. Okay. Regarding the demographics, so, like, what are the tolerances? Like, if you have a variance from, like you said, you're comparing it to the census data to what your return demographics were, like, what kind of tolerance do you have in those variances to say that this is not representative of the population or the demographic that you're trying to chase? Yeah, we try to keep that within the margin of error that we achieved on the survey. Okay, so each demographic would be, in this case, like 3.8? 3.8%, and we achieved that. I don't know the answer to this. What is the gender breakout for the city? Because you were going for 50-50. Is it 50-50 in the city, or is it pretty close to that within your tolerance? It is pretty close to that, but I believe it does skew more towards the women in the city if you look at the census. We try to just make sure that we receive 50-50 from each because we're trying to look at. Because what I was thinking about, like, if we're heavy women or we're heavy men, there could be a reason why one gender doesn't want to live here or whatever. But if it's almost 50-50, then that's not really a consideration for us. Yeah. We can also break those answers out by male and female. So if there are differences between the two answering, you can look at those as well. And I believe we've provided those to Laura as crosstabs. And I guess my last question or comment, maybe it's for administration, I didn't really see any surprises in the survey. It feels like it's things that we've all been working on or discussing. Perhaps maybe for communication, there was some useful information from the standpoint of how we're delivering our communication, which I think we've made with the mayor's leadership there that we made a less significant progress over the last year and a half. Yes. But was there anybody on the dais, when they're looking at this, see surprises in this? It feels like it's stuff that we're aware of that we're trying to work on. Councilmember Horland? Thank you, Mr. President. No, I think, too, Mr. Noonemaker's comment that he made to me and certainly to Laura's, that this was our first foray into this, our first foray into strategic planning. And that was one of the things that we had talked about is the importance of hearing from our residents and hearing from our business community. Because I think that a lot of cities, they alternate. And maybe that's your experience, too. They'll do the residents one year and perhaps the business community. Really to see that we're being responsive. And I think the comment that we heard tonight was that the city and the council are listening to the residents and we're focusing. I think it's, you know, an affirmation, if you will, that we are hearing the residents and addressing the needs of the city. So I don't think there are any surprises. I'd like to dig deep in, a little deeper into some of those areas that maybe there was a little bit less satisfaction. I think we all know that plantation's a great place to live. You know, it's certainly wonderful to see that the residents feel the same way. So I don't think there were any surprises. Councilmember Reinstein? Thank you very much. You know, just in terms of digging a little deeper is that I would like to see that when we look at the breakdown on the map of where all the respondents came from, that if we were just to look at, you know, different sections of the city, whether we'd see it skewing any different direction in terms of the answers. You know, if everybody in one section is saying the parks are great, but then in another section of the city, they're the ones that are saying they're not great. So maybe three-quarters say it was great, and that's why our numbers are so high, but that there's some on one section that's saying otherwise. So I'd like to see it a little bit deeper. But otherwise, I think, you know, everything that we've been talking about, at least since I've been up here on council, seem to reflect in the survey. I did have a question as to who won the $100 gift card. You know, you always see in surveys that it says you can win something, and you never know who wins it. Well, we had five of them go out. Okay. So I think we've had two or three of them claimed already. We are still trying to find those other two people. The problem is we have to wait 10 days once we send the e-mail to them for the respond before we can move on to somebody else. So it does take a little time. Thank you. Mayor Sortel? I think Council Member Horvind was dead on with it to do the resident survey this go-round and do the business one next go-round, because that's what we're excited about. And it matches our strategic plan. And if I can add to that, because when we start to dig a little deeper and then perhaps we start to phrase those questions, I think the questions were rather broad, and that was fine for this first time. But I think then digging, you know, what exactly are some of those code enforcement issues that people are, you know, and again, I think to your point, you know, can we go in and then really check what areas are complaining most about a certain item? That would be important for us to focus on. Yeah, so to Council Member Reinstein's point, when we put up the satisfaction with stormwater results, our city engineer wanted to pull out plantation acres because she thinks that the satisfaction with the job the city does might likely be higher than the other one. I told her to be careful what she wishes for. But so there are examples such as that that you're talking about, Council Member Reinstein, that are applicable very much so, yeah. I would think if we did a schools breakdown, north of Broward would be less satisfied than south of Broward, because of Plantation Middle versus Seminole Middle. Just my thought. Thank you. Council Member Anderson? If I may real quick, we do have a map that shows satisfaction in these census block groups, so I'll be sure to share it with you all. And also, we provided residents who responded to the survey with an opportunity to share their contact information if they want to be engaged in further discussions on the survey results. So if there is anything where we want to dig deeper, we can also call some focus groups together of those residents who responded to the survey to dig in a little bit. So keep that in mind. Council Member Anderson? Yes. Well, I think, yes, I think we're pretty in touch with the community, but it's such a testament to our department heads and our city staff to make it happen. I mean, we only – and many of them are residents, too, so they know it's not necessarily from us. It's just a team effort all the way around, so thank you to our department heads and entire city staff for making it happen. Mayor, how do you plan on sharing this with staff? This is like a – I wouldn't say a victory lap, but, you know, this is a big congratulations. Keep going, but it's good news. And as you see by the data, if anybody's going to tell our story, it's going to be us. We're the ones that got to tell our story. So at the communications committee, we talked about how to do it. We had no good solutions, really. If you guys have ideas, I'd love to hear them. In my mind, the thing that really makes the impact is when you see the graphics with the benchmark. If I say 92 percent versus 65 percent, that doesn't mean anything. But you see that arrow going to here to here, and then you see the other one. So how do we do that? Do we do a slide show or something like that? If you've got ideas, I'd love to hear them. Yeah, and I would say, Mayor, take a look at, I think, Coral Springs may be one where they – I don't know if it's within their strategic plan, but they do put their survey results online. And I think if you can take a look at a way to do that, you know, and push that out, I think that would be a great thing. Even if you – even as part of your newsletter, you could say, we recently conducted a survey, and the results are in, and here's a link. You know, let people dig into it. Yeah, and we had – before you all, of course, we had a meeting where he showed this before admin, and we wanted our department heads to share the results with their staff so the staff will then own everything. I know one person who might be the Parks and Rec director who was very proud of his stats and plastered him all across the walls in Parks and Rec. But I don't blame him. Yeah. Question for you. Yep. Of all the ones you've seen, was this one of the – did we win? Do we get $100? You guys are very – in that top 10 percent for sure. I've only seen maybe one or two other communities that are as high as you guys in some of these areas, especially as a place to live. And those are – one of those is a city that's been doing every two-year survey since about 2002. So they've been tracking – They've had a chance to fine-tune all the results. Yes. And their directors pretty much live by the report, it seems like, so. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. I don't see any other questions from the day, so thank you for your survey. Yeah. Thank you, guys. All right. Parks and Recreation, upcoming events. Mr. Goodrich. Good evening, everyone. Phil Goodrich, Parks and Recreation Director, Mayor, Councilmembers, City Attorney. Yes, I was very proud. And we had a staff meeting, and so I made sure that everybody got a chance to see it, and I plastered it all up on the side of the wall there. So very, very proud of those results. So upcoming events for Parks and Recreation. This Friday, August 9th, is the last day of summer camp. We're almost there. So bittersweet ending, but very happy with it. Obviously, this year's school starts early. It's starting on the 12th, so we wish all the school kids luck going back. Obviously, better graded schools, so that's even better, so that's a good thing. Monday, August 12th, we'll have our recreation classes will be open for the fall. So any of the programs that we have, folks can come by any of our community centers to sign up with those. Or if they've been preregistered, they can go online and register that way as well. Tuesday, August 20th, is Primary Elections Day. Just so that everybody's aware, we're going to have at Jim Moore Community Center, Volunteer Park, and Central Park, we'll all have polling districts in them. So be patient with us those days, if you could, and before the elections in November, everything will be going there. So that will be all day on Tuesday, the 20th. Friday, September 27th, annual Plantation Parks and Rec Foundation golf tournament. It's going to be held over at Plantation Preserve. If anybody would like any information on it, I have brochures with me. And I know Frank and Nikki is going to be up here. I'm sorry. They're going to talk a little bit more about it. But that will be on Friday, September 27th, and the shotgun start will be at 1.30 p.m. Deadline for entry for payment is Thursday, September 19th. You can enter as a team or as individuals, and we are always looking for sponsors. So if anybody out there in the community would like to help out, whether it be a raffle prize, whether it be sponsoring a hole, we're welcoming for everybody. So next I have on my list is the tennis department. Saturday, August 10th, and Sunday, August 11th, we have a USTA Level 6 Junior Tournament. That will be held at 8 a.m. at Veltri Tennis Center on both of those days for all age groups. Tuesday, August 20th, we'll have a league mentor event with the Veltri Tennis Center starting at 9 a.m. That's where experienced ladies that have been with the program for many, many years are going to bring in new people and kind of show them the ropes and welcome them into the programming that we have down at the Veltri Tennis Center. So it's really nice that we have that building of community even within the tennis center. Dan and Jill both have done a great job at fostering that. For the aquatics, the next thing we have come up is the Swim for Nick Clinic. I think I spoke that last time I was here, Sunday, August 18th, 9 a.m. to 1.15 p.m. Pool 1 will be closed for this event, and this is in honor of Nicholas Dwarrett. I hope I'm not butchering that name too bad. But anyways, it will be for free lessons for anybody in middle school and high school, and actually they'll take anybody of all ages that would like to come out. We put a big push this year for doing swim lessons. We're in the upper 800s. Our goal is for 1,000, and we're going to keep pushing that number until we get there, but we're very proud of that. But this is a really fun event that is there for the community in very good ways. Athletics, we have the PAL current registration is open for fall basketball, fall baseball, and fall soccer. Our adult athletics programming, we have registration going on for softball, kickball, and flag football. And then adult athletics future fall registration is open for another basketball league, and that will open up on October 1st. For more information, you can contact Melvin Johnson, who coordinates Iowa Adult Athletics, and you can reach him at 954-452-2507. Great. Thank you. Public request of counsel regarding municipal affairs. Those who wish to speak will request that you complete a speaker form. If you have not done so already, please do. Please state your name and address, and please address your remarks to the council president, not the mayor or individual members of the council. Please keep your remarks to the allotted three minutes. And, Mr. Carreras, you're up. Please tag along. That girl. Vicki. Vicki. So, Frank Carreras, 701 North Fig Tree Lane, and Vicki Gelfand here. So, as a quick one, I look at that survey with regards to presence of police officers. I drive around the city all day long, and I will reassure you that I see plantation police officers all over the place. So, Chief, you have nothing to worry about. Your men and women are rolling around everywhere. And you would also have enjoyed seeing them last night at National Night Out, where we had a table. And who are we? Well, that's the Plantation Parks and Recreation Foundation. It was a pleasure to see all of you out there, and thank you very much for your participation with regards to sponsoring holes and so forth. Again, you'll see these flyers around the various city restaurants and businesses. You can scan the QR code and become a member, well, a supporter of the organization. And we are looking for membership. So, if any of your constituents out there are interested in playing golf or volunteering, listen, I don't golf. I mean, I do, but, like, it's not a golf game. It's a golf moment. If the ball goes straight, it's a moment, okay? So, that's it on that one. But it's not about us. It's going to be about the city and the parks. And as you saw how they scored on that survey, our parks are very much revered and enjoyed throughout the city. So, look for this. Scan the QR code. If you have any questions, you know, ask me or Vicki, this girl, here. And we are looking for that support. We are looking for sponsorships, whole sponsorship gifts, and so forth along those lines there. All right? Do you want to say something? Sure. All right, go ahead. You said it's okay? Yeah, it was really up. You got a minute, 25. We are here tonight as volunteers and board members of the Plantation Parks and Recreation Foundation, which is a nonprofit. We are sponsoring a golf tournament on a Friday, September 27th at Plantation Preserve. And we want to let the community know that their involvement will help all the parks in the city inasmuch as our profits go towards improvements that are not covered by the budget. The Parks and Rec Director, Phil Goodrich, I know his name, has what we call a wish list, and we're trying to help achieve one of the things on that list. We're working towards a goal, and we're hoping to achieve that. This will benefit all residents of the city that make use of one or more of the 42 parks. We are looking for sponsors for tees and green signs, as well as foursomes to come out and enjoy the afternoon and evening of golf, dinner, raffles, and great prizes. I have tons of flyers, and I'm hoping to see everybody on the dais on the golf course that Friday. Thank you. Vicki, did you want to speak to something else? Because I think that all was covered under one three minutes, right? Of course. I dropped it on the floor. Okay. Vicki Gelfam, 9381 Northwest 18th Place, Plantation. I'm prefacing this statement that these are my opinions and have nothing to do with my membership or decision-making for the Planning and Zoning Board. I just returned from a trip to my hometown of Chicago. I did have every Chicago food available, hot dog, beef sandwich, Lou Malinati's pizza, and ribs, so I made it a perfect trip. I was mostly in the suburban area and similar to our area here in South Florida. They had the same problems of traffic, more crime, weather situations, and crowded restaurants. The one thing that I did not notice was the addition of large apartment buildings. When I left the suburban area that I was staying in and went further west and south to where I was, I saw apartment buildings between 7 and 10 stories. The strange thing is that they were built in areas where previously it was like plantation used to be, single-family homes, townhouses, and condos, with apartment buildings being 3 or 4 stories high. The city I was staying in was smaller than the plantation, but has 26 parks with over 500 acres of land, lots of great green space. I know that growth is inevitable, and I'm all for getting the tax rate down with having more residences built. However, the buildings that are 6 or more stories tall are not in my memories of why I moved to Plantation in the first place. I moved to Florida over 50 years ago, and after looking around several of the suburban areas, I said that when I was ready to buy a home, I wanted to be in Plantation. I lived in a rental villa for 6 years or so, it was a single story, and then bought my single story home in a small community. Traffic has changed since then. The main road, Sunrise Boulevard, has been widened from 4 to 6 lanes, and the time it takes from one place to another has sometimes tripled. What happened to Plantation, the bedroom community, as it was once called? I know it's been taken over. I feel it's been taken over by developers that do not live here, just make their money by building high-rises and over-developing. Once their places are completed, they will just go on to their next development. You won't see them dining out in our restaurants, shopping in our stores, or buying homes here. I'm only here to state the obvious, at least to me, that overcrowding has started to creep in the city I choose to live in. I'm asking those on the dais to hear what I have to say before it gets too much. The drive from my home to City Hall is about 3 miles, and it never takes less than 20 minutes to get here. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Nguyen. Joe Nguyen, 944, Northwest 92nd. Tara, it's good to see all of you again. Hello. Hope you're staying relatively cool and comfortable through the summer. It's good to see you all. Hope you're also enjoying the Olympics and some of the amazing athletes that we've got there, representing Team USA and all around the world. And I wanted to specifically recognize Aaliyah Butler as a plantation resident for her performance thus far in the Olympics in track and field, and we can continue seeing her perform as the week goes on. So I did want to congratulate her, and I know she's the daughter of a utilities employee here in the city. And I thought that was very cool that we have not only one, but we actually have another, I believe, of the Cook and Bacon dive team. I believe one of them grew up in plantation as well. So I just, I did want to kind of represent that and celebrate that because I think when you can connect an international stage to your own community, to your own schools, to your own pizza places and everything, I think it really helps bring us all together. And I think that's what the Olympics really is about beyond just the idea of spectacular performance and looking really cool doing things that none of us probably can, but they make it look so easy. So again, congratulations to all of them. I did also want to make just a very quick comment on the concept of housing and development. One, more development generally, if done smartly and in a dense manner, is better. We talk about developers coming in and just building things and leaving, maybe not going to our pizza places or our local businesses. Well, maybe they don't, maybe they do, but the residences that now exist there and the people who now live in that spot, they certainly do. And the more of that you build in a certain area, the more opportunity you have for people to not drive, to people to be able to get to those places without a car and also open the opportunity for them to use transit, bike, walk. If you're three miles away and you're physically able and the infrastructure is developed such a way, you can bike here in less than 20 minutes. It's going to be a fun ride home depending on the storm and rain, but I messed up yesterday and drove somewhere, so now this is my penance, so it is what it is. Again, I might be back up here for other things, but in the meantime, thank you again. Very good. Mr. Korman. Can I get one extra minute on the clock pending using it? Sure. I don't know if I'll need it, though. Rob Korman, 11095 Whitehawk Street. Loved the survey results. Be careful about patting yourselves on the back with regards to where we stand because by my count, 0.006% of the population of the city responded to the survey. So as a result of that, obviously, sidewalk conditions, street conditions, all of those questions can be biased when you take a really small number like that. So yes, it's a good start, but any kind of deep dives on those particular topics would be appreciated. There's an administrative item tonight that obviously we can't talk about, but I would request that you all answer two questions relative to it. Besides the fact that the document is misnumbered, I'll let that one slide, page 34, I'm going to quote from that one, a security awareness training policy. The city's IT director is accountable for running an effective cybersecurity awareness and training program, in parentheses, subject to budgetary constraints, that informs and motivates workers to help protect the city's information assets and third-party information, including personal data in our care. My industry, obviously, was hit with, along with many other industries, a cybersecurity action a couple weeks ago. Fortunately, American did not fare as poorly as Delta, and that had to do with two things. One, Delta didn't ask for help, and two, American had an infrastructure that allowed for updates to be put on separate computers and not activate them prior to it going live. So, why am I bringing that up? The subject to budgetary constraints in the parenthetical, because while the millage stayed the same with property values going up, the net income coming into the city is going to be larger. Therefore, I encourage you to figure out why there's this issue of budgetary constraints when it comes to something like cybersecurity, because, frankly, with personal data, including ability to pay certain things online from our banks and credit cards, that becomes a real issue for the residents of plantations, with some studies showing 95% of all cybersecurity breaches being caused by human errors. A budgetary constraint is not something that should be in there. Page 79, incident response procedural policy. Incident responses will be tested using tabletop exercises, simulation tests, and full-scale tests. Where appropriate, tests will be integrated with testing of related plans, in parentheses, business continuity plan, disaster recovery plan, et cetera. Where such plans exist, the results of these tests will be documented and shared with key stakeholders. The where such plans exist is the question. I understand the need for certain pieces of information about stuff like that to say close hold, but in light of recent events as related to the mayor's absence, does the city have a business continuity plan? Do we have actions in place to provide a guarantee to the citizens that there will be continuity of leadership, continuity of accident, or in the case of disaster recovery plans, what the procedures are in place for us to keep functioning as a city? Okay. One more minute. I don't think that was one more minute, but I'll go with it. You get one more minute. Okay, cool. So, please, if you would, I guarantee, I get that we are not the ones who are, should be subject to that information, but please answer those questions. Live Local Act was presented at Planning and Zoning last month. The Live Local Act basically, for the record, fundamentally says that if developers will meet the conditions of Live Local, that projects can be approved administratively. Staff was on board for the recommendations that were made, but I want to make it to you in particular, which is that there is nothing in the code that says if something is approved administratively that there has to be any notification to the citizens of Plantation. Our code has notification boundaries for things that are going to be subject to public hearings. As such, there's nothing that requires the city to notify citizens. Per our attorney's advice, it should be in your hands to change the code to say that if there is a project that's going to come in under the Live Local qualifications, that there should be some notification to the effective citizens as a result of that. Last thing I want to mention is with regards to the Purple Heart that was presented today. That was really cool. Just one interesting fact about the award that Mr. Olive was wearing. That particular award, the physical one, was created as one of almost two million awards that were going to be anticipated with the invasion of Japan. Fortunately, that never happened. Unfortunately, the need for that award never went away, and it's only in 2015 that new awards were actually published. I say that only because I really hope that the images that we saw and the ideas behind it are not used in any campaign material. As it goes forward, I think that would minimize the selfless action that happened there and minimize the sacrifice that Mr. Olive himself made. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Huizenga. Good evening. I am Dave Huizenga. I live at 1271 Northwest 78th Avenue. And just to recap, on May 22nd, I appeared here to tell you about the campaign to dump the bumps. And I've got my banner here. There are a number of residents that we contacted. We connected with 495 homes, properties, and I understand that a successful direct mail response rate is about 3%. For the dump the bumps campaign, we received a total of 152 responses, which is a whopping 30% response rate, which means that this is an important issue to our neighborhood. The majority of the responses were against the speed humps, bumps that are on 11th place. These are the cards that I got against. These are the cards for. So, and I'll give those to the clerk to put those into the public record. The number, a number of responses also had a handwritten note, don't put them on Marcano. So, on a jump drive that I'm going to also give to the clerk, I have the address list that we used to send out. I got it from the property appraiser's office. But, so, the overwhelming response is get rid of these speed bumps on 11th place. So, where do we go from here? Well, I imagine you're going to want your staff to verify this. That's a reasonable assumption. I think in a week to 10 days, you should be able to determine that these really were responses from the neighborhood. After confirmation, I think that the speed bumps and the signs for the speed bumps on 11th place should be removed ASAP. Next, I'd ask the city council to cancel the traffic calming program entirely. If you ask the voters of Plantation through a referendum or some other means, you would find that 70% are against traffic calming and speed bumps. So, how do you handle people at speed? Well, you have an enforcement mechanism already in place that was provided by the state legislature, and that is police enforcement. A research study released in 2022 by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration confirmed that high visibility enforcement of traffic safety laws has a positive and measurable impact on roadway safety by reducing dangerous driving behaviors that put road users at risk. I'm going to give a copy of that study that's on this thumb drive. The city of Plantation would also – I've got about 30 seconds. The city of Plantation would also receive a collateral benefit from police enforcement's speeding ticket revenue, which could help support continuing the enforcement effort. A less desirable solution would be to make additional changes to the traffic calming program. I sent you all packages that had a markup of the existing traffic calming program, and I used the one that was just updated to markup in my letter to you when I sent it out. The – is necessary – I think the changes are necessary to make the process more transparent and democratic, so that everybody knows what's coming and gets to be able to put their voice in. And that's all I have. I'll answer any questions. Thank you. There are several people that are going to speak to this. I don't really want to get into a big discussion, but I just want to address one comment that you made regarding revenue for additional enforcement. We get a very nominal amount out of a unified uniform traffic citation. It's like $2 or $3 per ticket. So, and our position is it's not to write tickets for revenue. We write tickets for safety. So, I just want to make sure that gets blasted out, that people understand. Because I was at Dunkin' Donut once, and we were writing some tickets because they were parking in, like, the fire zone. And they said, oh, a plantation needs revenue. That's not a revenue source. Okay. It's a very – it doesn't cover the cost of doing it. I tried to look that up, and it was not evident. You just hear that all the time. I just want to make sure. But thank you. Okay. Ms. Law? These are – Good evening. My name is Barbara Law. I live at 7730 Northwest 11th Place. I actually live on the street. I've lived there for 30 years. And even with the speed bumps, they are still going flying. Yes, we need police presence at the corner of 78th Avenue and 11th Place, especially first thing in the morning. Everybody thinks they're yield signs or no signs, and they fly through. And then they fly down the road. We have three schools in that area, Mirror Lake Elementary, Plantation Middle, and Plantation High School. And kids are riding bicycles, golf carts, walking. There's lots of kids every day of school days. But anyway, what they need – we need those speed bumps. Now, I don't like the ones that are there. I think you should do the – I guess they're called table speed bumps. I would totally be behind that. We just – I – you know, Dave – I know Dave very well. And he says, well, if somebody hits somebody, it's their responsibility. Wait a minute. You all are responsible now because you have the option to go ahead and keep those bumps there. Yes, they're an inconvenience. I get that. I go over them every day. But they're needed. There's too many kids in the area. I am now raised – my kids have been raised, and I'm raising – help raising my granddaughter now. So she's there. But I see this constantly, constantly. And I guess you won't make money from the police being there and writing tickets. But the police need to be writing tickets. There's too many of people that just go blow through the intersection. So I'm asking you to possibly consider the table ones in a place of what is there. They are highly needed. I just see too much. And it would be sad that somebody's going to get hurt. Also, I found several dogs that are – people lost their dogs. We take them in, figure out where they go. I mean, there's just too much there. They shouldn't be – it's a thruway, and we should definitely have speed bumps in there. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Law. Mr. Law. Hello, Don Law. I'm 7730 Northwest 11th Place. I have a big orange speed bump sign in my front yard. So unless someone here has actually gone out with a hammer and jizzle and cut out a piece of speed bump and painted it over with matching colors, they don't hate speed bumps more than I do. I really hate speed bumps. However, I can't say just take them out and don't do any other action. The city – Mrs. Law gave you information. The city has firsthand data. You brought out pneumatic sensors and measured the speed and traffic before the speed bumps went in. And the results were shocking, the traffic that we were getting through there. So I don't ever want to go back to having that kind of traffic come down Northwest 11th Place again. We were here on November 8th, 2021 in this very room asking you for help, and you helped that situation by putting the bumps in. So thank you for that. But in that meeting, there was an understanding that the bumps that are there now were temporary, and a more effective traffic calming solution would be implemented. So that was nearly three years ago. So I'm here to speak in favor of a better traffic calming solution. Besides being annoying, the speed bumps give the neighborhood an atmosphere of disrespect for the law, requiring a heavy-handed government. And I believe that makes our neighborhood less desirable, makes our property values go down, and most importantly, makes tax revenue go down. So I would speak in favor of a better solution, which is a roundabout. Today I spoke with Karen Wolfel at the City of Planned City of Fort Lauderdale Transportation and Mobility Department. She has got documentation of the traffic calming effect of the roundabouts that they put in, as well as evidence of the positive impact, measurable positive impact, that it had on property value and, more importantly, tax revenue. So I believe that that would be a solution that everybody would like. Plantation would like it because it makes the city a more desirable, more attractive place to live, less of an atmosphere of lawlessness. The dump, the bumps people would love it because the bumps would be dumped. And it would have more effective traffic calming. It would have a better appearance, and it would have an increase in property value, as it had been documented by the City of Fort Lauderdale. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Law. Your ink's smeared. Frank? What's your last name? Hamad. Hamad. Okay, I'm sorry. I was going to go with Hammond, but that would have been wrong. Yeah, it's all good, man. It's all good. Frank Hamad. I live at 1150 Northwest 78th Avenue. And my neighbors right there. I was very much for the speed bumps. Since we've gotten the speed bumps, the traffic has slowed down. Yes, Barbara's right. People still will blow through. But I don't want the cops sitting there giving so much speed in tickets when they should be fighting more criminal activities in plantation. Nobody likes bumps. Okay, I get it. But I don't think it makes a neighborhood ugly. You take a look at Plantation Acres. There's speed bumps all through the neighborhoods to protect the kids and everything and control the traffic. It's ugly houses and unkept yards that make a neighborhood look ugly. So, you know, you're worried about your neighborhood, fix your house, cut your yard, you know, you'll get a nicer neighborhood. It's not the bumps. Since I went through, since those bumps have been through there, I used to get these cars blowing through the neighborhood with the weed whacker, mufflers, you know. The sweetest sound I heard when you guys put in those bumps was when he bottomed out that one car and I heard that. I have not heard that car since come through there. So traffic has definitely slowed down since those bumps have been in there. And I'm sorry, Mr. Huizinga, saying that people don't want traffic calming 70 percent, I highly doubt that. Okay, the amount of traffic that goes through our neighborhood, that's University Junior, Sunrise Junior that people come cutting through. So if it was up to me, I'd have it on Marcondo Boulevard because nobody will want to come through that neighborhood, you know. That cutting, they'll go around. So if it was up to me to slow down that traffic, because I'll still see them blow through the stop sign, haul butt, down Marcondo, you know. And if you want to avoid that, put in, you know, better bumps, put in a roundabout. I don't care. Put as much as possible to keep people from cutting through the neighborhood. That's all I got to say. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Hamad. We got a couple other public comments. That's all the comments that we had on the speed bumps. I heard these were installed in 2021. So is that before the process that we instituted? Yeah, if you recall, a couple years ago, we were inundated with comments about speeding and wanted to remedy that as soon as possible. So we did act in advance, have since developed the policy or actually revised the original policy, and then subsequently revised it based on further feedback. And just to address the issue about them being temporary, it was a quick fix. We do anticipate doing other measures, but that does take time and capital, so it is something we're working on. So would it be beneficial to do the process again or assess what's in there now, to consider other things that we can do for more short-term fixes? Do we get more of a permanent fix? We can certainly do that. I would remind you all that we do employ a number of measures. We do have the active speed signs we've deployed in certain circumstances, because sometimes we'll have a meeting about a particular corridor and public safety will express concern about their ability to navigate the humps. We're interested in the tabletop, chicanes. There's a variety of measures that we want to deploy. It's just going to take time. And you all have been very gracious in approving additional work authorizations for studies that will move things forward in that regard. Okay. All right. Thank you. Mr. Conklin. If I may approach. Dennis Conklin, 4581, Northwest 6th Court. Heavenly hosts protect you and your families. It's day 1,601 of martial law, where they shut down our churches, had mask and shot mandates, loss of our unalienable, God-given individual rights. It's two days from two years from the FBI's unconstitutional rate. I was mistaken. I said it was illegal. And they had the use of deadly force at that time. It's day 365 since the arraignment and gag order of the president, violation of his First Amendment rights. It's day 310 of the summary judgment, no jury, that is, violation of his Seventh Amendment rights to a trial by jury of his peers. It is, sadly, day 299 of the Hamas war against Israel, Israelis, Jews, and freedom-loving people in the whole world. It's never stopped, and everybody knows now about Hezbollah, but I've mentioned before that they basically had to evacuate the whole northern part of Israel because of daily showing since the start of all this. It's day 168 of the violation of President Trump's Eighth Amendment rights. The excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. Day 106, coordinated national college jihad. It's going on still now. It's across 22 states. It even affected three of our college universities here in Florida. Mostly recently they've been basically attacking synagogues, preventing people from worship, and, of course, the events that's happened now in Washington, D.C., for the speech of Prime Minister Netanyahu. Day 63 of President Trump was convicted of 34 made-up charges of legal bills that were posted as campaign bills, like Hillary Clinton, and Hillary Clinton was never charged. It's day 26 of the attempted assassination of the president. It's since been learned that something went wrong with our government to protect him. It is day 24 since the dismissal of the unconstitutional FBI raid. Two days from now will be two years. And it's 17 days since the coup d'etat of the Biden administration's nomination, which was July 21st, where they took away basically the rights of 14,656,978 Democrats to elect their nominee. May I extend one minute? One minute. Fantastic. I would like to make the request of removing from the budget mandatory MARCOM's video-on-demand CRT training. That's critical race theory. It's been going on since around 2021. And I would like to request the removal of the budget, from the budget of electric vehicles, the equipment, and the charging stations. I would like to request that the city has been cutting back very well on the position that it's holding in cash and investments of federal treasuries, which are 20- and 30-year notes, and I want to congratulate them on that, but I think they've got to get rid of all of them. And with that, I'd like to encourage that you encourage our state legislature to look further into the bullion exchange and depository and to create transactional gold. And last but not least, I would like to request that you ask the Attorney General of Florida to join Kansas and Texas in their lawsuit against Pfizer for the fraud, claiming efficacy and safety for pregnant women of the shot. I'll yield back. Thank you, Mr. Coughlin. Ms. Clark. Sarah Clark, 10451 West Brower Boulevard. I have been in New York for a month, and I'm about to leave again, so I'll see you guys in November after this. It's good to be back. Let's see. I didn't come here with a ton to say today, but top of mind for me is environmental cooling, so I'm going to circle back to that. But first, something that I feel like needs to be driven home pretty much everywhere is that design influences human behavior, and not even just physically. We were talking about speed bumps. Sorry to bring that back up. But those physically prevent you from moving too fast. But there are other ways to do it where people won't even realize it. I mean, narrowing streets, optical narrowing even. They don't even have to actually be narrower. Optical narrowing is when you have something filling vertical space that goes upwards. So instead of seeing a lot of space in front of you, you only see the space that you have. You're likely to slow down. I was driving with my mother-in-law the other day. She doesn't care about traffic anything. She's like a paralegal. She doesn't care. That's not her thing. And I was driving with her, and I said, did the speed limit change? And she said, no, why? Am I speeding? And I was like, no, no, no, you slowed down. Why did you slow down? And she said, I don't know. I didn't realize I slowed down. And what I told her is that the sidewalks had gotten wider, the lanes had gotten narrower, and the general area had gotten prettier. And that had caused her to slow down and take in her surroundings. So food for thought. More food for thought. Environmental cooling. So I was in New York, and I walked everywhere and took transit. Was not a fan of the bike infrastructure, but I did walk everywhere and take transit, as one does in New York. And while I was there, I didn't have central AC, and the window unit was expensive, and we were encouraged not to use it so as not to explode the power grid. So similar problem to Florida, where, you know, our power grid is getting to the point where it's so hot that we are not really sure that we're going to be able to sustain all of this air conditioning, and people's air conditioning is breaking down. It happened to me last year. It happened to so many of my neighbors. It's just breaking. Like, we can't handle this heat anymore. And so it's important for us to start thinking about other types of cooling that aren't air conditioning. And people might think, like, shade is like, oh, you know, like, it's really easy to think about shade as, like, well, you know, it's hot everywhere, and it sucks everywhere, and it sucks less in the shade. But shade can actually take you down 10 degrees. Adding a water feature, we've got 10 more degrees. We're down 20 degrees now. I really think we all underestimate the power of environmental cooling. And then there's also things you can do with buildings where the height ratio to how far they are apart can draw wind down onto the street. And then there's material science, and there's all kinds of things we can do. You can, like, if you really had an ideal environment for this, and you really maximize the science that's available to us, we could lower the temperature of, like, some particular areas by as much as, like, 30 or 40 degrees. And it's actually crazy that this science is available. So food for thought. I will see you guys in November. All right. Have a good trip. I do not have any other speaker cards. Last chance to make a public comment. Having seen none, public requests of council regarding municipal affairs are now closed. The consent agenda consists of items 1 through 13 and may be approved with one motion. Does any member of the council wish to pull an item? I have from the public items 7 and item 12. Is there any other items that anybody in the chamber would like to pull? Can I have a motion? Motion to approve items 1 through 13, minus 7 and 12. Second. Ms. Beggarow, please call the roll. Council Member Reinstein. Yes. Council Member Horland. Yes. Council Member Anderson. Yes. Council Member Andreu. Yes. Council Member Fadgen. Yes. Thank you. Okay. I believe Mr. Wynn, number 7. Hey, good evening. Good evening. Joe Wynn, 944 Northwest 92nd Terrace. You can find us with the nice freshly cleaned and painted buildings now. Anyway, I just wanted to bring up the MMTP workshop, the Multimodal Transportation Program workshop. I just wanted to help remind everybody that everyone here expressed support for safety features like protected bike lanes and also, quote, deploying tactical urbanism in areas to get things moving a little quicker and not to beat any morbid four-legged horses or anything like that with speed bumps, but things like chicanes, planters, other opportunities like that can be done at low cost and low investment in time and infrastructure to make that happen, complementing on some of the things that Ms. Clark commented on. As well, I want to just keep in mind that these projects, though they have a pretty darn extended time frame in the planning from MPO, the city is empowered to implement things on their own schedule with some of their own funding and budgets and to understand that some of the things that MPO is presenting in these workshops, they may not be funded from their coffers until literally another generation. So the very tiny individual who was here just a few moments ago in the back there, they may have their kids graduating Central Park before the funding even comes through on some of these projects. So we just need to keep things like that in mind that we have an opportunity to do these things when we want to and we can then amplify the effects that additional funding may come through and help because we do want, and I understand there's planning and investments and economic considerations, but the longer we wait to do things, the less we can benefit people today. It seems pretty wild, but we have to assume that the only thing that's constant is change, but actually, no, that's not true. Change on its own isn't even constant. Change is always changing. The rate of change is always increasing, and it's not increasing linearly. It's increasing exponentially, and so as a result, we are always trying to catch up, and if we're always trying to catch up to a project, a project that we're looking to fund in 20 years, 25 years, we may not get it right, and we may have to then take another 10 years to do it. So let's start taking a look at some of these things today and see what we can do a little closer to tomorrow. Thank you. Thank you. Can I have a motion? Motion to approve item number seven. Second. Ms. Spagrow, please call the roll. Council Member Reinstein. Yes. Council Member Horland. Yes. Council Member Anderson. Yes. Council Member Andrean. Yes. Council Member Fajan. Let's back up. Yes. I think our city attorney is having a little bit of a seizure. That was not Council Anderson that lodged the yes vote. Council Anderson is back now, so you want to call him? I didn't have my glasses on. Were you not here? He was not here. Somebody else made that. Why don't we just redo the roll? Council Member Reinstein. Yes. Council Member Horland. Yes. Council Member Anderson. Yes. Council Member Andrean. Yes. Council Member Fajan. Yes. Thank you. It's all right. I just felt your stress over here. People. I'll tell you. Okay. Item number 12, Mr. Conklin. Mr. Conklin, 4581 Northwest Sixth Court. This kind of goes to the issue of money. And, again, the wastewater for the week wound up at almost $2,500 from the Gateway 7 district. And I always like to ask, as we're in the budgeting phase here with two hearings to go, to zero out the millage, the extra millage rate on the district. One of the things that was mentioned about how plans go into effect, but then funds either don't come around or they stay, and it builds up a mountain of money. And I mentioned before, what I gave you was the issue about the transactional gold. In September 30th, last year, 2023, gold was at $1,872 an ounce. The close today was $2,401 an ounce. And this money's been accumulating for years. I can remember when it first hit $100 million with Ray Carroll Armstrong. And then it kind of dipped a little bit just below, and then it kept going right after with Mayor Ben Dukvick. It's up to $313 million. And, as I mentioned, they've been trying to get rid of the treasuries. Nobody's buying them now. The Federal Reserve is buying our treasuries because they won't be sold on the market. That means they are creating debt to pay our debt. I'm just saying, if the plans are there, get it done really quick. Spend the money. But it sits there year in, year out. And these are 20- and 30-year notes. And, basically, that's what I'm hoping that you'll look into, urging Florida to continue the process of going towards a bullion depository. Because this kind of money sitting around lost, in 10 months, 28.6% of its purchasing power. And that's why you're scrambling around, supposedly, for all this millage to stay the same because you know it's a tax increase. It sucks in more money because everybody's houses are going up. And that talks to affordability, which has been addressed. Without the formation of families, that's biblical. That's God. We were created in his image, male and female. That's for a family. If families were functioning, you need very little government. And you can't do that when the government is betraying its currency because they took us off the gold standard with Nixon in 71 because the French and the Europeans recognized we're doing guns and butter, and they just kept putting the money in it. They took their gold out. Thank you, Dennis. Thank you. I yield back. Can I have a motion? Motion to approve item 12. Second. Ms. Beggra, please call the roll. Council Member Reinstein. Yes. Council Member Horland. Yes. Council Member Anderson. Yes. Council Member Andrean. Yes. Council Member Fajan. Yes. The cybersecurity policy, is that just transmittal, or are we discussing it at all? Hi, Jason Emaker, CAO again. You start at the beginning. Well, one, we wanted to offer you that for y'all's perusal. We knew you'd be engaged in the 100-plus pages. But also to indicate that we are in compliance with House Bill 755. It was promulgated into law in, I believe, 2022. And y'all will recall that that is one of the measures that the legislator took regarding no paying of ransomware and also imposed certain constraints on cities on how we protect our IT assets. Mr. Montefusco developed that policy. And just to address a couple of comments that were made before, while we did address the budget-constrained nature of such things, I can't think of a single instance where we've come before y'all, whether it's a daily silo, various sometimes redacted programs that we use to protect the city's infrastructure. There's never been something that's been denied on a funding basis. So we do feel like we're very well resourced there. And we do have contingency plans should things fail. We have those things specifically set up. Obviously, we're not going to get into detail about that, but we do have those. And with that, John's also available to answer any questions y'all might have specific to the policy. Okay. Thank you. Council Member Andreyo? Thank you. Mr. Montefusco, I thought this was a very thorough policy. And I could tell the time and dedication that probably went into crafting it. I hope that you will consider the comments that were made by Mr. Foreman, though, because I did have a concern. I didn't think that was appropriate to put about the budgetary constraints in a policy. We always understand that that's always, you know, a factor in any decision-making. But I don't think it's appropriate to put in the policy. And then I wanted to know if staff will have to do some type of acceptance, whether it's an online signature or some type of, if you could walk me through what the process will be to know that every staff member is aware of this cybersecurity policy and all of the regulations and do's and don'ts that are incorporated within it and the consequences if some of these regulations are not followed. Absolutely. John Montefusco, IT Director. And Mr. Foreman is, I want to start off apologizing to him. It is misnumbered. We pour it over a bunch. I'm a little bit embarrassed because we're very detailed, and it is misnumbered, so we'll take care of that. Corman. No, he's right. It's detailed. It should be correct. To answer your question, yes, I will address those comments. It's the first version of our policy, so we can amend it to take out the budgetary constraints. Also, yes, all employees will be receiving a copy. I'm going to be working with Ms. Edsel, Dr. Edsel in the HR to make sure everyone receives a copy and signs off on it, as well as their cybersecurity training. And discipline, there always needs to be discipline and action if someone continues to put the city's assets at risk. And that would be up to the administration. We would, obviously, I would consult with them. I would think of verbal warning, and if it continues to happen, it could, unfortunately, possibly lead to termination if it's just putting the city's data at risk. And then just for my own edification, I was trying to figure out why it's repeated several times about the, instead of like summary of change, you had that table all throughout, and it just seemed like it didn't always fit in the flow kind of, it disturbed the flow for me reading it. Like, throughout the policy, you kept having, you know, that this is a new policy with the date. Was that a requirement? Oh, it's just for when it was created. It's just there so everyone knows. I foresee future changes, so if that section is changes, that part would have an amendment on the date. This change was made. It's just for record keeping. In the past, I don't know if our attorney can weigh in. Usually, you just have that once, either at the beginning or the end of the policy, and then, as you said, when you amend it, you would amend it and put the new date. But I don't know. I found it awkward. Okay, we can look at that. It was in case we changed one specific part of the policy, but I'm open to suggestions. We can revisit that, absolutely. Thank you. But great job. I thought it was very thorough. Thank you. Councilmember Horland? Thank you, Mr. President. I'll be brief. Mr. Monofusco, I want to concur with what my colleague said. I know that it was required by state statute, but you did a great job putting it together. And to Mr. Corman's point, I agreed with that. I think I made myself clear during the budget and also during our strategic planning workshop. And what Mr. Nunemaker said is true. We haven't denied, but I want that always to be at the forefront, that everything that you do with IT is the underpinnings of every single department in the city, and there's too much at risk. So I want to make sure that that's at the forefront, always administration, and as well as council, that we need to fund whatever it's going to do to protect us. And to Councilmember Andreu's point, I would like to see something in place with the employees that, yes, maybe written warning, perhaps performance plan, but there's too much at risk. And unfortunately, if termination is the end result, but we need to make sure that our end users are practicing safe Internet. I see you're back there, and you're probably thinking something, Dr. Edsel, but, yeah. I have a comment regarding that. Like, I don't necessarily think that the ramifications or the discipline regarding the failure to follow the cybersecurity policy would be in there. It would be in the employee handbook that they're acknowledging. Sure. No, and I'm not saying in the policy. I'm saying that there should be some ramifications if there's a repeat offender. Sure, I'll be working with HR and administration to determine those levels of, like you said, of discipline. There has to be something there. There has to be something. Like you said, if someone's repeatedly putting city's data at risk, information at risk, it would be. See Dr. Edsel. If I could speak to that. Thank you, Mr. Montefusco. As with any of our policies, we have a disciplinary policy in our handbook, and this would not be any different. There would be progressive discipline. But any time we have a progressive discipline plan, it depends on the egregiousness of what the action was. Some things don't go verbal, written, suspension. Some things go right to termination. So every situation where someone breaks a policy, the discipline is based on what happened in that particular situation, and they all have a possibility of up to and including termination. Good. I do not see any other comments from the dais. Do we take public comment? No. Good. Just kidding. Hey, take it easy out there. All right. Thank you very much. Moving to legislative items. Item 15, the resolution of the City Council of the City Plantation Floor adopting the City Community Development Block Grant CDBG Fiscal Year 2024-2025 Annual Action Plan. I just read the intro. It's a resolution. You've got your, you're coming, you're coming. You get to speak shortly. Good evening. I'm Adlyn Griffith, Planning, Zoning, and Economic Development. This item is the CDBG Annual Action Plan. Okay. The Community Development Block Grant, the con plan, is a five-year document, 2020 to 2024, and we are looking at the action plan for the program year. The program year for HUD is July 1st through June 30th. The CDBG Action Plan is a requirement annually, and the funding for CDBG is from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. It's authorized under Title I of the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974. As amended, any city that has over 50,000 residents and any county that have over 200,000 residents automatically receives CDBG. It assists in the development of viable communities. Viable communities are achieved by providing for individuals who are considered low and moderate income. The City of Plantation, we are expecting to receive $578,477 this year. The national objective for HUD is to benefit low and moderate income individuals, prevent or eliminate slum or blight, and to meet urgent needs when health and welfare are threatened, such as disasters and so forth. The annual action plan is implemented through the three community development goals for HUD, decent housing, suitable living environment, and to expand economic opportunities. The annual action plan identifies projects and programs to fund using HUD's annual funding goals, supports the strategies, goals, and objectives of the consolidated plan that the city has created, and the 24 to 25 annual action plan. This is the fifth year of the five-year plan, so we will be submitting a new one for next year. When we look at how to spend the funds for CDBG, 65% must be spent on housing activities, 20% on administration, and 15% on public services in the community. The goals for our con plan for the City of Plantation has primarily been minor home repair, purchase assistance, and public services activities. When we look at the funding from HUD for the City of Plantation, we are expecting to receive $578,477 for CDBG, and for home, which is administered by Broward County Consortium, $180,188, so the total estimated federal funding, $758,665. When we're looking at what's considered low income, using the guidelines from HUD, if you are 0 to 30% of the area median income, you're considered extremely low income. If you are 51% to 80% of the area median income, you are considered low income. And the City of Plantation assists residents up to 80% of the area median income, and this is the chart that we use. It's updated every April by HUD, and for a family of one, it's $59,150, and so forth. It's available on our website also. So for the funds for this year, the proposed action plan is for public services, $20,000 each for women in distress, ARC Broward, which has programs for disabled children and adults, Meals on Wheels, which provides for seniors meals, and Lighthouse of Broward, which helps individuals who are blind. And they went through a process of an application and being reviewed by a board of six people. The owner-occupied housing rehab program, $222,782, down payment assistant, $160,000, and administration at $115,695 for the entire allocation. Staff recommends approval. Thank you. Any questions? Thank you. Council Member Andrea. Not a question, but I think you all do a great job, so it's actually compliments and accolades to you all with the CDBG funds. I would like to see a little more social media presence to get information out to the public, kind of what we just discussed a little while ago with the survey. I know I had a resident contact me a few weeks back about Meals on Wheels, and so I think if we could maybe publicize some of the opportunities that are available for our residents, that would be very beneficial. And if the individual is willing to, it would also just be nice to feature some of the assistance that's given for the down payment assistance, because people just aren't aware that these offerings are available, you know, of course, with their approval. And even, I know there was a lot of work with Lauderdale West, right, our retirement kind of community. If they're, again, willing to, it would be nice to feature some of those. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I do not see any other questions from the DAIS. I have a couple comments from the public, so let's get a motion, and then we'll go to the public comments. Motion to approve. Second. Okay. Thank you. Mr. Nguyen. Joe Nguyen, 944 Northwest 92nd Terrace. So first off, CDBG grants are really nice. They kind of highlight some of the challenges that we have in our community, and they don't solve them on their own. They're just a small piece. I mean, we have to recognize that, like, the owner-occupied home rehab is important, and for the people it helps is valuable. Obviously, it could be life-changing. It could be mold. It could be health. It could be quality of life, mental health. All these things come into play. But the program is showing to be aiming to help four people, four households. It's great for them. Now, moving over, you expect me to come up here typically and talk about lane widths and car dependency and infrastructure and housing, and I'm not going to completely disappoint you. But I do have another passion as well that I pursue also, which is essentially helping end gender-based violence and assist people in those situations to cut those strings of control so that they can find their way to financial freedom as well as physical freedom. Get out of those control situations, and in that, I mention that because in the CDBG funding, you guys and the program itself did include funding for an additional counselor at Women in Distress, which is our local domestic violence resource center, DVRC. They are invaluable, overworked, and underappreciated individuals who help people out of dangerous situations and help guide them towards paths of empowerment. There are still challenges in that, and this is where I get to the other side of things where you're like, oh, there's Joe, which is the idea that most, and I say it, 98% to 99% of all domestic abuse, and that can range from physical violence to gaslighting to any number of things, it's financial abuse, it's financial control, right? And that's what keeps people coming back into those situations. You say, well, why didn't you just leave? Well, if somebody actively is destroying your credit and controlling your funds, where can you go? What can you do, right? You end up in a situation where you suddenly can't get in a car, right? That's your way of getting around. This is where I jump into the, there are programs to help, but if we can keep that in mind when we come up with ways to produce better pedestrian infrastructure, better transit access, that's one more path that can provide a path to freedom for some of these affected individuals, and that's just another direction that I want you guys to keep in mind as we develop ideas for creating a more connected community. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Conklin. Mr. Conklin, 4581 Northwest Sixth Court. I wanted to thank the city for this. When Lee Hillier was sitting up here, and you've seen him a few times now, he's recovering from health issues. He's the one that fought tooth and nail Mayor Veltri over this, because once we hit the population level, he didn't want to get our tax dollars back from Washington. And Lee Hillier is the one that's responsible for all these years of CDG money. That's millions of dollars, because right now you can see this year it's a half a million plus, right? We've been doing it since Lee was on the council, what, 1992, something like that, until 1994, something like that. Anyway, so I wanted to say that. It has benefited Plantation Park East and Lauderdale West. And a lot of people, in the description that was going on with the first gentleman that did the survey, you can see this little original plantation point. There were no dots in that place, but there's a little bit of money in there this year for that as well. So, let me see here. On page 9 of the fuller report that wasn't there, the expected amount available that remains in the consolidated plan is over $2 million. And again, that's money that kind of gets not spent and added into the annual mountain of money, which is losing its purchasing power. And when it comes to affordable housing like that, I'm just saying, it's true. I bought my house, Plantation Park East. It was under $100,000. It was $87,000 in 1982. And the doggone house across the street from me went for over $500,000. How are my kids, how are these young generation going to get a home? You're forced into, and it's going to come up here in 16. You're going to come up, and I'll speak to that, too. I'll yield back the time. But thank you. Thank you, Lee Hillier. Thank you, Mr. Conklin. I do not have anybody signed up to speak to this item. Is there anybody else who would like to make a comment on item 15? All right, we have a motion and a second. Ms. Begaroy, please call the roll. Council Member Reinstein. Yes. Council Member Horland. Yes. Council Member Anderson. Yes. Council Member Andre. Yes. Council Member Fajan. Yes. So item 16, PD23-0006, public hearing, first reading of an ordinance. City Attorney Morgan, please read the ordinance. Thank you. First hearing, public reading of an ordinance of the City Council of the City Plantation, Florida, pertaining to the subject of a comprehensive plan, amending the text of a future land use element to establish a unified flex zone, and amend related flex and reserve policies, amending the text of the future land use element to incorporate policies from the Barrett County Land Use Plan relating to affordable housing, amending the neighborhood design element to update figure 1.6, amending the future land use map to reflect the unified flex zone, amending the physical and digital version of the City of Plantation Comprehensive Plan, providing for a transmittal to the state land planning agency, providing for a transmittal of adopted amendments to the Barrett County Planning Council for recertification, providing for a conflict, providing for a several billing, and providing for an effective date. Thank you. Mr. Chairman. Mr. Alpert. Yes, I would like to present items 16 and 17 together. Of course, they would be separate votes. Okay. Thank you. Some background, because we did discuss this item earlier in the year. Application PD23-006 is a comprehensive plan text amendment to create a unified flexibility zone and to clarify comprehensive plan procedures related to the assignment of flexibility units. Application PD23-0057 is a companion application for a land development code text amendment to modify text and tables to clarify land development regulations related to the assignment of flexibility units and comprehensive plan procedures. The comp plan amendment was approved at first reading on January 10, 2024. However, staff has modified the ordinance since then and is requesting another first reading of this ordinance tonight. Following an approval tonight, it will be transmitted to the state of Florida for their review and returned to the city council at a future date. Following an adoption at the second reading of this ordinance, it is subject to recertification at the Barrett County Planning Council. The comprehensive plan text amendment also adopts the county's policies 2.16.3 and 2.16.4 of the Broward County Land Use Plan, which relates to the affordable housing bonus density and sets our maximum density to 25 units per acre in priority areas for redevelopment. These policies are related to affordable housing incentives and benefits the city's eligibility for county grants. The LDC text amendment modifies text in Chapter 19 and tables in Chapter 27 to clarify procedures and to be consistent with the comp plan text amendments. Policy 2.16.3 allows for 6 bonus units for every moderate income unit, 9 bonus units for every low income unit, and 19 bonus units for every very low income unit. What does flex mean? Flex or flexibility units represent the difference between the number of dwelling units permitted within a flexibility zone under the Broward County Comprehensive Plan and the number permitted within the same flexibility zone under the plantation Comprehensive Plan. These units result from the city's plan generally being more restrictive as to the residential density than the county plan. What are redevelopment units? These are additional permitted dwelling units equal to 3% of the total number as established by the adoption of the 2017 Broward Next Broward County Land Use Plan. Redevelopment units replace what used to be called reserve units, which no longer exist within the BCLUP. What does flexibility zone mean? These are geographic area as delineated on the flexibility zone boundary maps and the administrative flexibility rules document within the Broward County Planning Council within which residential densities and land uses may be redistributed through the plan certification process. The city is proposing to create a unified flex zone which will exclude all residential areas outside of mixed-use areas and priority redevelopment areas. This is what our current flexibility zone map looks like with Flex Zone 68 west of Flamingo, sorry, hiatus, Flex Zone 75X west of University Drive, Flex Zone 76 west of the Turnpike, and 73 east of the Turnpike. So, as we showed previously, this is what we are anticipating a unified flex zone would look like with the areas in red, our commercial and mixed-use designations, this is where our flex units would be allocated rather than the majority of the city, which you see in gray, that are single-family and multifamily residential communities. The areas in blue are community facility land uses, so it could be places of worship, city, civic buildings, governmental buildings, schools. And per the Broward County Land Use Plan, as long as they are owned by either the county, the school board, or the city, properties that are owned publicly, they could also be allocated flex units. And, of course, here is our Gateway District, our local activity center. The companion code amendment enhances the policy considerations and review criteria that the council and planning and zoning board and staff could factor in when considering an applicant's request for unit allocation either in the local activity center, the Midtown District, or the priority redevelopment areas, including whether the project contributes to the tax base, adds employment, and provides other positive economic impacts, impacts public services and generates negative secondary effects, is compatible to the surrounding area, utilizes sustainable building practices, integrates an affordable housing component with a mix of income levels, and incorporates a diversity of housing types and sizes. And finally, integrates mixed-use design with vertical mixed-use as a preference. The staff recommends approval, planning and zoning board recommended approval on December 5th, and any questions? Thank you. I don't see anybody who wants to click in to speak. Me? Well, Council Member Reinstein beat me to the punch. Council Member Reinstein, you've got to cancel it. Thank you very much. I just wanted to comment on Table 41-2, which is the notification process for the development applications, and I wanted to thank you for increasing the boundaries. It's something that we've talked about before, I've asked for before, and I saw in the minutes that the P&Z board asked for them as well. I think that it's something we have to constantly be aware of. I still am concerned about how we do our notification when it comes to commercial. It's something we've talked about separately in regards to it going to the owners of property, not to the tenants, and that it should probably go to both so that the people who are there all the time are also getting notice of it. But thank you for increasing it and including it in Table 41-2. Council Member Andrea? Thank you, President Fadgen. Mr. Alpert, do you, is Exhibit A part of 16 or 17? I'm sorry. I need two screens. Am I going to have two screens? Well, there's Exhibit A for Item 16 and Exhibit A for 17. So I'm referring to Policy 1.16, where some language was stricken from that policy, and I was concerned because I don't want to read everything verbatim, but it said the city shall consider the following, and I'm improvising for the sake of time. Number one, whether there's a change in population, socioeconomic factors, or physical development of property nearby, all of that language is being stricken. The impact of development permitted by the proposed land use, I'm just concerned because why was that stricken? I feel like all of those are factors that should always be taken into account. We are taking it out of the comp plan and adding it to the land development code. Where can I find it in the code? Because I couldn't find it. Okay, so that would be the exhibit for the other item. Okay. And I probably should have called you because I know it's a lot of backup information. So forgive me for not calling you in advance, but I couldn't find where that was. Sure. And I was concerned that it was stricken. And I'm not going to beat a dead horse. I think everybody probably knows how I feel about FLEX. Yes. I will say for the record, because you don't. I can restate it for those who may have missed it. I don't support Unified FLEX. I think that it has the possibility to burden one area of our city. And I do support, because I know residents called me before, after my vote last time, where I didn't support the item because of the carve-out, if you will, for the acres. I support that. What I don't support is the unified piece for the rest of the city, particularly the gateway. And I've been very vocal about it, so like I said, I won't continue. But I just have a problem with the unified FLEX, and I prefer to keep the FLEX zones that we currently have in place. But that's okay. You'll get a vote. That's it. If you want to get back to me, Mr. Alpert, like tomorrow or the next day, because I know the backup was a lot. I just could not find where that had been replaced. But you can get back to me. Okay. I will. Okay. Thanks. Okay. We have several people in the audience who would like to make a comment on it. So I'll take a motion on item 16. Motion to improve item 16. Second. Okay. We're going to take public comment for 16 and 17 together. There's really only one person who wants to speak to both items, so if he needs an extra few minutes, we can do that. But we'll start with Mr. Conklin. Dennis Conklin, 4581 Northwest 6th Court. Dittos what Councilwoman Andreo said. I wanted to go back to mention about the CDBG money. There's 20% administrative costs that the city used to get, and for a number of years, they surrendered that to the county. And I wanted to make sure that the city got kudos for retrieving that. What I found from experience is when I bought, there was no flex in Flex Zone 73 neighborhood east of the Turnpike. So it was a fixed, known entity of single-family homes except for the Landmark Towers, and I called it the Kingston Trio on the corner next to the hospital, and Village Green. So you knew once you were inside Plantation Park East, that was it. Then they converted the Plantation Business Park into residential. That thing is an eyesore, and that's polite. When I was reading in here, I couldn't get through it either. It was 1,000 pages of backup. 50 units per acre. Our max, if I'm not mistaken, is 25. You want to take it to 50 units? You know what you've got to do to this young generation? What it means to get 50 units in an acre, you're going to take the size that's in our code now of a home and basically lap off 100 square feet or one room. That's what's going to happen if this goes through. And as was already addressed, dadgummit, when there was no flex in Flex Zone 73 neighborhood east of the Turnpike, they came up with the CRA and they did LAD or LAP, I forget what it is. It's local area of development, and they created flexibility, basically. And when you create flex, I'm pretty sure you all know what hypothecation is, right? It's you take paper and you create money out of it, basically by creating a debt. So what you're doing is creating ka-ching for the city by creating out of thin air, by creation of paper, money for the city. And I mentioned when I bought my home around 1980, from 1980 to 2024, the median price of a single-family home has increased 544%. You're condemning people to live in these – have you ever been to China? I've been to China. You're condemning people to live in these cities of China, which are just towers, and everybody is – what can I say? I yield back. Thank you, Mr. Kaufman. Ms. McCormick? Good evening. Donna McCormick, 1201 Northwest 114th Avenue, Plantation Acres. I support this ordinance, and I just would like to take this opportunity to thank Danny Holmes and his staff for all the hard work making these changes to our city ordinances and convey a special thanks to our mayor, city attorney, CAO, and city council members for listening to the feedback from our residents and taking action to address our concerns. And thank you, Councilwoman Andrea, for clarifying your support of the acres, yet perhaps voting in opposition of this plan, because I think it's important that you said that, and I appreciate that very much. So thank you all very much, and have a great evening. Thank you. Mr. Korman? I've got my question answered. For 17-2? All right. Is there anybody else who would like to make a comment on item 16? Ms. Beggarow, please call the roll. Council Member Reinstein? Yes. Council Member Horland? Yes. Council Member Anderson? Yes. Council Member Andreu? No. Council Member Fragin? Yes. Thank you. Item 17, PP23-0057, public hearing, second reading of an ordinance. City Attorney Morgan, please read the ordinance. Yes, sir. Public hearing, second reading of an ordinance of the City of Plantation, Florida, pertaining to the subject of zoning and land development. Amending Chapter 19 of the City Code of Ordinances, specifically Amending 19-67, Entitled Provisions Regarding Applying Certain Types of Comprehensive Plan Flexibility, Amending Article 3, Entitled Local Activity Centers, including Section 17-70, Entitled Plantation Gateway, Local Activity Center, and Section 19-71, Entitled Assignment of Residential LAC Units, and Amending Chapter 27 of the City Code of Ordinances, specifically Amending Table 21-1 and Section 27-22, Entitled Planning and Zoning Board, Amending Table 23-1 and Section 27-23, Entitled City Council, and Amending Table 41-1 and Section 27-41, Entitled General Procedures, Amending the Physical and Digital Versions of the Land Development Regulations, Providing for Codification, Providing for Servability, Providing for a Savings Clause, Providing for Conflicts, and Providing for an Effective Date. Thank you. Is there any other comments from the DAES? Yes. I don't see any. Can I have a motion, please? Motion to approve. Someone reach. Second. We've already taken public comment. Ms. Beggarow, please call the roll. Council Member Reinstein? Yes. Council Member Horland? Yes. Council Member Anderson? Yes. Council Member Andrew? No. Council Member Fadgen? Yes. Item 18, PP240010, public hearing, first reading of an ordinance. City Attorney Morgan, please read the ordinance. Public hearing, first reading of an ordinance of the City Plantation Floor pertaining to the subject of zoning and land development, updating and amending the Planning Commercial Development B-7Q District and Land Development Regulations, amending the physical and digital versions of the land development regulations, providing for codification, providing for servability, providing for a savings clause, providing conflicts, and providing for an effective date. Thank you. Okay. Mr. Holmes? Okay. Good evening, Mr. Chair, members of the Council. For the record, Dan Holmes, Planning, Zoning, Economic Development Director. This is application PP24-0010. It is a request to amend Section 27-92A5B of the City's Plan Commercial Development District, the B-7Q District, to allow, one, residential uses north of Sunrise Boulevard as conditional uses, and secondly, to increase the allowed height to buildings containing residential uses. Just a little bit, the Planned Community Development District, which is what the B-7Q District is a part of, the purpose of the Planned Community Development Districts is to permit land under unified control to be planned and developed as a whole with a greater amount of flexibility by removing some of the detailed restrictions of conventional zoning districts. So some of the other zoning districts have a lot more restrictions on them. This flexibility provides an opportunity and incentive to the developer to strive for excellence in physical, social, and economic planning. So the B-7Q is a part of the City's Planned Community Development Zoning Districts. So this map shows all of the B-7Q districts that are currently adopted within the City. The B-7Q districts shall not have residential. So currently, most of the B-7Q districts do not have residential. There are some exceptions within our code where residential is allowed within the B-7Q districts. The first exception is within what our plan calls Central Plantation. That's the Midtown District. There you see the one B-7Q district that's located within the Midtown District. So residential is allowed on B-7Q within this area. A couple of years ago, staff amended this section of the code, and we extended that boundary a little north. So the B-7Q districts that were located north of Cleary Boulevard but south of Sunrise Boulevard were also permitted to have residential uses. So you see two B-7Q zoning districts located within that area. So what's being requested as part of this request is to extend that boundary north of Sunrise up to the city's northern boundary line. And that would enable additional parcels that you see located here to have residential uses. You see this parcel highlighted. This is the 8601 parcel. This request that we've received tonight has been submitted by the developer for the 8601. So they've submitted us a version, which we have attached in your backup. Staff has slightly revised that version just a little bit, so we have what we call our companion ordinance within there as well. So again, there's two things pretty much that this ordinance looks at. The first thing is that it proposes to change the current height from five stories or 65 feet to ultimately to eight stories or 95 feet. Now, when this went to the Planning and Zoning Board, before it went, staff did have some concerns. We discussed maybe limiting it to six stories and then if affordable housing was a component, allowing it to go higher. We have since slightly revised that since the Planning and Zoning Board, but the ultimate height is still eight stories. But it currently reads now that it would allow the ordinance to change the height from five stories or 65 feet to six stories or 75 feet. And if affordable housing is a part of the request to allow eight stories or 95 feet, again, if it includes affordable housing. This sort of is a part of the same bonus type of stuff that we are putting in our code to enable developers a cost feasible way to provide affordable housing. And you'll see this as part of also the state statutory requirements that we begin to look at ways to assist developers in providing affordable housing. I've added this in here because one of the, this came up, some very good questions that came from the Planning and Zoning Board. There were some questions that came up with regard to live local. So how does this height increase what's, what's going to be the impact of live local? And so we did add an additional slide in here just to give you some indication because we now have to contend with live local. So whenever we deal with height in one area, as we know, live local now says that, hey, if there is a commercial piece that's within a mile of that, of that district or that location, that that site is also permitted. So if we look at pretty much, this is sort of the boundary here of what would be impacted by live local. So anything that is located within here would be allowed to, if it came in as a live local application, would be allowed to utilize the height here. Pretty much there's, there's not much to, to be impacted. It's, it's mostly what's along the state road seven, I'm sorry, what's along the Sunrise Boulevard corridor here. We also have the Plantation Point development, which probably will be coming in for some residential. I've even heard that they may even look at live local anyway as a, you know, for that site as well. But that, I just put that in there just for your edification, just to understand we will start adding, you know, slides of this sort whenever we start dealing with anything that modifies the height so that we can kind of analyze what live local, the impact that that might have if a developer wanted to come in and to propose 40% affordable housing on a, on a commercial, industrial, or mixed use parcel. And so, you know, staff is, as I said, we've reviewed this. You'll note that in the staff report, we did look at several policies, of course, within the, the city's comprehensive plan. Several policies from the housing element and from the future land use element, which we believe do support, that those policies support this proposed application. So we're recommending staff's version of the approval. So we recommend to move forward. I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you. Council Member Andrea. I'll just say we had a, a lengthy discussion a few moments ago about the survey results from our residents. Although I agree it was about half of a percent of those residents, but everybody was very enamored with those results. And the residents that were surveyed are, they're asking us, I would say some are begging to manage growth. So we're saying that that's what we're going to do. We're listening to our residents, the ones who put us here. This, to me, does not manage growth. We have approved some other affordable housing in the same corridor off of Sunrise Boulevard without allowing them to go to eight and nine stories. I don't know how, I don't know how, in good conscience, I cannot, I cannot agree with the approval of this. Let me say a couple of things. I understand the point that you bring up. But I think that survey also indicated that they also have a concern about affordable housing affordability. And so you've got to figure out how you're going to make things affordable, okay? Agreed. But that's why I mentioned the one that we just approved recently in this same corridor. So I think there's a balance. But this does not lend itself to balance. Which project are you referring to? The Alina? The Alina? Well, Alina's already there, one occupied, right? Right. No, the new one, thank you. Oh, the land use, you've done, you haven't approved the site plan. Correct. But you've approved the land use change. Correct. That would enable the application to come in. And I'm sure most of us have seen the proposed site plan, right? So I just, again, I don't know how you balance that. That's what I'm personally struggling with, especially when you hear from the residents. Right. So we want, absolutely, we need affordable housing. We're all well aware. We know that. We know that we're going to have density in this area. But, again, that's why we have approved the other apartments in this area, to get to that density and to get to that affordability. But this, in my opinion, is going beyond that. Council Member Reinstein? Yeah. Thank you, Council Member Andrejo, for those comments. Can we go back to slide number nine, please? So based on. Which one is nine? I think you had it on there first. Correct. With the boundary. Yep. Thank you. So based on the one mile buffer and based on where the subject property is located, the highest building in that entire boundary is six story. Is that correct? That's the Lena right now. Correct. I mean, that's what you're showing there, right? Yes. So there are no buildings anywhere within that area that are seven stories or eight stories. So this project would possibly be asking for to become the highest building in that area. Is that correct? Potentially. At this particular point in time, yes. Correct. And there's no plan being presented. There's no discussion of the five stories plus affordable housing. It's only if it was a lot of the eight stories would this, you know, affordable housing be considered to the extent because of that added. Right. So it would be six stories, which would match Lena. That's the change to allow the six story height. And if the developer is incorporating affordable housing, the council has the ability to look at approving up to eight stories. So that's what the. But that would come before a separate. Yes. Or is there some type of automatic. Well, what I would like to remind you is a B7Q district, which means that it has to be approved conditionally. It's a conditional use approval. So the use would have to be authorized by the council through conditional use. And that's what's being asked for right now is that if they went with the afford, the additional affordable housing, that they would be a lot of the eight stories. If the council. Right now. But that's what's being asked for. Yes, that's correct. Give them the ability to ask. Right. Is it the ability to ask for it at a separate time or is it right now where they're asking for it as a conditional use? What's being asked for. What's what's what's being proposed right now is just the ordinance itself. When the application would come in for a site plan approval is the time that they would ask for the, you know, you to approve the B7Q at that time. Right. With that. This enables them to ask. Right. Right. Right. This just sets the rules, so to speak. Six stories and, you know, eight stories if it includes affordable housing. Okay. Thank you. Go ahead. Council Member Horland. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Mr. Holmes. I know we've had a lot of frustration, staff, council and applicants, because we did not have any rules in place. And I understand that's where we're trying to get here to streamline the process, set some expectations and guidelines. Going back to the survey and Council Member Andrea referenced it and so did you. And there are multiple things in there. Again, it's statistical sampling, so we're not going to get everyone, but if we just look at that statistically, you also mentioned the need for affordable housing. And I think we had agreed in our planning sessions and our strategic planning session, most specifically, that that was a corridor that we were going to focus on for redevelopment. It's a transit corridor. We've got Primo that we understand there will be some housing there, some extra residential housing there. When you talk about putting this in as a conditional use, can you just go over, if it was not a conditional use, the option to go up to the eight stories, would the applicant's option be asking for a variance in height? What would the option be? If they had came to us and we did not have this in place? They could. They could. A variance, correct? That's correct. Okay. So my concerns in approving this as a potential conditional use is live local, but also the potential proliferation of other applicants coming in and wanting to put eight stories. I think the Lena is a little too high in that area, but we've got the six stories, and I don't want to go above six stories there. I'd rather judge a project on its merits, understanding you want to put those guidelines in place, and we all agree to that. But in this corridor, because what I'm looking at with live local, we've got a parcel right now that could potentially be a gas station, but if that doesn't go through, on the corner of Pine Island and Sunrise, that potentially, if that would be within the one-mile radius, could become another eight-story building. And that is far too close to single-family residential, and there's nothing to protect the neighborhood from that. So I think along this corridor, my comfort level is not having the conditional use with the potential to go up to, and taking that project, that potential project, on its merits, with everything that they bring to the table, and then deciding. Because I just think that we could open up a Pandora's box on that corridor, and that's my two cents on that one. Thank you. So what's the tallest building in the city? Probably one plantation. How many stories is that? Twelve, I think. If we went to the – let's say we approve this ordinance, and then the applicant requests, is that full eight stories. Is that the – that's the full request for affordable housing? It would be 48 percent? Forty percent. Under live local? Yeah. Is that your – so they have to – there are some parameters that they have to meet. The biggest one is that, yes, they'd have to have 40 percent affordable housing. If we were going to approve an eight-story building, it would have to be – it would have to be 40 percent, or it would just – I see a shakeoff over there, so. If the city was – because you're saying under B7Q or under live local? I want to make sure I'm understanding. B7Q, I guess, is specifically what I'm talking about. So on the B7Q, yeah, the – we wouldn't – if they incorporated affordable housing, that's a means to help them get – put the affordable housing in place. Right. Then, yeah, it could go up to eight stories. We're basically saying, like, we'll go to six stories, but then they could go to eight with the affordable housing component. Is that getting into that 40 percent affordable housing, or – Not necessarily. A lot less. We could put that criteria in there that is 40 percent. Okay. They could come in with 15 percent and still be eligible for the – Can you go to the one that shows 8601 basically on the road, that one? Oh, sorry. So basically B7Q, that's the Northside Sunrise Boulevard between Pine Island and University Drive, or is it just – B7Q, this piece right here, you mean? Well, I'm just trying to, like – we're talking about the – we're – I think the request is we're extending north of Sunrise Boulevard. Correct. So is that the entire area from North Pine Island to University Drive? Yes. Yes. Okay. So if they wanted to come into that public shopping plaza, what we're going to pass here is going to affect that as well, right? I'm going to go back one. So, yeah. So basically, this is what's in place now. Right. So this – And then this pushes across the street to the actual border of the city? Correct. So – but it's – okay. So it's the dotted line north of Sunrise is – Right. Is the – that entire area is B7Q, and then we'd be changing it for everything or just the – If it's – Colored areas? So if it's B7Q and it's within this boundary, okay, this entire – So what is just east of the colored area, I guess, which I'm assuming is just 8601 there? It's not highlighted. Like, yes, to the right of where your – There's an office building that's currently there. So you have – What is the zoning on that, I guess, is what I'm asking. That's B7Q2. So you have this site, which is 8601. There's an adjacent office building here, which is also B7Q. But I'm saying that white area, is that B7Q2? And would that change our ordinance? No. No, this is – this is – yeah, this is commercial B2P. Okay. It's located here. That's what I want to clarity on. So if we pass this conditional use, it only affects this B7Q, right? Only B7Qs that would be allowed residential are B7Qs that are located – But no other B7Qs anywhere else in the city. So B7Qs located outside of here would not be able to have residential. So that's – and this is currently what the ordinance is. So these B7Q properties are permitted right now to have residential under the current ordinance. And without this change, there's no residential allowed in there in B7Q? North of Sunrise within this boundary. In the backup, the PNZ board minutes, it said first draft. Is that just – they're just not done yet, the minutes? I just want to make sure that what we are reading minutes-wise, it had like a watermark on it. Yeah, it may not – we may have gotten just a draft copy. I'm assuming there's no substantive changes, but – I've reviewed it. I didn't have any substantive – any changes to make to it. You know, I saw that – you know, typically, you know, you have the PNZ votes, and they're kind of unanimous, and this is 4-3. Right. I have paused with the eight stories. Okay. I think that's all I have for now. Council Member Horland? Or – no. Yeah. Council Member Reinstein. All right. Just one comment, since President Fasin, since you mentioned the – it's a first draft of the PNZ notes, I did attend that meeting, and so I'm not listed as being present there. And I only mentioned it because it said it was a first draft, so I wasn't sure if it was still being worked on. But the discussion was very well taken, and it was very good. In terms of discussing this property. I don't see any other questions or comments from the day is. There is a couple people who would like to speak to the items. So – I'd like to add one additional thing. The other thing that you're going to see around the county, and if you're starting to drive around the county now, you're going to – you're seeing typically eight stories along a lot of the major arterial roadways that as part of, you know, the push to increase density along the major arterials to incorporate more smart growth principles. So that's pretty much what you're seeing. I actually did have a picture of a property that I drive by. This is in – this is in Coral Springs. So I just wanted to give you some reference in terms of – that's eight stories. That's at University and Sample Road. And that's pretty much what that height – what the height is going to look like. If you drive there, there's nothing really out of character with that. In fact, in this location, you're going to have a greater setback at 8601, which is going to be closer to 30 or 40 feet, so it wouldn't even be right up on the right-of-way. Well, because of the way the property is built and the – there's a retention pond and some other things out front there. You're also seeing – if you drive down 441 at – I think it's Sterling. There's new residential, as you can see it from the turnpike, eight stories. There's just up in Boca Raton on U.S. 1, downtown. It's eight stories, and it actually even kind of steps back up to an additional two stories. But it does not look out of place. I know we're changing. We're moving to a new – That's a big block on this corner. Yeah. It is. That's a massive building. But if you look at it in its full context, it doesn't look, you know, out of place. And so I know that it's – you know, we're moving from one paradigm to another here. We're going to have to incorporate and figure out how we're going to incorporate smart growth, how we're going to be a more resilient city, you know, to deal with climate change. Yes. And it goes to the full eight stories. That will be the tallest building, like Council Member Horland, I believe, said. It will be two stories taller than any other building than that. More than the end of the city. That's correct. So there's some things to think about. And as we talked about with the comprehensive plan, there's some things we need to look at with the Sunrise Boulevard corridor as well. This is where, as we talked about with the Primo plan, whether light rail ever gets approved there or not. You're still going to have bus rapid transit. So this is basically, as we look at density, where we're going to place population, this is an appropriate corridor for this to happen. It is still protecting our largely single-family residential character. This city is still largely single-family character. I mean, the majority of our land use is single-family uses. That's not going to change. We're actually, through these type of practices, we're actually protecting those single-family neighborhoods. And much of the traffic, we talk about traffic, much of the traffic that we're experiencing comes from the low-density single-family development. That's what's generated. Because when you have that type of development, you are auto-dependent. You have to rely on the automobile to go everywhere. You can't just walk around the corner or go downstairs, walk up the block or what have you, catch the bus at the corner or what have you. So these are things that we will have to think about. How are we going to grow as a city? We can say, no more growth, and we can stick our heads in the sand, and everything passes her by, or we can start paying attention to some things that we need to. Climate change is, you know, we've got to start growing smarter. We can't keep sprawling out and developing. So these are very, I know they're very difficult questions that you have to consider, but this is real. But I just want you guys to know, you're not alone in terms of where cities are going, you know, in terms of accommodating future growth and development. Council Member Horland. No, I just wanted to make the comment, Mr. Holmes. And listen, we've talked about this in many of our different sessions, and my discomfort is not with extending that line. I think that we all realize that that's an area that we need to focus on, and there are several parcels, I think, that are ripe for redevelopment, and part of managing growth is doing it thoughtfully. And I think that's what this council has been able to do. So, you know, I'm not going to throw up my hands and say we can't add any more density, because I think that we need to add some affordability to the city, and we need to also revitalize some of those areas. I think this 8601 parcel is one of those that can be done in a thoughtful way, and looking at the walkability of the shopping there I think is something that's very important. But I think what you're hearing up here tonight is a discomfort with the height. And that's why I don't want to just say a blanket no. Again, I understand what we're trying to do with the ordinance is set some guidelines, but I'd much rather take that project holistically, take a look at it holistically, and judge that on its merits. And I'd rather, and I know it would be more difficult for you and for the applicant, but rather grant that variance than to just open up the whole corridor or to 8-store buildings. That's where I'm coming from it, because I have no problem moving the line. Absolutely. Council Member Reinstein? So, well, obviously the ordinance is what we have before us. However, is there a desire from where you're looking in terms of smart growth, in terms of increased density, to move the B7Q north, but not include the height concern that is being raised here? I would, yes, definitely support moving the residential use north. That's the first component of it. And the height, as I said, it's, I mean, we have to decide as a community what the maximum height that we want. Understood. So the height, as I said, I understand that, you know, the comfort level with six stories. It's, I just think, just attending some of the conferences that I've been at with, you know, developer and stuff, it's going to be very difficult to also accomplish your affordable housing goals at that height. I understood. I think you made your point. I mean, you made that clear. I don't think we're putting our head in the sand and not listening to that and not considering that. It just sounds like that you may get a different result if this was to come before us to extend the B7Q north without including the height in the same ordinance. Right. So, thank you. I understand. Council Member Andrea? Can you just go back to the slide with the green, that one, thank you, that one. So, I think Council Member Horland kind of, or maybe you restated it, it's so open-ended, Mr. Holmes, as well, because, right, we don't know how many affordable housing units they would be willing to provide. Right. So, we can put in, if it's the council's pleasure, we can add a percentage if that's what. Well, that's what I was thinking of. It's like, if we're going to allow the eight stories, if it includes affordable housing, put a pretty high threshold in there. Well, and I have to disagree with you. And, obviously, I'm not in the weeds as you are, and you are more knowledgeable about this and do this every day. But, I do work with contractors on a daily basis, and I don't agree with the statement that you have to go to eight or nine stories to get affordable housing. I disagree with that statement, and I've seen that done. So, just like you're showing. For multi-family? For, yes, for these. What did we, again, we haven't approved it, but we looked at, we've had some preliminary discussions with other developers. I disagree with that statement. I, you could be right. We'll see. Time will tell. But, I don't think you have to go to eight stories to incorporate affordable housing. And, we've had developers meet with us who have offered plans that didn't go to eight stories. So, if, I agree, we have to find a balance. So, I don't think anybody here is saying that we don't want density, that we don't want affordable housing. But, eight stories at 95 feet, that is not what residents want. That's not what residents want. And, I don't think that's managing growth in a smart way. So, I would rather, I think that Council Member Horland said it best. I would rather see a project and be able to review it on its merit, but not change our ordinance and the B7Q commercial development area tonight. So, you're saying you'd rather they seek a variance for everything that they wish to do if they came in? Correct. Mayor Sortel. Thank you very much. We talked a lot about this regarding affordable housing. And, especially 8601 is a very benign place in my mind in that there's not a lot of interaction with houses and residents. This number here would stink if it's around houses and neighborhoods and everything else. This isn't a set-off thing that used to be an AT&T property. And, affordable housing, that's the place for affordable housing to go. That's an ideal place where this could be pulled off and we could go with that. I agree with you, though. What I saw, if it includes affordable housing, my question was, how much? And, I think, you know, 15 or 20, whatever number, could go in there. But, again, Council Member Horland's idea of let's look at it case-by-case, that's pretty hard to disagree with. That's good. Yeah. But, I think this, for that area, is appropriate for that area. A lot of other areas it's not. Council Member Anderson. Dan, I know we've talked over the years, but do you have a concern about losing Class A office space? Overall, within the city, I do. But, I think that there's opportunity, as we get more into mixed-use type development, that we can still develop more Class A. I think we have some opportunities, even at the mall, you know, with the redevelopment of that site. And, I still think that when we look within the Midtown area, there's still lots of parking lots and other things that could accommodate, you know, office as well. That's a fairly good-sized parcel. You don't have a lot of good-sized parcels for that. You have niches here and there. I'm just very concerned that's a big office space area, and we would turn it into most residential with a little couple offices and call it a mixed-use. It's 90%, 10%. It's a big trade-off. Right. Don't forget you have your Plantation Point site up there, which probably is going to accommodate even more additional office space at some point in the future. That's a bright spot, but I can't even point to a second one after that. I mean, you should be able to, but I can't. That's our bright spot with office. Right. That's it for now. Okay. Although I share the sentiments of all your comments. Okay. I don't see any other people clicked in. We've got a couple people who'd like to speak to it. Does someone want to make a motion before we take the public comment? Yeah. I heard a couple different things about changing the ordinance or not approving the ordinance. So I'm not sure what you all have in mind, but a motion at this point might not. You want me to take public comment for her? Probably. Okay. Just so you can continue to gather your thoughts. You can't talk then. I pay five pounds. I'll call for you before we close it. Hi. Hi. Sarah Clark, 10451. You're back. You can work with me back until November. Oh, yeah. You're right. You're right. After this. After this. Okay. God willing, I have a sticker here. It says legalized housing. This is why housing is functionally illegal is because anytime you want to build it, we need like 100,000 variances and it's extremely expensive to build and all of that stuff gets passed on to people like me who until just a few months ago spent their entire paycheck on rent. You're hearing from residents. You're hearing from people in the acres. They're loud. They show up to city hall because they have the time. For one of them, there are 10 more people who rent, who have kids, who don't have time to be here, who are spending the entire, who are spending way more than half their paycheck on rent. The acres makes up one, maybe 2% of the city. Way more residents rent than own. These people have their McMansion. They have their lawn. They have their picket fence and they're trying to pull up the ladder after themselves. They don't want anyone else to have that. We're out of lane now. So we can't build any more lawns or picket fences. The only direction we have to go is up. And I know people think that affordable housing is a complicated issue. And maybe 2% of it is complicated. The other 98% is supply and demand. Eighth grade economics. Supply and demand. What happens when the supply goes up and then, or I'm sorry, when the demand goes up and the supply doesn't, the cost goes through the roof. It's really that simple. We need to build more housing or it will never be affordable. We can have affordable housing or we can just have housing being affordable because there's enough of it to go around. We need to legalize housing. We need to de-restrict housing. We need to build more housing. And yes, I will see you all again in November. Mr. Korman. Rob Korman, 1095 Whitehall Street. I don't know if you all read the actual minutes from the July 16th meeting. If you did, I'm not going to repeat most of it. Councilman Reinstein was there. More importantly, I don't know if you spoke to your representatives on planning and zoning about the discussions that happened and what the concerns were. Just a couple of things to consider with regards to this. Yes, it was not a unanimous vote. One of the reasons why I had an issue with it was related to the fact that we still don't have a comp plan. And Danny knows this is one of my sticking points. Because while the comp plan is in the works and hopefully coming out soon, it has not been published. As such, there's nothing to fall back on to know what the strategic idea is for the city. But the ideas that you just mentioned about expanding the boundary northwards for B7Q to allow for residential conditional use, there's no problem with that. But there are a couple of things to consider. As far as what was put on the slide there, current height is six stories or five stories. The potential is to move it to six stories or to go to eight stories if there is an affordable component. But as mentioned, there is no negative or there is no lower boundary on that particular issue. The kicker has to do with live local, frankly, because while live local has a 40 percent barrier to coming into the city, if a developer is willing to do so, and please correct me if I'm wrong, the issue is one of variance. So to Councilmember Horland's point, if you're looking at something and they want a variance under live local, it can't be approved administratively, which means it has to come to you all, which then means the notification boundaries and everything else are put in place for the public to comment accordingly. What we're looking at here is someone who wants to take a project, which we already had the issue with with regards to 8601 already, and it was somewhat a similar one. The idea of raising the height and also what in that is going to be productive for that site. I haven't seen a site plan. I don't know what the site plan is going to be. I simply know that if you're going to mix use, whether it's ownership rental or whether it's a little bit of retail with rental, by putting in a small component of affordable housing, what you do is you open up the floodgates to that eight story building. If Danny could put that picture of the eight story building on university and sample up there, one of the things you have to watch out for, which granted would not be relevant on this particular piece of property, has to do with the design of that building. That design of that building is right up close to the sidewalk, right minimum setback from the street. But if you take a close look at it, it actually cantilevers out over the street, not over the full street, over the sidewalk. So what you have is a structure that does take up more space. I am not saying we can't have affordable housing in this city. I want it. But as you mentioned, we have developers who have come to us and work within the boundaries of our city to find creative solutions. And I think that's better for the city of Plantation at this particular time until the comp plan is published so that we can have an idea of what the actual priorities are for the city. Thank you. Mr. Laestrom? Bill Laestrom. I represent the applicant on this. We kind of got here faster than I thought. I know that's a hard thing in the development business. So our site plan is actually working through the city process at the very moment. But this ordinance kind of got ahead because we file them all at the same time. But the ordinance moved ahead. We are, at least on our side, absolutely okay with staying with what I call the waiver process to ask for the height. What we had looked at when I first drafted this was just to try to start providing you with some type of incentives for affordable housing because we really don't have any in the code. And, well, maybe height is one of them. I can see concern there. And so, quite frankly, what I'd ask is just you amend the ordinance to delete the portion that allow either the up to eight stories, just delete that out. Or if you're even uncomfortable even with the five, although I think that would be pretty appropriate, you just leave it at the six that's in there now. But delete that part. We'll ask for a waiver. We'll be, I hear you loud and clear on my affordable housing component, which we're working on and we have it in our project. We'll have to see if it's enough, as always. But the whole idea of this ordinance was just to try to, I call it, get us started. At the same time, your comp plan process had slowed down a little bit. So, as I said, we kind of caught up to you on the same agenda. So, with that, I would ask that you go ahead and just move the boundary, if you would. And if you want to make it five or you want to make it six stories, we'd certainly prefer the six stories. We think that's certainly appropriate to try to get that. I think you'll see, you'll like this site plan, but I realize that you haven't seen it yet. So, it's not fair on an individual business. Is there any consideration of affordable housing? Yes, it's in it. It's been proposed for it from the very first time I presented it. Well, we don't know. Yeah, no. That is true. That's why I said I understand the pause because even though it's a general ordinance, it applies a specific site. And at least if you take out the height part, it then eliminates these, what I don't believe are real concerns, but somehow that the Live Local Act is going to be used in some way that this ordinance will help it. Okay. So, with that, I appreciate your time and hopefully you would at least pass part of it. And you can always, I mean, the last choice is you can always table it to the date that our site plan gets here if you want to do that, or the second reading, either one. Thank you. Mayor Sortel? Just a quick note. We have developers come in about every week with an idea for here or there, and we tell them loud and clear, you're not going to get approval unless there's affordable housing in there. Basically, I say you're not going to get three votes. You can't get three votes unless you have affordable housing as a strong component of any project. So, not only his project, but every project that comes in. Okay. On the first level of coaching, we tell them it's got to be there. Thank you. Mr. Conklin, you want to make a comment? Question. Dennis Conklin, 4581 Northwest 6th Court. And just a question, but I would like the answer, because I was curious what the service capabilities for our fire department for 95 feet, eight-story buildings. That's all. And I would like an answer, though. Thank you. Chief Todd, what's up? Come on up. Good evening, Councilman, Mayor, City Attorney, Baton Chief Tony Martins, City of Contention Fire Marshal. This building, if it does go, as we say, considered a high-rise, which is anything over 75 feet from the highest, 70 feet of an occupied floor. So, that's how we consider high-rise. So, if the highest is at 75 feet where the floor is, is high-rise. It'll have all the protection that's required from smoke evacuation, generators, meet all the life safety. So, we have a capability to take care of it. Yes, yes. All the, from Midtown 24, you brought that up, 12-story building, Royal Palms, sorry, one plantation place, high-rise, Cornerstone high-rise. They have everything to protect us and all the necessities to keep us from bringing. I think that's really what the gist of the question was, is just that we have the capability to take care of an emergency. Yes. The building is self-sustained. You guys, and the fire department has to sign off on all these plans and stuff like that. Myself and Mr. Gale, that's the building official. Yeah. Absolutely. Yep. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. So, with this discussion, would anybody like to make a motion? I'll make a motion to approve the item, taking off the increase in the height and moving the boundary to the city line. Okay. So, move it across the street. Mm-hmm. And then, so there's no definition of height or- Deleting the, leaving it to five. Five stories. And then they can request. Okay. Do we have a second? Everybody at once. So, if we do nothing, what does that mean? Does it come back when they come to propose or they can't propose? Well, Mr. President, if you, you have to do something, whether that's not approve the item, whether that's table the item, whether that's vote, something that's modified on the requested item, so that there's some direction for the staff. If there's no approval of the item, the item dies, and it will have to come back in a different format than it is right now. If there's a tabling and further discussion, then it will come back at some future time. If there's a modification, as suggested in the motion that was on the table, then that would come back for a second reading with that modification to the language in the draft currently. So, if this doesn't, let's say we don't approve it, the applicant can't even propose what they want to do down the line because it's just not acceptable for that, where it is right now. Is that correct? That's because there's no residential allowed north of Sunrise. We have to approve residential. For them to propose that, I believe, and Danny can correct that. So, if we get rid of all height, any defined height, then they can come in and they can request their height when they do the entire proposal of the property, and we'll have a lot more information at that point. I believe that is true. They have to request the appropriate variances and waivers, et cetera. If we just approve it just saying that we will allow residential in there, then they can come in, and if they're planning on five stories or six stories or even eight stories, they can just ask us at that point in time to allow the height. We don't have to define it now in the ordinances. I'm just trying to find a pathway here. I think the question is, if the ordinances are modified to just say that B7Q is modified to allow residential north of Sunrise, that they have the ability to propose what they may be proposing, but they'd have to do it with certain waivers and variances, et cetera. Request any height. Any height changes. Right now, we're not defining the height. We're just saying that you can propose a residential development on that property, and then you have to request the height with your site plan. Right. Is that possible? Just to summarize it, yes. So if you approve the extension of the boundary, it would allow residential use north of Sunrise at five stories. So that's just the default? That's currently in the code. Yeah. That's currently in the code. And that was your motion? That's what I said. Yes. I was just asking questions. I'm going to ask questions. I got elected. But, Mr. President, I think it might beg a further conversation with council where we have a lack of a second if council is, because I thought we had talked about this in strategic planning and when we sat down with the planning staff, still reluctant to move that boundary and include housing. I think there may be, I'm not sure if we're at the comprehensive plan. Well, I think we might need to have just a little discussion here on the dais. Well, there's a couple more comments here. So let's, let's, Council Member Reinstein. Yeah. And this may be somewhat of a point of clarification because I don't have any problem with that one section being moved to the north to extend B7Q. I am concerned that it's an ordinance that we're then not seeing the entirety of the ordinance. And so I guess as a point of clarification is that if that is, if the motion is seconded and if it's passed just for the extension of B7Q, it's still going to come, the revised ordinance only approving that part will come before us for a second hearing. Correct. So it will give us an opportunity to fully see how you're going to draft that and we can read it for ourselves as opposed to just asking for it to be revised based on our discussion, right? The other option on that, I'm not sure, is to ask them to do that and bring it back for another first reading with that language written in there as you all are seeming to discuss right now. So it wouldn't be a second reading. It would be another first reading with the revision that the motion requested so that it doesn't include the height. It's written in the way that was discussed in the motion. So there's no, there will be an additional second reading after that. So it would be a total of three readings if that passed. Yeah, I mean, other than delaying the time for the applicant, which would be the concern, I do appreciate to be able to read a full. He has no concern. Yeah, the site plan is, won't be before you until a little later. Then I would prefer to be able to read it in front of me and see exactly what is, you know, what is being proposed, even though I agree with what's being proposed, but I just don't have the wording in front of me. I understand. Mayor, did you unclick? I clicked. Council Member Horland said what I said. It sounds like there's a problem in just the basic part of saying, do we want to move that line? Which I find interesting because if I'm right, Mr. Lestrom, you've already had outreach meetings with the public about this 8601, and people have been approved and everything, and I've got to call you out a little bit in this relationship. So the public knows about this, and they've seen actual things, but council hasn't. Is that where we are? Come on, man. Community meeting. Okay. You guys should see it. I've seen it, and I think it's a good plan, obviously. Obviously, it can be picked on and can be improved in everything. Okay. So I'm surprised that you haven't seen it, and you don't know the details. So I don't blame you all for what's going down now. They should not have seen it at this point in time. Fair enough. Yeah, yeah. Council Member Andrea. So if Council Member Horland's motion has died because it didn't get a second, I would like to make a new motion to table item number 18, right? Yes. Number 18 to a time uncertain. I can do uncertain, right? It doesn't have to be time specific. That is my motion. Okay. Council Member Horland. Before you made that motion, I was just going to say what I'm confused about is if we – I don't want to further delay this, not necessarily for the applicant, but just for the work that it's causing. We've had other first readings where we have approved a first reading and said, please delete this portion, and then it comes back in its new form in the second reading. So I'm not quite sure where we're going to go to a third reading. If we're asking tonight, saying we're going to approve the extension of the boundary line, take out the height restriction, why are we going to make staff come back two more times with that? That's what I'm confused about. So you want to – well, you haven't withdrawn here. No, I haven't withdrawn it because discussion ensued. So my question would be if the motion, my original motion stood, that we are removing the height requirement, we're extending the boundary, and then it comes back in its new form, I don't know that it's substantially going to be – It can still be voted down on the second reading. Sure, but I guess what I'm asking is, Council Member Reinstein was concerned about reading the whole thing. We would have the opportunity. You're just really removing the part about the height requirement. Everything else would be substantially the same. Right, everything else would remain – So I'm just – Second your motion. Okay. I'm just trying to avoid that third step. Council Member Horland had a motion that we were still discussing, so it didn't really die yet. So it was the second purported motion was if her motion had died, so the discussion now is that motion hadn't died yet. There was just discussion on the motion, so it was just part of the discussion. I will withdraw my motion. You're trying to put a hit out on me there. Okay. So that is my – I'm just trying to get to efficiency here so we're not delaying this for a third time. I think that we can take the concerns for the – to the second reading, and then it can be voted up or down at that point in time. This will just proceed to the second reading, so we don't have to have three readings on this. And that's what I was trying to get to is just from an efficiency point. Thank you. Council Member Reinstein. Yeah, I – while Mr. Leystrom was seated, I thought I saw him say from his seat that he's not concerned about the timing. He's not. So giving us an opportunity to – and while it's correct, Council Member Horland, that we have at times approved changes to a first reading without seeing the full version of it, it seems to me this is one that I'd like to see the full version of. Okay. So we have a motion and a second. We've taken public comment. Ms. Becker, please call the roll. Council Member Reinstein. No. Council Member Horland. Yes. Council Member Anderson. Yes. Council Member Andreyu. No. Council Member Fajan. Yes. Thank you. Item 19, PP240012, public hearing first reading of an ordinance. City Attorney Morgan, please read it. Public hearing first reading of an ordinance of the City of Plantation, Florida, pertaining to the subject of zoning and land development, amending Chapter 27, City Code of Ordinances, specifically amending Section 27-100 to add self-storage as a conditional use within the OPP zoning district, amending portions of Section 27-105 sub-AA sub-1, entitled Self-Storage Facility, providing for additional amendments to maintain consistency with the Code for Self-Storage Facilities, amending the physical and digital versions of land development regulations, providing for codification, providing for servility, providing for savings calls, providing for conflicts, and providing for an effective date. Please proceed. Mike Leveler, Assistant Director. So this is a text amendment to the Code, the Master Business List of Section 27-100 and 27-105-AA1, which are the regulations, the current regulations for self-storage facility. The basic premise here is to allow self-storage as a conditional use in the OPP, Office Park Plantation District. So this is also an applicant-requested code amendment, but staff has a version that's slightly different. So you can see on this map the blue, the light blue in the middle of the circle is the property that the applicant is looking at developing the self-storage facility on. This map shows the location of all the self-storage facilities in the city. The red dots are the ones that were approved before our last amendment to the self-storage regulations. And then the blue ones are the ones that were approved after that amendment. We also here show a one-mile and a half-mile buffer. So the half-mile buffer, 2,500 feet, where if one is located within this OPP district, the current ordinance before you is to restrict it to so the next one could not be closer than 2,500 feet to the other one. Whereas the larger circle shows a one-mile radius. So if we approve it with a 2,500-foot radius, it would potentially allow two self-storage, the second one being near State Route 84. If we approve it with a larger radius, it would essentially be the only one that could be approved with these standards. So the change is to allow it as a conditional use in OPP. These are the districts where it's currently allowed either by right or by conditional use. And this map shows the different districts that currently allow it. The one in blue is OPP, and it currently does not allow it. So the amendments to the regulations include allowing the use in OPP subject to the minimum distance separation of 2,500 feet from another self-storage use. And sorry to tell you another one about height. Allowing five stories, but only in the OPP, as recommended by our Planning and Zoning Board, currently allows four stories. Requiring conformance with high-quality architectural standards. And maintaining and or requiring perimeter landscape buffers with a minimum buffer width of at least 40 feet. So just some examples of some interesting architectural types. Self-storage has one of those stigmas from the past of being very ugly buildings, but in the last two or three decades, they've come a long way in improving appearance. Application was reviewed by the Development Review Committee on May 28th with a recommendation of approval with conditions that were embedded into the staff's version of these ordinance. And on July 16th, the Planning and Zoning Board recommended approval. So staff recommends approval. And the applicant is here as well. Council Member Reinstein? Can you talk about the regulating the separation distance? Why 2,500 or any other number? Why are we regulating that distance? Are you asking for it? Sure. I just want to go back to the map. The regulations that were adopted in 2015 pretty much asked that new self-storage is, for example, there's one on Clery Boulevard. That's a red dot there. And that one's been there a long time. Not a very attractive building, by the way. So the ordinance that's currently in place kind of moved these uses to the perimeters of the city. So you see a lot of them around State Road 7, Sunrise Boulevard. There's one out west off of Flamingo. And there's a few that's more in the central part of the city, but those were pre-ordinates. We talked about, earlier tonight, we talked about having office buildings and writing for residential. This is not an office building. This is a use that we don't necessarily want to proliferate. But the applicant makes an argument for, well, with apartments being built, there's a market for having some self-storage. And that's why staff is supporting essentially having some within the OPP, near some of the apartment buildings and so forth. So the reason for the distance separation is not to necessarily proliferate it because, as I believe Councilman Anderson brought up, we want to make sure we have not just room for apartments but also Class A office space and other types of uses as well. Maybe I'll ask the question differently. Is that I understand seeing it on the periphery, right? I understand that we want these type of use on the periphery. I understand that we don't want to see a proliferation of them generally as to how we want to see our community. But why controlling the separation distance as part of an ordinance as distinct from looking at each request on its own? I mean, you know, if there's somebody who comes in and says that they believe they could be, that there's a need, that they could be profitable, and I guess capitalism at work, right, and wants to be within the 20, within that boundary that you're creating, why is the city determining a 2,500 separation distance? Because you're not saying that they have to be on the periphery, and you're not saying that we only want a maximum of 10 in the entirety of the city. You're saying you don't want almost competition nearby. Why are we saying that? I think it has to do with the same reason like we have a buffer for liquor stores. Yes, exactly. We don't want to turn the Midtown District into a warehouse district because they're going to be building right next door to each other. Looking at this radius, the only other place that it could go is south of Peters Road, basically, right? Correct. But if there wasn't a separation distance included in this ordinance, we could determine that the next one that is asking to, you know, for some kind of approval that it doesn't fit and we don't approve it on its own. I think that's hard. If we don't have a separation distance, then we will probably see more proposals for this in the OPP. So having this in the code, you can always ask for a waiver. So say we have two already and another landowner wants to build one but it's less than 2,500 feet away, they would need a waiver and then you would be able to consider that waiver. And as Councilman Fadgen pointed out, yes, there are certain uses that we have. Distance separations for liquor stores, one of them. Councilmember Andreu? This would be number 12, correct, in our city? Number 12. I believe so, yes. Okay, thank you. Councilmember Horland? Thank you, Mr. President. I actually like the 2,500 feet because we don't want to see a proliferation of these, but they are needed with the amount of density we have in that midtown area. I know there was a comment made at Plenty and Zoning, and it may have even been Mr. Korman, and Mr. Korman has made the point before about we should be requiring the developers to build more storage. And that's just not happening. And I think if it's going to come down to building more storage or building an affordable unit, I'd rather have the affordable unit. So there is a need for this. I did look at the five stories and gave me a little bit of pause, but I think it's consistent with that area because we have larger apartment buildings, we have office buildings, so I do think it's consistent for the area. If they have the fifth story, then perhaps we won't need an extra facility so quickly. So I'm actually okay with this. So this is being proposed for six, the applicants on six, is it sixth court? No, it's five stories. It's currently in the code. Oh, yes, sorry, sixth street. Sixth street, okay. So on that street, what's the tallest building on that street? I believe four stories. Four stories. See, I don't like the five stories. In the market state, it says customer remembers the manager, not necessarily the brand. So what's the applicant's experience in the market, in the industry? Is it their first go or do they have other facilities? You want to answer that? And, again, this one is kind of, I call it different than the last one we just talked about, Bill Lastrom on behalf of the applicant. And so the applicant came to me and said, hey, this area, as you can see from the map, doesn't have any self-storage in the immediate area to be nearby. And so when we looked at the area, what we determined was is that this would be a good place within a short distance, not just for the residential apartments, but also for small commercial businesses that need a place to store. They're going to have their holiday decorations. They're going to have their, the one time they have an outdoor event where they have chairs. You end up with all sorts of opportunity for that. And council president, I have to keep looking at your titles there. Council president, I have not inquired of my client. We assumed that we would actually do that during, I mean, I usually do that as part of my prep. I'll have to be back for my conditional use approval, my site plan approval. And I was just trying to get a feel through this ordinance of whether the city council was okay with the one. And again, I put the distance in for the city because I anticipated the city would want it. It is not an economic, not intended to be an economic barrier on our part, where whatever you decide on that distance is, is fine with us. So my answer is I'd have to get back to you on that. I, you know, I'm very concerned about the Midtown, like this space getting gobbled up. Like we're talking about office space. I think that office space is not dead. I think it's, it has to go through a reimagining and a rebirth and an adjustment to what the marketplace wants. And I'm concerned that if we don't, if, if we go with this, if we do approve this, the buffer is a necessity because we want to control like what's going to go in there. So if the buffer wasn't there, I would certainly not be in agreement with it because I'd be very concerned that in the blink of an eye there, you know, once you approve one without that buffer or no restriction, like how do you say no to the next person with, you know, without impeding their property rights. So I don't like the five stories. I don't think it's the, you know, it's like one of the things in the market study says recommending high visibility. Well, if you have a five story building and that orange trim and it seems like they all have that orange trim, no matter who they are, U-Haul, the other, other competitors in the market. The staff had your same concern and had put in, I call it architectural strength that is not probably located anywhere else. I would much prefer to, you know, agree with what's already on 6th Street. You know, now there might be taller buildings just to the east of it, but if four stories is the tallest building on, on 6th, I think it would be this big giant cube or Lego block on 6th Street. So I don't think I'm for the fifth, the fifth thing. So this is saying like there, there's no loading bays. This is, you know, like no garage doors on the outside. You have to kind of go inside and take care of your business. Correct. It's not going to have your, usually on the first floor, where a lot of these facilities have to roll up doors, it would not have that in this, in this situation. So if I'm looking at this right, and I think I've already said this, but if someone else wanted to come in, really they could only go south of Peters Road, right? Because there's really nowhere north of Broward with the hospital. And only in OPP, which literally is those two, I call them the Kemper buildings from years ago, with the two, literally those two office buildings that are, have already been in front of you for the Water's Edge project. Are you going to say something? That's the area. The area shaded in green on the map. That's what we're talking about. So, okay. And what, the markets today said this, like what's, the occupancy was above the existing units. What was the occupancy? Do you remember that percentage? It was over 80% in the market study that was included in the backup. You know, and then there's that, you know, there's that one that's under construction. How is that going to have an effect on the, on the market that's coming up in quasi-judicial? I forget how many units is in that, that, that thing. Is that in consideration of the utilization of the space? Well, typically for our self-storage applications, when we come in with the conditional use, we'll do an updated market study. Again, I put that together just because I was convinced that there's, it's a good location from a, because there wasn't much there and there's a, the way we're developing it's probably the need. So I put the market study in there. We'll add in all the facilities that are either approved. If staff gives us one that's just being, has been proposed, we'll include that in an updated market study for you as part of our conditional use application. I think my big thing would be, I would not want it to be more than four stories. So is there any other comments from the dais? Council Member Anderson? Yes, it's odd that I'm saying this, but self-storage has almost no cars, almost no impact. You're getting highest and best use. I don't have, I don't necessarily, and you have almost no residential anywhere near there. This is a place where it's actually not a big deal to go a story higher. You're not asking for more cars. I mean, not appreciable storage. You only go every so often. So I'd like to know the sentiments of others. Oh, I think the thing, if I may, that's important to note, that you mentioned just a cube there. And I think that staff has already said that it's going to, we're putting architectural requirements in there. So it's not going to look like some of the other ones that have been approved in the city prior. So perhaps Mr. Alpert wants to expound upon that. Of course, that's what I would not allow it unless it was like that. I agree with your comment on the traffic of the to and go. It's kind of a passive kind of building. I'm just saying this big block that's going to be a story higher than any other building that's on 6th is really what my concern is. Now, if it was sort of hidden between, like, the apartment building, it's midtown, what's that called, midtown 24 or something? Midtown 24. That would be a little bit different. But on 6th, to have, like, a windowless with nice facade, no orange, I just think it would be a block. We put the whole idea of the architectural is to have windows and. . . You're not a rookie. No, I just get out talking sometimes. So the whole idea here is to mask it. We actually manage and own the office building next to us. So our intent is to actually incorporate those architect, the same architectural style to try to make it, to make it look like an office. And to the extent that when you see our site plan, you think our faux windows don't look like windows. They will look like windows. But, you know, call us out on it. But, again, I think we can make the building look fine. And remember, the end of 6th is midtown 24 at 12 stories. I mean, you're basically one building away from those for the law offices. And then what, to the north is the corner of Pine Island Fields and then the Broward Mall, the Contour Spa and then Broward Mall. Right. Right. Can you, weren't there a few other examples, tarpon bend storage, a few other, just to show, you know, those are storage buildings. I see some windows. These are just examples. But the intent. . . I was going to say, take a poll on which one, and I'll deliver it. The intent is to look like the building next to it and look like it's an office building. And they could even wrap it with other things, too. Okay. Yeah. There's also ways, architecturally, to make a five-story building look like three stories. If you put banding in certain places, it's all about perspective. The actual hike that's right next door to that. Yep. Okay. Mr. Corman. I need an extra couple on this one. Okay. Rob Corman, 11095 White Hawk Street. Again, I'm coming to you kind of to give you the play-by-play from the planning and zoning meeting. This also is not a unanimous vote. Part of the problem in certain elements of that market study that were included, there are pages there that talk about the radii and the number of storage units that are located within those radii. In addition to that, some of the elements that were talked about and almost highlighted when this was coming up was the idea of sustainability and the fact that residences are shrinking and people need places to store stuff. And as such, if it is closer to those residences, it will facilitate fewer car trips, except nobody is actually taking a couch and putting it on a dolly and walking from a storage facility back to their residence. Likewise, all those chairs that are mentioned by the applicant and the Christmas decorations are not being walked in 95-degree heat, potentially with rain, back and forth. So the sustainability argument for a storage facility in Midtown is a fallacious one, because if you go to the two-and-a-half-mile radius that's included within your packet, you'll notice that there are several tens of thousands of surplus units available. Most of those units, yes, are not within the city. They are south of the city in Davie, but a car doesn't care which direction it goes, and it doesn't ultimately benefit us as a city, which comes back to Councilmember Anderson's issue before, which is the idea of Class A office space. And something you have heard me mention prior, earlier tonight even, without a comp plan that is in place to know what we want to do with the OPP, it's very difficult to decide what elements we want to go in here. So the fundamental question in front of you tonight is whether or not to allow storage facilities as a conditional use within the OPP. It doesn't have to do with the site plan of it. It doesn't have to do with matching the buildings next to it. It doesn't have to do with the height. It doesn't have to do with anything else, although the height is an element of this particular approval because it would allow storage facilities to go to five stories within the OPP. Yes, a boundary ring that is 2,500 feet, roughly a half a mile, the purple ring that was put up there, is an effective deterrent from putting another facility within the OPP. But it doesn't answer the question of whether or not you want that particular element in the office park, because it doesn't function as an office park. We had a long discussion about whether or not to rename six Jazzwares way, because they just went into the building right across the street. We try really hard to get 500 office workers into that space. I ask, what would Jazzwares have said to that space if there was a storage facility across from it? Now, I get that it might have been a nice storage facility, but the question is, when you are trying to draw people in, yes, certain businesses might like the idea of having storage available, but it might not guarantee that they want to be right next door to it, and it is going to be put roughly in the parking lot between the Balfour Beatty building and that one-story building next to it. So the one-story building that currently has separation issues of scale that Mr. Alpert was talking about are going to be thrown off by having a larger structure next to it, no matter how you distort the scale of the fascia of that building to make it look like three stories. So what I am imploring you to do is to consider the nature of what this conditional use is doing to the OPP without us having an idea of what we want the OPP to be, because Class A office space can be built, it can be developed, can be redeveloped if any of those buildings decide to change ownership, but as far as what that designation is, the feeling was not mutual or was not unanimous on the Planning and Zoning Board that that is a good use for the OPP. So without that comp plan and without thinking of those things or having the answers to those things, I encourage you to say no to this one just because you can't pull it back at that point. And this particular piece of legislation, this particular conditional use, is being put forth by a developer for a specific reason. You have to think beyond that to the entirety of that district and the entirety of that zoning area. Thank you. Thank you. Is there any other comments from the Chamber? Do I have a motion? Motion to approve. Second. Ms. Beggarra, please call the roll. Council Member Reinstein. No. Member Orland. Yes. Council Member Anderson. No. Council Member Andreu. No. Council Member Fajan. No. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Quasi-judicial. City Attorney Morgan, please read the procedures for quasi-judicial hearing. Quasi-judicial proceedings. The City Clerk will swore in 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 presentation from the applicant and the affected parties and the public. The elected officials may set a reasonable time limits for speakers. The hearing will be then closed and the matter decided. The City Council's decision will be delineated in its motion and written in the writing by way of a development order resolution or ordinance evidencing its decision. The City Council may also decide to continue the matter to a designated time to allow for additional research or review. Thank you. Ms. Beggarow, can you swear in all who wish to speak during quasi? Yes, please. Everybody that wishes to speak, please stand and raise your right hand. Okay. 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? Yes. Thank you very much. Okay, item 20, PP-24-0021, consideration of a request to approve a signed special exception for extra space storage properties located at 1481 Northwest 65th Avenue and zoned ILP Light Industrial. Mr. Holmes. Okay. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chair. This is application PP-24-0021, which is a request by extra space storage. It's a request to allow a sidewall sign to exceed the maximum permitted square footage for single establishments with street frontage between 300 and 500 lineal feet. The location is 1480 Northwest 66th Avenue. It's located within the city's industrial park right along, right off of Sunrise. The agent for the request is Santiago Hernandez-Pazaro. The size of the property is approximately 2.0 acres. Underlying zoning is the ILP, Light Industrial District, and the existing use is a self-storage facility, which is currently under construction. The area is characterized, of course, it's in the industrial district, so industrial warehouses uses to the north. It's adjacent on the west to northwest 66th Avenue, and on the south by a more industrial warehouse uses, and on the east by northwest 65th Avenue. This sort of gives you perspective. This is West Sunrise Boulevard here, and this is the site. This building has been demolished, and as we indicated, the building is actually under construction at this time. Just to give you some background information, like I said, the building that's under construction is a new 124,860 square foot self-storage facility. It was approved previously by the city under application PP22-0017. The property is considered a single establishment with street frontage from 300 to 500 lineal feet pursuant to the city's sign code. Basically, single establishments are permitted one 48-square-foot monument ground sign, one 100-foot front building wall sign, and a 50-square-foot side or rear building sign. So the applicant is proposing two signs on the building. The sign that would be located on the front of the building here is proposed at 97 square feet pursuant to the code. This is under the 100 square feet. The subject of this application is the sign that's located on the north side of the building, which is a sidewall sign. Again, as indicated under the code, the permitted square footage for a sidewall sign is 50 square feet, and they're proposing a second sign on this facade at 97 square feet, which is pretty much tantamount to the sign that they're proposing on the front of the building, also at 97 square feet. This is sort of a picture of the building as under construction. So this is typically the front of the building here. This is the one at 97, which would be permitted with the allowable square footage at 100. So the sign that would be proposed here would be the one that they're seeking the special exception for at 97 square feet as well, which is only permitted 50 square feet under the code. The proposed sign, as I indicated, they're complementary signs to one another. Staff is recommending that the sign be a flush-mounted sign as opposed to a raceway sign that they proposed. And this shows you the north elevation. Again, this is the sign A, which is the one that they're requesting the sign special exception for. And this is the west facade of the building, which is the B sign, which is permitted and falls within the 100 square feet. Staff recommends approval. Happy to answer any questions. You're recommending a raceway sign? We're recommending that they not be permitted to utilize a raceway. What's a raceway sign? A raceway is just a piece that they place on the building and then place the sign on that raceway. It's like a little metal piece usually. We're recommending that the sign be flush-mounted to the wall as opposed to placed on the raceway. Judding out. Yes. Okay. Is there any questions? The address is 8320? Is that the address of the building? The address, what did I just say? I'm trying to remember. 1481 Northwest 65th Avenue. Yeah, 1481 Northwest 65th Avenue. This is, just to give you, this is West Sunrise Boulevard here. And this is the location here. So this was a storage unit previously? No, this was, yeah, it was an extermination building. That's correct. I'm asking because this doesn't align to our previous presentation. To your previous presentation on, this is a different zoning district, if that's what you're, within the industrial district? I don't, what's the question? I don't know if I'm at liberty to really go back, attorney. But the, well, you can ask them what the question is. I'm not sure what it is. The diagram that we just reviewed in the previous item doesn't align with this. That's why I was concerned about the address. The legislative item? It's number four. Right. But then that said plantation self-storage. And this is extra space storage, correct? That's all. I was just saying, that's why I'm trying to figure it out. The application was under plantation self-storage. I'm sorry, I wasn't understanding your question yet. You wanted him to identify himself. Yeah, and I believe he had stepped out when they were swearing in witnesses. Were you sworn in? No, sir, I was not. Can we swear him in? Oh, okay. Raise your right hand, please. Do you swear or affirm that the evidence you're about to give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? I do. Thank you. Okay, if you want to come on up, identify yourself, and then state that you understand the rules of the proceedings, and then you can say what you just said. I do. I apologize. I was in here for three hours, and I lost my mind for a second. So, yes, my apologies. I'm Robert Bishop. I'm with Compson Development. We're the owner and developer of the property. I understand the rules and what I will tell. So just restate what you just said. Yes, and what I said was when we first came in with our application, it was under plantation self-storage because we had not chosen our operator at that point. And then along the way, it was amended to extra space. And then there's a little bit of confusion on the address because the city asked us to amend the address when we went in because it does go between both streets. There was two entrances into the property. So there is a different address now than there was in the original application. Very good. Thank you. Good catch. Any other questions? Nothing from the DAIS. Anybody from the chamber? Mr. Corman? I promise this one will be quick. Rob Corman, I understand the rules. You know how I feel about our signed code and exemptions to it? Believe it or not, I actually like this one as long as it's flush-mounted because it does provide an element of symmetry, and it actually fits the space on the top end of those walls in both directions really, really well. So I have no objection to this one. Very good. Anybody? Anyone else from the chamber? Can I have a motion? Motion to approve. Second. Ms. Beggro, please call the roll. Council Member Reinstein? Yes. Council Member Horland? Yes. Council Member Anderson? Yes. Council Member Andreu? Yes. Council Member Fechman? Yes. Okay, item 21, PP-240022, consideration of a request to amend the conditions of approval for the Toy Beauty Academy. The property is located at 9739 West Broward Boulevard in Zone B-2P Central Business. Okay. It's indicated this is an application to amend the conditions that were approved for the Toy Beauty Academy. You may recall previously, back in January, that a use variance in a parking waiver was approved for this site under application PP-23-0054. This is the general location of the property, 9739 West Broward Boulevard within the Central Park Plaza. The agent for this is John Voigt. Size of property is approximately 4.6 acres. Underlying zoning, B-2P, the existing use is a commercial shopping center. Underlying land use is also commercial. Adjacent zoning districts are PRD-15Q and PRD-25Q. The area, as you can see here, to the north is characterized primarily by residential use. To the north is Chelsea at Jacaranda. To the east is Central Park Place. To the south are Somerset and Jacaranda, Somerset of Jacaranda and Fountains of Jacaranda. And also to the west is the Chatham Town Residential Development. So just some background, just to go back to January 10, 2024, the city council voted to approve a use variance and a parking waiver for the Toy Beauty Academy. The conditions that were put in place at that time when that approval went into place was that the applicant was required to restore six parking stalls that were converted into walkways to accommodate the movement of grocery carts for the previous doors market grocery store. Because that was done without appropriate permits or what have you, it was recommended at that time that those parking spaces be restored. And that was one of the conditions that the application was approved under. The applicant has now come back. There's some concern with the property management or the shopping center indicating that they'd like to have those back to facilitate safer pedestrian movement throughout the parking lot. So they're now requesting that that condition be removed from the previous approval. You will remember that there was the parking variance. This will not affect the parking variance. Just want to point that out. The parking will not change. And it does not, of course, affect the previous use approval. So we're just dealing with the condition of approval here. This kind of shows the locations of the six parking stalls that were removed. You can even see here on this some of the walkways that were put in place. And this kind of shows you also a visual of the walkways that were put in place when the Doris Market was there. Staff has not received any written citizen comments at this time. We do note that there are two code violations on the property. One is for lack of sight, maintenance, and care. And the other deals with the use of mulch for landscape beds. They had the wrong type of mulch that's there, so they have to replace that mulch. But they're very minor in detail, so staff would recommend approval. We think we can deal with the code enforcement matters through the code enforcement process. Mayor Sortel. The code enforcement, though, is not about the Toy Academy. It's about the overall property management, correct? Yeah. That's correct. You're not putting down mulch, are you? No. Okay. Yes. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Come on up. John Voight, the attorney. I was here for the Toy Academy, and this is one of the owners who was not here. And if we could go back to the aerial that showed there, right there, you see two of the blue spaces are not even, she owns the yellow, or the toy spies, but two of those are not even on her property. Right. And they have an association. You see every one of those others is a different owner, and those are condo medical. So we go tell her, yes, we didn't have a problem with it as a tenant, you know, and tell her, and she goes, well, we can't do this without getting the approval of all of the owners have to vote on this. They had a meeting, like, in February, and they said, no, we don't need six more spaces, and we would rather have the access through there. I think we all saw that in the backup. So I don't have any issue with – And what I was going to add, I was just at Code Enforcement July 18, and there were three owners there, and they said everything is done except the parking. There's still a violation because they can't give them a permit because their parking application doesn't include removing the six spaces. So it's been waiting now really since February, and my client's still not open for business. Well, I'm willing to make a motion to approve. Second. Okay, so Council Member Horland made the motion, Council Member Reinstein seconded it. I don't think we need any other comments. Is there – did you – is there any other discussion? Anybody else would like to speak to the matter? Seeing none, Ms. Beggro, please call the roll. Yes. Council Member Horland? Yes. Council Member Anderson? Yes. Council Member Andrew? Yes. Council Member Paget? Yes. Thank you very much. Thank you. All that for this. All right, Mr. Mayor. Thank you very much. As you all know, school is starting. It would be good if we could decide maybe today what schools we're going to so we could all not go to the same school for photo ops on the first day. Well, did everybody fill out – I had filled out a request from Broward County Schools. I think we did that last year, too. I didn't see those requests. I mean, I didn't – Yeah, they – so I'm – I put down Central Park Elementary and then I'll pop over to MLE, Mirror Lake. I put down Central Park Elementary also right down the street from me. Okay. I'm going to go to Plantation Park. There's enough room for both of us. I'm going to Plantation High. Very good. Brave woman with the new regulations. New principal. Oh, there you go. And I'm not sure if you're aware that the superintendent will also be in our city. I'm not aware. No. Do we have a school in nine? I have another obligation that day, so. I did not fill out that form yet, but I was planning on going to Mirror Lake. But did you – Okay, you can go to Mirror Lake. I'll go to Central Park. You can go to Mirror Lake. Sure. Yeah, no problem. Okay. She sounds angry. No, I'm not angry. She would, Mirror Lake. Fine. Say the word fine and that would do a good – No, no, no, no. It's fine, Eric. No, you take Mirror Lake. I'll go to CPE. Thank you. A bigger thing is – well, a different thing. At our strategic planning session, you heard that we talked about our brand and had some conversations about logo and tagline and, you know, where this is going on. We're thinking about looking for a branding and marketing consultant. I think we're at the phase – when you compare the data that we got on the survey today with what we talked about strategic planning, I think bringing in a professional to evaluate everything. I can go through the – I could go through all the reasons here if you want to hear them, but I think you got the idea. And so if you have input, we'll want to hear it, and we'll proceed down that path and it'll come back to you because obviously if we're spending money on a consultant, you guys will be touching it, so that's coming down the line. That's it. Okay. Comments by council members. Council Member Reinstein. Thank you. So I don't normally talk about family vacations from the dais, but we did have a recent family vacation to Israel just last week, and while we were there, I was able to add in some city business. I wasn't sure the opportunity was going to present itself, but our council unanimously had passed two resolutions in regards to Israel, and we also had a proclamation in regards to Israel. And so I asked for authorization from the mayor and administration for copies of the two resolutions and the proclamation in case I had the opportunity while I was in Israel to present them in an official capacity, and it ended up happening while I was there and had a chance to actually go to the Israeli parliament, to the Knesset. And interesting is that the Knesset was out of session, but there was a committee, a joint committee that was meeting at that time. And we do have a bit of a video that we're going to show of the presentation. It's only about five minutes, but I want to add is that what you won't see in the video is that right before I was given the opportunity to present this on behalf of the City of Plantation, there were families of the hostages that were presenting in that committee. So we were, I was with my family, and we were present to hear the hostages' relatives talk about issues that were going on. And so we had a chance to make the presentation afterwards. I will say that the video that you're going to see is edited a little bit because there were some additional comments that were made, recognizing my family that was there as well. And there was a, another one, there were two chair people, because it was two committees, and one of the chair, one of the chairs only spoke in Hebrew. And so he didn't give the full translation, so I cut that part out for brevity. But with the, with your permission, I will ask the clerk to play the, I think it's about a five-minute clip so that you can hear the presentation before the Israeli Knesset. We have with, with us in this meeting, uh, Mr. Louis Reinstein, council member of the City of Plantation in Florida. Uh, Louis, uh, as part of his, uh, public actions, was the leader to bring into the City Council a few decisions to support Israel and to express your partnership with us. I will let you speak and elaborate on that after you will complete your message to the people of Israel and the Knesset. Please. Thank you, Chair Bitton. Thank you to the members of Knesset, Havret Knesset, and the committee for the opportunity to be with you here this morning, while I know you are very busy doing very important work for the country. My name is Louis Reinstein. I am a council member in the City of Plantation in South Florida. It is my great honor to be here on behalf of our mayor and my fellow council members, and on behalf of our almost 100,000 residents. I am here to say, anachnu omdim im Yisrael, anachnu omdim im Am Yisrael. We stand with Israel, and we stand with the people of Israel. I am here this morning to share that in the City of Plantation, we have come together to offer our full and unanimous support for the State of Israel and the people of Israel, and to say very clearly and very simply, you are not alone. We have made this support a part of the official records in our city on three occasions. In October, when we learned about the massacre and the invasion, and the very short-lived support from the world, we, the City of Plantation, passed a unanimous resolution in support of Israel. I want to read two lines for you this morning. The City of Plantation, the City Council supports Israel as it protects its citizens from the heinous crimes committed by the Hamas terrorists. And the City of Plantation, City Council supports Israel as it defends itself against the barbaric war launched by Hamas. And while not in that resolution, I would now add, and by Hezbollah. Then in January, we issued our second resolution, and we spoke out against the horrific rape and torture. We called out the silence from so many in the United States and world organizations, and the failure of the Red Cross. We again in our city said, if others will not speak, if others will not speak up, we will not be silent. I would like to read and share two lines from that resolution. The City of Plantation denounces the use of rape as a weapon of war. The City of Plantation expresses great disappointment in local, state, national, and international women's rights organizations for their silence. It is as if they forgot that MeToo includes Israeli women, and we cannot be silent. Finally, on behalf of the City of Plantation, I want to share with you today that we also issued a proclamation on May 14, 2024, for Yom Ha'atzma'ut, in celebration of Israel's 76th anniversary and Jewish American Heritage Month, which we were also celebrating. This proclamation was also in response to the protests and encampments in the United States on our once prestigious universities. Thus, in the proclamation, we stated, the most effective way to counter the increase in anti-Semitic actions is for communities like ours to say, we will not accept such hate in our city, and we believe there is no place for hate anywhere in the United States or in the world. Today, while I'm here from the City of Plantation, I believe we are one of many cities in the United States and around the world that stands with Israel. We stand with Israel on our right to self-defense and in our right to live with peace and security. So today, I present these official documents from the City of Plantation, and I ask that they become a part of your official record. And on behalf of the City of Plantation in the state of Florida, and on behalf of all of our residents, I say today, Am Yisrael Chai. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Luis. This is not only exciting, it is a meaningful moment that you did the effort and came from the state and brought this supportive attitude while we are here in our challenging moment. We would like also to show our appreciation and to express our gratitude to you as a leader in your city, to the City of Plantation, to the people of Florida, to the people of the United States, on behalf of the Chairman Taib, the Negev and Galil Committee, the Education Committee, this House, the members of Parliament that are with us now, and the people of Israel. We just want to say thank you for being an amazing partner and standing with us in this challenging moment with the family. The fact that you are supporting Israel in all what you do, it's meaningful. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. I'll just conclude and say that you have no idea how appreciative they were to hear from us, and despite that it's not something that a city usually references and is involved in, the people of Israel appreciated hearing the people of Plantation, and that this city council and the mayor offered their voice of support. Thank you very much. Thank you. Council Member Horland? Thank you. Thank you for representing us, Council Member Reinstein. And I just want to wish everyone a safe and happy back to school on Monday. Council Member Anderson? Kudos to Chief and all the supporting cast, but for your National Night Out was a big success. That's it? That's it. Oh, yes. Council Member Andreu? So I was going to ask Mayor Sortle, and he kind of gave me a little bit of a prequel already, but I wanted to know if we, as a city, if we're participating in the mayoral roundtable discussions with the Broward County Public Schools. Yes. I got some notes here. I'll give. So it started where Megan Turetsky with the school said Superintendent Hepburn was going to have a roundtable. It was a Sheridan technical, invited electeds from everywhere. And at the last minute, they also invited assistant city manager, so Laura came with me. I've got a good feeling about him in that he said right away, we're trying to strengthen the partnership between the city and the schools. And when it came down to the question of school repurposing, or whatever word you want to use, Hickson said, we want to do it right. We know it wasn't right the first time. So there's a little bit of confirmation on their part that it could be done better than the way they did. You know, Hepburn has his thing, Believe in Power, Achieve, One Broward, and you know, they talked about everything else, and they wanted, you know, the big one obviously is metal detectors in high schools and the cell phone policy. But he said it's something he's going to do another one in September, and he wants to hear the back and forth. My take on the guy is he doesn't mind being challenged. He can take criticism. He's comfortable knowing that he has a bombastic school board, because he made a comment. He goes, you know, you know how our school board meetings are. And so I think, I would like to think there's a new attitude coming in there. I mean, you think about it. We've been sitting up here. We've had four superintendents since we've been sitting here. So, but I got a good feeling about it. He's got the goods. How much you can turn around a battleship now, that's another question. But that's where I'm at on it. Questions? Thank you. I'm glad you all attended. Yeah, yeah. And also, just, I know it was mentioned earlier, but primary elections, August 20th. So early voting starts August 10th, the 18th, from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily. I know that we'll have it at West Regional Library. So we encourage everybody to go and let their voice be heard. Again, National Night Out was great last night. I wish you could control the humidity, Chief. But other than that, it was great. And the expansion of all of the new items I thought were excellent, especially the teddy bear. And last but not least, just want to also wish all of our students, teachers, and administrators support staff a great first day and a successful school year. I know that we're supposed to take photos and send them to Michelle. So we want to all do that on Monday as well. That concludes all of my announcements, President. Thank you. The only thing, great event last night, bigger and better. I think people got a little scared of the rain that never came. And then Chief promises he's going to order Arctic Blast next year, a little cooler. So with that, we are adjourned at 1020.