City Council — Nov 29, 2023

And the last thing I wanted to talk about is something that's very near and dear to my heart and it's just cracking down on title fraud because it's very, very prevalent here in Broward County and in South Florida. And it's my goal to make sure that anybody that wants to do it doesn't do it and that we put people in jail that do do it. With that said, for the residents, there are a number of main functions to our office. The first function is we determine the value of every piece of property in Broward County for tax purposes, whether it's residential, commercial, tangible, personal property or centrally assessed property, which are railroads. And the reason that's important is because when a member of plantation or resident plantation pays their property taxes, the amount of taxes they pay is a relationship between the value of the property that we set and the tax rate set by plantation, the school board, the county commission and all other taxing authorities. So the most important thing we want to do is just make sure we get it right. And Broward County, as you know, is a huge place. More people live here than 13 states, the District of Columbia and all U.S. territory separate Puerto Rico. It is big. And there are more parcels that we appraised and exist in many states. And even though the people in our office do a very, very good job and their assessments are very accurate mistakes can occur or maybe somebody has information about their property that we don't have that could help us bring down their market value, their assessed value, which would also bring down their property taxes. And let me just give the residents a quick example. A few months ago when I was sitting in my office, my phone rang and I picked up the phone and it was a resident. I think of Dania and the resident of Dania said, Marty, I understand why you valued my property this way for tax purposes. You looked at it on January 1st and you looked at all the properties that were similar to mine in my neighborhood that sold the year before. And that's how you determined a value. But my property is different. It had a whole lot of water damage and it's very dilapidated. And I go, okay, well, show me what you got. And he provided me insurance information. He let us do a site visit. He showed us pictures. And the information he gave us allowed us to reduce both his market and assessed value to where I think he saved about $4,000 this year in his property taxes. So I always tell every resident plantation, go on our website at bcpa.net after January 1st of this year. And if you have any concerns with the value of your property, give me a call, email me, come to our office. We'll come to you. We just want to make sure you only pay on your fair share of value and not too much. So the second thing that we do, and this is what I love most about my job, is we give tax saving exemptions to people that qualify. And there are a lot of exemptions under Florida law that people qualify for. The most important one, as you know, by far is the homestead exemption. And that does two things. If you have a homestead exemption, it means it's your primary residence. And it's your primary residence. If that's where you're registered to vote, where your car is registered to. If that's where you live, you get that very valuable exemption. And it does two things. The first thing it does, it takes $50,000 of value off the tax roll. You don't want to pay taxes. Most importantly, it really protects you going forward. Because every year after you have a homestead exemption, the value of your tax line cannot go up more than a maximum of 3%. And that is so important right now. So if there's any resident in a plantation that has not filed for homestead exemption and you're going to live there on January 1st of 2024, please file. Because you know your property today is worth way more than it was last year and the year before that and the year before that because values are skyrocketing. And if you file for that homestead exemption, if you haven't done so and you do it, it'll make sure the value you're taxed on next year cannot go up more than 3%. And your market value and your assessed value won't skyrocket because of what's happening in the market. Once you have that, there are a whole lot of other exemptions. There are exemptions for seniors, for veterans, for widows. And so please, everybody in plantation, go on our website at bcpa.net, click on exemptions. And if there's something you're not getting, you can contact me by September 18th of 2024 so we can make sure it's reflected in your next year tax bill. The other thing I wanted to quickly talk about, Mr. Chair, is just where property values are right now here in plantation. And by the way, before I do that, I love the pictures, Nick, of you and your grandkids. They are adorable. They make me very happy every time I see it. So congratulations. Property values here in plantation, again, are skyrocketing. They're skyrocketing all throughout Broward County. And to give you an idea, last year in 2022, if you took all the commercial and residential property and plantation and you sold it on the open market, you would have got right about $17.22 billion. Fast forward just one year to 2023, there's been a 13.44% increase in market value to right about $19.53 billion. That's a significant increase in just one year. The taxable value is the value that you used recently that you set your millage rate on to determine the amount of money that you need to provide great services to the people of plantation. And in 2022, the taxable value was right about $11.593 billion. And then fast forward one year to 2023, the value you used was about $12.82 billion, which is a more than a 10% increase in value change. And what that means is you kept your millage rate about 5.8, which, by the way, I want to let you know is on the lower end for the county, which I think is fantastic as a resident. Thank you for that. It's under the average, and that means that your additional revenue this year is right about $7.1 million more this year than last year that you can utilize to provide great services to the people of plantation. And something that's very, very important is the vast majority of that additional revenue is not being paid for by your existing homesteaded property owners because the value aware tax line couldn't go up more than 3%. It's really being paid for by a lot of people coming from all over the world and paying top dollar for properties in plantation and by a significant amount of new construction that was added to the tax roll. This year, there was about $271,301,000 of new value added to the tax roll. The biggest being the Remy apartment complex, which was about $93 million put on the tax roll, and that's pretty fantastic. Right now in plantation, you have 21,543 homestead exemptions. You have 1,053 low-income seniors who receive a senior exemption. And something I'm very happy about is you have 116 long-term seniors who pay no property taxes, the plantation or the county. And I just want to thank you for that because not every city in Broward County has a long-term senior exemption. You have to adopt it, and you all did. And here's the way a senior can qualify for it. Not a lot of seniors qualify. They have to be over 65 years of age. They had to be made under about $36,000 last year. They had to be in their home for 25 years or more. And the value of their home has to be under $250,000. So the loss of revenue to you all and to any other city that's adopted it is minimal. You don't even see it. But to that senior who's struggling to make ends meet, that's a lot of money they can put back in their pocket to have a better life. I'm so proud of Plantation, my home city, for adopting that. I hope that every city follows your lead and does the same thing because it's the right thing. You also have 1,908 widows who receive an exemption. You have 197 totally permanently disabled American Hero veterans who pay no property taxes to Plantation. You also have four American Hero first responders who pay no property taxes to Plantation. The average sale, right now you have 20,462 single-family homes in Plantation. The average sale price of a single-family home in Plantation is $769,120, which is a big number. But what's interesting is the average taxable value is $314,000. And the reason there's such a big discrepancy there is people have been homesteaded for a long time. They come, they move to Plantation, they never want to leave because it's such a fantastic place. So the taxable value for your average resident is much lower than what the sales prices are. When it comes to condominiums, you have 8,955 condominium parcels here in Plantation. The average sale price is right about $262,910. But just like your single-family homes, the average taxable value is $118,138. The last thing I wanted to quickly talk about, Mr. Mayor and to the council, before I answer any questions, is something that's very near and dear to my heart and something I like to talk about everywhere. And it's cracking down on title fraud. You may have heard me say this before. South Florida is the title fraud capital of the world. It's the capital of the world because you have criminals, and that's what they are. They walk into the recording divisions of every single county in the state of Florida every single day, and they file fake deeds on people's properties, and they take those deeds and they extort people for money, or they mortgage, rent, or even sell the property. They do it all the time. And the reason it's so easy for them is the recording division for every county has a ministerial duty. They have to accept whatever documents file with them. So you have these criminals. They walk in. They file a fake deed, and they do something nefarious with it. So the first thing we wanted to do two years ago was give the people of Broward County the opportunity to fight the fraud before the fraud occurs. So two years ago, we came up with a great program. We developed a program called Owner Alert In-House. It's really a notification program to let people know if a document changing title has been filed in their property, and it's free to the public. And here's how any resident plantation can sign up. They can go to our website at bcpa.net. They type in their name. They type in their parcel ID number, and they type in their email address. And if we have their email address on file, they're automatically verified. If we don't, they have to upload their Florida driver's license or Florida ID. If we don't have that, then they have to upload a utility bill or something proving ownership. And then if any document legitimate or not is file changing ownership, they'll be notified instantaneously so they can fight the fraud before the fraud occurs. You can also now sign up to get a text message component. You can also get a hard copy in the mail. And something I'm very happy about is we've had 220,000 Broward County property owners sign up so far. And in plantation, almost 50% of all homesteaded property owners have signed up, and I am very, very proud about that. And what happened a couple years ago when we instituted this program was I started getting calls from residents. And they would say, Marty, I just got an alert from your office that somebody changed the title on my property, but I didn't do it. And then I would get more and more and more, and I realized how big of a deal this was. So I wanted to do something a little bit different. I wanted to work with law enforcement, build criminal cases, and put the people in jail who were doing this. So I called the Department of Revenue, which oversees the property appraisers for the state of Florida. And I said, Department of Revenue, I want to work with law enforcement, and I want to hold these people accountable. And I gave them a lot of heartburn. And they go, Marty, you know, you are a property appraiser. You determine the value of property. You give exemptions. You're not law enforcement. But we understand that this is a big deal for South Florida, and people are being taken advantage of. We'll make you the guinea pig for the rest of the state, and we'll approve your program. I go, great. So then I went to the county commission, which funds my budget. And I go, county commission, the Department of Revenue has approved a new program in my office. I'm going to call our Crimes Against Property team. Would you fund it? And all nine county commissioners said, absolutely, Marty. We'll give you whatever you need. I then went to see my friend Sheriff Tony. And I go, Sheriff, I go, listen, I have this new program in my office called our Crimes Against Property team, but I'm not law enforcement. I can't serve subpoenas. I can't arrest people. I can't do any of that. Can we work together to hold people accountable that are trying to steal people's properties? And he goes, Marty, not only will we enter into an interlocal agreement to work together, but I'm going to assign two sheriff's detectives to work with you to be housed within your office who can actually do the job of law enforcement and hold people accountable. I then went to see my other friend, Harold Pryor, our state attorney. And I go, Harold, you know, I go, the sheriff and I, we're working together. We're going to build these criminal cases. If we bring you some of these cases that you think are prosecutorial, would you prosecute these people? And Harold goes, Marty, we're going to enter into an interlocal agreement, and I'm going to assign an assistant state attorney to work with your office to prosecute the people that you bring to us. And over the past year, since we instituted this program, we've had right about, God bless you, we've had right about 30 arrests. We've had a number of convictions. We have a number of current open warrants where people will be arrested. We've been able to stop the fraudulent sale of millions of dollars worth of property, and we've been able to work with the court system to actually get the property back to the victims who actually lost it in a much more expeditious and cost-efficient manner. And just for the rents of plantation, I just want to give four quick examples as to people that have stolen people's property and the extent that they will go through in order to defraud the people of our communities, because I really hope everybody is very vigilant about this, because it happens all the time. The first example I like to give involved a married couple. It was two wives. One of the wives worked from one of our hospital districts. The other wife worked in the real estate industry. The wife that worked in the hospital district would find out when people would pass on. She would then take their confidential information, including their social security numbers, and give it to her wife in the real estate industry, who would find out if they had property in Broward County and they had heirs here. If they had property and no heirs, they'd file fake deeds on the properties. They would sell the properties on Zillow, mortgage the properties, rent the properties. They'd property in the amount of millions of dollars. But something I'm very happy about is they were found guilty, and even though they're a married couple, they're spending their time in different prisons, which I think is a great thing. Another example happened from a person not from Broward County. He was from Miami-Dade County. And his scheme was very smart. It's devious but smart. And what he decided, he somehow found out that there was a senior, and that senior was bedridden and very, very sick. And he also found that that senior owned a five-acre parcel in Southwest Ranches, free and clear. And so what he did to try to steal it was he filed a fake corporation with Tallahassee. He then made the officer and director of the corporation the sick man. He then filed a fake deed saying the corporation owned the property, and he then made a fake ID saying he was that man. He then walked into a small business in our neighboring city, the city of Sunrise, a mortgage company, and basically said, you know what, I've fallen on some hard times, made some bad financial decisions, but I have this one thing, a five-acre parcel, free and clear, in Southwest Ranches. Can I please have a $515,000 mortgage? And the mortgage company said, sure, we'll give it to you. And this is where they really should have realized something fishy was going on. The closing for a half-a-million-dollar mortgage on a five-acre parcel in Southwest Ranches took place at a Burger King in Hialeah. So they go to the Burger King in Hialeah, and you've got the bad guy trying to get the money. You've got the mortgage company not doing their due diligence, about to be out a lot of money, and you have the smartest person in the room, the notary. And the notary is looking at this thinking, this is very bizarre. So she asked for the guy's thumbprint, which she gave. She then provided it to our office. We contacted the town of Davie Police Department because they police Southwest Ranches, and the U.S. Secret Service because they handle a lot of the identity theft cases in America. And fortunately, the man was arrested. Unfortunately, he was given the full $515,000 mortgage. We recovered. He spent about $80,000. We recovered the rest. A third example happened more recently. We've arrested four or five people so far, and I believe others are going to be arrested very, very soon. And I've been told, I haven't been able to verify this, but I was told that all these people met each other in jail, and they came up with this scheme in jail. And it is a smart scheme. They figured out how to use the court system to steal people's properties. And so you had the ringleaders. And the ringleaders would file a quiet title action. It's basically lawsuits in circuit court. Saying, this senior or this banker or this person no longer wants the property. And then the return of service would go to the guy's buddy, who was in a mobile home in Hillsborough County, and he would say, oh, yeah, I represent that senior or that banker or that person. Yeah, they don't want the property anymore. Put in this guy's name or his company's name. And they sold between 20 and 30 properties that we found so far. We tend to find more every single month. And a number of them had been arrested. But that case in particular taught me a few things. Because one of the properties that they stole, they actually moved a whole lot of their friends into. And when they did that, the one thing I knew at the beginning was that the owner of the property is a victim. But I also learned that the community can be a victim as well. Because in one of those properties, which was in Fort Lauderdale, when they moved their buddies in, about 3 in the morning, one night, one of the buddies walked out of that property. And he walked to a neighbor's property. And he tried every single door of that neighbor's property until he found one that they forgot to lock the night before. And he goes inside, and he walked into the bedroom and walked up to the bed of the husband and the wife, about to do God knows what. The wife woke up, started screaming. He was then chased out by a very big dog, charged with burglary and breaking and entering, given an ankle minor, and went right back to the stolen home. We then worked with the city of Fort Lauderdale to remove the people from the home. And I learned a third thing. I learned not only is the homeowner a victim, not only can the community be a victim, but the people squatting in these homes can also be victims too. Because when you squat in a stolen home, you're basically living in a place in very dangerous conditions. There's no electricity, no running water. It's really, really dangerous, especially in the summertime. And when we remove the people from the home, I believe there's a three- or four-year-old child that was with him who was obviously innocent. The last story I just wanted to talk about is something that happened very recently. The sheriff and I did a joint press release together probably about a month ago. And we arrested a man that stole a 96-year-old lady's home that passed on in Tamarack. And here's what occurred. He actually contacted our office. And he said, oh, my grandmother just passed on, but she left me this property. How can I sign up for owner alert? And our office basically said, well, to sign up for owner alert, you have to show us you own the property. We need to see if there's a deed on the property. We need to see if there's been a will that's been probated. And he goes, okay, I'll get that to you all. The next day, he sent over a fake deed and a fake will. And you know what's fake write-off? For example, in the deed, we're supposed to say county of Broward for the notary. It's a county of Florida, stuff like that. And so our crimes against property team just started investigating it. And they also found out that this man actually found an innocent buyer for the property. And it was one of those companies that buys a lot of properties. And we actually knew who the lawyer was that represented that company. And we called them. And he said, oh, yeah, we had a feeling this was a fraud. We're not going to go through with the closing. And the sheriff's office said, no, go through with the closing. And so they actually had undercover officers in the lawyer's office. The man showed up. He went inside. He signed the documents. And they arrested him. But when they arrested him, they found a treasure trove of information about how he was trying to defraud the public here in Broward County. They found the identities of 53 Broward County residents. They found their credit card information, their PIN numbers, their tax return information. This man was so smart, they even found fake checks drawn on a legitimate Broward County business where he was pretending he was an employee and cashing them in the amount of thousands of dollars. I wanted to bring those four stories up because I just think they're each unique. But they show the people of our community how bad these people are that prey on them. So I hope that everybody in plantation, the other 50% of homesteaded property owners and everybody else signs up for our owner alert program. I think it's your first line of defense. And I also like to talk about this stuff and scream about it from the rooftops because I hope everybody out there knows that if they want to do it here, they're not welcome here. And we're going to put them in jail for a long time. With that said, I can go on and on forever. I've had five cups of coffee, two Red Bulls, and a Diet Coke. And I get very excited about this. But I just appreciate so much y'all having me say. And the two people I didn't mention, first, Eric, thank you so much for not just your service here, but also as a principal. I know that is not an easy job. I think you do a fantastic job. And, Denise, you are just a dear friend. I can tell you as one of Plantation's many residents, I'm very, very proud of your service. So thank you so much. But does anybody have any questions? I know I went on for a little while, but thank you all very much. Thank you so much for coming tonight and sharing all of this information. I have one question and one comment, or two. Can you share with the residents exactly where they should go to register for the alerts, if you can give that website? And the second one is, in 2024, we are going to have a new tax collector position. Can you tell everyone the difference between what that tax collector will do and you as the property appraiser? That is the best question ever. So the first question is, our website is just bcpa.net. It's a Broward County property appraiser. If you just go on there, right, as soon as they get on, there's a big button. They click on owner alert. They can register. And that second question is fantastic. I am so excited about there being an elected tax collector because I can say, it's that person, not me, that collects your taxes. I reduce your taxes. But every county in the state of Florida, except for a couple, I believe Broward and Miami-Dade County, have an elected tax collector. And the tax collector's job is basically to collect the property taxes. They send out the bills and they get the money. And then that money then gets distributed to the taxing authorities. That's the job of the tax collector. And their job really is to make it convenient and easy for people to pay property taxes. Our job is a little bit different. We determine the value of property that people pay their taxes on. We also give exemptions. And our job, in conjunction with the work the cities do with their millage rates and others, determines the amount of property taxes people pay. So it's a little bit different of a job. But a tax collector will basically be the person that collects their taxes and gives them to the taxing authorities and sends out the tax bills. Right now, the tax collector's office is actually under the Broward County Commission. So when people are paying their tax bill, they're not sending it to our office. They're actually sending it to Broward County Government. They'll now be an elected person in 2024 that will be doing that. And I think it will be really great for Broward County. And I'll just tell you why. You know, I believe that when you have an elected official in a job that is a job that's geared towards customer service, it's very important. Because I think an elected official is going to go a little above and beyond to try to make things easier for the public. Because you're accountable to the public. And having that job in particular accountable to the public will be fantastic. I hope that answered the question. Oh, thank you, Jennifer. Great question. Councilmember Anderson. So, Councilmember Andre, you took one of them. But the BCPA.net, I literally, I was at probably a park or something with your table there. You were there. And I just went on my phone and did it that easily. It was so easy to do. And then I realized it was so easy that I thought and got my parents to do it, my brothers to do it. Thank you. So we got, like, multiple properties done immediately. So easy to do and so smart to do. I wanted to ask then, since she took one question, are others, this is great news. I knew you were on the track to do this. But by aligning all those resources to find, prosecute, all the way, are others going to emulate that around the state? I mean, they'd be crazy not to, at least in the high-risk areas like Dave Broward, Palm Beach. That is such a fantastic question. Thank you so much, Eric, for asking that. And thank you for signing up for our Owner Alert Program. And also, along those lines, well, you know what, I have to tell you, when I saw that almost 50% of all our homesteaded property owners here in Plantation have signed up, the only reason that happened is because of you all and our partnership with Plantation. Because, like you said, our staff was in the park. The only reason we're allowed to go to the parks and have our standing events here is because the city is so wonderful in allowing us to participate with you all to help us sign up people that way. So thank you for that. And so right now, we're the only property's office in the country that's doing this. But it's been really successful and really good. And recently, I was elected to be the president of the Florida Association of Property Appraisers. And I gave a presentation to all of my colleagues throughout the state. And our staff came in, and we showed them the success that we've had. And what I'm really excited about is so many of them were very, very interested in doing this with us. And a very good thing is many of them were actually bringing it back to their law enforcement folks to do it with them as well, because you have to have a buy-in of everybody to be able to do it. And what we've promised all of them is, as they're starting to set up similar type of programs, we would actually go there, help them set up, show them what we do so they can do it as well. And for our purpose, it'll be very helpful, too. Because what I've learned in that first situation I spoke about with the married couple, they didn't just steal properties here in Broward. They sold them all throughout the state. And if there are other counties that do this as well that would work with us, it gives us more of a statewide web to really be able to hold people accountable. And the other thing I'm very happy about is last year the legislature passed a fantastic law that actually requires every county in the state of Florida to adopt an e-notification system, very similar to what we have when it comes to let people know whether or not something has been filed on their property, changing their title. So it's a great question. Thank you, Eric. I really appreciate that. Oh, thank you. I just have one question. We have an item coming up regarding accessory dwelling units. And, you know, people might want to rent those. People rent rooms. So if they rent part of their home, do they lose all of their homestead exemption? Or what's the procedure to have a partial adjustment to it? What happens if they do nothing and you find out about it? I don't think the public really understands what happens with that. That is a fantastic question. And also to let you know, another one of our staff members, his name is Bill Berringer. He's all the way in the back. Everybody on my staff always hides and he's now turning around. He's actually our director of real property. By the way, if anybody's upset about the amount of taxes they pay, it's his fault. That guy right there. He'll be here for that conversation. Your staff here was so nice to ask us to, when we went to the planning council, to answer any questions. And he'll be here as well if there's any questions that the council has. But when it comes to renting out your property, whether it's an accessory dwelling or whether it's another portion of your property, a lot of it depends on your facts. The first is, if it's an accessory and you are, well, if you rent it out, actually, forgetting that, I was thinking of something else. So if you rent out any portion of your property and it's your homesteaded property, you're not in danger of losing, potentially, your entire homestead. But what we can do and what we're allowed to do under the law is basically cut out that area that you're renting. And that would go on at market value. And the rest of the property keeps the homestead exemption. And what we do is we're very liberal. So let's say somebody rents out their room or they rent out that accessory dwelling unit. We'll basically just cut that part out. But we won't cut out the common areas that maybe everybody uses, the kitchen or the bathroom. We try to make it as easy as possible on people. If they rent out their entire property, they can be very much in danger of losing their homestead exemption. For example, if they rent out their property for 30 days per year for two consecutive years, they lose it. If they rent it out for more than six months, they lose it. And if they don't violate those statutes, but we determine based on whether or not, let's say they move their driver's license, their voter registration, if we determine it's no longer their property or their primary residence, then they would lose it that way as well. So one follow-up question based on something you said. So if someone's renting out a room and that goes to market rate or the accessory dwelling goes to market rate, but then it comes off being a rental, it's becoming a fully 100%, does that go back to your homestead amount, or is it an adjustment to your taxable value? So it all depends on the situation. It always depends. I know it does. I think generally what would happen is a lot of it could be on a case-by-case basis. And what I've learned about property in Breyer County is what may work for one may not work for another based on the law and the facts. But what could happen, for example, is if you are renting out a portion of your property, most of your property that is not being rented is going to get the benefit of the 3% Save Our Homes cap, and you'll get that Save Our Homes benefit. The other portion that's being rented will go to market value. If now all of a sudden you're no longer renting it, that can be a portion of your homestead again, but that value kind of stays up here, and then they get the 3% cap. Yes. It's similar to as if you were to add an addition to your home, a garage or something of that nature. But what I always tell everybody is if you're going to do anything, if you're going to rent your property, if you're going to sell your property, if you're going to change your deed, if you're going to add something, email me, give me a call. Let's go through it together, and we'll just give you good guidance and advice. You can make the best decision possible. Yes. Great information. Oh, thank you. I don't think we have any other questions. Awesome. Thank you. Well, thank you all so much, and thank you guys again. I love Plantation, and I just can't tell you how much I appreciate the great service you all provide to us. So thank you, everybody. Thanks so much. Okay, I believe we're at service awards. We have a nice list here of volunteer firefighters, and then we have some others in the service pen. 25 years, Stephen Blanchard. No? Appreciate it. Thank you. Stephen, the client's comment. 25 years, Kiri Blanchard. Thank you. No? You want to tell them that you've increased about the social and how you talk to people and what we want to do with fire and everything and how we want to be safe? I'm prompting. She's got it now, right? Well, actually, we'll talk about fire prevention in a second, but if I may, 25 years, I've been blessed enough to not only be a part of this wonderful family, but that I do also get to do with my own family, my sister and my husband, who I met here at the fire department, and we'll be celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary on midnight on January 1st. So it's been an amazing journey. But now, the truth is, we're just out there. We try to visit every single school in the city of Plantation. We don't try to. We do visit every single school. We try to get the message to everyone, not only children, but adults, too. We are on social media. We really try to get the message across the importance of fire safety. You can prevent the accidents and the injuries and the deaths, really. Thank you. All right. Five years, Yvonne Ortiz. Yvonne or Evan? Yvonne? You're good. Okay. Five years, Louis Moldamy. I know you. Yes, sir. You sure do. I was knocking on doors, and that was a congrats, man. Thank you very much. We had a good talk. Anything you want to say? Thank you. Five years, Rodney Paris. Five years, Gil Chauvel. Chauvel? Chauvel. I appreciate it. Five years, Eric Campbell. I appreciate it. Five years, Daniel Moy. You're good? Okay. Five years, Anthony Poo. Poo. Anthony Poo. Louisiana, Cajun, P-O-U-X. No, Haitian. Haitian. I shouldn't have known that. I shouldn't have known that. You want to say anything? Nah. Okay. I've got to go to work. I got you. Okay. Five years, Urien Santana. What's the kids up here? Chief, I imagine you're going to take a whole row outside. You know what you're doing. Absolutely. Thank you. Oh, you're more than welcome. Do you want me out of it? I'm sorry. You get the pen real easy. You should just get it. I know. Thank you. Oh, thank you. I appreciate that. Okay. Service pin award attendees, general employees. Five years, Pamela Ellis Building. I'm glad to see you here, right? Yeah, yeah. Thanks. Anything? Great. Anything? Okay. So, Pamela has been part of our building improvements in that every day, Pamela runs a quick report on how many reports are out by each department, because a permit isn't just building, but it's eight or nine departments. And so, we get to see that number, and that scoreboard, A, makes people competitive, and we built accountability into our permitting system. So, and if I see an email from Pamela, that's what it is. So, thank you very much. Five years, Randy Oberamt, Utilities. And an old tradition that got renewed at the request and suggestion of Council President Timothy Fadgen, we are doing five-year pins for electeds. So, Council Member Anderson and Council Member Horland, come on down. So, I braggingly, I call this out more than they do. I call us the class of 2018 because I get improved image by association. So, yeah, I got one too, so you'll pin me. But, look, we come from different angles. We don't always vote the same. We're not a voting block or anything. But when you have the experience of being elected at the same time and the experience of being a freshman elected, there's a lot of commonalities. So, it's been great with you guys. You want to talk? No. Okay. Take your pin. Thank you. Surprise, right? Yes. And, Council Member Anderson. They put Fadgen on there. Do you have your pin? Yeah. Are you kidding me? They really put Fadgen on here. Yeah. They really put Fadgen on here. Who's our pin person? Who's the pin person? Yeah, it's true. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Good idea. Good idea. All right, I'm done. You're welcome. Thank you, Mayor. Next up, Parks and Recreation update. Mr. Goodrich. Good evening. Before I get started with our upcoming announcements, I do want to take a moment to reflect on something that recently happened. If I can get Chief Harrison and Danny Poehler from Utilities up here for a sec. As many of you know, the Trunk or Treat program has grown tremendously. And one of the most important parts has been the participation of other departments. And we've had an ongoing trophy now for a few years, but we really didn't have anything to really symbolize that trophy. So today, we actually have a trunk, very representative of Trunk or Treat, that I'm going to give to Utilities Department. But I do want to recognize the Police Department for being runners-up the last two years. And you are designated on this trophy. And, of course, for being for Trunk or Treat, it is full of candy. So if anybody needs to want to pick me up, see Danny. That's what a trunk looks like. That's what a trunk looks like. I've got to thank all the other departments. We had a lot of fun doing this this year. The Police Department, they've 10 years running or something like that. So we look forward to see what everybody's going to do next year because this definitely stepped up the competition a little bit. So my team did it, gave them an idea with it, and we all discussed it, and they ran with it. It had to be that Captain Morgan statue. Yeah, you don't see those everywhere, do you? I'll deserve it. Well deserved. Utilities are pirates at heart. So thank you. Thanks. Again, I can't thank all the departments for all the participation they give us in all the events that we do in Parks and Recreation, from Public Works, police, fire, utilities, you name it. Everybody's always stepping in and helping out and making it better for the residents and for all the different events that we put together. So thank you. So tomorrow, we have a 90s skate night party out at the Central Park Skate Rink. From 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. is free to everybody who comes. Friday, December 1st through Sunday, December 10th, we're hosting the Orange Bowl Invitational International Tennis Championships. This is a USTA tennis championship. It is recognized as probably the number one tennis tournament in the entire world for juniors. If you look at every major champion that's been in the past several years, they all came through this tournament and were winners or at least placed very highly in this tournament. So we're very happy to have it. I believe we're on year number 12 now, and we're looking forward to continuing that reputation with and that relationship with USTA and look forward to many more years of hosting this event. Also Friday, December 1st, we have our Rock the Park concert at Pine Island Park again. Obviously, it went very well, very well attended. The band we have this week is Jaded. It's an Aerosmith tribute band. So that's at Pine Island Park. Gates open at 6, but the concert begins at 7. Saturday, December 2nd, right out here, we have Light Up City Hall. As you can see, we've got some of the decorations going. We have some more work going to be done in the next couple days. We're really looking forward to that. That will be at 5 to 9 p.m. out here at City Hall. We will also have selfies with Santa, and we'll have arts and crafts, music, food trucks, and more. So come on out and enjoy the evening. Thursday to December 7th through Sunday, December 10th, we have our Plantation Swim Team is hosting the Winter Championships. That's at the Central Park Aquatics Complex. Any information on that, 954-452-2525. Saturday, December 9th, we have Breakfast with Santa out at Volunteer Park. Very popular program. It's done very well the last few years. We're very happy to have that again. That is at 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. This Friday, December 15th, we have a senior trip to the Dolphin Mall for a 55 and older. Bus leaves the Jim Ward Community Center at 10.30 a.m. Runs to 3 p.m. Pre-registration is required, so please give us a call at 954-585-2344. Also, Friday the 15th through Sunday, December 17th, the Parks and Recreation Foundation is holding their Holiday Pickleball Tournament. If anybody's interested in joining in that, you can contact Andy Rubenstein. You can reach him at 954-439-2900. We also have athletics, obviously, always ongoing. We have PAL spring baseball, basketball, and softball is having registration right now. And for adult programs, we have also basketball, softball, kickball, and flag football. That's it. Thank you very much. Thank you. We're at the public request of counsel regarding municipal affairs. Those who wish to speak 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 the remarks of the council president, not the mayor, or individual members of the council. Kindly keep your remarks to the allotted three minutes. And first up is Mr. Buehler. Carl Buehler, 6831 Southwest 11th Street, Plantation, Florida. I have to say, listening to Marty Kyer is a real trip. I just imagine the closed caption person trying to keep up with him while he's typing. Anyway, he did spend some time at the end of his presentation talking about property fraud, and I hope there is enforcement. And along with short-term rentals, I hope the city pursues enforcement there to ensure that these are being properly registered and paying their fees, and the fees cover that enforcement. Actually, Marty just released a document last week, a 27-page document, outline property fraud in Plantation, right here in Plantation Acres, our backyard. And that involved an individual, a mortgage broker, who had an employee that was renting in Hollywood, and he was behind in his rent. And so he told his landlord, landlady, that he could help her with selling her property if she would give him all her identity information, which he then exchanged with the individual in Plantation, which then wrote up fraudulent bank applications and got a $900,000 loan. And then in cooperation with an NFL football player, transferred the title back and forth a few times through acquit-claim deeds. And this individual actually lived in this property for 15 years and claimed the Homestead exemption illegally. And the council actually passed a resolution honoring him upon his death. He was council member Mark Hyatt, just so you know. I don't think anybody in our city officials today would do something like that, and I'm grateful for that. I appreciate that you have all worked really hard to protect our city and to live ethically. And I expect all of you will continue to do so. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Paul Thompson. Council President, I'm Paul Thompson, 8320 West Sunrise Boulevard, Unit 115. I'm here tonight to speak. It's been a very cheerful meeting. I enjoy the camaraderie and the energy. I have just a small grasp, so I don't want to bring the energy down, but I do want to bring forward my concern. And the hope is not that we beat up on any aspect of the city. The hope is that we find ways to make things better. I am the owner, let's say, of a small business in the city of Plantation, and I've had to go through the process. And before I get into my big issue, I do want to say that there's a lot of hardworking people in the city of Plantation, hardworking people. I have had to deal with the local business tax office here in the city, and I thought that would have been an easy process. And I met one of the nicest workers that you have, Mary Leeds, and she does an awesome job. The problem I have is that she's the only person in a department that I think is of a huge value to the city. It drives business. It drives earnings. It drives a whole lot of things. It drives our socialization. It drives all kinds of things. And we have one lady in that department who has to face people like myself and a line of others. I've been there five times to see her, and she humbly stands there, and she says, I'm working on it. I'm so sorry. I'm working on it. I'm so sorry. And the turnaround time on an application is two months, two months to have your application looked at. I had the misfortune of making some very minor omissions on my application, and it was looked at and put back in the queue. It's been eight weeks. I did not see any movement on my application, per se, until two days ago. Two days ago, I got a notice that said, make a payment for something. I did that immediately. Yesterday, I got another note that said, we've reviewed, and zoning said you passed, and the city clerk's office said you were disapproved, or something negative there. Today, I responded to everything. All I'm saying is that I'm a small business owner trying to do the right thing. I want to be a part of the city of Plantation. I want to represent Plantation. And if the processes that we have in place are not conducive to the growing small business, then I feel as if there's something missing. We really need to give Mary Leeds some assistance. We need to give her some assistance. Mr. Mayor? Let's have Jason first, and then I'll add. Okay. We're addressing this. We're making a new hire. I've had. You're exactly right, sir. Hey, I'm Jason Unamaker, CIO. And I want to appreciate the comments, and it doesn't bring us down at all, and we're very receptive to that feedback. In fact, we've received some of that feedback previously from some of y'all. You know, we had originally thought that by engaging another business tax specialist in the short-term rental arena would provide some support to Mrs. Leeds. But what we found is that the STRs are so time-intensive, that sucked about 80 to 90 percent of Marlene's time, which is not a bad thing, but it is just an exhaustive process, as I think y'all are aware. In addition, we've got a dedicated meeting schedule with a special magistrate, so that has kind of become its own industry, if you will. But with that said, we did recognize that one person for 5,000 businesses is just not sustainable, because the comments you heard, it's not the first time we've heard it. And it is frustrating. So what we did is we just froze an open position in PZ, the permit tech position, to hire another BTR specialist to give Marlene's that support. So we will engage that as soon as we can. We agree 100 percent. It's something that, frankly, we probably should have done sooner. But, you know, we thought the STR clerk was going to get a little bit of relief there, but we just didn't see it. And that's not a failure on her part. It's just indicative of what the short-term rental process is all about. But I do appreciate the comments, sir. Thank you. Mr. Mayor? Yeah, so, yeah, I want to add to that. It'll be the first time we've ever had two, and we're going with two. Meanwhile, at the last Midtown meeting, Midtown specially requested could we get our own BTR clerk, and Midtown funding is available so we could get a BTR paid for through Midtown. And I would like to make that person almost like a concierge also to help with business and permitting, and so we could grow the whole business there, and it'll be paid for not out of our regular city budget, but through Midtown funds. So I'm excited that they were amenable to that. Mr. President? I'm glad you brought it up, and I said yes. Yeah, and that's something we had talked about previously, about having a business concierge, because we shouldn't have a gentleman come before us that wants to open a business here, and we've heard it time and time again, but to also help through that whole permitting and inspection process as well. So I think that would be great. Our city should be set up so that if you're a business and you want to get started, we should be like this. What can we do to help you? Rather than be adversarial, we should be side by side. And find solutions. When we do building, for example, we're not doing building to play gotcha. We're doing building to be building safe, to have things open, and I'm sure you all appreciate that. But overall, we are in the process of we've got to do better about getting our businesses off the ground and the way it's done and all of that. And that's well aware. We've done some things, and we're going to do some more. I am. 100%. Are you set now, though, Mr. Thompson? Are you ready to go? What kind of business? To leave? Please see ice cream. First, I'm not set, no, because I have my food service. It's a restaurant. It's in the pavilion in Mark Schmitt's Plaza, plantation pavilion. It used to be Buster's, that location. That location. It's going to be a Caribbean-Hispanic fusion restaurant right now. But we're not set, because I responded today, and my fear is I'll have to wait two months to hear again. I'm paying rent on a space I can't use. You're losing money. I'm losing a lot of money. Mr. Mayor, can we just make sure that somebody contacts and follows up? Danny Holmes is on, and he'll talk to Mary first thing tomorrow. I do appreciate it, and thanks for the time. And we look forward to coming to the restaurant. Good luck, Mr. Thompson. Invite us to the opening. Thank you. I will. Thank you. Good ice cream. Ms. Cynthia Bush. Good evening. Cynthia Bush, 700 Southwest 78th Avenue. I'm here again to just follow up on my, seems like, biweekly or every other week comments about parks and landscaping and native plants. I did put in a public records request to the city, and Mr. Goodrich's office gave me materials very quickly regarding the use of herbicide in plantation preserve, as well as the reports that we have to send to the state for that park, because it is money that came through the Florida Trust, I believe, originally when it was built. So I have a couple comments on some of the things that I read in there, and also some, based on some conversation that I had, finally, with environmental landscaping, because they did call me back. One, there is this in that report, documented invasive species in the park, but I think there's far more than maybe what those reports actually state. So I would love to see maybe more conversation about that. Two, also, it's apparent that there hasn't been any large-scale maintenance in that park since 2019. That's what those reports say. So, and that is based on my own memory, is what I remember seeing, that there hasn't been any real, like, large-scale refreshing of plants since 2019 in that park, which is quite a long time when you consider how much rain we get and how fast things grow and what happens. And then, finally, in my conversation with environmental landscaping, it became sort of apparent that we have a lot of talent in the city of Plantation, which I knew, with respect to knowledge of plants, knowledge of Florida-friendly plants, and knowledge of native species in particular. And we require that new business or new construction puts in some percentage of native plants. But it may be that we have a bit of a disconnect between that priority in our city and what might be happening with respect to public works and parks and recreation, because it may be that they are not really involved in some of the decision-making as to when and where and what plants need to be put in what locations. And I think it's something that's super important. I mean, we have these people in planning and zoning. They're advising planning and zoning on these types of situations. But when it comes to public works working in a median on Plain Island Road, it's apparent that there's no conversation going on there, because they're pulling out native plants and replacing it with turf. And environmental landscaping doesn't have a say over that. So, and maybe also with respect to parks and rec as well. So that's my comment. And thank you very much. Thank you. Next, we have Mr. Joe Nguyen. Joe Nguyen, 944 Northwest 92nd Terrace. First off, congratulations, Mr. Fejan and Mr. Ernstine, on your new positions here. Thank you. That's so exciting. I'm going to have to mentally reshuffle where everybody is. This is going to be major. Anyway, so I wanted to just talk about... I'm sorry. Okay. I just wanted to mention, I know we talk a lot about the idea of, like, urban heat island, urban heating, urban effects, right? We mention that concept a lot. And it's very academic. We talk about, like, oh, the research shows that, you know, it's five degrees warmer here, or six degrees with this kind of building. And it's all very, like, on paper numbers. We don't cognitively, like, get it. We don't feel it. I just wanted to mention, we finally had a day where it's nice out. Look, sneakers. And I rode over here, of course. And what I noticed was really interesting. I left the Jacaranda Central Park area. It was chilly. I rode along past Central Park through our areas off Pine Island, the whole section by the public stuff off of Pine Island, the old American Expressway area. Reasonably cool still. As soon as I got halfway through the walk and approached university, warm, like, barely mild warm, surprisingly so. Wait at the light, cross the street, get into Fifth Street. And as soon as I make my way to the multi-use trail along Fifth Street, back down to cool again. Dramatic difference. Right around the post office, it fell back down. This could be five, six degrees change just from literally quarter-mile areas. So it was just a really nice, tangible impact of the idea of urban heating and how asphalt and cars contribute to a massive amount of heating when we actually have days that are comfortable and nice. And that little difference can mean essentially the difference between a day that somebody here walking around City Hall or over at the park goes, oh, it's gorgeous out, and somebody over by the walk goes, yeah, it's a little, it's a little, a little warm out. And, you know, and as we know, things will be continuing to heat up and warm and all of that. It's just another thing to keep in mind. And so as we talk about all our other concepts and walkability and things like that, this is just a nice little anecdote that I thought to share. Again, congratulations, congratulations, and we'll be seeing you again soon here. Thank you. All right, thank you. Mr. Matthew McIntosh. Hi, Matthew McIntosh, 601 Northwest 82nd Avenue, Apartment 531. I felt inspired to come up because the business owner needing more assistance because the department only has one person for 5,000 businesses. But just a few weeks ago, we were having a big debate of if we need to cut the millage rate or if we, like, just keep it at the same level for five years and see the law. The people are against keeping the millage rate. They want to cut the millage rate, which would have not allowed us to hire a new person for that department, you know, on and on. So I think that was just a good example of being, like, penny wise and dollar stupid if you're advocating for that. Well, if you weren't and you've maintained the millage rate, that was a good fiscal responsibility. But it was just something I wanted to point out. I think it's something that should be brought up more when people are saying, why are we keeping it? It's like, all right, here's what someone said on so-and-so date and how they were asking the city to do something. And if we cut the rate, how about you go and tell that person why the city shouldn't help them? That's just my thoughts, though. So I think, you know, accountability needs to go both ways if you want to function in society. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Rob Corman. Rob Corman, 11095 White Hawk Street. Two things. I'm going to start with I came before you back either May or June with a request as Chair of Planning and Zoning to amend code to allow certain things to happen. The specific code section I'm talking about is 2722C2B. Basically, what we're trying to do, the Planning and Zoning Board, in some cases, is a final decision maker with regards to something as, for example, practical difficulty waivers. Somebody put something in the backyard. They want to change it out. We ultimately make that final decision. And what I requested and what I'm requesting, again, is a change to this particular code, which governs the Planning and Zoning alternate members. Currently, a member is only allowed to swap out with their primary. An alternate is only allowed to swap out with their primary. So if Council Member Anderson's primary is not there, his alternate can sit in. However, if the alternate is not available, then that seat goes empty and we don't have a full dais. What I'm requesting is that the concrete nature of 2722C2B be changed to allow any alternate member to sit for any individual on the dais. I get that that might introduce the notion of bias, but considering that we are advisory in most capacities and only making decisions that directly affect residents in a narrow capacity, I think it's more important to have a full dais of seven members than it is to have a particular rule that limits alternates seating. That is the first thing. The second thing I'm going to ask you to do is a little bit of your financial oversight, because I have a question with regards to something that popped up on the website, namely University of Plantation. We have two professional educator administrators on the dais right now, and I'm looking at the webpage, and this, while it is an admirable goal to provide our residents with information and tools they can share with their friends and neighbors and help the city distribute accurate information on important topics, excuse me, the semester class schedule, as the classes read, are a little bit loose with the titles, not quite sure what information is actually going to be presented, but what disturbs me more is that it's limited to residents 18 and older. It requires an application, a driver's license, and utility or business tax receipt. The problem I have with the application is it is intrusive. It requires you to list your occupation. I'm frankly not sure why my occupation as an airline pilot would be a determining factor in me being able to join this university. The university of plantation. Likewise, there's a photo waiver. We don't have any expectation of privacy in something like this, so no photo waiver is necessary for this or at the parades or at the park or anything like that. Yet, for some reason, the university of plantation is requiring a photo waiver and an application for something that, in my opinion, is going to be using city funds and resources. As such, I would request that your oversight look into this particular program. My personal preference, as an educator, would for this to be webinar-based, because if you want to make sure that the information gets passed along accuracy, it could do so to everybody without a middleman. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Lori Bernardi. Lori Bernardi, 11681 Northwest 6th Street Plantation. Congratulations to those that have changed seats, and congratulations for the year and all the stuff that you did for the city of plantation. Okay, mine has to do with the dogs in the parks. I'm a dog lover. I've had dogs, cats, rabbits, fish, turtles, snakes, everything. But the dogs in the parks are getting out of hand. I think that people should not bring the dogs in the parks. There are signs up that say not to. At the Trunk or Treat, with all those people, and there was a ton of people at the Trunk or Treat, there were so many dogs there, and I'm not talking little dogs. People had big dogs there, and some of these kids were afraid of the dogs. And it's not right that if you're not supposed to have the dogs in there, and you have all these little kids with their parents, and some of them get away from the parents, these people have all these dogs in there. And there are signs up, but I don't think people are going to keep them out of the parks until you put a sign up that says you're going to be fined, and the cops are actually going to enforce the fines for these people. You go to the food trucks on Wednesday night, there's people walking around with these dogs, and I've actually had to, like, jerk my leg around because a dog went after me, and it's not right. I mean, I'm there to sit and have a good time. I'm not supposed to be walking around when I'm talking to my friends, walking around from truck to truck, worrying about whose dog. I mean, all the dog has to do is not like the perfume you have on or the smell of soap you have on. I mean, they're lovable and all, but an animal is still an animal. And I know that there's plans on Central Park to have a dog park, and there's dog parks around whether you have to go to Sunrise or whatever, but they need to be taken to the dog parks and not in the parks where little kids are. That's my thing for tonight so far. Have a nice day. Thank you. Is there anybody online? Oh, I'm sorry, Mayor. Mr. Mayor? So I would like, I feel quite a bit like Lori does. One dog, a dog comes running after me and the owner goes, oh, he's fine. Hell, I don't care if he's fine. I'm not. You know, so there is that piece of it. So my question to counsel and or law enforcement is what mannerism do you suggest we go about enforcing, removing, policing, that kind of thing? How should we handle it? And I'm open for ideas. And I'll direct staff to do what we think is the best way to do it. Mr. Member Reinstein? I guess the question back to you, Mayor, would be do you have any examples of what is done in other cities that have, you know, regulations regarding dogs in parks? Good way to go about it. I don't. It would seem to me I don't have any particular answers or suggestions other than to maybe look and see what is done elsewhere. I probably don't need to reinvent the wheel on this one. Thanks. Council Member Anderson? Similar to Council Member Reinstein, I don't know if what our we have signs posted, but I don't know if we have an ordinance on it. I'd have to look it up. If necessary, we might need if we don't, we might need to add to it because I think we should have the right to fine. It shouldn't just say no dogs. It should say, you know, subject to fine or whatever, because I have had residents complain at Rock the Park and a lot trunk or treat. A lot of these big events, they come to everything, and they're not just little dogs, and it shouldn't matter at what size because little dogs bite, too. And I'm a dog and animal lover, but time and place and manner. We need to be respecting our own rules, and if they're not going to respect them by just a nice sign, then we have to have teeth to it, too. No pun intended. So right off the bat, I think I'm going to ask Bill to put it on the FRPA chat, if nothing else, about how you all police it. So I don't know if we have an existing, but like Councilman Reinstein said, we should check around to see what they do. Yeah, unfortunately. So one of the main reasons why we moved Rock the Park to Pine Island Park, it's a controlled environment. I have a one-point entrance, and we do have police helping us with that, and we have made some additional signage. Last Rock the Park, I believe, we had one dog, which was a service animal, and there are exceptions that we do have to understand and make. Like, that does not mean like an emotional support dog does not qualify under ADA law, and the ADA law has very specific. There's two questions I can ask them. One is, what service does that dog provide, and I cannot remember the second question, but we'll make sure that staff has that. However, I will tell you that I can't repeat the things that people call us when we approach the dog owners, and I feel terrible for my staff, the frontline staff that are out there, trying to just enforce those rules, and we've had this discussion many a times, and we do have some basic framework for the ordinance. Trisha's been working on that specifically, so we will have that to you very shortly. But we appreciate the help police provides us because, again, when we say you can't be here, it really doesn't carry a lot of weight. I think it is best left up to PD and parks to work this out with staff. However, what I would suggest, we have another ordinance that's coming up, a second reading, smoking in the parks. I'd also, the city does a great job on our social media campaigns. While everyone is not on social media, a lot of people are. So what I would suggest is that there is a social media campaign about the no smoking, if that passes tonight, and the dogs. And I love my dogs, but they don't belong at these events. Great suggestions. I would just add, you know, let's enhance the signage. You know, I think people need to also consider that kids and people are playing on those fields, and it's not really fair to them. We're borrowing those fields because their primary purpose is for soccer. So, Lori, did you have something you wanted to add? Yes, you know, like when Publix, you know, when people are bringing all their dogs in Publix, but the new signage that Publix put up has really made a difference because, I mean, you can tell what dogs have been trained and have the vests on are the ones that are supposed to be in there as opposed to the ones that you just get for calming or whatever else. But Publix has wording on there now because it has to be the real ADA that, you know, is for reasons. So, I mean, they did. They must have looked up and found what kind of wordage you need on there because you don't see all those dogs in Publix anymore, which is nice. A dog under the arm, a dog on the table at a restaurant, those are not service dogs. No. Nobody wants to enforce it. Even though they have the vests on. It's frustrating. You know, I got two dogs that I love, and I'm disgusted by it when I'm sitting by someone that has their dog on a table at a restaurant. Because I might be sitting at that table next. Thank you. That's true. Any people online? Okay. Last call. I filled out my form wrong. Hello. I don't know if I saw you for just general comment. I know I'm on there for legislation, but. Go ahead. Okay, thank you. Donna Marie McCormick, 1201 Northwest, 114th Avenue, Plantation Acres. The topic is short-term vacation rentals. As a city, we've been working on improving our controls regarding short-term vacation rentals. We revised our ordinance. We hired additional staff. And we added an additional special magistrate hearing as of September to improve our enforcement. I've been working closely with the assigned city staff to assist, and as such, I wanted to provide an update as it relates to Plantation Acres. In the acres, we have 34 short-term vacation rentals, with only 11 of them properly licensed. Because the special magistrate's docket usually only has 10 to 12 spots each session, there were a grand total of 21 cases heard. However, only eight of those were acres, cases pertaining to only six locations. The majority of these cases were just to get them licensed. So the issue that is now in front of us is making sure they're abiding by the ongoing rules once they are licensed. And that's an ongoing concern. At this rate, it's going to take many months to address the backlog. So my request to you as a solution is to simply add additional slots to the existing special magistrate's short-term vacation rental monthly docket so we can clear the backlog. Now, my second comment regarding short-term vacation rentals is to express my concern and unhappiness that agenda item tonight, PP23-0035, which has to do with accessory dwelling units and pool houses. Donna, can we wait until we get to that? Oh, well, one second. Yes, we could. We could. But the point is, okay, and I'll go through this. I'm having a revolt on my first night. Sorry. I mean, I don't mean to revolt. The point is, we have a crisis for short-term vacation rentals. Until and unless this is evaluated to potentially only benefit family members, we're only going to exasperate the problem. That's my point, and thank you for allowing me to make it. Thank you. Quick, quick. Oh, the mayor left. Oh, there he is. Oh, the mayor left. I got a bad angle. I was that bad, the mayor left? I spoke to the magistrate. We're not limiting the slots. It's just a matter of the items that get through the process. There's no limit, and we tried to tell Donna that, and she didn't listen. No, Donna said, I would pull up a chair. We sat here and told you that we're going to do as many as we want. They've told you that. Staff has told you that. We can do as many as we want, and we want to do as many as we can. Okay. I said I would pull up a chair side-by-side, unpaid, and assist, and you said no. Okay? Thank you. I certainly did. Yes. Okay. Last call. With that, public comments are now closed. Moving on to the consent agenda, which consists of items 1 through 17, and may be approved with one motion. Does any member of the council wish to pull an item? Council President, I don't need to pull it, but I did send Ms. Beggaro just some small corrections on the minutes for items 12 and 13, so I'm fine with approving as amended, but just some typos. Okay, but we don't need to pull it. Does any member of the public wish to pull an item? I see 18 and 19 on here, but I kind of think that 18 is referring to 19 because there was a change to the agenda. Everyone wants to speak regarding the ADU legislation. Is that correct? Yes. Okay. So if you put 18, I believe that's actually 19 now. Can I have a motion? Motion to approve. You're pulling 11? Okay. Did I miss anyone else? 6? 11. 11 and 6, that's it? Can I have a motion? Motion to approve items 1 through 17, minus 6 and 11. Second. Okay. City Clerk, please call the roll. Council Member Anderson? Yes. Council Member Andreu? Yes. Council Member Horland? Yes. Council Member Einstein? Yes. Council Member Fadgen? Yes. Thank you. Now we're at item 6, ammunition for the police department SWAT team, the SWAT training and duty use. Someone yelled 6. Is that Carl? No, come on up. Oh, there it is. I'm sorry. Sorry about that. You haven't written down. Joe Wynn, 944 Northwest 92nd Terrace. I'll try to be very quick. Okay. All right. So $90,000 for bullets. I want our police to have great training, target skills as much as anyone else, and I want them to have the best situational awareness to keep our community and continue keeping our community safe. Totally without saying. But I'll say it anyway. I'm not saying it's not worth it, assuming it's typical compared to other similar-sized departments. I honestly don't know. It seems like a lot, so I'm going to compare it in terms that I understand. It's sidewalks. It's about the price of one of the lengths of sidewalks that are community requested in one of those sea slips. Those are currently awaiting funding for maybe a plan in about six to seven years. We know that it will also improve the community and the community safety in tangible ways, day-to-day priorities. That's all. Thank you. Any other public comment? Motion to approve item six. Second. We have a motion and then a second. City clerk, please call the roll. Council Member Anderson? Yes. Council Member Andreu? Yes. Council Member Horland? Yes. Council Member Reinstein? Yes. Council Member Fadgen? Yes. Thank you. Item number 11, EPR Fire Prevention. Amendment number four to the Ambulance Billing and Related Professional Service Agreement. Mr. Buehler? Carl Buehler, 6831 Southwest 11th Street, Plantation, Florida. I basically have a question here, and that is, is this new agreement with Digitech going to include online processing of billing? Because the problem in the past has been, I got a bill from the Ambulance Billing, and they sent me an email and a paper bill, and I went to pay it, and they had a place to pay it online. You go to the website, and I filled out all the forms, and it was, you know, it says we cannot, you know, we can't process this, something like that, some error message. So I said, well, maybe it's my blocker. So I got rid of my ad blocker, tried again, tried a different browser. I spent a whole lot of time trying to pay this bill online because using the exact link they gave me right on the website, also right on the snail mail billing, and then I filed a complaint with the city, and I found out that even though they do have that option showing, they actually cannot process anything online. In fact, you have to send them a check. The only way to pay that bill is snail mail. You cannot use, you can't call up and pay it. You can't use the website. You can't pay it online. You can't use a credit card. You have to send a check. And I thought that if you're paying them all this money, you would think in this day and age that you're going to have online processing. And snail mail, I mean, you know, it's sort of obsolete. But anyway, I paid the bill eventually, and I don't know if that was ever resolved. Mr. Spencer, can you speak to that? Good evening. Charles Spencer, former director. I can only speak to what the amendment actually says, and it does offer a billing and payment portal. So I'm not sure if that's the online payment that Mr. Bueller is speaking to. Oh, hi, Anna. Hi, Tara. We are actually currently working on that with IT and payment. Which means yourself. Yes. Oh, Anna Oteniano, finance director. Sorry. City Plantation. We're actually working on it right now, and that hopefully will be in the next month or so. We're hoping to get that off the ground. Great. We've had that for a while. We've heard from other people. We've been working on that. Okay, very good. Yeah. Carl, you're absolutely... Was yours emergency service, is that what you said? Amulance, yes. Amulance, yeah. Any other comments? Can I have a motion? Motion to approve item 11. Second. We have a motion and a second. City clerk, please call the roll. Council Member Anderson. Yes. Council Member Andreu. Yes. Council Member Horland. Yes. Council Member Reinstein. Yes. Council Member Fajan. Yes. Thank you. All right, we're up to legislative items. Number 18, Ordinance Creating Tobacco-Free Zones in the City Parks. City Attorney Ezra, please read the ordinance. Yes, sir. This is a public hearing, second reading of an ordinance of the City Council of the City of Plantation, Florida, amending Article 11, Ancillary Public Services, Division 4, Parks and Playgrounds of the City Code of Ordinances by creating Section 2-374, entitled The Designation of Tobacco-Free Zones in Parks, Providing for Conflict, Severability, on an Effective Date. Thank you. Is there any comments? I'd like to make a motion to approve. Or make a motion? Second. Who made the council? Council Member Warren. You want to be out of here. No. Any comments from the council, from the public? City clerk, can you call the roll? Council Member Anderson. Yes. Council Member Andreu. Yes. Council Member Horland. Yes. Council Member Reinstein. Yes. Council Member Fajan. Yes. Thank you. Number 19, Ordinance of the City of Plantation pertaining to the subject of zoning and land development, amending Chapter 27 of the City Code of Ordinances, specifically amending Section 27-105A, title Accessory Dwelling Units and Pool Houses. City Attorney Ezra, please read the ordinance. This is 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 of the City Code of Ordinances, specifically amending 27-105A, entitled Accessory Dwelling Units and Pool Houses, amending Section 27-72, entitled Residential Zoning Districts, amending Section 27-92, entitled Planned Community Development Zoning Districts, amending Section 27-11, entitled Definitions, amending Section 27-310, entitled Accessory Buildings and Structures in Residential Districts, amending Section 27-296, entitled Accessory Uses and Standards, amending the physical and digital versions of the land development regulations, providing for codification, severability, savings clause, conflicts, and an effective date. Mr. Alpert. Good evening, Council, Mayor, City Attorney, City Clerk, Michael Alpert. Will you entertain a motion before he begins? Sure. I'd like to make a motion to table the first hearing. I think that there's been a lot of questions raised as to the request for more time to review this, and while I think, and I've spoken to Mr. Alpert and Mr. Holmes, while I think that the presentation could answer some questions, my concern is that some of the people who would like more time to review this proposal haven't yet formulated all the questions that they would like to formulate so that everything that may be presented, they may not answer all those yet because they're not ready to raise all of their questions. And so, instead of going through this right now without giving the public more time to evaluate this that's been requested, I make a motion to table. I would... Wait, wait. You did not? I did not back up. Okay. Council Member Horland? Thank you, Mr. President. I'd like to offer an alternate view. What I have stated to everybody, and I've tried to respond to everybody who's emailed this week, is this has been publicly advertised for this evening. I think that we should go first. You know, I'd like to follow our processes. There's a reason why we have a first and a second reading of ordinances. I'd like to have staff give their presentation tonight. This is not the first time this has been brought to the public. It's gone through the AHAC meeting. It's gone to planning and zoning twice. And planning and zoning, I believe on the first reading, made some very good recommendations. So, this is not new to the public realm. I felt that it would be best if we had the presentation that everybody has... We've been talking about the ADUs for about a year now. And I don't believe when we had our planning and zoning roundtable, I believe everybody knew that this was coming, at least from the Council's perspective. I thought it was best. And what I said to residents was, it's been advertised. Let's have the first reading tonight. And I have no objection to postponing, and I did call planning and zoning staff, to postponing the second reading until February, March, if need be, so that we have more time to create the ordinance that we want is best. But this is not new to the public arena. It has been through three advisory boards. So, you know, that's my feeling on it tonight, since it has been publicly advertised. Because if you look online with the e-comments, we also have a lot of people that are supportive of the ordinance. Just a point of order. Yeah, go ahead. I think there's a motion that was made, and I understand if it's not seconded, then we would continue. But I think the proper, and we could ask our city attorney, but the proper step once the motion is made is to entertain a second. Just for purposes of clarification for the record, once there's a second, there's no further discussion on a motion to table. So if there's going to be any discussion, it would occur before a second. But once a second to a motion to table is made, there's no further discussion. Okay, and that's kind of, I want the mayor's clicked in, and Council Member Andreu. So, Mr. Mayor, it's jammed up. I don't know. I broke it on the first day. Jennifer was ahead of me. Go ahead, Council Member Andreu, if you'd like. Thank you. Sorry. It was exactly to Attorney Ezra's point. So, although I'm in agreement with Council Member Reinstein, I would like to have the presentation, and maybe you would do that motion after the presentation. But I would like to have the ability for not only the council, but more importantly, the public, to go through the presentation, because I believe in my conversations with staff, a lot of the questions that have been raised to us via e-comment and also through the various e-mails we received, and to Council Member Horland's point, people who support this and people who I don't think anybody is not supporting. I think they just have questions and want clarification. So I think it would be most beneficial in seeing how people have already come out tonight to go through the presentation, and then after that we can decide on if we would like to move this forward. I would like, I think it would be wise to listen to the presentation and take the public comments, and then make a decision whether we should table it or we're going to vote on it first reading, and as Council Member Horland suggested, scheduling it way in the advanced future of like March or April, I think is what you said. Let's see. I'm not sure if I'm trusting this thing. Council Member Horland looks like it's next. Okay. Council Member Anderson. Oh, I'm sorry. I basically, I mean, I see all the points. I know we've had a lot of comments, and I think we're all going to want to have time for the public, but I think we need to see the presentation. So I guess the last one to speak pretty much captured what I would say, which was Council Member Andres. So, but let's see where it goes from there. I think we need to see the presentation and then see where it goes from there. Okay. So we have a motion to table. Do we have a second? We can still get me, too. Oh, I'm so sorry. That's okay. You're not there. Click it. Go ahead, Mr. Mayor. Sorry. First off, I got the same, we all got the same letter that spurred this discussion, which came from Hawke's Landing, and I'm delighted to see Hawke's Landing, which is the premier area in our city, to be involved and to show action. There's a lot of bright, talented people. It's a premier area there. But I have problems with the way it's presented because the gentleman who presents it, David Weiss, says, I write to you on behalf of the Hawke's Landing property owners and I presume other homeowners associations. Hawke's Landing is not a homeowners association. Hawke's Landing is still run by Robinette Homes. There was no election where Weiss was ever elected by a vote of all the residents. Because not all the property has been sold at Hawke's Landing, he is still an employee of Robinette Homes. So this letter is written by a developer. This letter is not written by a homeowners association. If homeowners associations have a problem with it, it's great. Also, I would think that he has contact with people who have been through the two AHAC meetings and the two P&Z meetings. It's been out there for six or seven months. So for now to get a letter saying, oh, this is being sprung on us, is incredibly disingenuous. I'm ticked. I think you can tell. And I wish the person were here so we could have the conversation. I think he's here. I'm here. Oh, good. Come on up. Well, wait. No, no, no, no, no, no. We have a – I don't trust this system right now. Does anybody else want to speak on the dais? I don't think so. Okay, so we have a motion. Do we have a second for tabling? I do not think we do. So should we do the presentation or a motion to approve? Mr. Alpert, it's your show. Normally, you would have the presentation first, and then if you wanted to ask questions now or table the questions until later. But okay. Thank you. Just a little bit of background. ADUs are accessory dwelling units, and they could be in many forms. They could be attached to the primary home, or they could be detached. And Florida Statutes Section 163.317712A define ADUs as an ancillary or secondary living unit that has a separate kitchen, bathroom, and sleeping area existing either within the same structure or the same lot as the primary dwelling unit. Accessory dwelling units are found to be very compatible within single-family neighborhoods. It's a pattern that you see all over the country. Just some graphic examples. It could be in addition to the second story. It could be in addition to the ground floor. It could also be a detached structure. One of the greatest challenges that homeowners face with building ADUs is government approval and permitting. Overall, 50% of homeowners nationally found it difficult to build their ADUs to their city's or county's development standards. ADUs can increase property values, generate revenue for property owners, and supplement housing within our residential neighborhoods without changing the character of those neighborhoods. The city is requesting amendments to the following sections of Chapter 27 in order to provide for all single-family and dual-family properties to allow accessory dwelling units on their properties. Definition section. The section on residential zoning districts, the planned community development zoning districts, specific use regulations, accessory uses and standards, and accessory buildings and structures in residential districts. And the reason that 27-105 is highlighted is because that's where the bulk of the new regulations are. It's the existing section on guest houses, and it was modified to the present proposed ordinance. Some of the benefits of ADUs. They meet a range of housing needs. They promote intergenerational and multifamily arrangements. They optimize collective infrastructure. They create additional income for both cities and homeowners. And they reduce urban sprawl and foster sustainable cities. So the process, as was alluded to earlier, the ordinance complies with the State of Florida's Affordable Housing Strategies Statute 420.90764E to help our community provide more housing options for our residents. In December of 2022, the City Council approved this concept as part of the final AHAC report to the State of Florida's Florida Housing Coalition. And actually this evening, item number two, consent item number two, approved the report for the 2020-2023 year, earlier this evening. On July 6th, the Affordable Housing Advisory Committee recommended approval of the draft ordinance. On July 18th, the Planning and Zoning Board heard this item and suggested some modifications in order to address the Board's concerns and questions. And on November 7th, the Planning and Zoning Board unanimously recommended approval of this code amendment, making a finding of consistency with the City's comprehensive plan. This ordinance replaces the existing ADU regulations, which are characterized as guest houses, which currently may only be utilized by family members or household employees. This ordinance allows a full kitchen, as allowed by the statute. This allows ADUs by right rather than by conditional use. Allows ADUs in every residential single-family zoning district, our duplex district, RD6L, and the PRD, Planned Residational Development Districts. Provides that ADUs may be occupied by family members as well as unrelated people. Typical example of what a detached ADU would look like. It would require at least one bedroom and one bathroom, but no longer has a maximum number. Increases the proportionate size of the ADU with respect to the primary residence from a maximum of 25% to 50%, with a limitation of a minimum of 500 square feet and a maximum of 1,250 square feet. Maintains existing structural front and side setbacks for the home, but allows a minimum rear setback of 10 feet. So in other words, it would be in the backyard. It would still have the same setback as the home is required to have. But instead of having a greater setback, we are proposing to allow 10 feet rear setback. And so if your neighbor has an ADU as well, there would be 10 feet minimum between each of those ADUs back-to-back. Does not require extra parking spaces provided the home already meets on-site parking requirements, unless the ADU has two or more bedrooms, then another parking space would be required. And does not impede a homeowner from adding a garage, carport, or driveway subject to those respective development standards. This ordinance complies with the statute as mentioned previously. Adjusts relevant sections of the code where needed. That's why you see those other sections addressed. Provides that ADUs may be rented either as short-term or as long-term, but either the primary residence or the ADU must always be owner-occupied and must abide by the city's ordinance for short-term rentals. Property owners must file a deed restriction in the Broward County public records, and the city will not enforce HOA regulations. Just, again, these examples, different types, from a plan view and from a three-dimensional perspective. Staff recommends approval. Council Member Andrea. Thank you, Mr. Alpert. So one point that I want to make, and then I have a question for you, if you could go back to one or two slides where the bullet points were. There you go. Thank you. So I asked Mr. Alpert to pull me some information, and thanks to you and your wonderful staff and Mr. Holmes, you were able to do that very quickly. And I just wanted data because those of you who have worked with me for a little while now, I like to make data-based decisions, right? It's not just pulling these ideas and notions out of the sky. So we went back to, I think it was 2018 or 19? Yes, 2018. Okay. And there have been 13 ADUs approved since 2018. Guest houses, yes. So I don't want people to leave with the impression that, you know, there's thousands of these in plantation. Because I know since I've been a member of the council, I can probably count on one hand how many have come before us as conditional use approvals. So that's one aspect. The other aspect, I believe the mayor touched upon it, is with the HOAs. And I just want to make a few comments about that. So although this went through the entire process, again, kudos to the staff. It's gone through PNC. You've checked all of the boxes. But we have to remember that sometimes the general public is still not aware of these things. So, yes, as a council, we've been talking about it for over a year. And everybody's been aware who's been very involved. But the day-to-day resident who's not tuning in and watching would not be. And so I think that's important to also workshop it, have this presentation, and get their input. So it's not that we want to delay anything, but it's important to get all of the residents' buy-in and input about this process and this ordinance. So the other question I have, and we discussed this yesterday, is your last bullet here. In terms of HOA, because Hawks Landing is not the only one that I've been in touch with. I'm in Westport. I've talked to our HOA president. There are quite a few HOA presidents who have been concerned about this because they don't know how it will impact their HOA bylaws. So you said that the city will not enforce their regulations. What does that really mean? And so if they have something in the HOA deed-restricted community that prevents their community from having an ADU, where are we going to, I guess, give that preference? Who trumps who? The HOA would trump in that case. So, yeah. So if it's a deed, I just want to be very clear because you and I had the conversation, but I want it to be on the record. So if the HOA community has something in their bylaws or whatever they use in their deed restrictions, that would take precedence over our ordinance. Correct. And another analogy would be somebody wanting to do a fence, and their HOA required a certain type of fence. From the city's point of view, if that type of fence was allowable, we could approve it. But if the HOA doesn't allow it, then they're in trouble with their HOA. So they have to abide by their HOA's regulations as well. So I think that's a very important point. And not only that, I think that we need to give people an opportunity, again, the timeline, to go back and maybe if they want to now, because maybe their bylaws didn't address the ADU situation. Because, again, in my area, right, wasn't an issue when the community was founded and built. Right. So maybe now they want to go back and the board wants to meet, and they need that time to meet and address how they want to deal with this. And I think we need to allow that and give them that opportunity. So thank you, Mr. Alpert. You're welcome. Thank you, Council Member Andreo. I was going to ask, regarding the HOA regulations, that if the HOA has regulation in there that says no, then that's the end of it for that community. And I do think that a ramp-up period for those communities who want to institute that is probably a good idea. Council Member Horland. Thank you, Mr. President. Council Member Andreo, that's exactly where I was heading tonight. You stated everything. I thought it was important, since it was advertised, we have the presentation. A lot of the questions can be answered tonight. And then on that delay, if we go forward tonight of the second reading, there's no time frame. We can create the ordinance that best suits the needs of all the communities. I think a couple of other things that came up in some of the emails and that we've talked about, that, you know, people were concerned about, you know, drainage. Well, if they don't, the property doesn't meet the drainage requirements with the proposal, it's not going to be approved. Fire access, all types of, they still have to conform to our codes. And I think it's also important, we've had the discussion, that there's not going to be, I do not believe there's going to be a tremendous proliferation, because these are expensive to build. So there's a lot of considerations. I'd like to just address short-term rentals, because that was brought up earlier. Yes, we're having a crisis with short-term rentals, and many of you know that's been one of the things I've been working on, we've all been working on for a couple of years, we're also having a crisis of housing in this community. This would also allow people to stay in their homes if they want to rent out that piece of property, you know, or have their in-laws there or their children who are returning home from college and can't afford an apartment in City Plantation. But I think it's important to talk about short-term rentals and base it, again, on data and facts. When we talk about short-term rentals, if you look at the complaints that we've had, and I confirm this with Marlene, who's handling our short-term rental registrations, the owner occupied short-term rentals renting out their property. We don't have the police calls. We don't have the complaints. So where we have the issues are the ones that are, there's no- Non-hosted. Non-hosted, thank you. Non-hosted. So I think that is also a concern that people have. That's less of a concern for me. I don't think this is going to open the door to the short-term rentals. But, again, thank you for stating that. I think it's important that we have the presentation tonight, and hopefully we can start to massage this so it best fits everybody's needs. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Alpert, for the presentation. And, you know, I think it is correct that we've been dealing with this for a long time, and I think on the council we're very familiar with this. And I think as mentioned, and it's worth mentioning again, that we did approve agenda item two, which was the amazing job of the Affordable Housing Advisory Committee. And so this clearly is one of the suggestions that's part of the Affordable Housing Advisory Committee. And one of the questions that we discussed when I asked was in terms of the urgency with moving the first hearing. And one of the things that you said was that only, and you said today, only 13 guest houses approved since 2018. Although this has been a work in progress for a long time, and you've done, and the department's done a tremendous amount of time, put a tremendous amount of time into this, the reason for the tabling was so that the residents who have questions, regardless of whether the people sending us emails actually have an HOA or don't have an HOA, and regardless of what any of us think of the basis for why they're coming to us, a lot of residents have said they want more time. And so the comment that Council Member Andreu said, I think was said very well, is that sometimes, you know, they read it on the agenda for the first time, even though it's been before us for many, many moons. And so the fact that so many residents reached out and said that they wanted more time to analyze it, maybe to speak to their HOA, maybe to have their HOA meeting, maybe to talk to their HOA attorney, maybe to do some further investigations so that they could be prepared to ask those questions tonight, even after listening to this wonderful PowerPoint presentation. So that was the reason for the tabling, not because you haven't done a stellar job. So thank you again for the presentation. Thank you. Council Member Reinstein, I guess for the motion, if we make a motion and have a far, like a March or April 2nd reading, do we have to make that as part of the motion? Or is it just a matter that's our intent and we'll just schedule when we want to schedule for the second reading? You can. It's within your authority to move to approve and request that this not be rescheduled for second reading public hearing until after a certain date or until a time certain. You can do that. Or you can approve it and request administration not to set it before a certain date and not make it part of the motion. Okay. My issue with tabling it is, is that the residents that have signed up to speak on this will not be able to speak to it. So in my opinion, I feel that we should make a motion because it is the first reading. We can knock it down in the second reading after everyone gets up to speed. And then they certainly will be able to reach out to us because they have been reaching out to us. So my opinion is, if someone can make a motion with a future date for a second reading, that way we could do town halls or workshops as necessary to get everyone to understand what we're trying to accomplish. And then we are also going to be able to hear the public's comments regarding this. So with that, Council Member Andreu. Thank you, President Fadgen. I just wanted to add, you know, it's been advertised on social media a lot. We have the upcoming housing affordability meeting Monday, December 4th at 6 p.m. right here. And I think that will also give everybody an opportunity to learn more about ADUs in general and talk about affordability and the crisis that Council Member Horland mentioned earlier that we're all seeing right now and feeling. So having, again, that meeting first would have, I think, in retrospect would have helped to have that first before having this come. But that's okay. We're here now. And I would like to hear from our residents and get their input so that all of that can be taken in before this is finalized in, say, the end of February. Okay. I don't see any more comments from the Council or the Mayor. If someone can make a motion. Make a motion to approve. And I'd ask that Planning and Zoning Administration not schedule this before the end of February. Can we make that March? Don't schedule it before the end of February. They can make it March. It'll be March. I was thinking. Okay. Do we have a second? Second. Okay. We'll move into public comments. Mr. Buehler, unless you don't want to go first because you got first the last time. You want to wait? I'll wait. All right. I don't want to pick on you. Mr. Wynn. Buddy. Every time. Every time. I'll bring WD-40 one of these days. All right. So, Joe Wynn, 944 Northwest 92nd Terrace. All right. So, I think that Council Member Horland had access to my notes before we got here because she just went through all that. But I'll just shoot through. I appreciate everything that you said as well. Really, there's two separate issues here. The first is the NIMBY concern from existing residents worried that this will suddenly bring noisy and disruptive Airbnb renters to their neighbor's new tree house or extra rooms or whatever. We've discussed this at length in previous council and committee meetings. And there are stringent owner and resident rules in place to mitigate that. Plus, we already have the short-term rental policy set by the city and the state. This doesn't change any of those. And it doesn't let people just live in a tree house. They have to be homes. They have to meet the same drainage requirements that are already in place. And individual disruptive events can still be handled on a case-by-case basis by the police. And it does happen more than it should already with actual full-time home residents. Finally, this doesn't prohibit HOAs from overriding the zoning policy. So you can still prohibit them in your own communities, though you shouldn't. And that makes many of the objections a bit moot. So I think we need to truly understand what makes ADUs powerful. For places, a lot of unused land or a desire to expand the home. It gives property owners the freedom to improve the value of their property and generate recurring income while providing some degree of more affordable housing. This goes with the second point of the whole discussion, addressing housing costs. If you're a property owner right now, it's pretty great. I mean, insurance stinks. But increased values is a good thing. For those looking to buy, it's really hard. Plantations' average income cannot afford even my modest place, which has doubled in value in the past seven years. Thus, they rent, which is wildly expensive because of comparable property values, while offering no learned term wealth growth. Renters who would prefer to buy but cannot afford to are deprived the freedom and the American dream of a residence of their own. ADUs are one small piece of a broader effort in bringing the cost of living down to help more people get to that goal. More options means a lower price for housing. This is documented in every city that's been implemented, and it's a net good for our community. We talk about addressing the housing affordability crisis. Here's one of those pieces. Let's get this first reading, and I want to again mention it's a first reading. We are not saying today this is now law. We are saying this is the reading, and then we can move forward again after additional discussion, public comment, hearings, whatever it may be, so that we can iron down exactly what we want to do and what we want to present as the one that could become the policy. And then we can have the appropriate time to help more people have the freedom and the option to live, work, and play where the grass is greener. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Van Jewell. Hi. Kathleen Von Hul, 11901 Northwest 24th Street, Plantation. I just wanted to say that I think whoever thought of this, I applaud you for coming up with thinking out of the box. I'm sorry I have not been on top of it. I hadn't heard about it before. I think we have a terrible crisis of affordable housing. I think it breaks my heart every time I'm reading all these stories on Next Door, people who can't afford a place to live. I thought this was going to guarantee more that it's affordable housing, but I guess if you have your family living there, obviously it's more affordable for them. Hopefully, putting these ADUs and allowing people to have the ADU will help the homeowner, of course, and then as well help people find a two-bedroom that's maybe more reasonable for them. I think it's a great plan. I understand there's a lot of people that have a lot of questions, and I'm happy to hear you have all kinds of committees working on listening to what the HOAs have to say and drainage. You know, we already have drainage problems in the acres. We have septic tank issues, and as long as those things are considered, I love the plan. That's all I want to say. Thank you. Thank you. Next, Maggie. What's that? Zalame? I can't read your handwriting. Evening. Good evening. Thank you for having me. I'm Maggie Zalamea. I live in Jacaranda Lakes for 20 years. I am the vice chair of the Affordable Housing Advisory Committee, and I am here to say that I wholeheartedly support this proposition. This is the minimum. This is like the minimum that we can do. The state of Florida and South Florida in particular are so far behind the rest of this country that we really, all of us, should be ashamed of ourselves. And I know that this city council is actually one of the councils that is doing more, and we're further ahead of the game. But I'm going to tell you, and I don't think I need to tell you, that the entire county is struggling. And this is a catastrophe. The reason why we are in the catastrophe is because we haven't been able to make the decisions that needed to be made three and four and five years ago. Please, I ask you, do not put this off. Again, this is the basic minimum. I think that the ordinance already addresses and puts the safeguards in place. If a homeowner association doesn't want it, it's not going to happen. We're not going to have a bunch of these, okay, but it at least is a minimum. It's the minimum that we can do to help. It's going to help elderly people. We have a crisis with our seniors. The AARP is supporting this nationwide because this is a great way for seniors to age in place, for seniors to be able to have an ADU to rent it out. Sometimes nurses and caregivers live there. So this is something that's going to help us. And all of us are facing this issue. There are more and more seniors that are homeless. I think you've seen the statistics on the numbers of seniors that are now homeless. This is something that is going to help college graduates, younger people. And, again, this is just the beginning. So I'm thinking, if we can't even do this, then how are we ever going to deal with the bigger picture? Please, I urge you to act. Thank you very much. Charmaine Williams. Good evening. Charmaine Williams, 7460 Northwest 13th Court Plantation. Piggybacking off of what Maggie just said, I do believe that ADUs would be extremely important. As a regular, average person who works and honestly would not be able to afford an apartment if I didn't have a second income coming in from my husband, these ADUs would obviously be great for folks who need it. Affordable housing is a serious issue that we're having, not just in Broward County, but in South Florida in general. So having something that someone can afford, having something that a homeowner can generate some income from as well, because, again, God forbid one of us loses our job, we may not be able to maintain our home. Okay, so having these in place would be something perfect that could help people in the long run be able to afford where they're living, students coming home from school, like you said, Councilwoman Harland, Harland, I'm sorry, seniors, veterans, folks who are receiving some type of benefit, some type of voucher who cannot find housing. People don't want to accept the vouchers, people don't want to accept the vouchers, the housing is too expensive, and the vouchers won't cover it. These are all things that can assist with those needs. So, yes, please vote for it. Thank you. Thank you. Mark Dobson. All right, thank you, sir. Lizette Hampton. Lizette Hampton, 11460 Northwest 8th Street. Not for it, not against it. I think that this is something that really needs to be explored, and if it, you know, if there is true demand for it, I'm all for it. I do have concerns. I have concerns about the impact that additional buildings, okay, are going to have on the environment. I am in plantation acres. Every year, my house floods more and more and more. We are having to bring in our structural engineering because we see that the land has receded so much that my foundation is exposed. I have two buildings that were overbuilt that they put, the owners put pools, and they put batting, baseball batting cages in the back. And, you know, how did that happen? So, we need to understand the impact that this is going to have on the environment. That's one. The other, you know, the other concern that I have is parking. And we are okay where we are, but what's going to happen in East Plantation, et cetera, where the parking is so limited because the houses are closer together, what impact is it going to have in the quality of that community, okay? So, there are many things, and it is a very noble idea, right? We need to, let's not overlook the impact that this is going to have in our environment and the overall quality of living and also on crime in the city. So, when we do all these other readings and other considerations by the board, please remember that. I think that was it. And then the other, you know, my other concern living in plantation acres and having 30-some vacation rental units, which, frankly, to me, it's money laundering, is what if those owners, okay, decide to build additional buildings? What, how are we going to, why are we going to monitor that? Right now, we're not even enforcing the fines for those who have violated. They're not being enforced, and that's how our lean salary get paid. How is this all going to be, and all of that needs to be considered. And it's a very noble idea. I'm not for it. I'm not against it. I just need, I just need time, needs to be given, and these boards need to analyze all of those aspects. Because 10 years from now, we may be regretting the choices that we make today. Thank you. Mr. Mayor, do you want to speak now, or do you want to wait? I was just going to suggest that I presume Mr. Alpert's taking notes on some of these things, and some of these things I presume he could address after, if you're comfortable with it. What's that? You got them in your head. But some of the things that were said here, he addressed them. So when we get through everything, we can bring him up, and then he can address it. I don't want him anymore talking. Okay. Do you want to wait, or do you want to? I just have a question, Chair. Ms. Hampton, my question is for you, and you don't have to get up, but it's for you, and for anybody who may be speaking about wanting more time, which was the concern that I was concerned about, I'd like to hear how much time you think you need, because the motion that has been first and seconded is to wait for the second hearing until March. And so if you are going to speak about needing more time, if you can comment on that, that would be appreciated. I know you said not to come up, but if you're going to speak, you need to come up. There's a record mechanism to this. No, we're not done. We got derailed. Wait, wait. Got to be on the speaker. I'm trying to help the clerk. She's going to thank me tomorrow. Do I need to get my name out again? No. All right, so how much time do we need? We need as much time as is necessary, I think, to say at the end of February. No, as much time as it is necessary for people to, for residents of plantation to raise their concerns and for that to be incorporated into the boards that are looking into this specifically and at least cover those questions that we know the environment, the flooding and plantation is a real issue until that is considered and is looked in the plan to say that we're going to have a second reading in February. Like, I want to know what is driving the demand. We know that it's our children that are moving back home. Okay, Ms. Hampton, we understand your point. I want to get through the rest of the public comments, and then we'll have a discussion and figure out if we need to put a certain time in for when the second meeting will happen. Ms. Bernardi. Lori Bernardi, 11681 Northwest 6th Street, Plantation Acres. Okay, 20 houses since 2018. I haven't been here for all 20 of those, but I have been for some of them. And the ones that I've heard are for to have family members, like the parents, to come and live with them. Now, most of those that I've been here have been approved. Some of them have had to come back for re-approval because of something with zoning. So I have no problem with doing the houses because of family members. Where I start having a problem is when you use them for rent because, I hate to say it, but with the short-term rentals already, it's almost like you're going to have a short-term rental, but in these smaller homes. And it's already that with the short-term rentals that we see that the different developments that don't have mandatory HOAs that we're having a problem with the restrictions that are put on it. I mean, the booklet's like this, but if you go to the magistrate hearings, all the fines, they keep reducing, reducing, reducing them. When these places make $4,500 to $5,000 a week, and then they come in and say, oh, can you reduce our fines? Can you do this, that, and the other? The city could be making buku bucks off of this, and they just keep reducing the fines. And then another person comes up whose driveway is busted from the sidewalk to the street. They don't reduce their fines, and they make them pay the fine and fix the driveway and give them another 60 days to come in and do it. So I don't have a problem with the houses being built, but being built for family members or things like that. But to have different people come in and out almost sounds like you're running a business again. And if you're going to use it for rental money, then they need to be registered and everything, just like a short-term rental places the houses are. And then I also see the problem of the ones that have the short-term rental houses building more houses on it instead of these pickleball courts, tennis courts, and everything else they're building to attract the people in and using it for more income. Oh, I put a closet in, so now that's a room, too, so I can put more people there. And then the thing with the driveways, if you go to the magistrate hearings, you wouldn't believe the people that are in here because they're parking cars on the grass because people are having to come to live in the home with them, like the kids are home from college or whatever because they can't afford to live on their own. But now they're getting fined because the cars are being parked on the grass. So then now they're going to make their front yards are basically going to be mostly cement to park the cars on the cement. So, I mean, yes, I do think more time needs to be considered. The time frame is to have maybe to be able for the homeowners to have town hall meetings and whether we can get a few of them together and maybe the same place. You don't have to go from place to place. If it's around each other, it would be an idea to shorten the time some, but that's the time frame that I'm thinking. Okay, thank you. And we have the holiday in the middle, so, you know, all these holidays in the middle is what kind of takes up a month. All right, thank you. Council Member Andrea? I just wanted to correct yours. It was 13, not 20. I think you said 20. I wrote 18. I trust her. Ms. McCormick? Donna McCormick, 1201 Northwest 114th Avenue, Plantation Acres. I agree we are in a housing shortage, and it's a crisis, but it's two-pronged. It's the developers, and now with ADUs, it's the single-family and duplex homeowners. So I think it's great that we're talking about ADUs, but I think we also need to talk about what are we going to do, how are we going to hold our developers to make sure that we have affordable housing. What's in front of us today, though, is the ADUs for single-family homes, and my concern regarding that is one of family members. I would prefer that family members or employees of the household owners are the people that are in the ADUs. I disagree with allowing them for short-term vacation rentals for obvious reasons, which I've stated in the past, and I think parking is a concern currently in plantation, and I think that whatever is passed, if this is passed with ADUs, that it has to come with additional parking requirements, and that's my comments, and I would appreciate putting this off as long as possible. But one other thing that's really important for Plantation Acres, we talked about so many people have been involved in this. Where was Plantation Acres Improvement District? They weren't at the planning and zoning meeting. They're not at City Council. They're not involved. We have a drainage issue. Whether they're good, bad, or indifferent for Plantation Acres, the fact of the matter is we have a drainage problem, and adding additional concrete is not going to help us. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. McIntosh? Hi, Matthew McIntosh, 601 Northwest 82nd Avenue, Apartment 531, Plantation, Florida. Yeah, lots of discussion. First off, I do want to say that one of my friends I brought for the first time just had to leave because of how late it ran, but it would have been very disappointing if we just got rid of the first hearing of an issue because people finally heard about the issue, and that would have been kind of disrespectful. If someone that I, like I told to come out tonight to speak about something was, like, this got to dismiss, I think that that would not be a way to go for anything, whether if you support or oppose something. If you're already at the hearing part and people came out and took the time of day to come out to speak for something, you need to proceed forward of doing that hearing, whether if you're going to vote for a measure or not. So I just want to mention that. Secondly, in regards to the ADUs, it is needed. We have a housing crisis. I know just, like, two months ago, whether it was at a PCP meeting or if it was a general city council meeting, there was a longtime resident that came in here and said that they were struggling with the housing payments, and we already know that we can't provide that much help with the city if we're going to keep the military rate how it is. And it's like the city can only help so much even if we raise the military rate. So that lady is probably not going to hear it at the city council meeting about how housing is unaffordable here because she got moved out because she couldn't afford it. And that was, like, three months ago, and this has been talking about for months and months publicly. These are public meetings. I'm not an employee of the city. I'm just an alternate member of a planning and zoning board. This is all publicly available information. If you put another public meeting or public hearing about this, guess what? Yeah, some of the people that were interested are going to come out, but it's still just going to be a fraction of the percent of plantation. What you have is a marketing issue. But if you wanted more marketing, then you're going to need to raise taxes to fund that. And then when people are complaining about, oh, all that government spending, hmm, all right, that's when you bring up the people that were complaining about not hearing it and have them in contact with the people who are complaining about taxes and have them discuss it out and see what the solution is. Because I think right now, you are just a punching bag, unfortunately, and people that live in this community aren't really talking to each other because, hey, we have a bunch of single-family homes and you have to drive everywhere, and no one wants to do that. So they're just, like, on the TV right now and not talking to the community. If it was something where they were walking home and they saw this was going on and you just had a cheap billboard sign up, then, hey, it's like, oh, that looks interesting. Let me walk in to the city council meeting and, like, be part of the community. Overall, it's a marketing issue. ADUs, that has already been discussed. We have a housing crisis. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Hamway? Hello. Gary Hamway, 1105 Northwest 90th Avenue Plantation. I am a 25-year resident of Plantation. I live in Lauderdale West. We have a homeowners association. In order for us to change any agreement that was made in 1977, we must have an 85% vote by the membership. Because that was never reached, the association lowered it down to 65% of the homeowners, and that amount still didn't come out. So I am guided by my homeowners association, and anything that gets changed on our amendments must be voted for by the owners. I do not believe that putting things off forever will work. Just like if I put off a bill forever, I'm never going to pay it. I must have a time limit, and I think we need a time limit. If we can't measure up to that time limit, well, then woe is us. Thank you very much. Thank you. Please hold the applause. Ms. Fain? Hi, Jennifer Fain, 11831 Northwest 9th Street. Congratulations to you guys, first of all, and it's good to see you all. I am not yet opposed or for this. I need more information. I have sent you guys my concerns. I did hear back from two of you. Thank you very much. What I am concerned about is specifically for my area, and I'm sorry. I know people get upset about, you know, the acres wanting things. I would like to know how we can't, because originally when we were talking about zoning, we were talking about carving out certain areas from having, you know, changes in zoning. I'm afraid that allowing this is going to adversely affect our zoning. I'm building right now an extension on my house, a closet. It's expensive. I have to match the stucco, the roofing, everything. I didn't hear in the presentation how it's going to be different, a guest house versus an ADU. So let's say I build an ADU. It's a different stucco, whatever. I haven't heard what the criteria is. I rent it out for you. It's very expensive to build. So to recoup that money, I don't know that I'm even going to recoup that money, having somebody live in an inexpensive, affordable dwelling. And I decide after a year, you know what, this isn't for me. Now I have an extra dwelling on my property. Does that change the zoning? Now I have two homes on my property. Now I have, I'm not sure how that's going to affect down the road if I'm going to sell my property with a pool house. I don't understand how the difference is. So I would- It can be platted separately. So it'd be one home. It'll increase your value. Okay. He can just take the notes and then he can try to address it. Okay. And the other thing is with, in the acres, so I have this ADU. That is going, I don't want it right on top of my house. If I'm going to have, you know, strangers, new people on my property, I'm going to put it in the back of my acre. Now I need to have a driveway. I need to have concrete. So now I'm adding concrete. I'm adding a house. It's going to have a septic tank because I have a kitchen and a bathroom. Now I need another drain field and a septic tank. And what I was saying in my email is our houses are now at the age where the septic tanks and the drain fields are failing. And we need to have a new drain field. I'm not going to have room in the acres. So when you guys talked about carving out the acres, I'm wondering if we could carve out the acres or some of the larger, you know, areas that have septic and have issues with flooding. I'm concerned about the flooding. So I hope that you'll consider, you know, the acres and SPID. Thank you. Mr. Buehler, I didn't want to make you go first twice. I know. Carl Buehler, 6831 Southwest 11th Street, Plantation, Florida. I want to address two concerns I've heard here tonight. One is a concern that these ADUs are going to flood our neighborhoods. I mean, they're going to be proliferating, you know, and changing the character of the neighborhoods. Statistically, nationwide, the percentage of eligible properties for ADUs in the communities that allow them, they only have about 14.8% participation. So that's one out of seven homes, or one out of seven properties will take advantage of this program. And, you know, so if you look up and down your block, you might not even see a home on your block with an ADU. It's one out of seven. I don't know how many houses are on a block on average. The other concern is the short-term rentals. And I brought this up at the planning and zoning meeting at the HOP meeting. The state mandates, you know, that we have to allow short-term rentals. But they made an exception with the ADUs. They actually put a poison pill in the legislation. And that poison pill reads that ADUs can only charge a nightly rate for the rentals that does not exceed the medium rate for a monthly rental per night. So you're talking about, generally we're talking about smaller units, where they say 700 to 1,250 square feet. The median for a property, an apartment like that is under $1,700 in plantation. It's even less than, huh? For a 500 to 1,250-foot apartment, it's under $1,700, the median. You divide that by 30, you get $56. Now, you're not going to find anybody with an ADU who's going to do all the trouble of advertising, sharing money with the Internet, you know, paying all these fees, cleaning the apartment for $56 a night. It's not going to happen. So basically, the concern over short-term rentals is not a realistic or practical concern. I don't have the code with me, but I gave it to you at the planning and zoning meeting, or did I give it to you? You have it. So Mr. Albert does have that. It's in the state statute. And by the way, there's also a poison pill in the state statute for living local and flex, that buildings are not going to build high-rise apartments in neighborhoods because they cannot meet the 40% rule for affordable housing. That's another thing. Overall, I have to say that the planning and zoning board did a real thorough review. I was totally impressed. And I don't think the public recognizes how much work they put into determining a lot of different issues, like ownership. How does ownership transfer? What's the legal definition of ownership? I don't know if this can be published online for the public to read. I don't know if the public could read it and understand it. But we've got to move on. Thank you. David Moghan? I think I butchered your name. Yes, that's okay. Everyone does. All right. So, yeah, my name is David Moghan. My address is 3040 Northeast 6th Avenue, apartment 317, Oakland Park, Florida. And I'm here because I think this is an issue that affects all of us across Broward. And I don't have a lot of fancy words. I just want to say I love this plan. I'm really in support of this. And people have brought up the housing crisis that we're experiencing across the country very acutely here in South Florida and Broward. I think in order to address the housing crisis, we have to think about dynamic ways of expanding the housing supply. And ultimately, you know, that's not going to be just single-family homes. It's not going to be just apartments. It's not going to be just ADUs. We need to think about a holistic way of adding housing wherever we can. I think with ADUs specifically, you know, it is a good way. Folks have mentioned for families to stay in their homes by renting out an extra, you know, extra unit, essentially, on their property. Or for expanding families, allowing elderly folks to age in place with their children living in the main house, however you want to arrange that. It's a great thing for families. And oh, the other comment I had was I am new to this process. I was not part of the AHAC meetings and the planning and zoning board meetings. But it sounds like a lot of work has been done already. So I think it's time to probably wrap up the planning and start taking action. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Gill? Good evening, everybody. I am very excited to be here today. I first want to begin by thanking you for the hard work that you have put in. I personally know the hundreds upon hundreds of hours that my husband and the many sleepless nights that he has given this. He has two and a half decades of experience as a student here in Florida, you know, University of Miami, Florida Atlantic, in another municipality here. He was a volunteer for over 10 years in the city of Plantation before he became an employee. I want to thank all the volunteers, all the city employees, and the elected officials because I know how hard you work. I personally know how hard you work. I also want to – I wrote it down so I don't go too far. I want to especially thank the planning and zoning department for the hard work updating and correcting our zoning and land use codes. You'll be amazed at how many bad spellings, bad grammar, the red lining that was hidden and is all over the place in our code. How many chapters, how many zoning districts we have. We're a tiny, tiny city, and I think we have 58, 79 zoning districts in our tiny city. So thank you for doing all that hard work at cleaning it up, all of you, because it's not just the staff doing the work, but it's also you guys recognizing it and approving it and moving it forward. I have been coming to the city of Plantation for over 20 years myself, because of my business. I have never seen such a progressive board. Thank you. I was literally laughed out of here and said no to a project. And when a white man came to present the exact same project the following council meeting, the exact same project got approved. So thank you for your progress. Thank you for having such beautiful members in the board now. Last but not least, I am definitely in favor of these accessory dwelling units. As we see, it will only one in seven homes, if they take advantage of it, they do. I was personally involved with helping a citizen, an owner in Plantation Acres. He was building an accessory dwelling unit for his father. His father was elderly, ill. I know that this was about 10 years ago. He spent $250,000. He added a garage. He added a bedroom for his father. He connected it to his home. It was very expensive. It was a very lengthy project between the engineering, all of the approvals, all of the materials, and all of the construction. I can tell you firsthand, if you're converting your garage to an accessory dwelling unit, you cannot do it for less than $50,000. And that is the garage that already has a foundation and already has walls and already has a roof. This is not going to be done by everybody. This is very expensive. So our fear, all this fear-mongering, needs to go away. I have nine seconds to congratulate Michael Alpert on his four-year anniversary. We got married four years ago tonight. Thank you all very much. Take care. Thank you. Mr. Corman. If I could, point in order, could I have two extra minutes on this one per the rules that you laid out? I think it was in July. Sure. Thank you. All right. So I want to talk about this from the standpoint of the Planning and Zoning Board because I want to give you the background on what we did with regards to this particular issue. This came before the board on July 18, 2023. And there was several, several rounds of back and forth with the city, mostly related to the issues of protecting the citizens of plantation from any unforeseen circumstances. One of the things we asked staff to do was to check the wording on other cities' rules with regards to ADUs. We wanted to make sure that they couldn't take an end run around our existing zoning rules. We wanted to make sure that the paragraphs, as they were written, do they protect enough? One of the big concerns I had was with regards to plantation acres because if we had the capacity to build ADUs, one of the things that we needed to address, which wasn't in the original writing, was the size limits. Because, hypothetically speaking, if you have a 10,000-foot home on an acre, you have the room to put another 10,000-foot home, which would functionally do the end run around the zoning in the RS1EP district. So one of the things we asked for was a minimum and maximum size of these ADUs to conform with what their original purpose is, which is a ladder in the housing supply. If grandma is living in an apartment that she can't afford in a multifamily building and she can move back to an ADU that has a kitchen, a bathroom, and a bedroom, that opens up that supply. The other thing we had to consider was the proliferation of these, which, practically speaking, is not going to happen the way people think. As Councilmember Andreyu mentioned, we've only dealt with 13 of these things, guest houses, in the last couple of years. Even if you take a building price of 100 per square foot, you want to build 1,000-square-foot ADU on your property to rent out, do the math, that's $100,000. Not a lot of people are going to do this, but it does provide homeowners, especially in the east and west of the city that have the larger pieces of property, the option of building on that property to create an income stream and to raise the value of that property. The vacation rentals. One of the big problems we had was if you sell your home to a vacation rental property, now you effectively have two vacation rentals on it. That's why we asked for the idea of owner-occupied to be put in there. And the way that the owner-occupied was written, I challenge anybody here to say that if you are living in a house that's 20, 50 feet away from you and there's a party going on, that you're not going to go knock on the door and tell them to be quiet because it's actually affecting you, the owner, first. So a lot of the issues that we have with short-term rentals in the city is ameliorated by the way that the rewrite happened. And I want to make it really clear, they worked on that for several months. We heard the second reading of this back in November. So the staff did an outstanding job closing many and many of those loopholes. I was a government and economics teacher. Civic knowledge is necessary. And so the idea of postponing this or tabling it to allow people to finally get in on the loop is somewhat letting them off the hook for a lack of civic engagement. The way the process is that we have set up with a first and second reading allows for the exact concerns that you had, Council Member Rodenstein. So please consider that. One note with regards to HOAs, because I obviously did that. You know I live on Whitehawk Street. I'm a resident of Hawks Landing, have been for 25 years. So I considered also the issue of HOAs and whether or not HOAs would be protected. If HOAs have architectural review boards or architectural standards, those have to be met, as Mr. Alpert described. So the effects on HOAs we think are minimized. That does not mean that you're not going to have bad actors who are going to try to make end runs around this. But that's why we have an enforcement department, that's why we have codes, and we have the ways to address it. On a personal note, I'm sorry, Mr. Mayor, but the comments you made about the association are completely false. You've had a chip on your shoulder about Hawks Landing for a long time, and it should not come out in public. As far as this goes, though, consider this bill or this code change that you have in front of you to be the result of months and months of back and forth between the advisory board that you all appointed and the staff. And I think they've come up with a very good piece of code for you. Thank you. I'm sorry. Please, no applause. Ms. Clark? Hey, Sarah Clark, 10451 West Broward Boulevard. Good to see you guys again. It's been a few weeks. We're doing this again next week. Yeah. Wait, really? Okay. No, I have it lined up in my calendar, but it never actually works out properly. Okay, so I came here as fast as I could from the airport, but I missed out on some of it. So forgive me if I'm covering something that's already been covered. I'm pretty sure ADUs have been coming to city council longer than I have, and planning and zoning voted unanimously in favor. So I think it's time that we just let it be. Also, I'm really excited. I really want to see it finally pass because it benefits everyone. Really, everyone wins, older people, younger people, and everyone in between, anyone who has property and wants to have the freedom to do what they want with it. It's a win for everyone. I understand there are concerns, but there have been a lot of hardworking hours put into addressing those concerns. Forgive me if I'm wrong. I seem to have picked up on there being some sort of concern about affordable housing and making these units affordable. Is that the case? Is that not the case? Was that brought up? Did I imagine that? Okay. Maybe it was just me. Okay. Never mind. I think we've been here for a while now. I think everything I probably would have said has been covered, but we are in a housing shortage, to say it for like the millionth time. And one of the best ways to drive down housing costs is to just build more housing. I know it seems simplistic. I know it seems like there's got to be more to it than that. There is more to it than that, but like supply and demand is a big part of it. And because of how restrictive our zoning and building codes are, we haven't been able to build the amount of housing that there is actual demand for. So in order to meet that demand, we need to do as many things as we can, right? It's building apartments. It's building all kinds of things. But ADUs are one piece of that, and they're a very important piece of that. And I cannot wait to see them go through, and I really hope that people are able to adopt them. And, yeah, that's all. Thank you. Mr. Weiss. Good evening, everyone. David Weiss, Hawks Landing, 106, Real Golden Eagle Court. Nick, sorry, I'm here. And I understand that. Just a minute. I understand that killing the messenger is some way to try and tamp down what otherwise would be very valid objections and concerns that your citizens and your residents have. And 135 people who have signed this petition that I've sent to all of you have. And if you wanted to kill the messenger, that's fine. But what you said about me was absolutely false. I'm not an employee of Robinette Homes. I'm the president of the Hawks Landing Homeowner Association. I have been for 25 years. So, as far as the objections I have, I know I took some of my time to respond to a personal attack. I'd like to reclaim some of that time if possible. Yes. Thank you. We've laid out very valid concerns that we have about this provision. We were only provided the final draft of this on Monday. We tried to retrieve it over the weekend, but the website was down. So, when we did receive it on Monday, all we had to do was look at the language in the provision. That's all we had. What we saw today was helpful, but we didn't see any reference to the language that gives us assurance. And I think the time taken between now and March and April would be very helpful to give us that assurance. We need it in writing. Because while Mr. Alpert's a very fine fellow, a very fine professional, in 10 years, I might not be around, he might not be around. And unless it's in the provision, unless it's written, we don't have anything to fall back on. So, that's what our concerns are. I don't need to reiterate all the concerns I've sent to you all. Really appreciate your professionalism. And thank you very much. Thank you. Mr. Chair, can I ask a question? Go ahead. Mr. Weiss, I just want to follow up with the same question I'd asked previously. The current motion is to hold the second hearing. I think it's until March. Is, based on the questions that you have or people that you've, you're speaking on behalf of have, is that sufficient time for you to? I think it should be. I think it should be. And we don't want to delay it excessively because we understand and heard that there's a lot of support for this. And in the right manner, I think tailored, it should be worked out and should work fine. The concern that we have is that there should be an opt-out provision, that the associations and the communities that want to opt-out should be able to do that as a community. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Weiss. Is there any more comments from the public in the chamber? I don't see any. There's nobody online. I just want to make a couple comments. And maybe, Mr. Alpert, you can come up at this point. With the current code, it's a conditional guest house. So, some of the, some of these, we would run into the same kind of problems, I would think, that were being described by some of the residents regarding, you know, too much, too much non-permeable stuff on the property, the drain fields, et cetera. Because right now, people can still do this. They're just not supposed to rent it out. And if they rent it out, then they're in violations. Right? Correct. I do want to say that one of the provisions that we put in there, it's an existing provision, but we reiterated it in this section, in terms of drainage, in terms of drainage with pervious and impervious percentage. So, that will remain. And actually, other than the acres, the percentage requirement for residential lots is to maintain 35% pervious. Okay. In the acres, it's 20%. So, with the addition of an ADU, whether you have the primary home, maybe a barn, other accessory structures, and the ADU, you still cannot exceed that 20%. So, we're maintaining the pervious percentage on these lots. I think some of the things that some of the speakers were talking about, you know, their concerns, I think it becomes economically prohibitive. So, that's another constraint on it, not just the code. So, you know, these are expensive properties. If people are looking for an investment, you know, $100,000 accessory dwelling, I mean, that's a high rent if you want to get some sort of return on investment, unless you don't care. You might be building it for other purposes and stuff like that. So, those are some of the things that are striking me during the comments. I guess the other, the last comment I had had, kind of something that you kind of brought up. You know, if we, you know, if someone wants to build one of these guest houses, as it is now, or an accessory dwelling unit, if we pass this ordinance, we're going to go out there and inspect it. And then we are going to find things, a lot of things get found that are not, that haven't been permitted and coded. And we can take a lot of action when we find these things. Is that, that's correct, right? That's correct, yes. Okay. That's really the things that just really popped into my mind. Council Member Horland? Very quickly, because I'd like Mr. Alpert to be able to address maybe some of the things that were brought up tonight. This is exactly what I wanted tonight. I wanted us to have the presentation. I wanted the public to be able to speak tonight. Mr. Weiss, as I said in the email to you and to many of your residents, I have great respect for you. You always have thoughtful feedback. And that's why I thought, let's have the hearing tonight. Let's follow our process, as Mr. Corman and I both indicated. And then we can work on this. I don't think it should be a time indefinite. If we come to the end of February, beginning of March, and we feel that we need a little more time, we can make that decision to not have it advertised for that meeting and come back. But I think that to Ms. Alamea, who is one of my appointees on the invoice of affordable housing, we want to get this right. And there's been a lot of work. Your committee's done. Planning and zoning's done. Staff is done. But we need to be able to let all of the residents have their say and get their feedback. So I don't think by delaying that second reading by a month or two is really going to harm us. But it is something that we need to take care of this year. So I want you to go ahead and be able to address some of the concerns that came up from the residents. Okay. I do want to say something, Council President. Well, Council, did you tap out? No. Okay. Go ahead. I do want to make the point that if this were not a thing, if this were not passed, every single home in the city can do a short-term rental. And that's because the state statute allows it. So this, by allowing this, doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be a short-term rental just by allowing this. It can happen with every single family home in the city. So to me, it's not a relevant connection because it can happen either way. With regard to that also, the ADU itself would not be counted for the bedrooms. So if they wanted to rent the ADU or if they wanted to rent the home, it's one or the other, and the owner stays in one or the other. So actually, in a sense, this provision, which we worked with our attorneys and we worked with Florida Housing Coalition to make sure we could get the best that we could get. We initially were trying to prevent this, but we can't. You know, from the state statute, we cannot prevent this from any of these from being properties that are allowed to have a short-term rental. Again, that's every single, single-family property can have that. So what we did get was something a little bit better was saying that it has to be owner-occupied. And the Florida Housing Coalition approved that. Our city attorneys looked into that and approved that. So at least we know that the ones that are non-hosted, they tend to be the ones that are the party homes. They're owned by LLCs. They tend to be the ones that cause some nuisance to the neighborhood. We don't think that this would, with the owner-occupation, would essentially create a nuisance in that regard. House Member Reinstein. Yeah, I wanted to just add is that the people who had reached out in advance of this who were asking for more time, nobody has spoken of needing more time than the motion provides. So I'll say that I'm happy that it was not tabled because the motion will provide sufficient time for the people that have requested it, which was the only goal. I actually think that everything that Maggie Zalme has said up here, I agree with as to the points for the ADUs. And it was just for those people who were seeking more time, when residents want more time, I lean towards wanting to make sure that they have that time, even if so many of us follow the P and Z board and followed everything that has been worked on by you and the department for so long. So that being said, nobody has raised any reason why the motion shouldn't be approved. So thank you. Thank you. I think it's a good ordinance. I think that the affordable housing advisory committee and the P and Z and staff have done a good job putting together strong ordinance. So thank you for all that hard work. I believe that March is a good point for us to try to get this back on the agenda. But if we get delayed, I have faith that administration P and Z will push it to the proper time so that possibly we can get the town halls or workshops, whatever is necessary, sort of make sure that everyone feels comfortable with where we're going. So I don't think I think we have a motion and we have a second. I don't think there's any more comments. So I'm ready to call roll. City clerk, can you call the roll? Council member Anderson. Yes. Council member Andreu. Yes. Council member Horland. Yes. Council member Reinstein. Yes. Council member Fajan. Yes. Thank you. Yes, sir. The city clerk will swear 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 a part of the record. The city staff will make the first presentation, followed by presentations from the applicant, any affected parties, and the public. The elected officials may set reasonable time limits for speakers. The hearing will then be closed and the matter decided. The city council's decision will be delineated in its motion and rendered in writing by way of a development order, resolution, or ordinance evidencing its decision. The city council may also decide to continue the matter to a designated time to allow for the additional research or review. There is one item on consent, and items included under the consent agenda are self-explanatory and are not expected to require a review or discussion. Items will be enacted by one motion. If discussion is desired, that item may be removed from the consent agenda and considered separately. Thank you. Ms. Begaro, can you swear in all that want to speak? Okay. Anybody that wants to speak on this, please stand and raise your right hand. 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? Thank you. Thank you. The quasi-judicial consent agenda consists of one item, may be approved with one motion. Does any member of the council wish to pull the item? I want to pull it, and there's a member of the public that wants to pull it. I'm pulling it because I need to make a Jennings disclosure. I met with the applicant's attorney, and it will not influence my vote. I would also like to make a Jennings disclosure, and it will not influence my vote. I'll also make a Jennings disclosure, and it will not influence my vote. And I will make the same Jennings disclosure. And I met with the attorney on the phone, and it will not influence my vote. Very good. Can we have a motion? I do have some questions for the applicant as well. Well, should we make the motion first, right? Motion to approve item 20. Okay. Second? Second. All right. Council Member Reinstein. Good evening. Good evening. Good evening. Barbara Hall, Greenberg-Torick for the applicant. And I've been sworn. Did you have something that you wanted to present on the? If we go through the presentation, this was Sean's. Excuse me. Do you want to just run through it to the point where we have the emergency? You're just going to focus on the amendment, the specific request to waive the condition that was? Correct. That's all. I just want to get the site plan up, showing the emergency buttons. The existing condition would require staff to be outside in the drive-through lanes whenever both lanes are open. But both lanes will be open routinely, so it would require staff to be outside all the time. We're asking to change that condition to require staff to be outside during peak hours and in emergency situations. And we will provide emergency buttons in the drive-through lane, which would connect to staff inside, and they would come out to assist if there were an emergency. Did you have more to present? No. That's it. That's my story. Chair, if I may. Go ahead. So my questions pertain to the initial waiver was because an escape zone, an escape route, is required. Right. And when you came before the council, yeah, if you can go back to the one with the escape route that way. Yeah. So initially that's required. Because of your needs, because of the applicant's needs, you asked us to waive the escape route, and the condition that was approved by the council was that when it got to two lanes, so meaning that, you know, obviously if it's only one lane, then somebody can leave that route as they need if there's an emergency. If there's two full lanes, then you can't, which was the whole purpose of the escape route. So my concern is that the whole purpose of the escape route is so that if there's an emergency, somebody can get out of it. And when I, when you, in what you're proposed, if you go to the second slide that shows the buzzers, right, the buzzers are all the way towards the, towards the end. They're not really even in the middle of the, of the lane. And if, if somebody is enters in the inside or the outside, and they go, once they get around the curve, there's no way for them to get to that buzzer for quite a while if the lane is packed. And the whole reason that this is an issue is because the lanes are often packed. The other concern is that, you know, the, the proposed condition, or the proposed, the applicant's proposal is that during peak operating hours. So I'm not sure when peak operating hours are because it's not, it's not set forth in here. So let's even say that you have a specific, well, maybe, maybe, but there's discretion there and, and that's, that's concerning. Same thing is that in emergency situations, which there's also discretion as to what that means in emergency situation. Now, if, if, if somebody is in an emergency situation at the, towards the front, um, they can't get to the buzzer for a while to declare it's an emergency. Um, I'm not sure how they're going to actually tell anybody all way at the front that there is an emergency other than to start. I'm sorry. May I add something? Cause I have an idea regarding this buzzer. Um, I think it might solve the issue. Sure. Instead of a buzzer, how about a sign that, that has a text message? Like, you know, you, you go to football games and you text X, X, X, and then you type in, I don't know if that's a technology that'd be easy to implement and accomplish the same thing. And then anybody who runs in an emergency can just text that and notify somebody inside. We could provide a number. Yes. Some method of doing that. But if the issue was the location of the emergency buttons, then we can locate them closer to the entry point. But clearly this is a peak, peak operating hour. When the drive-throughs look like this, it's because it's a peak operating hour and there are going to be staff outside at a time like this. I apologize for interrupting. So, no, I, and, and thank you for, for that. Although I, I, it's a reasonable, I think, additional condition. Um, I think not only the buzzers closer to the front or more buzzers, um, you know, if you, my, my concern again is that, um, emergencies happen. We don't always want to plan for, you know, the, the worst case scenario, but on the other hand, we are, we, that was the reason for having an escape route. And so if our, you know, there are times where we have something in our, um, in our provisions, just like we had a whole discussion on in our, um, zoning provisions as making a change, the escape route I think is, is something that should be in there. And so, you know, if we're going to waive that, which we did the first time and now we're doing it again. Um, I want to make sure that we're, there's assurances that, um, there is a way to get out of that lane, um, for whatever the reason may be. Okay, so I did talk with the Chick-fil-A folks before I came in case you were concerned about the locations. So if you like, we can go to four buttons and put two on the north end and two, um, at a point on the west end before the, the canopy. That sounds helpful. I'm, you know, if nobody else has any other, um, any other comments on it, then, um, you know, I, I think I could be satisfied with that. I just, again, I just, uh, I'm concerned, um, knowing that, um, you know, there's, there's no way, there's no way out once you're on that lane. Councilmember Anderson. I know Chick-fil-A's are busy, so what is peak time? It's most of the time they're open, but is it really going to, that's, if I recall when we saw this, it's 80, isn't it 80 car queue? It's, um, yes. It was something way up there, wasn't it? Way up? Is it 80? It's not 80. But it's pretty darn close. It's 62. Okay, 62 car queue. I was thinking, if we're not going to force them to have an escape lane, why wouldn't the second lane be mostly closed? You know how you go to a lot of things, it's one lane, and right before you order, then it goes to two lanes. So, for a good portion of the day, it could really be one that becomes two. So, essentially, that, a lot of that could be an escape, and then you could add just the end to be the escape. You still can have the buttons and things, but it could be essentially coned off or temporarily shut off the, the second lane until the actual peak time when you have 62 cars going through. Um, I don't know where the actual order is. The actual order is in the canopy, do you want to, correct. That's where you place your order? Correct. So, why would we have the buzzer where you're actually able to talk to someone? That's idiotic. You would put it where there's not someone. Understand. And that's why. You can talk to. Like, I don't want to order chicken. I need to get out of the line. You don't need a buzzer. Um, that's why I'm suggesting that we have the other two locations. Yeah. Two on the north, um, probably a little ways in, but I'm, I'm saying in this situation, if this occurs, we all know Chick-fil-A, they have four or five people outside. It's never going to be like this without people outside. So, you're going to have the lane kind of half full, maybe, but putting two buttons on the north end, two buttons in the drive-through before the canopy should get us where we need to be, I think. I, uh, I'm sorry. Are you done, Council Member? Uh, I might speak again, but I'm good. That's fine. Um, I don't want to get too much into their operations, you know, telling them they know you look at some of these Chick-fil-A's, the older ones. This is the byproduct of all the problems that the old Chick-fil-A's have. They know how to design this. I don't want to get in the thing to tell them that we should have the second lane merge into the first lane. They know what they need and how to handle it. I've got to be honest with you, I think the buzzers are silly. I think the signage thing with some sort of text message mechanism would accomplish the same thing, and then they wouldn't have to. We're overengineering something that's been around for, like, 70 years, you know, a drive-through. Um, I am very, um, satisfied with their representation from when they were here the first time regarding, like, if it was necessary to evacuate that, um, the drive-through, that they would be out there very quickly and get them out of the queue so whoever had to get out of there could get out of there. So, I, I don't think you need to use the buzzer technology. I think it could be, you could utilize something else. It'd be like a simple star, like FHP has. So, just my opinion. I, I really get, I really get nervous telling them, you know, have two lanes merge into one. And, and I got to be honest with you, I hate those McDonald's lanes. I feel like I'm going to shoot somebody sometimes when they, so, I wouldn't, chief. The two lanes actually do merge into one most times after the canopy because the pickup window is on the inside. And so, once you get past that point, generally, there is an empty lane on the other side. Council, Council Member Anderson, I think you're clicked in. You all. I, I, I kind of agree that, like, what, is someone going to get out of the car and walk over to the buzzer in the rain or in the heat? It's just, and if they're far away, they don't even know the buzzer. They might be people that want to prank the buzzer. I, I, I, I'm leaning toward, towards what, um, Council Member Fagin said, that the, just about every human being that's driving a car at a Chick-fil-A is going to have a cell phone. So, I think that's a, a pretty good idea there. Okay. Thank you. This thing froze up again. Has anybody else clicked in? Well, I just turned it off. I'll click back in. Okay. Council Member. Yeah, so I guess the question then is that based on, um, what some of my colleagues have said, um, are you willing, is the applicant willing to put in some type of text message system so that, um, it would alleviate the difficulties that these buzzers would place, um, and still allow you the, uh, and I'll, I'll just, you know, we're, we're, we're not, um, we're not managing the operations. We're allowing a waiver of, um, of, waiver on a waiver. So, I mean, that, that is what we're doing here and that is our, our, our role. So, in this situation, um, you're, are you willing to make that change and put some type of text message system? Either a text message or a phone number. I'm not sure which they prefer. What is easiest? Yes. That someone will answer the phone. Yes, we will provide that signage and a phone number or a text message. If, you know, I, I don't know their internal operations. So I would rather have that. Well, can the applicant answer it? Is the applicant here to answer that? The applicant is not here, unfortunately. So, but it would be a designated phone number or a text message. And we would agree to that and put signage throughout the lanes. Thank you. Um, any other comments from the, uh, the dais? I believe, uh, what did I do with it? Oh, here you are. Joe Nguyen, you wanted to speak to this? Come on up. Joe Nguyen, 944 Northwest 92nd Terrace or something. All right. I had, I had some prepared notes on this, but frankly, I'm just preface it with this whole thing. It's really stupid. Uh, it's such a symptom of car dependency that it's just bonkers. If this were people going to a store or a restaurant and waiting in a queue, you'd never need any of that, right? I understand that drive-throughs are a characteristic of society, a characteristic of American society. However, this is, this is the Midtown area, is that correct? This is, this is outside of that. All right. This is closer to where the motor, Sunrise and University. Sunrise and University, right, near the old Motorola facility, magically, yes, yes. Uh, now there are other businesses there, there are other restaurants, there are other offices, and I know we've discussed in previous meetings that we wanted to try to create some sort of way that people working in those businesses, uh, could walk over to have lunch or whatever, uh, that may be. I understand Chick-fil-A is a very unique drive-through experience type restaurant, uh, I don't want to deprive them of that, however, we need to keep in mind, if we're trying to create a cohesive, walkable place in plantation, this doesn't work. You, they're, they're incompatible, uh, you, you, you are not going to be walking there. Frankly, the buzzers are stupid, and if we're going to do anything, I mean, we can literally just have a sign that says, if there's an emergency, open your door and say, hey, there's an emergency. I mean, having a sign, we're going to have a phone number, we're going to have a text message, now we're going to have to say, let's add a QR code so people can scan it and call too. Um, there'll have to be other places in the country that have two lanes without an escape route for a drive-through. They've done something about that, uh, this is, this seems like we're trying to reinvent the wheel for just a parking and restaurant moat. Uh, it, this is all crazy. Uh, sorry. Thank you. Thank you. Um, is there any other comments from the, uh, chamber? Come on up. Were you sworn in? What's that? I can swear in no. Right hand, even though I'm a lefty. Claudia Gill, 10050 Northwest 3rd Street Plantation. Um. Wait, wait. Do you, 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. I have some experience in drafting. If they have room for an emergency lane on the left, they can certainly put that emergency lane in the middle. I have been through countless hearings in all the municipalities. That seems so unsafe. If I'm having a heart attack and I'm stuck in the top corner on the left, I am dead. I'm never leaving there. You can certainly fit an emergency lane in the middle and let both lanes access it. I think that left line is University Drive. No, between the two driving lanes. But I'm just saying to put a middle lane in, that left lane is University Drive. They're as far out as I think they can go. Can you show? They had it in red. They had it shown in there in red. You had it. Go a slide backwards. Right there. You shift the left lane all the way to the left and you make the middle an emergency lane. It would work. I don't want to be stuck in there having a heart attack or having someone in the car with me in a true medical emergency not being able to leave. I know I had projects denied because I couldn't provide that in properties around the county. So, allowing that with an emergency exit, it's a liability and I think it's a liability for the council, for the city. It's just not safe. That's all I have to say. I look at this and I don't see a danger. I think it's okay. People have cell phones. If there's a real emergency, they can call 911. The fire department cannot access you. You're in the middle right there. They cannot. They physically cannot. Is there any other comments from the chamber? No. With that, the person who made the motion, I can't remember at this point, was it Council Member Horland? I don't remember anymore. It was Council Member Horland. So, I think we requested instead of a buzzer, some sort of signage for a text message or a phone number to call in case they need to get out of the path. Are you willing to make that amendment? I'm willing to make that amendment. I'm willing to state that I'd like to make a motion to approve and I'd like Chick-fil-A to decide what is going to be best for their operation. So, whether that's text message or signage or the buzzer, quite frankly. Okay. Okay. Who was the second? Do they? Are you agreeable to that? Yes. I will second that motion again. Okay. With that, City Clerk, if you can call the roll. Council Member Anderson? Yes. Council Member Andreu? Yes. Council Member Horland? Yes. Council Member Einstein? No. Council Member Fajan? Yes. Thank you. Okay. Next item is quasi-judicial item number 21. Consideration of a request for conditional use approval for Five Star Athletic Training Center. The property is located at 1700 Northwest 66th Avenue in Zone ILP. City Attorney? We don't read it. We don't need to read it. Okay. I'm new to this. Only ordinances. Okay. Only ordinances. I'm sorry. Go ahead, Council Member. Mr. Alpert, is it correct that this is an existing business that is just moving its location? Yes. Okay. Just off the top, what waivers are they? No. It's conditional use. Just conditional use. Just conditional use. And they were already located. I'd like to make a motion to approve. Second. Do we need to see the presentation? I don't. Anybody from the public want to see it? City Clerk, can you call the roll? Council Member Anderson? Yes. Council Member Andreu? Yes. Council Member Horland? Yes. Council Member Einstein? Yes. It was entertaining though. We believe in experiences in plantation. I'll train him. I can't talk. I'm sorry. We can't talk. It was definitely an experience we were here. We appreciate it. And just so you know, yeah, we've been in this community 10 years. Great. So we've done this great. We've done everything. Good. Good luck. You don't have to leave. We only have four more items. Buy the album. Well, he can go. All right. Number 22, consideration of a request to approve zoning and landscape waivers for LPG investment warehouse. The property is located at 6781 West Sunrise Boulevard and Zone ILP. All right. Good evening, Mr. Chair. Members of the council for the record. Dan Holmes, Planning and Zoning, Economic Development Director. This is application PP 22-0041. It is a request for site plan elevation and landscape plan approval to construct a 14,435-square-foot, one-story industrial warehouse building. One quick note. This presentation is for 22 and 23. Yes. Okay. I'm sorry. Yes. I forgot to mention that. Me too. So the location of the property is 6781 West Sunrise Boulevard. You can see it's located along Sunrise Boulevard, sort of as it bends north a little near the Plantation High School campus. The agent for the application is Mark Angle. The address again, 6781. The size of the property is 2.3 acres, and it's located in the city's ILP, which is the Light Industrial Zoning District. The existing use is Office Warehouse Building, and the adjacent uses to the north, south, and east are ILP, and to the west, which is RS4K Residential Single Family. And again, this is the property located right here. This is just an aerial photo of the site. Again, you see Northwest 16th Street located here, and Sunrise Boulevard located here. And we note also the notification boundary there in purple. This is the proposed site plan. So on the site, there is an existing two-story CBS building, which will remain in place. So this is the portion of the site which will have the addition and which will entail the new development to the property. This is the south elevation facing the existing building. So if you were looking, this is the south elevation that faces this building. And then the east elevation is located at the bottom. The north elevation, which faces Northwest 16th Street. And the west elevation, which would face Sunrise Boulevard. And this provides a rendering of the proposed development. Materials, color palette. Basically, the building is a textured finish with a tilt wall finish. So it primarily gives you more of a concrete type feel. There's smooth finish panels with metal doors. And again, this is the floor plan. There's a couple of bays that are proposed. So you have five bays. There's one bay located here. A second bay here. Third bay here. A fourth bay that's proposed here. And a fifth bay that's proposed here. This is the site circulation plan. Again, this is Sunrise Boulevard here. Ingress, egress is from Northwest 16th Street. There are two points there. You can enter here at the first ingress, egress point. This ingress, egress point would allow you to kind of move around and circulate. Move, you know, around the entire building. If you came in through the second point, it would enable you to park here. But it does not allow circulation, you know, around the building. Parking requirements. The required parking for the site is 64 spaces. And the applicant is proposing to provide the required 64 spaces. Of those 64 spaces, four of them would be ADA spaces. There are a couple of, two zoning waivers and three landscape waivers that are part of the proposed request. The zoning waivers, the first waiver which requires industrial use is at least 10,000, but less than 25,000 square feet to have one loading space. The applicant is requesting to provide zero loading spaces. One of their rationales is that there would be some loading that would be enabled through the garage doors that would open up. And so they do not see the need for an additional loading bay. The second zoning waiver is from section 27-300 which requires exterior wall elevations that exceed 50 feet to have an eight foot or more offset. That's sort of as you have these long walls of a building that kind of provide some architectural interest or what have you. They're proposing to allow a portion 60 feet point eight inches of the north exterior wall to be built without the eight inch or more offset. So that would be this portion of the building located there. And then with regard to the zoning, the landscape waivers. I'm sorry, I'm going to give you the benefit of all of the slides here. With regard to the landscape waivers, the first landscape waiver which requires a five foot width for the east and west south perimeter buffer yards. This is the buffer yards. This is the buffer yards that would require here. The applicant is proposing to provide, to reduce this to two feet eight inches and four feet four inches along these buffer yards. The second request, section 27-255 requires six trees in the east perimeter buffer yard. So that would be this buffer yard here. And so the applicant, sorry, I'm moving. The applicant is proposing to reduce the six trees that are required there to four trees within that buffer yard. And then waiver number two, which requires, from section 27-255, which requires an interior landscape island to be 12 foot wide. The applicant is proposing to have a nine foot wide landscape island. And so you can see each of the landscape islands there that are notated with the number two that will be nine foot wide. And waiver number three is from section 27-255, which requires one shade tree for every 30 lineal feet of the landscape pedestrian zone. The applicant is proposing to request along the west LPZ to have shade trees where three shade trees where five are required. They're basically requesting to reduce the number of trees in that LPZ. And that's the LPZ you see located here. A community meeting was held on May 18, 2023 at the Central Park Multi-Purpose Building. The applicant indicates that three members of the public were in attendance and provided input. Citizen comments, staff did request if there were any citizen comments. We did not receive any written comments or phone calls in regard to this application. And with regard to other concerns and pertinent information, we know that there are no violations on the site. So staff finds that this is compatible with the surrounding patterns of development. It's in compliance with the comprehensive plan, and it's in general consistency with sections 2750, 2741, and 2752, which are the applicable sections for this proposed development. In conclusion, staff recommends approval. Happy to answer any questions. Thank you. Councilmember Horland. Very good question. Do we know what type of goods they're going to use the warehouse for? I do not know. I didn't see that in any of the backup material. I was curious. Mark Engel, 4800 Southwest 64th Avenue. Davey, I was sworn in. Right now, it's just speculative. Right now, he has a tenant in the existing building. That tenant may take some of that space. It's shown broken up in five spaces. If you can get a tenant for the whole, you know, it's just for speculative. If I could add, at the John Voigt here, attorney for the applicant, the community meeting, the three people who showed up were from the office warehouse immediately across 16th as tenants looking for more space. Right. And one of them had a door and window company, said that was his main office, but he had grown in inventory, so he now had to go to Davey to get one additional space and sunrise for another. Because there was no other space and plantation. So he was even wanting to talk about buying the whole building, you know. Right. So that was the demand. Thank you, Mr. Engel, Mr. Voigt. I'll make a motion to approve. I'll second. Council Member Andrea. I was just, I had a quick question. Going back to one of the landscape waivers, with those islands, is that because that's the current length of the island now? So our code would want them to increase that? Yes. So all of the landscape waivers are because of existing conditions. Okay. The setback on the two sides, that's what's already there, the number of trees. That's the current building meets the site plan with those requirements. Council Member Anderson. My concerns are about landscape as well. Normally we have a better landscape view with showing the trees and things, what's there and what should be there. So it's hard to comment, but I'm generally for this. But if we're going to cut down everywhere we're going, we're cutting down the trees, reducing the number of trees, not cutting down the trees, reducing the number of trees. What are you saying? Because I know it's an established area. I pass every day going to work. Right. So along the, which would be the south buffer yard, there's already existing trees both on their property and adjoining property. The one on the right side. The orange is orange. The orange color, right. The one in the red is also, there's trees both on their property and on the adjoining property. And we place trees wherever we could that would grow within the existing canopy. But, you know, we're not going to plant a new oak tree underneath an existing oak tree. So. But it doesn't meet the code even with existing. Is that what? Right. So there's the code has some additional requirements that we added. This property, of course, was already developed. If we were trying to force those new trees onto the side, it would not be feasible to do so and would actually end up in, you know, trees that wouldn't grow appropriately or properly on site. And so we did look at this as part of the development review committee. And it was determined that, you know, staff did not have any issues with regard to those requests. Do we ever, don't we occasionally, like, could we ask them to donate the trees they should have planted to our tree funds so that we could put them in parks or other places when there's storms come to replace our trees? Do we ever do think, haven't we done things like that? I'm not sure whether we, with regard to trees that. Right. And I believe there was. We are paying into the tree fund for some of the older trees that we removed that were not healthy. Because where the new building is going is existing parking. It's underutilized parking. And there's islands with trees in there that are not healthy because the islands were smaller. And so we're removing those and we are paying. For the trees that you're removing. I think his question was with regard to the trees that are not being planted. So the addition to trees. Yes. Okay. I went to landscape correction. Dan is correct. The tree mitigation is regarding trees that are being removed. To answer your question, regarding the trees that weren't planted because of the existing canopy. That's something we can look into moving forward. That when these waivers are applied that we don't lose that vegetation. Right. It calls for those trees and we're not putting them in. They should be responsible for those trees. And you say going forward. It could be going forward starting now. Yeah. We can. We can look into that to, you know, at different park locations or public locations to see if there's a need for various types of trees. Yes. I don't remember. It was. It was not very many. But, uh, yes. Yeah. One. Yes. About four total. That's correct. Anything else? Council member Anderson. Are you done? Well, I would like that to be considered. I don't know what the feeling is of the colleagues here. Who has the motion? I'd be happy to consider it. How would you like me to state it? Just that the trees that they're responsible for per code, that they would either plant them, which is not feasible. Then they would donate them to the tree fund or whatever in place of planting them. Okay. Well, aren't they donating to the, they have to. So for. Okay. So. Right. So, all right. So let me, let me make sure I understand your request then. Cause I thought it was first planting. Do you, cause the tree fund would be a, a, a, a, a. The tree beautification fund. Right. They'd be paying an amount into the tree fund. So we can look at, you know, what type of tree would be required there and require them to put money. We'd have to change the code, of course, for that. Cause the code right now only considers trees that are being removed for payment into the, to the tree fund. Chair. Council member. Reinstein. I don't think you'd have to, unless I misunderstood. You wouldn't have to change the code if the applicant accepts the condition that is being requested. That's. That's correct. Generally speaking, as we move forward, as part of our review process, if that's something that we would like to do. So that we don't have to have a special. Right. Approval here. Then we'd have to look at modifying the code for this one instance right now. Correct. Correct. I would say. Is the applicant agreeable to that? Mr. Angle. He's agreeable. It should, would be a matter of how we determine the value of those trees. Right. And I don't know how much we're talking, but I just thought it was reasonable. It should have, it should have been included. I think it would be reasonable. How about this? I'm going to amend my motion to approve pending the applicant. We'll work with staff. Okay. In determining the amount of those trees. And that they, the four, four trees? Was it four or? Six. There was two there and I think two in front of the building. But whatever, whatever, we're short. Okay. Okay. The trees will, money will go into the Tributification Fund. Okay. Very good. We need a second. The applicant. Agree to the second. Okay. Any more comments from the DAIS? Any comments from the Chamber? City Clerk, call the roll. Excuse me. Just to clarify. I'm sorry. This is for item number 22, correct? This is for item number 22. Sorry. Thank you. We'll do 23 in a second. Okay. Council Member Anderson? Yes. Council Member Andreu? Yes. Council Member Horland? Yes. Council Member Reinstein? Yes. Council Member Fadgen? Yes. Can we have a motion for item 23? Motion to approve. With the same condition. Yes. Second. Okay. Any comments from the DAIS? Any comments from the Chamber? City Clerk, if you can call the roll. Council Member Anderson? Yes. Council Member Andreu? Yes. Council Member Horland? Yes. Council Member Reinstein? Yes. Thank you. Item 24, I'm going to. Thank you. Item 24, I'm going to make a Jennings disclosure. I met with the applicant's attorney and I will, it's not going to influence my vote. I'd like to make the same Jennings disclosure. I did call the applicant's attorney to ask a question and will not influence my vote. And I'll also make a Jennings disclosure that I spoke to some of the residents in that area and drove by that area. Oh, I did drive by as well. I would also like to make a Jennings disclosure in terms of emailing and communicating with residents. It will not influence my vote. Same. I don't think I talked to anyone, but I definitely received emails. And the applicant. Sorry. Excuse me, just a point of clarification. I'm assuming the disclosure pertains to both items 24 and 25. Correct. Thank you. Yes. Yes. Okay. Do we want a motion? I don't need to see it again, so I'll make a motion to approve. Okay. Second. I'll second. Do we want to see the presentation? I would like to see just part of the presentation that talks about where the residents' privacy rights may be at issue or the concern that was raised by some residents. If you can skip ahead to that. Yeah, we did put up the applicant actually to provide some additional slides here. So this is basically, these are kind of the four residents that are in question here. I think the resident that we spoke about was the resident that lives here. And two. I think there was two, but I know the address is listed in here. I'll tell you the address. 7781 Northwest 13th Court. I think that's this location. That one. Yes. And then I think we received correspondence from number two. Yes. So just to give you a little bit of background. Normally when there is a commercial use of this sort, which abuts residential properties, there is a wall that is required. There is a request for a waiver of variance from the wall to be located here. That's one of the waivers that's a part of this request. And so what the applicant, based upon the community meetings, I know that some of the residents actually were not in favor of the wall because they wanted a view of the lake. I'm not sure. I wasn't at the public meeting, but that's what we talked about at one of the development review committee meetings. That was part of the rationale with regard to the request for a waiver for the wall as well. So the other, the applicant in question here, there were some special considerations that were put in place located here. Not the applicant. Not the applicant. The resident. I'm sorry. Located on this parcel. There were some considerations that were looked at with regard to their property. And this is a slide that was provided by the applicant kind of indicating the type of landscaping and buffer that would be put in place to help buffer that applicant. So basically what you're looking at here, this would be the applicant's home here. There is an existing, there will be an existing fence, chain link fence that, you know, around the property itself. And behind that fence, there will be some additional buffering that would be placed here to help buffer that property from the site itself. And so that, that property will receive some additional buffering that other properties are not necessarily slated to receive. Chair, may I? Yeah. For that, that particular 7-8, I know that's quickly in the document. That's correct. Was there any feedback from that? Yes. Let me, let me let the applicant. I'll call again for the applicant. Um, our landscape, um, architect met with the homeowner and showed him the plan and worked out the plan with that individual. When was that, Ms. Hall? It was. I'm good. Do you want to come up, John? And I'll ask him to tell you. Uh, John Harrigan, landscape architect from EcoPlan, and I have been sworn in. Um, I don't recall exactly when it was, but I believe it was before, um, our planning and zoning board meeting. Yes. Um, went to the house, uh, during lunch hour, met with him, had the plans out, discussed, uh, options, uh, for creating a screen because they're, they're in a unique situation. It was the, uh, the only property that would have a direct view, um, uh, of the structure. Uh, so we talked about planning the Japanese blueberry trees, which would create a pretty, pretty opaque, uh, uh, uh, buffer. I, can I follow up? Yeah, go ahead. Um, just, just so we're, we're sure is that, um, do you have, uh, and I, I only ask specifically about this resident because this resident had reached out and did specifically tell me as of today that nobody ever, that he never spoke to anybody. And I, I understand. And maybe he's mistaken. I, and that's why I just want to make sure that, that he was talked to. Uh, maybe he doesn't recall, but he had said that, um, that nobody ever spoke to him about what, what was being proposed to, um, mitigate the, the, this, this request. If we're speaking about, uh, the resident that was, had the number one on it. And I apologize. I don't remember the gentleman's name. Um, but, um, most definitely met with him and discussed strategies on how to create the, uh, yeah, Mr. Nunez. That's correct. Is that who being? It is. And, um, it, it, unfortunately, he's not here in person. And, um, he actually, uh, he actually reached out and said he was trying to get on, but he, he missed the deadline to get on Zoom. So, he's not here. He can't speak for himself. I can't speak for him other than, um, what he had, uh, what he had indicated in a prior conversation. Um, which that's all I can share is that that's what he shared with, uh, with me. Okay. I'm, I'm pretty satisfied with the, um, the screening that's going to take place. Um, I drove that street when it was on the original agenda. And, uh, you can't even see that the, the existing building that's similar height, that's closer to university and very close to the property. I can't even see it from the residential, uh, street. So, I'm pretty satisfied that this mitigation is going to be appropriate and the resident will be happy. Um, so that's my two cents. Uh, council member Anderson. Just, uh, just to piggyback on that, just that I trust that the applicant will work with our administration to ensure the homeowner, whether it took place or not, that it will be, it will suffice before this is final. Yes. Um, and just to give you a little background. When we had our neighborhood meeting, Mr. Nunez came and another owner who didn't have the lake before but has it now. And this graphic shows you in yellow where the lake is today and where it will be in the new project. So, you can see it expanded to give some additional people waterfront who didn't have it. And we talked to Mr. Nunez and I'm, I said, I'm sorry, you're the only one who didn't get the lake. Um, but we will work with you to give you a landscape plan. And we contacted him and John went to see him and came up with this plan. Maybe just another follow up. Yes. I, I commit to you that we will do that. Great. Thank you. May I? I also want to. Yes, go ahead. I want to amend my Jennings disclosure. I forgot when we talked about Chick-fil-A, we did talk about this. Yes. I said I saw emails, but I did also talk to the applicant's attorney. Yes. Okay. So, thanks. Um, any other comments from the dais? Any comments from the chamber? We have a motion, right? Oh. I'm sorry. Mr. Nunez. Don't have to run. I believe this is it. Oh, it's late. Joe N944 Northwest 92nd Terrace. I know we all want to go home. I had some prepared comments and statements. It's not worth it. Uh, what I do want, what I do want to, uh, mention is the project calls for Japanese blueberry as a hedge, which, uh, the University of Florida's horticulture division does consider most likely non-invasive, which is fine. Uh, however, I think we should probably be trying to lean towards Florida native plants whenever we can, when they're appropriate. Uh, also there's a concern that hopefully the horticulturalist will be aware of that, that because this is closer to sort of infill type areas, that tree can become chlorotic and yellow if it's in a, uh, high pH area. So I just want to make sure that they don't put all these trees in, spend a bunch of money, and then the homeowner has all these yellow trees in front of them that look dead all the time. So just keep that in mind as well as we plan, and maybe try to see what we can do about working towards native hedges and things because they tend to be better with, uh, bugs and fungus that we don't know about today, but then five years from now we're like, oh, geez, this is a problem. So, uh, that's all. Hopefully we can all go home soon. Thank you. Um, any other? Motion to approve item 24. Okay. Second. Any other comments from the chamber? Seeing none, city clerk, call the roll. There was originally a motion, am I correct, that actually? I thought there was too, but. Yeah, that actually, you were the seconder. And you seconded. Oh, okay. Yeah. Actually I didn't, yeah. Alright. Do we want to stick with that? Okay. Thank you. Councilmember Anderson. Yes. Councilmember Andre. Yes. Councilmember Horland. Yes. Councilmember Einstein. No. Councilmember Fadgen. Yes. Thank you. Um, item number 25. Um, can we have a motion? Motion to approve. Second. Second. Anybody want to make any comments on it from the chamber? I'm sorry? No. I can't hear you. Um, any, any comments from the chamber? Uh, city clerk, if you can call the roll. Councilmember Anderson. Yes. Councilmember Andre. Yes. Councilmember Horland. Yes. Councilmember Einstein. No. Councilmember Fadgen. Yes. Okay. Administrative update. Mayor Sortel. Can you check around and catch me at council comments? I can. Okay. Um, advisory board reports information unless somebody wants to make, uh, have any comments on it. It gets us to comments by council members. Councilmember Anderson, you want to start? I hope I see people at rock the park. Other than that. Oh, the, what was the last time? The parade. The parade. Uh, I thank Shannon and Phil and so forth, parks and rec for the outstanding parade. Um, as always. So, and I hope everybody's Thanksgiving was great and hopefully we see it rock the park Friday night. Very good. Um, Councilmember Andrea. So, I don't want to prolong the meeting any longer than necessary, but I do have a few comments. So, I'm trying to understand, um, and see if we can get some consistency and continuity in terms of some of the things that I would say happen maybe like behind the scenes. And mayor, this is probably for you and, and your staff. Um. I'd love to hear it. I asked for some data a few meetings ago regarding the Helen B Hoffman Library. And then I did get that data. But then it wasn't, I don't believe, and somebody correct me if I'm wrong, shared with my colleagues. So, I wanted to know the cost with all of the change orders with the, the library. And that came out to about 1.3 million. Um, I don't, still don't know what the original, uh, estimate and budget was. But I think that's where we're at now. And that's still going to, um, increase a little bit. Because we still need to do the fire alarm. And, uh, some other repairs. So, I'm just trying to understand. And, uh, you have totally improved communication. Thank you. Mayor Sordal. So, I. Who, who sent the response to you? Because I want to coach them better to respond to everybody in council, or Jason, or I will. Because staff should know that. And we had somebody, it sounds like we had somebody who didn't. But I might be wrong. No, it was me. Uh, no, it's only me. And I apologize. I was trying to not call any names, Mr. Newton. No, it's okay. I've been back and forth dealing with some other issues. Um, I wanted to get some more definitive answers on some of those extra cost items. But you had asked for a status update, so I at least wanted to give you something. Um, and as far as original project estimates, please recall that this was a kind of a structural deficiency that happened. So, we weren't sure what we were going to be getting into. Um, so there was a structural repair. Then we did the roof, windows, doors. We hardened the whole structure. Um, so I wouldn't say it was something where there was an original budget for it. Um, it turned into more of a renovation, if you will. Um, but once I get some of those final figures, we'll distribute it to the entire council. And I have no problem distributing what I distributed to you as well. Please. I think it's worth sharing with everybody. And then to that point as well. So, and I don't want to call any names because it's nobody's fault. I just want some consistency, I guess. So, we were asked to chime in and give opinions about the survey, which I previously was not really in support of spending $30,000 for. But, we weren't asked to chime in and give any opinion about the, which I had been advocating for, the university, right? Plantation University. And so, sometimes we just see these things on social media. And I don't think that that is a good way to be given information is if I happen to look on a social media post. So, I didn't know that it was being launched. I would have liked to have seen a little. We did, I think, but we got an email. I think, for me, I saw the email the same day I saw it on Facebook. So, my point is, if we could have had maybe just a little bit of conversation about what the topics will be, how the information is going to be delivered. And I understand. I don't want to get into the day-to-day because you are the mayor and you're a strong mayor. But, again, sometimes we're asked and sometimes we're not. So, those are two different issues. So, on the Plantation University, that would be more of an administrative effort for offering an educational opportunity to residents, not being as impactful to council, per se, from a policy perspective, whereas if we're going to go and ask questions to the population, that's going to have some ramifications. And there may be some issues that, you know, take Central Park Master Plan. We've discussed a number of items that are significant and will have policy implications. So, certainly that's where we want to welcome y'all's input. Plantation University, it really shouldn't. It did generate some interesting feedback in some of the Facebook groups. But these are standard things that cities do throughout the state that, you know, generally don't. I've never seen that type of discussion, frankly, on something like that before. I just wanted to have a little more involvement in it because it was something I was advocating for. And I thought when it was first proposed, it was a great idea. So, that's why. Can I add a comment to that? I was going to say it so that you can respond to it. I guess issue is not the right word. But the problem was is that the social media response is what council members voted for that. So, and I asked you about the application. The application. Yes. Very intrusive application. Other than I guess I think what I would have been interested in would have been to have like a kind of a little communication about it. And I agree this is administration. It's an initiative that you're taking. I don't think there's anything bad about educating our residents about all the great things that our various departments do and stuff like that. But the rationale between just limiting it to 50 people, limiting, you know, if 100 people want to sign up, couldn't we have moved it to volunteer park? And I think I've mentioned some of this stuff to you. So, those were some of the kind of things because some of the, I wouldn't say I had a lot of pushback. You know, I had a couple people call me about it. But it was mainly, you know, the social media mob that were kind of attacking and stuff like that. So, that's just my two cents. Mary, you clipped in, so. Yeah. So, a couple quick comments on Plantation University. Councilmember Horland and I both in 2018 went to League of Cities and they said form citizen group committees. What they do is you can almost view it as making your residents smarter, which didn't get them onto boards, which didn't get them onto council. I have a 27-page document that Laura and I have been working off of, which is best practices from League of Cities. So, we compared and contrast what everybody else does. The form, for example, is pretty regular with everybody else's. Let me send you, I'll ask April to send you all the 27-page document. Look through it. We use that as a guide sheet of what do we want to do. One of them says, do you own a gun in their applications? So, obviously, that's very problematic. So, we didn't go as far. My point is there's a wide range of that. And we studied that and we put a lot of thought into it, into what we did. But if you don't mind, let me send you the thing. Anybody who has a question, ask me directly. No problem. And come to it. And if there are things we don't like or don't like, happy to tweak it. And thank you to Laura for working so hard on this. Thank you, Laura. I think it's going to be great. My one regret is we should use the name Plantation 101 rather than University Plantation. That would have been a better one. So, I don't know if we change it midstream or not. How will you decide, though, who, which applicants are chosen? You'll have a waiting list or? That was one of the questions. I didn't know the answer. The first 18 qualified applicants get in. We will check to see. We debated running a background check, but we're not. For some other things, they did run background checks. Other cities ran them. So, it will be the first 18 qualified. If you've had problems as a citizen, I'm not. First off, it's costing us zero. It's costing other than we might give away some hats. Well, Steph. But Steph is delighted to do it. Is Charles still here or not? It's an hour. Yeah. But, I mean, in terms of money out of pocket of a hard cost and using that, that's what it is. So, if we have residents who, for example, didn't pay their water bill on time and got it continually shut off and everything, or problematic to the city, then they're likely not eligible to be a member of this because we've spent city resources on them, and they are not citizens that we can rely and trust on. But we'll look at it, and everything is flexible. Council Member Horland wanted to say, do you want to? I have a quick comment, and this was something going back to 2018, and we've talked about it previously. Other cities do it and do it well. I think that, you know, again, the Facebook comments, people are looking at this differently. Have it bigger. Make it almost like a town hall. That's not what it is. I think several of us have been through the Citizens Police Academy. It's more like that, that you go in and it's for the citizens that want to go in there and learn more about our city departments. Okay. I didn't see the comments, so I don't know what you're, yeah. But I think that's kind of, you know, what we're hearing. I think people are looking at it differently. Is the Citizens Police Academy, is that application as intrusive? I don't recall. It's been a while, but it's limited, and it's the first, you know, say 20, 25, and then there's the wait list, and then you run it again. So this is not a run and done. I'm sorry. I just found the application kind of, for the things that you weren't mentioning, you know, let's just call them bad actors or, you know, whatever. I don't know you could still do that without some of those questions. And then the photo waiver that was, you're on public property. I think just a blanket disclosure would probably be adequate to just say, hey, tending this, you're, I think it's just a slippery slope. I don't know what the waiver is for, the photo waiver. Rather than me give you answers now while it's still going, if you've got answers, email them to me. We'll get them to staff. We'll get you the best answer we can, and we'll get you more complete answers that way. I have no problem with everything we do being vetted. We should show our work, and it didn't just, we didn't just pull this out of the air. It came from a deeper research than you all might have known. I feel like we've hijacked Councilmember Andrea's comments. That's okay. No, it's a good conversation. No, thank you. Councilmember Reinstein. Oh, go ahead. Well, I didn't know we were having a discussion on the university, and so I was not going to chime in because it was your opportunity, Councilmember Andreu. But since I do want to make my point is that I didn't have any comments on it until I heard the comment, Mayor, about being qualified. That does concern me, that there are certain qualifications, because actually the person who is not paying their bill is probably the best candidate for it as opposed to the worst. Yes. So I'm not looking for a further discussion on it. I just, if there are qualifications, that's something that I think I would like further involvement. They need the help of education the most, you could argue. Fair. You can circle back to us. All right. All right. And again, not to start a whole discussion tonight. I know that Carol already emailed us some tentative dates. But I really would like us to have a conversation about waste management concerns. I know Councilmember Reinstein quite some time back, a few months ago probably now, brought up some concerns. I feel like those are growing to the point that I had a conversation with Jason, that I was very, I will say for the first time in, I've been in the city over 40 years now. There was, there were rodents out in a neighborhood in the day. So it is definitely, the problem is, is increasing. And I am getting a lot more feedback from residents and I have a lot of concerns. So I would just ask that maybe Ms. Morris, if you can maybe move that date up. This is a discussion and I don't know how my colleagues feel, but, or if you want to email her. But this is a conversation we need to have and revisit what we are doing in terms of. What if we added an agenda item to discuss the dates? She sent us dates, but that subject was later. So my recommendation is to maybe move that up. I agree with you. I agree. And we'll try to work with it if you want to work it now or whatever you all want to do. I get your point. You guys just want to let us know how quickly you want to try and cue this up. We have the first workshop meeting in January, which I believe is the 10th. The 24th we had planned on doing the advisory board update. February 7th we have the consultant coming in to work on the ADA transition plan and present that to you. There is a second workshop in February, the 21st I believe. I'm sorry, my math tonight is not good. And I had scheduled it for March 6th. You tell me how much further you want to move it up. Move it up to the, can we move it up to the first position? You want to move it up to the first workshop in January? One of the January ones. Okay. Consider it done. I think you had two in January. So one of the January ones. But if everybody just will go back, look at their calendars, look at the dates, and then probably just. Can you just resend out those workshop dates? Sure. I appreciate it. And on that note, thank you all. It was a great parade. Thank you to all of the wonderful staff that made it such a huge success. Parks and Rec and everybody who was out there. And we'll see everybody next week, Wednesday. Thank you. Really? Council member Reinstein. We're not done. Sending a message. Yeah. Just one point, and that is some of our discussion about affordable housing and the need for affordable housing was apropos to Senator Nanrich becoming the new mayor of Broward County. That's her number one issue. I know that she has told me, and I'm sure she has told many others, that she's going to be reaching out to all of the cities to try and focus on that issue. So congratulations to her and to Commissioner Beam-Furr in becoming vice mayor. Council member Horland. She already asked me to have coffee about it yesterday. So, yes, again, congratulations to my colleagues. I thought it was a great discussion, and I know that your desire to put off the agenda item tonight was because of the concern of the residents. I think we were able to solve that. I just wanted to say, as you know, I'm getting in the car and driving up to Orlando tonight. We're starting our policies the next two days. But I've reached out to a couple of my colleagues on committees who have already passed this ordinance in the last couple of years, Sarasota being one of them, West Palm Beach. So I've asked to talk to them in the next couple of days and see how it's worked out for them. So I hope to bring back some feedback to all of you by next week. So can I just ask, Mr. Goodrich, do we have a time that the lights are flipping on because a resident asked to me on Saturday? 5.30. It sounds as if it gets dark. Thank you very much. Thank you. Okay. I know what you're talking about. So we were approached about a particular kind of feel us out about the Wells Fargo location, Sunrise and Pine Island. There was no plan that was brought to PNZ per se. I did meet with the applicant via Zoom and they said they were going to hold a community meeting. But I did let the Jacarenda Lake, some of the community that was surrounding that, know about it because it was going to be coming up. And if they had some information they wanted to share about it, that they could. Okay. I didn't see it yet. You're welcome. I actually, when I spoke to them, I encouraged them to also speak to Lauderdale West as well. But I didn't, you know, I didn't contact them. I just told them they should reach out to them. Anything else? Council Member Horner? Mayor? CEO James Ouaishman C bursts out? No. Indeed. Well, you're the longer they might have seen the year, it's not my Scott, I would rather walk, and that's my, because that's my transcendentelle. I rather walk up to the site and come out here. You guys know me before I see you. 종 Leader. Good luck Visit Chick Play. I will reach you guys. They have понятно, thanks to my son that came out. She was in the Hospice Mil Disecom. Ashley Mccorm Xander visited, and you guys know we had a great talk. Staff is sitting there right for him to get money, where he could get ideas. She asked questions about what we're doing with it. It was a great conversation. Okay. Parade was a lot of fun. I had a lot of candy when I hit City Hall. I'm very popular, great job. Parks and Rec and everyone involved. And I'm looking forward to light up City Hall. And I think with that, we'll adjourn at 1015. We'll be right back.