good evening and welcome the wednesday march 12 2025 city of plantation cra meeting which will be followed by our city council meeting is now called to order at 6 0 1 pm miss beggar please call the roll excuse me city council meeting starts and then take a break and then go i said following yeah okay yeah i'm still confused but thank you CRA meeting followed by the city council meeting no no no city council city council meeting CRA in the middle yes sorry thank you you're right sorry we're doing something a little bit different tonight and uh we had a workshop first so we're called order for the city council meeting thank you very much yes sorry i knew that was going to happen roll call please all right council member anderson here council member andrew here council member fadgen here council member horland here council member reinstein here mayor sorrell here here opening remarks council member fadgen thank you very much um i invited rabbi pink who was a proud 20 plus year resident of the city of plantation and he's rabbi of the chabad of east plantation to lead us in our invocation tonight so rabbi if you'd like to come on up in addition when he's done with the invocation i invited cub scouts from pac-817 that meet at st gregory's to lead us in the pledge so as soon as he's done you all come on up i'll call you up hi rabbi thank you mr mayor council members and members of the public yes please stand as a proud resident of plantation for over 21 years with my wife and children and a community rabbi here it's my honor to lead this invocation almighty god as we gather here today we seek your blessing in our daily lives and the decisions we make we look to the upcoming holiday of purim for inspiration jewish communities around the world this thursday evening on friday will be reading the book of esther known as megillat esther recounting how in ancient persia almost two and a half thousand years ago there was a plot to annihilate the jewish people instead of giving up their faith in god to try to exempt themselves from the decree they strengthened the trust in god and the performance of the commandments led by the leader mordechai miraculously god's blessing shone through and with the courage of queen esther the plot was foiled however it didn't end there due to the way the laws were structured in ancient persian those times it left the jews still susceptible to attack righteous gentiles stood shoulder to shoulder with their jewish neighbors and defeated those who chose the path of evil master of the universe we ask you to give us a heart to understand eyes to see and ears to hear to learn from the past to make the right choices and to reveal your presence in this world through acts of goodness and kindness and let us say amen all right if can the cub scouts come on up this is probably going to be the highlight of the meeting jason the light on hey when you order cub scouts this is what happens all right all right why don't each one of you come up to the mic there and say your name and tell us why you like the cub scouts who wants to go first who's not shy catch you all right i'm vincent and i like cub scouts because it's fun all right hi my name is julian and i like cub scouts because it's fun and my name is christian and the reason why i love cub scouts is because of all the things that you could learn in scouts and camping all right my name is joseph janey and i like cub scouts because of the honor to help the environment and other people great hi my name is jason i like cub scouts because i like all the camping trips we do awesome that's what i like hi my name is henry and i like cub scouts because i get to go camping awesome hi my name is jackson and i like to do cub scouts because i like to go camping and go on disney trips all right it's okay we have quinn robbins and one of our newly and crossed over aol's everybody with our blue scarves here they've recently crossed over to the troop and she you know is the member of our first 817 girls troop all right one last question for the camping the guys like camping what's your favorite camp out where you like to go disney now i remember disney when i was in the cub scouts and the boy scouts because that had the nice flush lawn to sleep on it and uh at the uh whatever camp wilderness right yeah that was like the hilton that's usually our end of year camp what's it what's one that you not disney one that's not camp elmore elmore what about camp daniel bean anybody you guys go up there yet haven't been there fish eating greek's another one that we like to go there you go awesome thank you everyone thank you thank you for joining us next we have up the items submitted by the mayor good evening everybody um our special guest tonight is uh alan zeman alan is a school board representative who covers the entire county so you're one of ours mike is yours you wanted to come give us an update welcome dr zeman welcome i did i wanted to come and give an update thank you uh for that i do represent broward county which includes plantation so it's great to uh to see you um i would like to do this more often um i get out and talk to fort lauderdale and pepper pines and deerfield beach and parkland and coral springs uh um because i believe we're all in the same game you know your kids are our kids and my kids are your kids and it's really important for us to uh think about these things denise and i serve on the briar planning council and it's a critical group because we get people from all over broward county from all walks of life private sector public sector and the like and we try and solve problems which is really enjoyable because of the kind of all y'all approach right which is everybody in broward county matters as your county-wide school board member i enjoy playing that role there's a few things i wanted to share with you today um some of it relates to upcoming legislation some of it has to do with your 9462 students in in plantation so let me start with repurposing and what i have is maybe three or four minutes of comments and i thought i'd answer any questions about interests that you have repurposing is real broward county has 33 more schools than we can possibly afford and the entire kind of issue is do we want to spend money on facility maintenance or do we want to spend money on academics and and mental health and social emotional learning and the like and we would much rather spend the money on that so we are going to go through the process over time it looks like the legislature is going to give us some help on that if you think closing schools is a good thing and spending more money on the kids and not on facility management this year they are kind of hell-bent on both the house and the set aside and mandating districts do that and so the draft legislation would get us to 90 which is the goal that we had said anyway and so that would be those same 33 to 40 schools closing out of 206 that's a lot of change i hope they give us some time to do it and i don't want to do it all in one year hillsborough county did that and it didn't end very well so that's where we are on that you'll probably be curious about specific schools if you want to call me about specific schools i'm happy to talk to you about it is it likely to affect plantation absolutely we can't close that number of schools without affecting a big city like plantation our goal though is to end with a better school system just one that has fewer buildings in general to that end i'm always fascinated by programmatic options that we don't hear about you know you guys know plantation parents and plantation students better than we ever will you have a great single district rep here for plantation but in reality we don't get enough information about things that matter to you we invented new river middle school's marine science program because the city came to us and said my god you're sitting on the new river why don't you do something with the new river marine science and for the past decades now at new river middle school it's made a big difference so please stay in touch with us on it it's hard to do that but if there's a school and you think that that school can emphasize something that would really do great for the community we'd love to know about that the second topic is cell phones a year ago as some of you know we banned cell phones from morning bell to afternoon bell we gave teachers the authority to allow students to use cell phones either for safety issues or for instructional purposes and the like that has gone very well fights are down 17 percent in broward county schools county-wide and thankfully which gets me to my third topic our academic performance last year was phenomenal and made us an a-rated district our results halfway through this year are better so this year we are going to go from 43 c-rated elementary schools to a number significantly lower than that maybe significantly lower than that and we are within striking distance in two years of having a and b schools only in broward county so the push that through dr hepburn and other senior staff has really paid some big dividends and we're excited to see that our model though has led the house and the senate to introduce a new bill that would be statewide so it looks like and that has 30 plus co-sponsors already and so it looks like the state of florida will move forward with a bell-to-bell restriction i hope they have the instructor option as well to give people the authority to allow kids to use school allowed to use phones when it make great sense the last thing that is on my list i just have to talk to you about uh particularly this week which has been a tough week for us we lost a student to a self-inflicted gunshot wound on monday night it's not the first suicide bar county this year the number of suicides the number and frequency of suicidal ideation the mental illness of teenagers in this country is staggering 20 percent of high school students in this country will tell you how they will commit suicide 10 of high school students in this country have tried and thankfully the success rate is is pretty low but we are in a national crisis on mental health the broward county has adopted a new plan we lead the nation in safety and security you know which you might expect after a horrific incident like marjory stoneman douglas but we would like to take that kind of best in the country uh strategy and apply it to mental health we would like to be the school district that figures out how to bend this curve back but right now the kids in plantation the kids in broward county are hurting and we're going to continue to do everything that we can i've got an hour-long meeting tomorrow with the superintendent to introduce some new metrics and some new strategic initiatives to make that the case so those are kind of the highlights in broward county closings are real i'm sorry the last point is a very local thing but i sure would love your help on this one um is anybody in the audience think it's a bad idea to give away an empty seat on a bus i didn't think so because i've done that survey a thousand times now and i haven't had one person come back and say that's a bad idea but kids that live one and a half or 1.8 miles from school right now do not get an easy path to get that empty seat many of us think that that empty seat ought to be available on day one has a tremendous impact on the number of cars in the car line blocking your traffic has a tremendous impact on traffic itself it also allows parents guardians foster parents an opportunity to not have to drive their kids through traffic on the way to school on the way back we are caught up in that process right now if you care about that and you want to call your school board member or you want to call the superintendent um it would really be great i just think that traffic implantation is bad the traffic where i live is bad the traffic in pembroke pines is bad we have had some very active city commissioners and mayors that will reach out to school board members and that has led us to kind of start make some changes in that regard but i don't understand why a school bus with 84 seats pulls up to the last stop and has 14 kids in it and i know there's kids that live close to that two mile zone and they would really like to get on that bus and use it throughout the year for all those community benefits i talked about so my only activist plea for you guys to help me would be to please let your elected reps on my board know how important that is subject to your questions that's all i wanted to present with you tonight but i hope to answer any questions you have thank you very much dr zeeman do we have any questions from the dais okay yes council member uh andrea thank you president reinstein thank you so much dr zeeman for coming here tonight and sharing with us um i do want to make sure you're aware that our mayor did send the superintendent a letter regarding the um lot that is uh school board owned property on broward and hiatus and that the city might have the right of first refusal on that land if it is up for sale so just in case you hadn't heard wanted to make sure that you were aware of that um it's unlikely the mayor does anything related to school that i don't hear about um which is a real compliment to to his um ability to communicate um uh i think you know we have to figure out the county and municipal relationships in a way that works for everybody that's that's my whole point is your kids my kids my land your land uh i view public land as belonging to the people not belonging to the city the county the railroad the federal judicial system and the like and we need to figure out how to allocate that land back to the people who paid for it so that it provides the greatest value to us um so i will look at that letter and um and and very likely uh hear more about it from your mayor or you or others and and i welcome that i really enjoy those conversations so that we can get to better uh solutions for our whole community thank one for howard i thought you were going to say that he wrote a letter about school bus seats i was like yes yes i love that's not just yet uh councilmemory anderson behind schedule councilmemory anderson hi dr zeman thanks for coming out good to see you good great uh the empty seat i pushed that for years as a principal but it was me to the transportation department not the way you're doing and i assume you're the one pushing because you're asking us to get with the constituents i i think any taxpayer would would want a utilization of the bus is already rolling for the kids that deserve the bus and require the bus beyond two miles why not fill it with the rest of the way um and it's currently i think at least last i read it was october when they opened the empty seat so you want to push for day one i would just hope there would be a provision if any kids that did qualify for the bus wanted to start later on that you maybe have a first come first serve and if you're like number 84 then they get bumped off to let the kid that deserves it but that way it's a win-win all the way around you know one you know no one gets excluded and will utilize the entire capacity i have often taken advice from you but in this particular case we got that same advice from many of our principles and so that provision is in what we've proposed the biggest issue is that the world has gotten used to atms and ubers and lifts and you know kind of mobile deposits and just kind of the creature comforts of the digital world and so it's not out of the realm of what they expect to think that they could have a broward uber you know app what we call bruber on their phone and it gives you a seat for a week so when a new kid does show up it could be that the last person has bounced out um it's just frustrating we we spend 105 million dollars a year busing kids it is roughly two thousand dollars per kid per year and there are other smaller counties in florida that have already moved forward on this and i i'm a pretty competitive guy i hate being third but there are other counties that have done it the reason that's important is because it's feasible right it's out there no one's done the app yet though so if we do the bruber app so everybody can find out we have a great app for here comes the bus you know if you uh like me i skateboard every morning to the bus stop on the corner with my two twins the 10 year olds and uh when we get there we hit the app called here comes the bus and it shows you where the bus is it's just great but people are used to that level of convenience and i think you know probably one of the challenges of our time is to beat back the skepticism about government performance you know where people's expectation the government is less than it is for other organizations and i think that's just wrong we should be better than them we have more nobility and the purpose of why we come to work every day whether it's a city or county or any government agency and we ought to reflect that in how we make decisions and how we do things that are on the cutting edge it's the government that invented the internet not the private sector right and many many other examples you know when we did gi bill at the end of world war ii it returned eight dollars to the economy every year for every dollar we spend and it's a miraculous program and so i believe that it is the challenge of our time for you and and for the school board how do we deliver government services that are better than what people expect not and more cost effective and i'm sure you saw this i know you're a very intelligent guy but the the soft cost you're talking about transportation saving you know but it saves the parent the gas it saves the soft cost of the school having long car lines that stretch out into the street and impede traffic safer because you have less pedestrians interfering with cars just there's this a litany of soft things that you say by doing that's a great it's a great move well the other thing i'd like principal anderson is uh which is the way i've always known you um is that kids that that play together in their community one's two miles and one's 1.8 mile for their school get to get on the same bus that play together all afternoon and they get to spend some time together and spend some time on the way home my vision for this next year would be to take those kids to a public school or a public charter so that extends the benefit all those things you talked about to taking a neighborhood of kids dropping them off at one or two schools including public charter schools and the public charter schools are dying to kind of do that combined uh transportation model because they get hit really hard their their size is so small that their cost is significantly more than two thousand dollars per person um but if we all just you know throw our money in and have fewer buses that extends all those benefits for traffic and for parents but i just love the idea of kids playing together getting on a bus someone jumps off at one of them you know the district public schools and someone else you know five other kids go around the corner to a public charter uh why can't we do good things for our community and kind of exceed uh the expectations that people have for us dr zeman the mayor has a question uh quick update yes sir um we sent that letter to superintendent hepburn's office and that day his office responded and booked the uh discussion with us they responded like that which is really impressive um pam set it up jason and i are going to do a zoom with superintendent and we looped in hawks landing president let him know kind of just what the talks about and and uh and he's with us on it so um it's exciting that's howard calling me right now so there you go i must have you got in trouble for something again there you go i'm tickled with that but i think you'll find with dr hepburn and he's not on my phone so he's not hearing this um you know we stole a great leader from paul beach county uh we saw two leaders from paul beach county the one that we're with right now impresses me every day and um it's not just his intelligence and his ability to make decisions on the fly it's his commitment to work it's his commitment to building people is like insane desire to be the superintendent of the best school district in the country and uh we're about to renegotiate his contract i suspect that you'll hear some record-breaking numbers and some record breaking conditions uh he asked for six vote super majority he may end up with nine you know that it'll take nine people to fire him or something he's he's really terrific um and i i really enjoy working with him there is absolutely zero friction on a school board in briar county which ought to make the news every day you know good news rarely makes the front page uh but the great news is that there's nine people working in concert together with the superintendent and senior staff to try and deliver world-class education thank you very much thank you all mayor you have another item you guys can clap for dr zeman if you want oh you come here we're supposed to get people love come to plantation next up a roof about a plantation we have your proclamation here rabbi posner did you want to join the mayor rabbi pink often you're going to get a microphone exactly so i'll read the proclamation and then we might explain to people what it is and why we're doing it okay here's the proclamation we have and then we'll explain the meaning behind it whereas in accordance with the jewish religion the laws of sabbath contain the commandment let no man go out of his place on the sabbath day whereas a person's place is defined by one specifying certain natural or artificial boundaries and two by mutual agreement whereas the mayor of city plantation has been petitioned by rabbi mindy posner of habada plantation on behalf of those of the orthodox jewish faith to allow the erection of such a boundary also known as an eruv within the boundaries described below and whereas the mayor plantation deems it to be in the public interest that those of its residents of the orthodox jewish faith for whom the petition has been presented be granted the rights now therefore i next sort of mayor of the city of plantation do you hereby proclaim that the public domain within the boundaries of the city plantation is hereby designated to be an air roof for the sole purpose of allowing members of the orthodox jewish faith to observe the sabbath and other jewish holy days within said boundaries in accordance with jewish religious law mazel tov one of you all might want to explain what it put it out with and it's a common thing in many common places right sure so as the proclamation said uh this is biblical based on um a verse which says that no man shall carry outside of the camp and therefore um on the sabbath if someone of the jewish faith who would like to keep the sabbath in the traditional way um would like to carry a water bottle when they walk to the synagogue as one of uh congress over here is so happy to hear or to push a stroller or anything else like that then we have to set up something called an a roof and this proclamation gives us you know jewish law has recognizes that um has to be done with all the official permissions and this is the city saying this is allowed and it basically signifies that the whole area of plantation is considered one um camp per se and that allows us to carry around and i just want to say this is not the first proclamation in 2001 um uh the then mayor um did a proclamation but it was a much smaller boundaries and thank god the community has grown um rabbi poser for chabad of the acres and chabad of east plantation so we're spreading out so it was a need to um expand it to the whole all the boundaries of plantation so thank you that's very good thank you council member andrea who's up council member andrea you have the next proclamation ms latchman if you can join me so for those who don't know march is our social work month and this is the second year that i have been fortunate to present the proclamation for social work month in honor of social work month and it reads as follows whereas social work month is celebrated annually in march to recognize the invaluable contributions of social workers to individuals families and communities and whereas the theme for social work 2025 is social work compassion and action and whereas social workers are dedicated professionals who advocate for social justice promote well-being and empower those in need and whereas social workers are at the forefront of helping our city address a mental health and substance use disorder crisis and chronic income equality that has led to rising homelessness and whereas social workers use their knowledge skills and compassion to support individuals and families overcoming challenges accessing resources and building resilience to help members of our society reach their full potential and whereas we celebrate the commitment and dedication of social workers across our city and nation who strive to create positive change and improve the quality of life for those they serve now therefore next sort of mayor and the city council of plantation hereby proclaim march 2025 as social work month well good evening everyone um my name is veronica latchman i am the broward chair of the national national association of social worker um to my right or half of my steering committee we're here um so we are all social workers all from plantation um in broward county alone we have over 400 and plantation roughly between 50 to 100 so you might see a small portion of us but we are strong and mighty and like the former gentleman was talking about mental health that's also in the forefront we want to let you know that this is something that we're passionate about and we continue to strive every day to help those in our population and our community to provide that help so thank you thank you very much while you're taking that picture i'm i'm going to add that my sister mindy and my stepsister laura are both social workers and the work that you do is incredible work and it it requires the passion and commitment so thank you thank you thank you thank you and not only that i'm also a cert member and one of my cert thank you very much next up we have parks and recreation uh upcoming events we have director trish good evening council members mayor and mr ezra a couple of events this weekend and the following weekend first this saturday we have our annual touch a truck event that's at the equestrian center from 9 a.m to 12 p.m with our more quiet torn free hour from 9 a.m to 10. also this weekend saturday and sunday we've got a usta level six junior tournament at the veltri tennis center also saturday and sunday we are hosting the seventh annual bazooka soccer tournament that will be held at central park the following weekend saturday and sunday march 22nd 23rd plantation march into spring softball tournament at pop travers park and sunday march 23rd the dolphins nfl flag football regional tournament also at central park for pal we are registering for cheerleading and our adult athletics is currently registering for kickball and flag football as usual you can follow us on social media at plantation parks or give us a call excuse me 954-452-2510 thank you thank you very much so now if i get this right we are going to momentarily take a recess from the council meeting and we will call to order the cra meeting at 6 34 p.m and i'll ask miss bedrow to please call the role for the cra meeting commissioner anderson here commissioner andrew here commissioner fadgen here commissioner horland here commissioner reinstein here commissioner sortle here city attorney as well here so the cra consent agenda consists of three items and may be approved with one motion i'm going to also pull item one does any of our other commissioners wish to pull an item motion to approve items two and three second hearing any any further discussion on items two and three seeing none miss beggar please call the roll commissioner anderson yes commissioner andrew yes commissioner fadgen yes commissioner horland yes commissioner reinstein yes commissioner sortle yes thank you so as to item number one item number one refers to north state road seven and sunrise boulevard corridor enhancement study the only concern that i had was based on not just what what i read but particularly the the pictures that were describing what was in the in the backup material it seemed to suggest that the consideration for bike paths would not be protected bike paths protected bike lanes which is something that we've been talking about generally in regards to bike lanes throughout our city can anybody speak to that sure jason on the maker cao yeah i think those are just illustrative the focus of this is going to be on the landscaping the lighting and signage we didn't mean to indicate that we're going to be moving away from protected bike lane bike lanes at all okay so and i didn't see a particular description of it in the written portion however the the pictures accompanying it did suggest that what was abutting the landscaping these bike paths were just the painted bike paths and not protected bike paths so that wasn't intended to suggest that that was where we would be going with this yeah and we'll convey that concern to the consultants as well very good thank you very much uh and uh mr conklin also um i see you walking up do we have a do we have a motion motion to approve second okay mr conklin uh dennis conklin 4581 northwest sixth court as long as we're served in the meeting heavenly hosts protect you and your families um i pulled this because similarly uh what's already been mentioned when i went through the backup there's northwest 57th street which is 10 blocks outside of the cra and the gateway so that was what i was wondering about myself so uh this illustrator from the answer and i'll yield back thank you very much hearing no further discussion from the dais or from the public ms beggar if you can please call the role commissioner anderson yes commissioner andrew yes commissioner fadgen yes commissioner horland yes commissioner reinstein yes commissioner sortle yes seeing no further business for the cra the cra will adjourn it's i'm sorry did you have something further sorry please come back up mr conklin apologies no i got in too close to the deadline i couldn't present my slip early enough if i may approach thank you mr conklin you're welcome um that's one for each on the ds unfortunately i didn't get a second one for secretaries um the first thing i wanted to do was apologize because it was uh uh how would you say gently uh pointed out to me that i was disruptive for the last uh city council meeting when um i continued to make remarks uh on my way to the seat so i want to apologize for that um what i brought up at the last cra meeting was about the affordable housing and i know from experience that people in the united states roughly about 17 and a half percent have no credit rating it doesn't mean they have a crummy credit score it means that they basically sort of biblically uh followed their uh ways of handling their money and the borrower is slave to the lender so um this describes uh methods for manual underwriting which i believe should be considered if this um program that was proposed for affordable housing uh goes through these are the people that basically are not a credit risk because they don't expose themselves to the slavery of the creditor or the lender um there's four examples of documents which are listed there's almost a dozen and they can present any of those for manual underwritings similarly uh for renting the same thing happens it can be done without a fico score without a credit score um i mentioned that every time we wind up discussing affordable housing we are chasing our tail now i've always mentioned it because of the fact that the federal government is basically destroyed our currency um and that's another biblical thing because uh if you look at the constitution article 1 section 10 they can coin money they can't print it and that's what they've been doing basically without redemptive value of of value if you look at the bible there's only gold silver and copper that's mentioned um what i found out in a podcast yesterday was the federal government owns 70 percent of the mortgages in america in other words it's completely destroyed the mortgage uh industry and it artificially throws the price of homes uh through the roof and because the people that are working for a wage can't keep may i extend please conclude and get to the request of council thank you thank you the people that work for a wage are getting depreciated dollar purchasing value and they can't keep up with the accelerated cost uh accelerated price of the property so um we are chasing our tail but i believe that people 17 of the population should not be discriminated against because they choose to follow the bible thank you you'll beck thank you mr conklin anything further from the dais from the public seeing no further comments the cra will adjourn at 6 41 pm and we will reconvene the regular city council meeting we will begin at this point with public requests of the council regarding municipal affairs those who wish to speak we request that you complete a speaker form if you've not done so already please state your name and address and please address your remarks to the council president not the mayor nor individual members of the council please keep your remarks to the allotted three minutes if extra time will be needed to conclude your remarks please ask for it as your time is expiring and not prior to beginning your remarks we'll begin with dr julie long hi julie long nine seven two west tropical way plantation um thank you for the opportunity to speak this evening there's been a lot of talk about government and the problems with government in the news um i i think this evening we've seen two examples wonderful examples of what government does for us we our county is working diligently with um a council member from this community on a master plan for delivering solid waste none of us however independent we might be can deal with our own solid waste and waste disposal nor can we adequately educate people we heard from dr zeman what the school board's doing so i just come here to say thank you so much to the elected officials and to all the people that work in the city of plantation for taking making us safe for doing your job and making this a wonderful place to live and i think that when disaster strikes also we all need the government so thank you so much for what you do thank you dr long mr conklin dennis conklin 4581 northwest sixth court uh tomorrow march 13th is the fifth anniversary 2020 of the um plus elite day of um the national state of emergency which basically led to the the shutdown uh the whole society in america uh which included churches which has never happened before in america uh schools uh it's loss of our independent and individual god-given rights um that was tomorrow it'll be 1826 days counting the leap year day uh it's been 522 days since the hamas war began against israel that's been addressed this one uh 121 days the johnny come late lease from iran hezbollah started their war against israel uh 323 days since the college jihad started and uh spread across the country and it went into the municipalities as well and uh just yesterday apparently colombia finally came to its senses and they identified a perpetrator i guess you would say for extraction from the united states of america he turns out to be a hamas affiliate which as we know hamas is a terrorist organization um 243 days since the first attempted assassination of president 179 days since the second assassination attempt uh they're going to be putting that uh person on trial apparently this came up last week uh 128 days since the landslide re-election um and day 52 of the second administration as i was mentioning about the affordability of housing and whatnot and the the decreased purchasing value of the dollar in the last kaffir there was over 330 million dollars in the city's mountain of money i'm not sure what it is this time is about to come out probably next month um gold at the last kaffir september 30th 2023 was 1874.50 an ounce today it closed at four o'clock at 2951.30 an ounce that's a 57.4 loss in purchasing power of any dollar that you have and the city's got a lot of them and you're chasing after money to pay your bills and pay of course our dedicated and loyal employees so that was in 17 and a half months it's lost over half of its purchasing power we're chasing our tails i yield back thank you mr conklin next step uh mr wilkerson mr wilkerson from south plantation high school welcome thank you um so yeah my name is legend wilkerson i'm here on behalf of south plantation high school's uh magnet program i'm here to address a critical environmental issue with you guys um nutrient pollution in our canals uh because of fertilizer runoff right um just like any just like our neighboring cities um plantation is struggling with the increasing levels of nutrient pollution in its waterways so like uh when fertilizers come from lawns and landscaping and they flow into our waterways they there's there's too much phosphorus and nitrogen um they cause algal blooms and these blooms reduce oxygen levels in the water kill fish and like reduce water quality drastically um so this is one of the main reasons of the green in the canals i'm sure you guys have seen the murkiness of the canals but um yeah um if i'm there if unchecked like this problem will most likely continue to decrease like property value and can eventually harm the health of the citizens and residents that like to interact with the water itself um you don't have to look far to see consequences of nutrient pollution um in neighboring cities like miami and for lauderdale um they're already struggling with uh these effects over recent years but um instead of just sitting there like oh i guess we are um and taking the consequences they have uh implemented um what's it called um sorry they've implemented uh restrictor fertilizer regulations um and i feel like we should probably take do the same um there's three that i would like city to implement um just off the top um the first one would be banalizing fertilizer banning banning fertilizers containing phosphorus um as it's not really needed and because the south florida's soils already contain enough um phosphorus as is and it more just contributes to pollution um the second one would be prohibiting spraying fertilizers within 20 feet of any body of water this would just create a buffer zone between where the water flows so it doesn't flow into the canals um the third one would be banning fertilizers during um wet seasons so june through september the heavy rains prevent they like flow all the water or they fill all the fertilizers away from the plants so they can't actually absorb them um so there's really no point in spraying them during those times um i'd like to say i'm just not alone in this effort um i've received backing from south florida water management district um and when talking to one of their board members um they referred to a past initiative called the two percent is left two percent or less is best program um which was a program against fertilizers um and containing phosphorus so this just shows that i'm not like the only one here in that like another source is also trying to back me in this um and then i believe by adopting these measures um city plantation uh can make a huge difference in the city and safe guard our waterways in the health of our community very much thank you guys for your time consideration thank you very much uh the uh the question would be is whether or not you've had an opportunity to speak to our our mayor administration in regards to whether we're doing any of this or whether we we can do any of this have you had a chance yet so i think the mayor right here i want you to come in and visit um jason can you sit next to the guy in the pink shirt he'll give you a phone number and email okay and um i also question can we legally do that can we ban that is it the state wrong direction yeah exactly i mean we're not my question is are we preempted by anything and i don't have to research the issue yeah i would have to research you like to come to yeah so i was thinking about stuff like that um i was notified of some law that might restrict it to banning towards the public but i would say that you could probably ban it towards the city itself as most of canal borders city property rather than home property so you know towards the plantation community center they have a lot of stretch of grass near the come out yeah and you you nailed the problem that's that's the problem you that's thank you so much you're not up here just woofing yeah thank you mr robertson well done thank you very much next up we have christopher mcgowan also south plantation high school please you can give them all to me and i'll hand them out important topic that you've already heard us mentioned about yeah yeah i didn't know if i was supposed to come up for that or no you're right on time let's hear you thank you sir so i have a speech prepared so good evening mayor sordal city council members and city officials my name is christopher mcgowan a student at south plantation high school doing my environmental senior project on trying to reduce car emissions by promoting biking as an alternative i'm here to advocate for safer biking lanes to protect students and reduce carbon emissions in our city transportation accounts for 29 percent of of u.s greenhouse gas emissions with cars being a major contributor as traffic congestion worsens we have a chance to promote biking as a safer greener alternative however students and residents face dangerous conditions when trying to bike florida has the highest by bicyclist fatality rate in the country and students show that protected bike lanes can reduce cycling injuries up to 90 percent one of the most critical areas needing improvement is peters road a key route for students biking to south plantation high school currently there are no bike lanes forcing cyclists onto the poorly maintained sidewalks or roads alongside fast moving traffic additionally at 6928 peters road the sidewalk abruptly cuts off leading students with no safe path this forces them to take an unnecessary detour through a neighborhood just to reconnect with the sidewalk increasing both travel time and risk some argue that sidewalks are enough for cyclists but the data proves otherwise the florida department of transportation states that riding on sidewalks increases the risk of accidents at driveways and intersections because cars don't expect fast moving cyclists there in fact study shows that cyclists on sidewalks are 25 percent more likely to be hit by cars at intersections so by adding bike lanes on peters road and fixing the sidewalk gap at 6928 peters road we can reduce carbon emissions by encouraging more students and residents to biking instead of driving improve air quality preventing asthma and respiratory issues caused by traffic pollution ease traffic congestions making roads safer and more efficient for everyone and lastly enhancing safe safety and keeping bikes off sidewalks and giving cyclists a protected space advice investing in bike lanes and fixing unsafe infrastructure is an investment in a cleaner healthier and safer plantation i urge you to take action thank you for your time and i look forward to working together on this issue well done thank you very much this is a topic that we we speak about quite often and we appreciate you your presentation today thank you all right thank you okay uh any other requests from the council chambers seeing none public requests of the council regarding municipal affairs are now closed we now move to the consent agenda the consent agenda consists of items one through eight and may be approved with one motion does any member of the council wish to pull an item number four please just a small correction and i also have from the public number seven any others motion to approve the consent agenda with the exception of items four and seven second hearing no further comments uh on those items miss beggarow please call the roll council member fadgen yes council member horland yes council member anderson yes council member andreou yes council member reinstein yes council member andreou item four i'm so sorry miss beggarow i should have emailed you and i just ran out of time but uh casey wright is kathleen c right if you could just please fix that in the minutes it's the building the school board building it was misspelled it's kathleen with a k c right thank you motion to approve item number four with the correction with the as corrected second seeing no further discussion item four miss beggarow please call the roll member fadgen yes council member horland yes council member anderson yes council member andreou yes council member reystein yes uh item seven mr conklin dennis conklin 4581 northwest six court um i pulled item seven uh two reasons uh week one uh to point out again it's basically water and waste water um i recommend that you zero out the extra millage that the district pays and go with just the tiff from the cra which greatly exceeds that and in week two i had a question if the uh record recognition system is that the traffic light license reader thing that's what it is thank you i'll yield back thank you very much do we have a motion for item seven motion to approve second seeing no further discussion miss beggarow please call the roll on item seven council member fadgen yes council member horland yes council member anderson yes council member andreou yes uh next up uh next up we have two um legislative items that are listed on the agenda both of these items uh administration has asked to be deferred um mr city attorney mr eswald do we need to do anything further in regards to the two items no sir the only thing that uh i'd like to make mention is that um in the in the backup it was specifically referenced that the items would be deferred to the march 26 meeting and i'd ask that we specifically um consider deferring them to the subsequent meeting after that um so i'll leave that up to the administration i don't think we need to vote on that um unless there's anybody from the council that wishes to discuss that um then we're on to comments comments by the mayor you guys are flying keep going mayor we're going to call you ron jacobs man we're gonna set the records keep going there i do i do have one thing uh um you will likely received a notice of some school awards to apply for that were that were sent out lauren edmund talked about it a couple days before and maybe laura you could come up and help us if you don't mind uh we kicked it around and look what we do and what you all do in terms of being in contact with schools and everything is stellar we're involved we're engaged in everything i don't know if we have that one hook that is really enough to win an award with and i'll ask you all for input with that or do you think it's just a compendium of everything we've done and laura's going to take the notes because she's going to be the one writing it i'll just say that i sent laura what i called a stream of consciousness email today which was really a recantation of all the things and i went through everybody's social media and looked at pictures and as pd and you know the next gen scholarship the things that we all do in the schools there may not be that one hook but there's a lot i mean they're really absolutely it was it was so gratifying we know what we do to support our schools um but looking in there and it's not just all of us up here it's our fire departments our police department sparks and rack uh finance had somebody part take uh participate in super reader day so i just gave it all to you you can put it together and thank you and i got some good information from our police department and parks and recreation department i know i heard from a couple of you with interest in applying for this award and um if we can we're able to put a good application together we'll work on that and um if you have anything you'd like included um obviously you have sent me information please let me know councilman bandre you you know i i don't know if you'd like your scholarship included i know you you're running the program so i don't want to just appropriate it for the city but i don't want to leave it out either wonderful i i'll just add that um mayor i don't i don't know what any other cities are doing but um i know that from our day as uh this uh this council has spoken quite a bit and quite regularly about our interest in being involved in the schools um so it may be that there's no one one hook that you use that term but um i don't know if any other cities are doing as much as we are doing so i think we're pretty proud of that now now if that's going to look good on an application that's a question but we're happy to try deadline's march 21st so it's not like we want to spend time pondering it we're going to have to crank this thing out and we're good with that okay thank you all any other comments mayor comments from the council council member and joe thank you president reinstein just want to wish everyone a happy st patrick's day on the 17th uh to all of those who celebrate uh also looking forward i know looking forward to attending of the plantation fire department graduation for fire one class 2401 on the 20th and also barbecue with the hero saturday march 22nd from noon to three with our cra at 747 motors uh i will not unfortunately i won't be here and i usually never miss it but the sierra club will be celebrating earth day on the 23rd at the nature center in hollywood and i had a question for council member horland i know we're doing the relay for life event april 4th here at city hall at five how do we get the luminary bags that i didn't they're actually going to have them here so um parks is supplying a table and a tent for them and they'll have them here and i'm just i'll touch base with them but the idea was that they will bring markers and people can create them there do you purchase them though it is a fundraiser correct it used to be back in the day they would give you the bags but i think i think it's a fundraiser yes it should be a fundraiser okay all right wonderful i look forward to purchasing a few bags on uh april 4th so thank you for that information and our gfwc volunteer of the year uh event will be held saturday april 5th and it's um we're also of course celebrating women's history month so i could not uh not acknowledge council member horland and all of the wonderful women who make our city so great our leadership we have a great representation of women who are directors and sit in leadership positions and that's not everywhere so we don't take that for granted and all of our city staff so thank you all for the work you do you are appreciated not just this month all the time very nice thank you that concludes my announcement yeah you said everything councilmember fadgen um where to begin well just happy saint patrick's day that's all i got nice well done councilmember horland uh thank you and council member andrea right back at you we do have a lot of terrific female directors and it's an honor to sit up here on this uh dais with you um tallahassee is in the news so the mayor and i will be up there next week um i know you've probably been getting alerts uh about all the bills the one that we've been fighting this way this week is a dissolution of our cra and i did ask mr newmaker and city attorney ezra i was a little concerned because one of the provisions in there was that the cra could not start any new projects um as of october 1st so i was concerned about what we had approved at the last meeting but i'm assured that we've already set the money aside for green mills and that will be okay i just want to mention that from the brow delegation the bill is going to be heard in um the house tomorrow but in on the senate side senator pizzo senator uh sharif and senator jones did a phenomenal job of fighting for the um cra's and what i did today is just kind of tell our story and why it's important there are some bad actors out there but in state statute cra's have to have a mandatory audit so they should really take a look before they craft these bills at the audits and see who the bad actors are um we're not a bad actor and i talked about the public's coming all just the amazing things are happening in our cra so i'm hoping we'll be able to beat that back as as well as the many bills that are coming after our revenue including the property taxes so um hopefully they'll get the property insurance market under control before they come for ad valorem um and then um i just wanted to mention that i believe we have um two government buildings that could potentially be closing in city of plantation uh the one i'm most concerned about i'm sorry that was loud the social security administration building on sunrise um has been slated by the federal government to close which is distressing for um they're looking to end that lease as well as we have an fda office in the city of plantation mom also noah has an office close by us um in um that deals with our fisheries and wildlife in sunrise so uh they have not yet closed but i think it's important for us to be aware of that uh people will be laid off but it's also access for our um residents to be able to have that social security administration building nearby so we'll keep an eye on that and i believe we have the library luncheon this weekend as well don't we this weekend so uh that's it and i wish everybody happy st patrick's day i wore my green early councilman ray anderson hi everyone i missed the rock the park i was supposed to go but it was another event that didn't get out on time but i went to the moonlit concert night for this chamber of commerce i got there midway though i was a little uh well too good and bad it wasn't very well attended but a lot of people said a lot of the kids everybody was there early for the storytelling but the concert part and maybe back to back it wasn't the concert part wasn't as well attended but siobhan and several others highly complimented the parks and rec crew that helps to co-set up that and they just said they bend over backwards and really work hard and it was just nice to hear that so passing the compliment on and happy st patrick's day to everyone and that's it thank you everybody fantastic i'll just finish with uh uh three religions three holidays happy porum happy holy happy st patrick's day and with that our meeting at 706 is adjourned