City Council - Regular Meeting

Thank you. you Thank you. so So,

you

Welcome back, friends, to the July meeting of the Community Redevelopment Agency. The date is July 27, 2026. First order of business is a Pledge of Allegiance, so I'd ask everybody to please stand. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. I see a new face over here. Welcome. Can we do the roll call, please?

Chair Thompson. I am here. Vice Chair Drucker.

Here.

Commissioner Grau.

Here.

Commissioner Perlman. Here. Commissioner Seppel.

Present.

All present.

Very good. Mr. Manager, Director, do we have any amendments to our agenda today?

Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. First, for the Boca Raton Museum of Art, they've advised staff and they wish to withdraw its presentation at this time, and that's on the CRA agenda. And then for the upcoming workshop, the presentation regarding historic preservation design guideline, Guidelines that's also been withdrawn and staff and the applicant agree that it'd be more productive For the historic resources board to complete its review and then develop some recommendations before bringing that matter back to the City Council Okay, very good.

We can move on then to the minutes I believe we have one set of minutes the minutes of the regular meeting dated June 9th 2026 are there any revisions or corrections to these minutes? If not, I'll accept a motion a second to approve those minutes as presented. I everybody jump at once excellent that's a first and a second second second very good all those in favor please say aye aye aye all right moving on we have no presentation 5a but we do have a presentation 5b the downtown parking overview license agreement request follow-up mr director what do you got yes thank you mr chair mr stephen timberlink will make the presentation

Thank you, Mr. Director, members of the CRA Board. I'm going to provide a brief overview of our parking as well as response to the recent parking license agreements requests we have received. We'll start with the origins of parking meters in downtown Polka. With the growing popularity of areas within downtown in 2011, the decision was made to put meters in Meisner Park to ensure spaces were available during limited and peak hours. Since then, all of the on-streets parking spaces within the Boca Raton CRA boundaries have been metered to ensure availability and prevent extended stays. Enforcement is available 24 hours a day. Most spaces have a maximum of four hours to encourage turnover, and payments can be made at any of the 118 meters located throughout the downtown, as well as the park mobile application. Over the last 12 months, we've seen about 531,000 transactions at our meters, totaling about $2 million worth of revenue. That same time period, we've issued roughly 34,000 citations for anything from expired meters, handicap violations, life safety. To transition to the license agreement discussion, as of today, we currently have eight different license agreements throughout the downtown. Three of them are right-of-way, two are loading zones, and three are businesses that have the right to use spaces within what we call the bank parking lot. The bank parking lot is located on the corner of Boca Raton Road, first and first, up near Meisner Park. That's the green arrow on the map in front of you. Our three right-of-way valets are designated with the blue stars, and then the yellow plus signs are the two loading zones that are currently in the system. So to dive deeper into Sanborn Square, oops, going too far. So Sanborn Square currently is 112 parking spaces with 68 located on the street and 44 in two different parking lots. We see roughly 14,000 transactions generating about $52,000 worth of new revenue. In this area, we are currently running two different pilot programs. The first one is a 29-minute free parking, and then we have installed space monitors in the Royal Palm and Sanborn Square area to monitor how long cars are actually parked in the spaces. We're expanding that to Palmetto Park this month. So for the 29-minute free parking, this was in response to a request from a local business. We created a 29-minute free trial. For a limited number of spaces in 2004, when we launched the trial, it was strictly First Avenue, and then expanded it just recently to Boca Raton Road, so we have that whole T area of the Sanborn Square. When you key in the meter at any of these locations, once you enter your space number, you get the option to select an hourly rate or a 29-minute free parking. What we're seeing is roughly 8% to 15% of all of our transactions now are these free within this area. To date, we've given away roughly 3,000 free 29-minute sessions. For the space occupancy from January to June when the pucks have essentially went live, we've logged over 25,000 parking sessions lasting more than five minutes. 10,000 of these sessions were under 30 minutes, so roughly 25% of those also involved paid transactions. And then for sessions between 30 minutes and one hour, there are about 45,000, roughly 82% paid. And sessions lasting one to two hours, 83% paid. And greater than two hours, 4,500 transactions with 75% paid. So recently we've had requests for loading zones at Tower 155, a valet stand on First Avenue, and then discussion with Meisner Parks lately outside the area for additional spaces for their premium valet, as they described it. So staff is searching for guidance to either continue their program of only granting renewals RESTRICTING NEW LICENSE AGREEMENTS TO AREAS WHERE WE WOULD CONSIDER LOW UTILIZATION, WHICH IS MAINLY WEST OF FEDERAL HIGHWAY AT THIS POINT. SO WE ASK THAT CONTINUATION OF TO CONTINUE WITH OUR CURRENT PROGRAM THAT DIRECTION. THEN I'M HAPPY TO ANSWER ANY QUESTIONS.

THANK YOU, MR. TIMBELAKE. MEMBERS OF COUNCIL, ANYBODY HAVE ANY QUESTIONS FOR STAFF?

I DO.

GO AHEAD, STACY, GO AHEAD.

The first is regarding the Park mobile app. Why is there no way to correct an error if you put in the wrong parking space, etc.? You have to start a second transaction and pay twice.

That would be a question for Park Mobile, I guess. I don't know why there's no. You would have the same problem with the meter. If you put the wrong space number in the meter and completed the transaction, the meter is not going to know that you have put the wrong space number.

Okay. And so if you have, if you received a ticket for that, who would be the one that reverses that ticket? If you provided the proper documentation, is it park mobile or is it the city of Boca?

The city does that as part of our user fee schedule. We have a minor fee that's less than the parking ticket to correct it. And so you submit that paperwork along with your receipt and the payment of $15, and the ticket is wiped.

So the ticket's wiped, but then you still have to pay $15 plus parking. So a two-hour dinner costs you over $20 in parking for a small error. I don't know. I just don't think that's very user-friendly when we're trying to attract people downtown. Okay. that's a different issue I also regarding the recent license requests I would like to look into creating a loading zone for tower 155 any further comments no okay Thank You miss simple anyone else

I also agree about Tower 155.

A loading zone there?

Yes. Okay.

Anyone else? I mean, the staff is looking for direction on these two items, whether they should be granting renewals but restricting license agreements and also what to do about loading zones. So any thoughts?

I mean, just case by case. Every case is different. I don't think we should change the policy. We're not over parked in the downtown. We have a lot of parking. There's a lot of open parking. What this study didn't give us was the usage rate. It just gave you the amount of people that used it, but not the remainder of what's not being used. And that's also important data. When I had my agenda review last week, I asked for that data, not for today's meeting, but just in general. So you could tell us how much we're using it, but if you don't know what you're not using, then it makes it harder for us up here to provide input on a policy. So because of that, and because I do know we're under par, because I was told at that meeting, we have that data somewhere. There's an email that's going to be sent or was sent. And we should just take it case by case. So if we are looking at Tower 155 or we looked at the zero parking or the one that was at Tucci Plaza that came before us, we just have to look at those areas and take them case by case. And if we can loan those spaces out, we can, as long as there's always a way to retrieve them back if we need them. But right now we don't need them. So I'm in favor of that.

Makes sense. If there's not any other thoughts, I do have a couple cards here, which I can open up for public comment, I guess, on this one issue. If that's okay with everyone, I'll do that. The first card I have is from Neil Schiller.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Good afternoon, honorable mayor, city council staff. My name is Neil Schiller with the firm of Government Law Group 137 Northwest First Avenue in Delray Beach. I'm here today representing Hillsboro Mile Property LLC. I was here maybe six, seven weeks ago seeking your concurrence to direct staff to issue or prepare a revocable license agreement for four metered spaces on the corner of Northwest First Avenue and East Palmetto Park. I completely agree that this should be reviewed and all of these should be reviewed on a case by case basis. Your staff just showed you there are only three applications that have been filed for either a loading zone or a valet parking permit. A. B. Valet parking permits for a number of spaces are guaranteed parking revenue, right? So those spaces are paid for throughout the day. So you have guaranteed revenue, which is something that every municipality should be looking at with Amendment 3 on the ballot in November. And lastly, time. If you look at the valet permits that have been issued, those are for 10 years. My client is not seeking a 10-year valet permit. They're seeking a 24 to 36-month valet permit. which is why this all goes back to that this should be evaluated on a case by case basis. There isn't a lot of applications. Staff is not overburdened by this. And I completely agree. I think what we should have utilization rates. How often are these spaces being parked at either for free or paid that will help you as this elective body to determine the right um policy decision on each one of those applications i thank you so much for listening to me and happy summer thank you mr schiller next up ellen bogdanoff

Thank you. Ellen Bogdanoff, I appreciate the opportunity. One, East Broward Boulevard, Fort Lauderdale, I represent Tower 155. I think I was before you a couple months ago, and we talked about all of the concessions that the Meisner Hotel had made, but there were two outstanding issues that kind of compromised Tower 155. One was the Access and we're working with staff on an amendment to the idea. The other one was the loading zone I don't know if we would need two or three spaces We have been communicating with staff, but I think they're waiting for your direction and we certainly would appreciate it Thank you very much for your support it's it just would make their lives a lot easier because the alleyway is so narrow and they want to limit the use of um because it would block the alleyway when they have like large moving trucks but the vast majority of deliveries are you know amazon you know all ups all of that and then what they're doing is actually blocking their driveway into And that right now that back gate has to be closed off. So very often they're just kind of stuck until they deliver the packages and leave. And right now it's a little bit slower because it's summer, but in the winter time it ramps up pretty significantly. Whatever arrangement we make with city staff, we would appreciate the direction that you would support the loading zone to kind of relieve. And quite frankly, it wouldn't necessarily be exclusive to Tower 155. It's a loading zone. It could be the adjacent properties as well. And as you saw from the map, there's really nothing on Boca Raton Boulevard as it is today. But thank you all very much. Appreciate the opportunity.

Very good. Anyone else wishing to be heard on this item? We have separate time for CRA public requests. That's where I'm going to get to you, Mr. Starkoff. And for those of you who are here today, I see a few faces in the crowd who might be wanting to talk about skate park. We're going to get to you soon, as soon as I can, just not right this second. I hope you guys can bear with me for just a little bit. So I'll close the time for the public comment on this issue. I agree with my colleagues. Just let me just say that I do think something like this necessitates review on a case-by-case basis, and I am open to them being reviewed in that manner. We shouldn't just have a hard no to all of them. And for the two that have asked, I do think that they make a case, a compelling case even, they are good subjects for a license agreement so if I think it would be my preference that the staff put together a license agreement for the two of them and bring it back for us with the utilization rate data that I think you were referencing this trucker and that way we can make a decision on each but I do think that generally speaking those make those make some sense any other thoughts but anybody else go ahead miss trucker

So a couple thoughts that I thought of so if like for staff for our neighboring city in Delray for the summertime they did I just spoke to one of their commissioners that sits with me on the NPO they did like free summer parking on Wednesdays and apparently I'm waiting for this data they're gonna I've asked for it so I want to I want to share with staff and then everybody else can have it as well where they've had like a lot of people coming to the downtown especially in the slower months when you're hearing from that it's really, really slow. So just food for thought for next year, just putting it out there. But once I get the data, I'll share. And the second thing is that they were having issues with drop-off and pickups because everyone knows there's a two-way Atlantic Avenue. So they've converted some of their parking spots to just ride-share, drop-off, loading, Uber. So that can also be something we look at for Tower 155. So it's not only, because they're not unloading things. Amazon comes in the middle of the night, but not... don't see a lot of them at nine or ten o'clock at night at least i don't but maybe for uber share and i saw it specifically right in front of northeast second they put them right there they took four spots i think it was three spots right on the corner and they converted those into ride share uber lift and loading just for staff as a as a gauge point thanks okay thank you any other comments

If not, Mr. Director, do you have the direction you need?

Yes, thank you. Okay.

Very good. Then we can move on to our agenda. We have no other presentations at this time. No quasi-judicial related public hearings either, nor do we have any resolutions or regular public hearings. So I can move on to public requests. I have one card, Mr. Earl Starkoff. After that, anyone who wishes to be heard related to the CRA. Name and address, you'll get up to three minutes. Mr. Starkoff.

Good afternoon, Earl Starkoff, 3260 St. Charles Way. My request I'm bringing before the CRA because there are questions relative to the downtown campus area that are to me come up as a result of what you will be hearing as the police station report. And so I want to get this out before that presentation. As I said, item 2D on today's workshop agenda is the presentation of the proposed police services complex. And I appreciate the presentation was put up online to view before today's meeting. and I support the centralized police headquarters on Spanish River Boulevard as well as a downtown police presence I want to get that out of the way early my questions concern the proposed 9,000 square foot downtown police facility the current public facing presence occupies relatively little space What police functions require the remainder of that building and why are those functions better located downtown rather than at the proposed centralized location? These questions also relate to the long-term planning of the downtown campus. i continue to believe that memorial park should remain public open space rather than become the site of a future city hall with additional administrative offices instead consolidated at this growing presence of of the city in congress avenue and now park of commerce boulevard that would preserve more public space at what is now memorial park and also reduce downtown traffic If the 9,000 square foot police presence is justified, what is the long-term vision for the existing police headquarters that show up on slide five of the presentation that you'll see on the edge of it? If there have not been any discussions, could either that site or part of the 9,000 square foot site be used for something such as the community center, which would open up more space on what is currently memorial. I recognize that these questions may not be all answered before September. There are consultant studies coming in and so on on building conditions. However, the reason I bring this up now is I would like today's discussion to begin the conversation if staff has already explored these alternatives i would appreciate hearing what has been considered if not i hope city council will provide direction so they become part of the broader downtown process i understand you have a deadline in september in order to determine what the bond issue will be so i appreciate your time now for me to raise these questions and during your presentation that you raise these questions of staff so that we can start to get the conversation going and the information out there. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Starkoff. Anyone else for public requests related to the CRA? If you want to talk about skate park now, you can, but there will be a presentation on that later and separate public comment related to that right after the presentation. But if you're here now and don't want to get in trouble with mom and dad, for example, you can, you can speak on that subject matter now, if you'd like, or on any subject matter related to the CRA for that matter. Anyone else? All right. No takers. I will then close the time for public requests as it relates to the CRA. We have no other business or settlements, so I can move now to the director's report. Mr. Director, what do you got?

No report. Thank you.

No report. Excellent. The attorney's report.

No report, Mr. Mayor.

Okay. So we can go on to commissioner's report. I'll start with my left, Ms. Sipple.

No report.

Mr. Perlman. No report. Very good. Ms. Drucker.

No report.

Deputy Mayor Grau.

No report.

Okay, and then I will round all of that out by saying, likewise, I have no report. So we can conclude our business with the CRA today. The time is around 1.50. We'll be back very shortly for our workshop meeting. Please stay tuned.

Thank you.

Welcome back everybody. We are back in action this time as your Boca Raton City Council. We here are here for a workshop meeting. Date again is July 27, 2026. First order of business for us are board interviews. The first board that we have up for interviews is the Affordable Housing Advisory Committee. Is there anyone here who has submitted an application and wishes to be interviewed for that board? If so, please step forward, state your name and address. You will have three minutes. I don't see anyone here for that one. Probably because nobody applied. I should have known that. So we can move on then to the Citizens Pedestrian and Bikeway Advisory Board. We have one applicant, Mr. Lynch. I don't see Mr. Lynch here. No? Anyone else wishing to interview for the Citizens Pedestrian and Bikeway Advisory Board? Seeing none, we'll move on to the Community Appearance Board. We have no applicants there, so that's easy for now. We're rolling instead to the Financial Advisory Board. We have two applicants, three vacancies. Are any of these applicants here wishing to interview? No, not seeing them either. That's all right. They can interview tomorrow if they like. Next up, Library Board. Yes, sir, step forward, please. State your name and address, and you'll have three minutes. Mr. Lusk, why don't you hit that button right in front of you so you can see the light.

There you go. Hello, I'm Ronald Lusk, a 30-year resident of Boca Raton, and I'm applying for the library board. I didn't know I'd be making a speech. I've been working on my board at my condo, and I've been enjoying it. I spent 18 years on the board of a local private school, and so because I loved my library so much growing up in Delray, I thought I would apply to this position.

Why don't you finish the speech with just your address real quickly?

I'm at 881 Butternut Terrace.

Very good. Thank you, Mr. Lusk. We will be making our appointments tomorrow night. You need not be present to win, but feel free to come back if you'd like. Thank you. Thank you. The other two applicants for this board are unable to interview at this time, but still wish to be considered, and we will consider them tomorrow night, as I said. next board parks and recreation board we have a total of seven one two three four five six seven applicants which is great thank you everyone for your service i uh i see several in the crowd so whoever wants to step forward first who wants to interview for the parks and recreation board please do so mr sumislansky let's do it

Good afternoon. Jim Smoslowski, 420 Southwest 17th Street. Applying for continuing my service on the board for the Park and Recreation Board. I was appointed back in 2020. I do enjoy my members of the board. We have good, healthy discussions. Prior to being on the park and rec board, I was on the pedestrian and bikeway advisory board for 15 years and served as chair. Currently on the park and rec board, I'm the vice chair. So I look forward to continuing, and I hope you consider my application. Thank you.

Thank you. Any questions for Mr. Sumas Lasky? No? All right. Thank you, sir. Appointments will be made tomorrow night. Who's next up? Yes, sir. Step forward, please.

Hi, good afternoon. Ryan Luring, 548 Northwest 13th Avenue, Boca Raton, Florida, 33486. And I'm applying to renew as well my membership on the Parks and Rec Advisory Board. I was first appointed in 2022, and it's been a joy to serve and represent my neighbor's interest on the Parks and Rec Board. And just happy to continue serving if you all will have me, so.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Loring. Any questions? No? Thank you, sir. Next up, Mr. Rask.

Hi, I'm Joel Rask. My family and I reside at 485 Northwest 69th Street. First, I haven't had a chance to address you guys since the election, so congratulations all. I'm excited the direction the city is going right now. I've had the pleasure and honor to serve on the Parks and Rec's board for the last two years. It was very fun. As a father of three, I can attest firsthand how impactful our programs here are compared to other cities. I don't think we just have programs, but we have, you know, recreation is a core component for the city. It's what makes it great. and with the growth of our city and other surrounding, we still, you know, I want to be part of that growth and help growing future recreation opportunities, open, accessible for all residents, but especially the youth. So I just hope that you guys consider me again to serve again for another two years. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Rast. I'll go anywhere. Any questions first? Okay. Feel free to go somewhere. That's fine. Thank you. All right. I see Mr. Nelson standing up. Come on forward, sir.

Keith Nelson, 841 Park Drive East. I'm here to reapply for my second term on the Park and Rec Board. I'm a 25 year resident and I've been coming to city council meetings for over 10 years for various issues. um i walk several miles a day in in the in the parks almost every single day so i spend hours in the parks and their parks are very important to me um i'd like to um to be reappointed to continue my efforts to try to make the the board more meaningful for not just the residents but for the council so to we can actually make meaningful recommendations to council when uh directed and i know there's a lot of important decisions coming up over the next over the next years and i like to be a part of that for our city any questions any questions nope thank you thank you mr nelson we have three more applicants i see two of them at least anyone wish to come go next miss hackwist welcome

good afternoon brianna hadquist 5710a coach house circle boca and with me like always are my spokes tortoises thaddeus and ted i'm applying for a position on the parks and recreation advisory board i'm sure everyone knows that i'm quite an outspoken advocate for our parks green space and wildlife i have a lifelong love of nature and wildlife that started spending summers at my grandparents very rural cabin in northern wisconsin I've played several sports for many years, and I grew up in an area that had beautiful parks called forest preserves, and our city had excellent recreational facilities. I attend and speak at city council meetings as well as Beach and Parks Commission meetings. I feel it's important for these two groups to have a solid working relationship with each other. I don't have a degree in recreation. My degrees are nursing, food and nutrition, and healthcare administration. I haven't worked for the city, but I was a volunteer for almost 20 years. I had to step back due to family health issues, but I'm ready to become more involved again. Some of the more interesting things I did as a volunteer were helping with the preteen girls theater camp. I hadn't signed up for it, but the volunteer office called one afternoon pleading for me to do it because the previous volunteers didn't come back after lunch the first day. I was also a cast member for every season of Shriek Week, which was 18 or 19 seasons, and I was nominated for Volunteer of the Year. For the season, I played four village characters for every tour group for the entire season. I had to get ahead of the group, make costume adjustments, and all behind the scenes in the dark. Several of the other seasons, I was a tour... guide on the trail. Every night we tried to see who was going to be the person that could scare the most people off the chicken exit. I participated in a summer art show, I won second place for a fused glass exhibit, and I had my own exhibit as part of Art in Public Places. I'm very proud of my recent accomplishment of saving our enchanted forest in the wildlife in Sugar Sand Park. Our parks and recreation facilities are valuable assets in our community. I feel it's important to ensure that all of our parks are maintained in top condition. We need to constantly grow and evolve to make sure that all the sports and recreation activities are represented and that we're meeting the needs of our community. My record of nearly two decades of volunteer service demonstrates that when I make a commitment, I follow through. If selected to serve on Parks and Recreation Advisory Board, I will dedicate the same time and energy and passion to protecting and enhancing Boca Raton's parks and recreational opportunities for current and future generations. Thank you for your consideration.

Thank you miss Hagquist and I couldn't help but think about you and your turtle tortoise sidekicks this morning as we were at a ribbon-cutting for a gopher tortoise preserve in the Hidden Valley neighborhood. So I suppose your advocacy has paid off in some way because we are creating more and more of an environment for our gopher tortoises here in the city of Boca Raton.

I'm very happy about that.

Okay. I think there's one more applicant for the Parks and Recreation Board. There are two more. Ms. Morrow.

Good afternoon. My name is Judy Morrow, 1305 Northeast Fifth Avenue. Last time there was an opening for the board, I had a little bit of a conflict because I like to come to the public city meetings. But now I've worked that out where Mondays, the first and the third. They have meetings for the Parks and Recreation Board, and I am very passionate about doing the best I can for all the people that use our parks, not just our citizens and residents, but also, you know, our visitors, our tourists and everything. the thing that I talked about last time to the old board which everybody keeps telling me is a good idea and yet it has not happened yet and that is that we need to really do a lot more of entry clinics for sports for young people. That is for ages four years old up to 18 and especially the most vulnerable between ages 11 and 18 because a lot of times they drop out of sports. and also there's a price range and last time when the council met the previous council mark wigder on the record agreed with me he said that for especially tennis but it can also be applied to other sports is they need to have a marquee out in front of this the um boca raton tennis center saying that after school they have low cost one-hour clinics for the young children. The children have to pay a very high rate. Some parents can't pay the adult rate for the children to learn the basics of tennis and other sports. Not just tennis, it can be pickleball. I played pickleball yesterday at the park with my grandchildren. I played a match and thank goodness we won. We were subs for things. But I don't see enough young people And when my children were young, I have three, I had to take them to Deerfield after school because I worked as a teacher, and I couldn't afford, you know, an hour to learn the basics of tennis. So my children were at Deerfield for $7 an hour. They got to learn the basics of tennis, and it was very, very helpful. on the board, I would like to make recommendations, not just for young children, but all ages, and also to, you know, do the best I can, and I like a lot of sports. I also went to the park today, and I I enjoy and I want to make them better and anything I can do to help. Thank you and please consider me for the position and good luck to everybody. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Morrow. Any questions for Ms. Morrow? I don't see any. Thank you, Ms. Morrow.

Very efficient meeting today.

We're doing our best. Any other applicants for the Parks and Recreation Board? Okay, like I mentioned, thank you everyone for your interest in serving. Our appointments will be made tomorrow night. Last board we have for today is the Sustainability Advisory Board. I have one applicant, though I don't see her. All right, perhaps you will be interviewing tomorrow night. Thank you everyone for your patience. All the applicants, thank you for your desire to serve. And everyone else, thank you for your patience as we get through the important role of our board. So we can move then to proclamations and presentations. The first one we have by the Greater Boca Raton Beach and Park District we have here with us the executive director of the Beach and Park District miss Brianne harms along with by I should note several members of the Beach and Park District I see Aaron right I see Robert Rollins I see Susie Vogel sang I see at least one maybe even two staff members associated with the Beach and Park District thank you everybody for coming miss harms please welcome please come on up and we look forward to hearing about the skate park

thank you very much thank you mayor and city council members i want to thank you all for your time in the last couple weeks each of you had a chance to meet with me talk about this answered a lot of your questions we have more questions to answer not related to this but we will get to those and i appreciate everybody giving me the time to talk about this and talk about our mutual interests in recreation in the city today i'm just providing an overview of the skate park that we are adding to the north park site plan this is just part of the site plan process review process This has been a community-driven project. In April of 2025, we had the skate park community show up at one of our meetings, and some of those folks are here today that followed along the entire time. They showed up and said, we need a new skate park. Our current skate park is... It's out of date. And here's an overview of the current skate park in the city. The existing facility was built in 1998. It was built on top of half of the shuffleboard courts that used to be there. It was originally designed in 1998. It was designed more for rollerbladers because that was the cool thing to do in the late 90s. So this was an add-on to Memorial Park, was not part of the original Memorial Park. It's about 10,000 square feet, which is relatively small by today's standards. A lot of things in recreation have evolved over the course of time, and kids are faster. There's a lot more equipment that they're using on wheels. This is also not accessible by ADA standards of today. As far as expanding it in downtown, I spoke with your utility services director and he mentioned that there is also a lift station adjacent to this as well as the infrastructure that feeds that lift station. So there would be significant costs associated with moving those infrastructure and pieces out of the way to expand your current skate park so after the april 2025 meeting our board directed me to start working on this and explore opportunities that we may have to create a better space for our skating community and when i say skaters today that includes your skateboarders your bmx riders scooter riders adaptive riders all skills all age levels we had multi-generations show up at our meeting and they are still skating and still enjoying themselves outside

Ms. Harms, can I ask a quick question? Yes. Does that include rollerbladers? And if so, is it still cool?

Rollerblading is actually still cool. And quad skating, I have a personal interest in that. There's quad skating as well. So all these things are happening, and they're all happening. And obviously, 10,000 square feet is not a lot of space for all that to be happening at the same time. So we need more space for everybody. After that meeting, Planta Park approached the district and offered us a grant for $32,600. That grant covered the cost of hosting two public workshops, conducting a community survey as far as what people would like to see in Escape Park, and as well provided a conceptual design. We talked about this over the course of four more district meetings. as well we got input from all the different types of writers we got input from the parents we got input from the neighborhood as well and community members and then we created design based on that feedback And so as many people know, we are in the process of building North Park out in the Boca Tica neighborhood. And this is just the east side that's been designed. So the skate park would be situated. It's for reference, your current skate park has 10,000 square feet. This is over 45,000 square feet of skate park and pump track. We currently don't have a pump track in Boca. As far as I know, the closest one is Ocahele Park. So this would also create multiple opportunities. Along the railroad tracks in the wooded areas, there's gonna be mountain bike trails, so those mountain bike trail riders would have an opportunity to come off and enjoy the pump track as well and then get back on their loop if they wanted to. Mix it up a little bit. design the conceptual design that was adopted includes that pump track it includes a cityscape where you have your your steps your rails your ramps and then you also have multi-level bowls for beginners intermediate advanced skaters and then you also have the snake run as well over on the northwest side So currently we have the public engagement has been completed. We've gone through the process of designing this. We started with construction documents and now we've also ordered a bid to American ramp construction company. They're the ones who built a lot 11 down in Miami. They've built a number of skate parks across the country, but that's a nationally recognized skate park that many of you may have heard of. They also built Kona and Jacksonville, Orlando, Tampa skate parks and again all across the country. So once we get through the site plan process, the goal is to get through permitting as quickly as possible. i don't know if brandon's here just hint hint and then um we would start building hopefully next fiscal year and so with that i'm happy to answer any questions great council members do we have any questions for miss harms okay okay did we have any further presentation from our staff as it relates to this

no we don't okay all right and you don't really need anything from us at the moment do you miss harms we do not we do not need any action we just um moral support all right very good right thank you well hearing no questions i will open up the time for public comment as it relates to this item so anyone wishing to speak on the skate park proposed skate park at north park please uh step ups give us your name and address and you'll have three minutes

Hello, everybody. Thank you for having this meeting. My name is Fabiana Delfino. I am at 6161 Northwest Second Avenue. I joined the Boca Tica community in 2023 and I've been loving it. I'll tell you a little bit about my life growing up. I grew up here in Boca Raton and I played at Patriot Tennis Center. I played at the downtown tennis center. I played saber soccer my whole life. I actually grew up at skating at the Tim Huxle Skate Park. I was at the five-year anniversary in 2003. where I came with my brother, who also skateboards. I am 29 years old, and skateboarding has been a part of my life for over 20 years. I've been able to enjoy the beautiful gifts that it's given me. It's given me community, a sense of self, a way of expressing myself, and it's my favorite thing to do, and it's actually my profession. The theme I've noticed today is the mutual motivation of Boca Raton in development and how much we love our parks. I love Boca Raton. I love every single park. I want to thank Brianne for bringing this to the forefront of Boca Raton. I think everyone should know what's going on in their city. And, you know, looking at this photo of the Tim Uxwell skate park, It's emotional. I spent 17 years skating that park, and it's been just sad seeing it kind of get dilapidated over the years. Seeing the membership go down. You pass by the park and you don't see any young kids. I think it's outdated, and most importantly, it's unaccessible for a lot of people. We paid, growing up, my brother and I, we had a family membership, so we annually paid, I believe it was $70. But for people of the city residents who don't have an annual pass, it's $3 to enter. And if you're not a city of Boca Raton resident, that's $6. So if you live out of the city limits, you're paying $6 just to go through that fence. So with this new skate parts, it's very exciting. I see a light in a lot of the young people. I mean, look around. There's so much energy. And I want to motivate you guys to just keep it going, you know? So I think this is a great example of how we could push Boca Raton into the future. And we need to make this. We need this addition. We need it. And I appreciate you guys for the time listening. And thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Delfino. And she reminds me, I have a bunch of cards relating to this topic. I hope it doesn't offend anybody for me to go in the order of the cards that I have. First up, I think there are maybe two brothers, Todd and Miles Adel. Can we start there? So maybe not brothers after all.

Father and son, actually. So Todd Adele, 9304, Neptune's Basin Court, Boca Raton, 33434. I just want to say, when I first moved to Boca Raton at a different address, we moved... across the street from where the city hall complex is on the south side of Palmetto Park. And I will say a major selling point for us was the fact that we had a skate park that was in walking distance. Unfortunately, once we learned that the hours were difficult, you couldn't get in there in the mornings, you did have to pay to get in. It clearly became clear to us that this was not the ideal skate park. Yes, we were still happy that we had a skate park in the neighborhood, but um the point being um there there is a vibrant skateboarding community here in south florida as you can see from myself there are skateboarders of all ages all shapes and sizes this is my son standing next to me who's also going to be speaking it is an amazing activity that um that we love to do together it's something that i am very happy that i can still do at my age along with my son and enjoy it but we do need a modern skate park that is accessible that is free to the public that is you know has all the amenities that you would expect in a local skate park we We have spent countless hours driving all over South Florida. We shouldn't have to drive, in my opinion, 45 minutes to an hour or more to go to a quality skate park. So I really applaud the work that's been done by the Beach and Parks District and the city and in conjunction with Planta Park and all the skaters in the community to come together and advocate for this. We're just here to support it and really looking forward to having a new modern facility. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Riddell. All right, Junior.

All right. Miles Riddell. I live at 9304 Neptune's Basin Court. I just want to say that I've been skating since as long as I can remember. And I'm 15 years old. I've probably been skating since I was three or four years old. and i didn't live i was i used to live right next to this park it was um not far but i didn't i never wanted to go to this park it was never my first choice i didn't want to go at all like i wanted to go to other parks better parks and i would go from time to time but It just was not as enjoyable, which is crazy because it's super close. It should be my first choice if I wanted to go to a park, but it wasn't. There's so many other parks. I would rather go and wait and sit in the car 30 minutes to go to Boynton Beach or the old Ramp 40 is gay park or go down to Miami where the parks are so much better. They're so they're well designed, more modern. This park is completely outdated. Honestly, it's not a good park and it it's i just don't think that it should continue to be you know because it shouldn't cost money all these parks they're free to skate and this park costs money and that's why there's no one there it's outdated it costs money it should be either redone or a new park should be made closer thank you

All right, thank you. Next up, I have Stephanie Donovan. My mom.

this little button somewhere no okay hi um really quickly i am a um i live at the same place they do 9304 neptune basin i'm also a um boca teacher as well um i've been here living in boca for 14 15 years now i've been teaching at west boca for a while now also. And skateboarding is a huge part of my family. It's a huge part of the community. I love it. I couldn't think of another sport that I wanted my kid to get into. It was immediate. He played soccer for a little bit. He played basketball. But skateboarding is what stuck. And the skate park, like my son mentioned many, many times, is outdated. And when this opportunity came about and Lundy started talking about it, it was extremely exciting. And we've been at all the meetings and we're super excited for the next step, especially seeing every other community getting an amazing skate park. It's going to be something that I think and I hope gets more kids out there, more kids skateboarding, more kids just being active. And I think that's one of the things that we need to think about as a community is how do we get our kids into the parks off their phones, off the, you know, the gaming systems and out there? Because it is possible. The kids are out there all the time and they're really enjoying it. And I think that's one of the things that we're missing a lot in Boca is that new, fresh skate park. So... thank you guys for your time thanks for lundy thanks to everybody for showing up today it's um you know it's good it's a good thing thank you guys all right thank you mom next up i believe our two brothers i mean at this time the wright brothers austin and colby

Good afternoon, Mayor and members of City Council. My name is Austin, I'm 16 years old, and I live at 436 Redwood Lane, which is rather close to the site of the new park. I'm here because I strongly support including a skate park in the plans. There are a lot of young people in Boca Raton who skateboard, ride bikes, and ride scooters, but we don't have many dedicated places to do those activities. A skate park would give us a safe, designated place to practice, exercise, and spend time with friends. I've heard concerns that a skate park could attract bad people, but I don't think that it's fair to judge people based on the sport they enjoy. I've also heard golf suggested instead, but Boca Raton already has plenty of opportunities for golf, including two pristine public courses. This is a chance to create something different that younger residents would actually use instead of a golf course, which would be very limited in uses, especially for young people like myself. As someone who lives nearby and would personally use this park, I strongly encourage you to include a skate park to provide a great place for the community to enjoy. Thank you.

Thank you.

Colby.

My name is Colby Wright. I'm 13 years old. I live at 436 Redwood Lane, and I'm resident of Boca Raton. And I also support building a skate park at the new park. For kids my age, there aren't always a lot of outdoor places where we can go and actually do something we enjoy. A skate park would give kids and teenagers a designated place to skateboard, ride bikes, and ride scooters instead of using streets, sidewalks, and parking lots. It would also give people a reason to get outside, be active, meet other people, and improve at something they enjoy. I think this new skate park should be something for different generations. Adults already have many recreational options in Boca Raton, and younger people should have a voice in what gets built here too. Because we're part of a community and we're going to use the skate park for years to come, please consider giving us a place designated for us. Thank you.

Thank you, guys. Next card I have is Mary Alice Kindred.

Good afternoon council members. Mary Alice Kindred 330 Northwest 67th Street. Thank you for your time. I came to speak today as an educator and a mom. I am so passionate about this park because I see firsthand day in and day out that our children need safe spaces to interact, to learn how to socialize face to face, to challenge themselves and others, a place where they can enjoy the outdoors. The personal growth I have witnessed at skate parks over the years has been incredible. I've watched timid young children afraid to try anything blossom into confident young individuals. I watch the skaters cheer on one another when they learn a new trick. Regularly, I see veteran skaters assisting the beginner and encouraging them in the same way a coach would on a field or a teacher in the classroom. The great thing about skating is it really is the individual working on their own abilities rather than comparing themselves to other skaters. I've noticed the skate community is an inclusive community. When you enter the skate park, you will see people of varying economic backgrounds, races, cultures, academic and physical abilities. When you step into the skate park, you're a skater. That's it. That's all it takes to belong to this community. In this world we live in, that is refreshing. i've seen first-hand skate parks that serve as the hub for local teens in the best way possible it is where you can find them on weekends and after school it is their reward after a long week of classes and exams it can serve as a much needed break before them they must buckle down and get back to work we see the stress on kids today we see the lack of socialization skills physical activity and positive peer influence we must provide our children with places to go in lieu of tablets in their bedrooms They need to get out and learn how to navigate in this world, and so many important skills can be acquired in the community spaces such as this epic skate park. When a child fails on a computer game, they get upset, often rage, and quit. In a skate park, if they fail, they get up and try, and try again, most times with positive encouragement from their peers at the park. These days, many children feel like data points in the classroom, that their entire worth is their reading score. Many do not get to participate in fine arts because they are placed in intensive reading classes. This can be a lot on young children. They need a place to unplug and have fun. As I mentioned, for many children, they no longer get that time during the school day. The one thing I would add is that there must be some supervision at the skate park. If I had to point out one great example, it would be the Jupiter Skate Park. It is in the center of a neighborhood and it is a welcoming space for all. There is just one attendant present, but he knows the kids and families and they respect him. He is simply there to make sure helmets are worn and that there are no illegal activities in the park. After spending a lot of time there and driving many hours there, I've never once witnessed him having to enforce any of these rules because the children and the adults that go to the park know this and they understand." I thank you again for your time and I implore you to think long and hard about this proposal. It really can be a game changer for so many children in the best way possible. And as the young man said so articulately, both of you, all of you, I'm so proud of you as a teacher and a mom. I just wanted to cry for you. You're amazing and inspiring. There are so many things for adults to do in this community. and i'm grateful for that personally but i do think this teenager demographic is lost on us sometimes and as a mom as an educator for 29 years this is the age they need us the most to rally around them and not every child plays soccer and football and tennis and swimming which are all amazing but i think we fit their needs and i think these guys need a place to go thank you thank you ms kindred next up brianna kish

Good afternoon. Brianna Kish, 6661 Northwest 2nd Avenue, Boca Raton. I came to speak today to support the children and families of this community. I personally do not have any children, but I know how important it is for children, especially teens, to have safe spaces to go and socialize. I also see a generation that is spending more time on social media, like a bunch of us have said, than face-to-face interaction. I see students so stressed out by the abundance of high-stakes exams throughout the school year. These kids need a place to release some of that stress, to express themselves, a place to get exercise, work on their skills and abilities, and creativity in a supportive environment. I had places like this when I was growing up, and I see that the need is even greater today. As I age in this community, I want to know that teenagers have a place to go and are not forced to go looking for places to skate, like in our community and office building parking lots. Who wants that to happen? I also need to know that as I age, I will always remember the trials and tribulations of adolescence. It was not an easy time, and I know I needed places to go with my friends. This community has made so much for the little ones and plenty for the adults, but I truly feel that this demographic is often left behind. We have to remember every kid is not a soccer or football player, as also said before. Some children lean towards individual sports like skating, and they too need a place to shine. I think this is an awesome opportunity for the community to come together and support our children and families. Let's walk away today knowing we value the future generation and their physical and mental health as we decide to give them a safe space to thrive. I live in Boca Tica. I'm not afraid of this at all. I want to see this. It's going to make me smile when I see that these kids are there in a safe place and not causing trouble or not bored because they're not sure what to do.

i think it's a really really great idea and it's a great place to do it council members thank you so much for your time thank you miss kish next up danielle mensch i apologize if i didn't get that right no you got it you got it right actually thank you yeah my name is danny minch i grew up here and live in boca raton 556 northwest 15th court in boca and i'm a skater just like my fellow lovely elder skatesmen if you will we like to go as well And so do my kids, my 10-year-old right over here, and my 13-year-old as well. My son street skates, and my daughter and I like to surfskate, and so having the pump track would be incredible. Otherwise, you've got to go all the way down to Hollandale or Okehele, which is really far away. I just really appreciate your support for this. MY DAUGHTER AND I HAVE BEEN HERE TWICE BEFORE FOR CITY COUNCIL MEETINGS WITH THE GIRL SCOUTS AND I KNOW MAYOR THOMPSON REMEMBERS US AND WHAT'S THE QUESTION WE ASK? CAN WE HAVE OUR SKATE PARK? CAN WE HAVE A GOOD SKATE PARK? CAN WE HAVE A SAFE SKATE PARK AND CAN WE HAVE ONE THAT'S DESIGNED BY SKATERS FOR SKATERS? IT IS SO AWESOME THE COMMUNITY HERE IN SOUTH FLORIDA TO SKATE BUT THERE'S A HOLE IN BOCA THAT WE CAN FILL AND EVERYONE HAS SAID IT SO MUCH MORE ELOQUENTLY THAN I CAN THAT that we need that space for kids and for families. We go skating together, and it is just a release. There's nothing like being on four wheels and just cruising around. So thank you for your support for all of this. The skills learned with skateboarding are learning to be part of a community, which is different than even some of the surfing and other extreme sports you do around here. The community is super inclusive. They watch out for each other when they skate. They encourage each other. There's everyone from, I mean, a little bit older than myself myself all the way down to like these five-year-olds that just rip so everyone's looking out for each other and interacting with kids of people of all ages they're encouraged to learn and grow and try new things and to get up when they fall again when they fall again and again and they that's a skill you can learn not so easily now because things are just kind of given to you and kids get nervous about taking risks measured risks um so thanks for your support i know mayor thompson especially you were super kind to support this when we talked with the with the girl scouts and um i humbly offer to take any of you skateboarding um when the skate park is ready because there's nothing like it so thank you so much for your time thank you miss mensch next up daniel lundy

Hello. Daniel Lundy, 21662 Arriba Real, Boca Raton, Florida. I was born and raised in Boca. Grew up skating the Tim Huxhold skate park with Fabiana and her brother Pedro. She's being humble. She is one of the top five girl skaters in the whole world. So Boca does produce pro skaters and I think we should honor that. I was lucky enough to, I started a nonprofit called Planet Park, so I was lucky enough to do a grant for my hometown. with that grant we were able to do personalized skate park for this area and host community input meetings which really let the community let their voice be heard with the skate park design it's inclusive for all it welcomes all different sports it's got good lines of sight this skate park has no skate parks tend to have a natural flow to them. This one's kind of a rectangle, the outdated one. The new one has a flow to let people go through almost like a trail and it lets it be a bigger park without making it look crowded. I urge you to support this skate park and move forward with this project. I thank you for your time today. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Lundy. Last card I have, and then anyone else wishing to speak on the skate park can come after him, is Michael Schneider. Is it possible Mr. Schneider is the one who just walked out of the room? If so, we'll come back to him unless he appears. There he is. Mr. Schneider, you're recognized.

Oh, yeah. I'll wait until she gives it up, OK?

Thank you. Yeah. OK. OK.

everybody get it okay yes sir okay good basically the first documents i've given you if you don't mind mr schneider name and address oh sure i apologize 5500 northwest second avenue all right uh the first beginnings is condo one condo three, condo four, condo six, and condo nine. They're against the skate park, all right? They prefer, and they're against the skate park and the Boys and Girls Club, all right? Might as well get both of them in there. And they're against it because What they want is basically golf, green space, and a community center, all right? So I got five condominiums amount to about 1,400 people, 1,400 taxpayers, and 1,400 voters, all right? I'm out with all these condos that were signed by the presidents. on your second item here i've uh pages uh there's an agreement here called the uh oka ocean breeze park and master plan park commissioner development commission meeting it's a little sheet of paper i'm sorry i didn't type it but i printed it enough so you could understand it's basically out of all these pages that i've analyzed for you it's basically saying that the what do you call it that like on page seven for instance which i have which i've given to the clerk i just didn't have enough copies to give out but basically the there was nothing on the beach and parks department uh on the beach and parks district program priorities list it wasn't even listed on the skate park at all all right neither was the boys and girls club uh basically on the next thing i have on your thing on june 8 2020 the beach and parks department legal counsel sent an opinion on whether the boca raton beach and park district in accordance with the chapter laws whatever whether they could lease lay and land and whether the concession can be done the answer was no all right then there was the last thing i have in the file was the boca teca poses incompatible development basically that the skate park, we want the green space, we want the golf course, and we want the community center. Now listen, most people feel it's a waste of money, $5 million. I'm a liberal guy. What can we do to compromise this? put it in spanish river park it would be big enough better enough and the people could locate it and find it and it would be a nice it's near a school just like the one downtown was all right and i feel that would be the best place to put it likewise the boys and girls club and then last page that i've given you it's basically a grid of the original proposal which never included a skate park all right but i'm willing to have one but i don't want it in back of my house all right like you wouldn't want in the back of your house all right mr schneider could you put it in a place where the spanish river park where it's policed and what and nobody's even said what the hours are or anything like that

thank you go ahead what was that sir i was just saying your time is concluded thank you for your comments like my end is right when you want perfect thank you anyone else wishing to be heard on the matter of the skate park miss hackwiss go ahead sure why not but why don't we have miss hackwiss go first since i recognized her no

As long as you said North Park when you started, I figured I might as well get up now. It's nice to see you again. Earl Starkoff, 3260 St. Charles Way. I was unable to attend the June 18th special budget meeting, but as an incurable insomniac, I have gone through 279 pages of the preliminary proposed budget. the 313 pages of the capital improvement program and staff's presentation video But since I only have, what, two minutes and 37 seconds left, I'm going to stick to just one of those topics. And that is Project P02, Railroad Crossings, Project Number 1420048, which is pages 82 and 83. 81 and 82 of the capital improvements presentation. I'm asking you to defer the approval of that project for the crossing of Jeffery Street and the closing of 28th Street. instead i'd like you to delay the project until there's more public input to fully participate in that decision the project is estimated to cost 20 million dollars from what i've heard residents of bocatica and the surrounding neighborhoods do not want additional traffic on jeffrey street Many residents throughout Boca Raton, including, I confess, I live out near Spanish River High School, use the 28th Street crossing regularly to avoid heavier traffic and Dixie Highway, Federal Highway in downtown. the project would also affect the beach and park district's long-term vision for north park a new roadway would divide the park where jeffrey street now ends and require a pedestrian tunnel without the crossing pedestrians could continue crossing safely at the existing dead end creating a more unified and enjoyable park Boca Raton has committed itself as well to being a Vision Zero city, and I think the public should better understand how the railroad crossing project advances those goals. Although preliminary work has been completed, including a federal grant and necessary license agreements, those actions should not prevent the City Council from reconsidering whether this is the best use of the proposed funds. I ask the city council to obtain broader public input and determine whether this $20 million project is truly a higher priority than other capital needs before moving forward. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Starkoff. Next up on the skate park discussion, Ms. Hagquist. I'm sorry, sir? I was a question of just recognizing the next speaker, sir. Thank you. Oh, okay. Yeah. I'm not a skater. How about a rollerblader?

Hi again, Brianna Hagquist, 5710A Coach House Circle. I have never in my life been on a skateboard, and I think if I was, I probably wouldn't be alive today. I like the way this is designed. It flows right in with everything in the North Park area. There are so many people who are so interested in it and so passionate about the sport and wanting this expanded new facility. They also spoke about it at the Beach and Parks meeting. People of all ages, including very young kids. There was even one little boy who wasn't even as high as the podium, couldn't even see him when he was talking. But everyone was getting up there talking about just how passionate they are and how they need it. And I would really like to see this for especially the young people to get them off of social media, get them out there meeting people, trying things and doing new things. Also, since this was a golf course, the land is not suitable for any of my wildlife friends, so I don't have to worry about any of that. But I really would like you to approve this project. I think it would really be a good thing for the city and get more people out there and participating in a different type of a sport. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Hagquist. Anyone else wishing to be heard on the skate park? Good, Mr. Chaffee.

My name is Harold Chaffee. I'm the president of Keep Golf and Boca. I represent over 1,000 people. Listen, I don't object to the skate park. I think it's a great idea. I just think it's in the wrong place. Secondly, not merely a skate park. When I was a kid, you could go to any place and play. You don't have any place to fish. You can't do it at Hornley Park anymore because the alligators or whatever. Bryan Bridge, they close that off, you can't fish. There's no place that a person or a kid can leave their house, get out of their bedroom, leave their phone at home, and go someplace and play. Even soccer, football, whatever sport it is, whatever it is, it's all closed out to people who just want to do it. To get together as a group and play. The other day I saw a bunch of kids on the corner of 2nd Avenue and Jeffrey Street, and they were playing soccer. Just got out there, they wanted to get up and play, and they did. We restrict everything. You can't play on a football field, you can't play on a soccer field, unless you belong to a club, an organization, or something else. That's utterly ridiculous. All the fields and everything we have, nobody can use them. So if you look into it, you'll find out it's the truth. Yeah, well, okay. I know the kids have been chased off the football field. I know they've been placed off the soccer field because they didn't have a lot of time or didn't belong to a club or something. The skate park I think is a great idea. The only trouble is I think it's in the wrong place. It's isolated someplace where basically it's not near any other sport that can be played. Because if you come there and all of a sudden the kid wants to go play skateboard and then he wants to basically play, maybe he wants to go out and kick the ball around. He wants to do something else. It's just too remote. I think that basically this skate park should be put someplace like over in Sugar Sand Park. Not at Sugar Sand Park, but over by the Hornley, because you've got two schools there, you've got the three colleges, you've got a load of people, basically, that could use this better than hidden away in Boca Tica, in an area there. The other thing, too, I'd like to say, the community was never involved in this. They talked about the railroad. They talked about the skate park. No signs went up to basically invite the community who live there to basically have their input or even ask them or even present anything to them. This is the first time, I have some drawings here, but I didn't give them out. It's the first time I've ever seen a detailed drawing of exactly what's gonna go there. We've been talking about this for months. You know, I've asked many times, can we have a presentation? Can you make some kind of a place where people can see? It's the same thing with the whole east side. You should invite the people. You don't talk to the community. That's how your people got elected, because you do not talk to the community. You make decisions. 28th Street is a perfect example. Kids have to go to school. How are they going to go to school? They can't cross over. They're going to be closed, 28th Street. You know, there's a couple of industries, a couple of places there, businesses that are probably going to go out of business. And they come and they talk and they basically just, you know, nobody listens to them. It's a shame. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chaffee. Anyone else wishing to be heard on the skate park? I did see somebody in the back. Thank you. Step on up. The floor is yours.

My name's Gabriel Damiani. I live on 251 Lancaster Street. I just had some dental work done, so if I'm mumbling, sorry about that. So far, so good. Keep going. I'm a fourth-generation Boca Raton resident. I have a two-year-old son. He's gonna be just like me. He's gonna be into action sports, and right now, there is no place for us. I went to even Boca skate park with him the other day so he could ride his balance bike, and even there, we were denied. Some kids really use these places to escape. Not everybody has a good home. Not everyone has parents that want to take them to stick in ball sports. I just, I think the community really could benefit from something like this. It's a beautiful, concrete skate parks aren't like they once were. Tim Huxle, that may be an eyesore. They build beautiful skate parks now. The concrete's polished, colorways, they use different features. That's definitely more of an eyesore. The pickleball court back there is not taken away from other sports, but that is a concrete eyesore. A nice skate park really could do that area some justice. I mean, it really could. There's probably over 50 tennis courts in the town where people could go play pickleball. We can go to that, but they didn't even let me and my son in the other day. And I get it if he was... It used to be packed on Fridays, and I get it. A BMX bike can't be in a skate park that size with a bunch of kids on skateboards. But I got a two-year-old on a balance bike. And if I wanted to, I could take him to Ocahele, but I get off work... who wants to get home, shower, and drive to Ocohele. Doesn't make sense. Can't do it on the weekdays. What, I'd have to drive down to Miami? Doesn't make sense for anybody. The community needs something for people to be outside, active. This is for the future of Boca. This is for, I've heard a lot of complaints, but there's a whole nother generation trying to raise children and build the sensor community here and people need to be outside the sun's good it's healthy keep an active lifestyle thank you thank you sir any more public comment on the skate park yes ma'am

Hi, my name is Rachel Bennett. I live at 152 Northwest 12th Street in Boca. I'm here to support the skate park at North Park. I'm a 20-year resident. My son is going to be 20. He's been skating at Tim Huck's old since he was five. It used to be so vibrant. My husband and I sat many hours on those bleachers watching him skate when he was little. They used to have competitions. There used to... used to be full but now the skate park is obsolete we need a new skate park north park is convenient i've been to the beach and park meetings at least four times where they discussed this with an additional two other feedback meetings so that's at least six meetings that i got information about the skate park i support the skate park and Can't wait to see when it's built because my husband skates, he's 50 plus, my son still skates, and we need it in this community. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other comments relating to the skate park? Last call for public comment on our presentation related to the skate park.

seeing none we will close the time for the public comment on the skate park uh as it sounds like miss harms is there any concluding comments you want to make or i think we said before there's nothing for us to do at the moment but why don't you take a minute and just uh put the bow on top i just want to quickly thank everybody who came out even for and against it it's important to have everybody's opinions in the same room i want to thank all of you again for the collaboration on what we do we care about providing more recreation in the city i think you all agree with that so we're going to work together and get things done thank you all very much

Okay. Very good. Members, any further discussion on that matter? Yeah, Ms. Drucker.

I just want to thank everyone that came out today. We received many, many emails in support of the skate park. And also, the skate park will be a green space. It continues to be a green space. I just want to acknowledge the people that emailed us throughout the weekend and even throughout the day. And all the children that were here, your voices matter. And I appreciate you coming out and taking the time, the parents and all of you, to be here. So thank you for engaging in your civic duties. Thank you.

Hear, hear. Thank you, Ms. Drucker. Any other comments? Mr. Perlman, go ahead.

Thank you, everybody, for coming out. And I agree, it's about time that we have a new skate park. It's a shame that the Tim Huxhold Skate Park and many of the other recreational facilities were allowed to get to that condition. One comment I would say is, I mean, it's great that the Beach and Parks District took this initiative to get this project going. And they're at a stage where they have a design, they're ready to start construction. the tim huxhold skate park is in memorial park in the downtown um i think that over the last several years you know and i i'm learning about the history but i guess we could say that maybe the beach and parks did there could have been better coordination and of the beach and parks district with the city council and working together and because things can't be done in a vacuum so i think the city council has to think about um also are we going to be rebuilding the the tim huxhold skate park in memorial park so we're we're about to um hear presentations tomorrow for consultants who are going to come up with a design Obviously, that is a very centralized location in the city. And that is where the skate park has always been. So I mean, we could build two skate parks. I mean, we might just need one. maybe we need uh you know we definitely need a new one somewhere and soon but the question is is do we want to bring that up tomorrow or do we want to start to talk about possibly rebuilding the the tim huxhold skate park in this centralized location of memorial park as part of this upcoming plan

Thank you, Mr. Perlman. Just my initial reaction is I'm sure the skaters in the room would want three or four skate parks if they could get them, and I appreciate that, but I think the new one at the North Park, assuming we go down that road, seems to be a suitable replacement. It wouldn't strike me as a need of ours to have a second one downtown, a smaller one, even if it's the same footprint, but I'll keep my mind open on that. Any other comments? Ms. Sippel.

I just want to say thank you to the younger generation for getting up and speaking and letting us know what you want to see. I appreciate it. And I know that my kids they're a little bit older, but they would be loving this.

right on all right i think we can then conclude our item 2a which is the presentation on the skate park we can move 2b was removed off of the agenda that's the historic preservation board and we can move then to item 2c which is a presentation on homelessness response update mr manager what do you have thank you mr mayor um i'll make the presentation along with our acting police chief uh mr uh dubinsky

And just kind of an intro here, several weeks ago I provided counsel with a comprehensive memorandum outlining our current homelessness response and some of the challenges we continue to face and several recommendations for your consideration in that memo. And really today's presentation kind of builds off of that memo. and we're providing some additional contacts and then really highlighting some work that's already underway and then seeking policy direction from council. Before we begin, I'd also like to frame today's total discussion here. workshop really it's not simply about homelessness it's really about maintaining our safe clean and welcoming public spaces while treating every individual with dignity and really connecting those that are willing to accept services with appropriate resources and there's no single solution to this this is this requires enforcement it requires outreach it requires partnerships a lot of coordination and really long-term case management so I really want to thank you for allowing us to to talk about this today And there's really just four objectives here. We've got some current conditions. I want to highlight some of the things that are already underway. We're going to present some staff recommendations and then really receive some council feedback and direction. And I'm going to talk a little bit more about framework before I turn over to the Acting Chief of Police here to discuss really our operational response. But quite frankly, this is real simple in today's presentation is we're really looking at establishing a quality of life working group. We're looking at adding four CRA officers focused on downtown quality of life issues. And then probably most importantly is creating a community resource coordinator position to really improve citywide coordination. And then we're going to return at the end of this presentation to this direction that we're going to need from council. But before, you know, we kind of discuss what the city is doing, I just really want to briefly remind really everybody that it's important to understand that we're part of a larger regional system. And of course, Palm Beach County is the lead agency responsible for homelessness policy, funding, shelters, outreach, and case management. and uh you know booker raton we're an important partner in that system but we don't operate independently at all we are very closely connected to palm beach county to the point that we have some of their actual team members working for our police chief and that's how integrated we are and uh And now I want to kind of with that overarching understanding of where we fit in the county, I'll turn it over to the acting police chief to talk a little bit about how we're currently structured in Boca Raton. Thank you, Sir.

Good afternoon, Mayor, Council. Currently, the way we're structured is we have the Palm Beach County's Homeless Outreach Team that works laterally in conjunction with the Police Department to help us with the quality of life issues to make sure that the people in need get the services that they require. And they work with our CRA sergeant who oversees two quality of life officers. That CRA sergeant also oversees two traffic officers. Then we have a citywide community engagement unit and under that unit we have two homeless outreach officers that try to connect and coordinate with the homeless in our community to make sure that they also receive those services. Under the community engagement unit, it is more holistic. They work with the Palm Beach Hot Team more closely to get people driver's licenses, make sure that they can get their social security checks, and other services that can help them get off the streets. Right now, the way it's structured is that we have several local service providers, Boca Helping Hands, Changing Lives, St. Gregory's Church and Sunshine Pathways. These organizations work on providing services to the homeless in our community, but they work independently siloed with the homeless community, so there's no real organized coordinated effort. We'll go to the next slide here. and this is what we're requesting we're basically we're looking at increasing our efficiency by adding a community resources coordinator there are local cities that have this position in place and what that person does is make sure that we're working with these local service providers in a coordinated manner so the the community resource coordinator would reach out to all these local service providers and additional resource providers and basically coordinate schedules, work with them to make sure that services aren't overlapping and kind of control more of the daytime location of where these services are being provided so that we can better keep track of our homeless population in the community. And we can ensure that if we're seeing the same individual over and over that we're actually making a breakthrough and getting them the things that they need. And in having this community resource coordinator, who works with our CRA sergeant and our community engagement sergeant we can integrate the police force in a way that is caring and compassionate we can ensure that people receive services but if they refuse services or if they've got other issues that we need to address from an enforcement standpoint we can also do that as well So we are asking for an additional two traffic officers to work under the CRA sergeant and additional two quality of life officers under the CRA as well and they'll help us be more out there in the parks and the community to address some of these ongoing issues and to work closer with the community service coordinator. And we can move on to the next slide. So right now we do already have homeless outreach officers, but we're looking to enhance that program with the coordinator. We're conducting proactive patrols ongoing. We're constantly roving the parks and the beaches. We've got cameras in many of the parks where we're trying to be proactive about seeing any kind of issues that might arise and sending officers out there to address them before we get complaints. Our hot team coordination is working well with Palm Beach County. They're the ones that are actually going out into the field with our officers and they're keeping count of who's in our parks, who's in need of services, and they're tabulating the type of services that they provide, which we'll take a look at in a future slide. We provide service referrals and that helps us ensure that people are getting connected with services while addressing the complaints that we receive. We started the park ranger transition. We've completed reorganizing them underneath the police department July 1. And so that's an ongoing process. It's not a quick one. Although they are under the police department, we're reviewing their procedures and policies and seeing how does that strategically align with our goals of providing public safety and also increasing quality of life. So once we get them integrated better under our police services department, we'll be able to look at schedules, job descriptions, maybe some policy and procedure revamps, and training for those park rangers so that we're better aligned. Additionally, we have the trespass ordinance, which was passed earlier this year. It's a complex ordinance, but it's a great ordinance because it provides a high level of due process for people. We have to be careful about protecting people's constitutional rights and giving them opportunities to use these public spaces, but the approach has to be within the order of the law. This trespass ordinance requires that we post signs at all the parks indicating that they could be trespassed, individuals could be trespassed after warning. They request bulletin boards or they require bulletin boards where we post those notices. Many of people who may be subject to this trespass ordinance may be difficult to notify so we will post the notices and warnings up in a bulletin board. And then we have to implement a magistrate process whereby individuals can request to have their case heard in front of a magistrate who will then determine whether or not the person should be adjudicated on that trespass. So all of those things have to be logged and tracked. The city's IT team has been phenomenal in trying to develop that system. They've been working on the forms, on the background databases that are required. We've been back and forth with city legal to make sure that Those forms are legally sufficient. I am hopeful that we'll be able to roll that out and implement it by October 1. Part of that process is to train up our officers on all the nuances of this ordinance. Hopefully we'll get it done sooner, but I feel confident on an October 1 date for that. Next is the slide. This is just a snapshot of what the homeless outreach team at Palm Beach County does for us. The city contracts of services with the homeless outreach team. It's two civilians who work with our community engagement unit as stated before. The calls for service are Just that the hot team was notified about a need of assistance and went out somewhere. Contacts are actually people that the homeless outreach team has made contact with on a one-time basis. Engagements indicate two or more interactions with the same individual. So the hot team member has met with someone and then had a positive enough interaction they were able to have a second engagement. Services provided include assistance obtaining mental health screening, substance abuse treatment, and other actions such as that. Follow-up actions are related to case management meetings, housing navigation, helping people get long-term housing, and also ID, social security checks to come in so that they can pay for food and other needs. And then program outcomes are bigger efforts. They're placing someone in shelter or giving them diversion such as we've made contact with a family member and we've reconnected them and they've moved out of the area or moved into a residence with their relative. And then we also track, in addition to what the HOT Team does, we track our police calls for service. So these are areas where we've been called out. It's related to someone who's got an at-large status. And there's a variety of types of calls that we track. And we also track the location. It's obvious by this map that most of those interactions are happening out east and concentrated in the CRA. These are hotspot areas. To deal with this, we contact the hot team and we show them these maps and we direct them to these areas. There's an area right outside of the town center mall that's a little bit of a hotspot, and so that's where we direct our coordinated efforts to. What I have noticed about this is that although our contacts have remained pretty steady over the last several months, our reactive calls for service, the complaints we're getting are on a steady decline. And next slide.

Yeah, so thanks, Chief. As you can kind of see, we've made a lot of progress, and we're going to continue moving forward here. But we've strengthened enforcement, we've strengthened outreach, and of course we've strengthened partnerships. And really what we recognize, right, there's a lot of opportunity here to improve more coordination is really how to get some long-term effectiveness. And for our recommendation is really to establish a quality-of-life working group And quite frankly, this is just really an open forum to bring everybody together. You know, residents, business, service providers, law enforcement. And Delray does this very well. And I've been working with them for the last three or four months on that. And quite frankly, we can start this right now. I've already gotten multiple emails after folks have read this memo and they think this is a good idea. And when you add that coordinator to this, that central point that they have like in Delray and Fort Lauderdale, it really helps facilitate awareness and it brings everybody together on the same page so we can provide the best possible public safety and outreach as well. And then, you know, the final thing is recommending those additional four CRA officers because as you saw on the heat map there, most of the incidents occur in and downtown. So really with that, I just wanted to really thank the mayor and council for giving us an opportunity to continue working on this and there's more things that I want to bring forward as we get this moving forward to really enhance public safety in Boca Raton.

All right. Thank you, Mr. Manager. I'll go first, just to start the discussion. I think these are sensible approaches to addressing the issue. The quality of life work group, I think, is a great idea. The sooner we can get that up and running, the better. And I think the steps, as it relates to law enforcement, make sense particularly. Just to clarify, the two traffic officers aren't dedicated solely to the homeless population. That's traffic enforcement, right?

That's correct.

OK. But I think most important of all is the coordinator position. I think you've indicated that that has worked out well in many other places, particularly Delray Beach has a dedicated coordinator and that has proven successful. I think we should implement that here as soon as we can. Any other comments? If not, Godspeed.

No, there is, okay. I noticed that we have already taken meaningful steps to help this problem, and the trespassing ordinance was just implemented, and also the park rangers were only recently transferred to the police department. We also have a new chief of police. He hasn't even been sworn in yet, but I think that these material resources and operational changes should be evaluated before adding permanent layers. It makes it difficult to know whether the new spending is necessary until we evaluate whether or not these recent policy changes are achieving the intended results. I am in favor of supporting the quality of life working group and a coordinator. I just think we need a little bit more time to let this marinate.

Mr. Manager, do you have any comment?

Yeah, no, that's fine. I think we can phase that in, if you will. And what I'll do is I'll come up with a phasing plan and some type of criteria at which I'll come back to council to show you particularly the policy. the trespassing policy implementation I think that it's going to provide some data pretty quickly once we implement that as well as the park ranger so maybe six months from now something like that and now you know we'll talk a little bit more about it but I can definitely phase that the CRA police officers in but I definitely want to move forward with the resource coordinator well let's see where the the consensus goes only start there Mr. Rucker

yes so of course public safety is something that i'm always going to advocate for uh definitely the coordinator um i know the person in del rey and i know the person in palm beach that handles some of this coordination so that's that's a positive i think that's something we could do immediately and in terms of the officers i think just having more presence of officers whether it's homeless related or traffic related or just in the downtown is important especially what i've been seeing in the downtown as of late um is a lot of the e-bike a lot of the the kids are these e-bikes and packs so the more police presence that we have in the downtown in general whether we decide that we reshift them to certain parts of meisner or to the the hot spots that you saw so if i because if i understand correctly this is where you all and I guess I'll direct this to the to the interim chief you've identified these areas where these are the officers that you need for these areas and I say it and I'll say it again we are never going to cut costs on public safety something that I won't do we cut it in other areas we could figure it out in other areas but not when it comes to the safety of our community So for me, I like the way it was presented. The data has been already established. The data has been presented as what you all need in order to be efficient in the downtown. And we hear it often from our residents. I know Ms. Ramble's not in the room today, but she often comes to us for traffic, for safety. a lot of insight so for me I would just move forward with the plan how it is we do not have to wait six months to provide safety nets to our communities because this is in the CRA this is in the downtown where we also not only to our community but to our tourists that come here and the season is starting up again so things may be a little bit calmer now but college is coming back students will be back in town and more people will be back in the downtown and I think the more officers we have ready is a good thing. And also we have to hire these people. They're just not that available. So we have to kind of look for who we have to hire, right? So the sooner we get on, and I believe it's a safety issue, I would tend to just move forward with the presented plan. Thanks.

Thank you, Ms. Drucker. Other thoughts? Ms. Perlman, go ahead.

Thank you. Mr. Sohani, if this were approved today and we wanted to move forward with it, and the chief as well, how long do you think it would take to make the hires and do the training such that it could be implemented?

Good question. We would we would prioritize the CRA. So we do have vacancies that were in the process of filling right now. We're getting we're getting load on the vacancies. We've got about seven department wide and we should be at about three or four in the next month or two. But we have discretion as to where we put them. So our priority would be to put those officers sooner than later into the CRA. Once they come out, you know, once people come out of the academy and they've been trained up, It gives us the flexibility to move personnel around. So probably within the next few months, I would say, we could get officers to fill those CRA spots.

I agree. I think this is a plan that I've heard from a lot of residents, and I'd like to get moving on this.

Very good. Ms. Sipple?

I feel the same way as Councilmember Perlman. We've had a lot of emails, I've had a lot of phone calls regarding the situation and I think we need to strengthen it up and try to get it under control and offer them as much help as we possibly can. So I'm fine with going ahead as is. Okay.

think go ahead mr also mr zohaney i'd like to thank you because i know how much work and research you put into this so well done and thank you okay so i think consensus as we move forward on this as is asap

That concludes our time for the presentation on the homelessness response. We can move then to the next and final presentation for today on the police services complex. Mr. Manager, who will be making the presentation on this matter?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. We're going to keep the same team together. It will be me as well as the acting chief of police, and then we're going to bring in our public works and engineering director, Mr. Zach Beer, as well. So you know really I just want to kind of lead off a little bit with this workshop really it kind of continues our discussion here for those have been tracking this it's been going on for a while and really it's it's kind of providing an update on where we're at or the staff's evaluation process uh maybe the staff's recommendation at this point and next steps moving forward and as many of you know there's a lot of things that have happened a lot of council discussions the whole council has toured all these facilities over the last month and i really want to thank council for taking the time to do that and as you know we have a lot of police facilities in order to understand how we're spread out around the city. And we got that done as well. So, and then I wanna recognize the staff's due diligence in this presentation of looking at other locations as well. And we're gonna talk about that. And in today's workshop, it's really not asking Council to make a final decision on location or authorized construction by any means. The purpose really is to review our due diligence, explain some of the operational considerations, and then present our recommendation, get Council feedback, and then really take what we have presented with council feedback and make changes so we can push this out to our community advisory panel so we can maximize our community engagement schedule for the next two months and then from that engagement with the community make the necessary adjustments and come back to council uh for follow-on discussion on potential location timing how we're going to pay for this bonding and things like that so this is just another step in the process and with that I just want to kick this off and and really let you know that we've taken a look really the operational effectiveness of our police department and and what I want to kind of talk about for a second is you know the police department headquarters it's it's been around it's aging and and we haven't made a decision on what to do in the last 15 or 20 years and the result of that no decision fundamentally has we've grown right the city's grown the police department has grown and so now we are operating out of multiple locations right as a police department and that is not that effective so you're going to see that explained by our police chief in a little bit more detail and then we're going to talk a little bit about timeline right now And as you can look at this, this started a long time ago doing a space needs and operational challenges assessment of our police headquarters. And where we are today is we briefed council last month and we kind of introduced a site idea and potentially a funding methodology and that put us on a timeline. And that timeline, if we were to bond this, that would the citizens would get a chance to vote on that this March so that's where we are it's July we've got plenty of time to adjust this and to seek council direction and then put us on a path for the citizens to take a final vote in March and move forward with that and then you know once we come back to council in September after the community engagement plan they'll have a chance to look at this make those final decisions on location on on a bond amount hypothetically and then if it moves forward we'll have a ballot language ready to go in November And then if the council wants, we would RFQ this, we'd RFP it if that's the direction that they want. And we would hire an architect firm eventually to be ready to go. So when the citizens, if they vote yes on this in March in this example, that'll keep us on timeline. So that's what this entire project timeline looks like on this particular slide. And with that I'll turn it over to Mr. Dubinsky if you can kind of explain a little bit of why this matters.

Thank you. Having the command control and communications under one roof is absolutely critical to police operations. And that's because time is of the essence. We don't have minutes, we have seconds to make decisions and to get information out. Our 911 center, which also includes a real time crime center component, is the heartbeat of our police department. They're aware of everything that's happening around the city all at once. They receive the calls in from the public and then they dispatch those calls out over the radio system. They're also monitoring social media and getting information that way. our city also dispatches for the fire department so medical needs come in and depending on the situation especially something god forbid an active shooter type situation where we need to get medical services in there may be a time where our police department needs to provide cover for those fire trucks and so since we're all centralized if we were all centralized in the same Building we would be able to provide those critical cover needs for for EMS Our command our command officers are able to stand inside that real-time crime center and get a real feel for what's going on Without having to have that information relayed currently the way it is is that we're at the police department and 911 center is up here and So we have to rely on phone calls and hearing radio traffic. And we can only be on one channel at a time. We can only observe one video screen at a time. So being able to stand right there in the center and get that information real time is absolutely essential to a coordinated effort. um since the information does come in quickly it also gets disseminated across the community quickly with social media it's very easy for things to get out of control if we're able to push out information ahead of everyone else we can control a narrative we can coordinate efforts of where Victims may have to go to meet their family members, things like that. And so it's essential to be under one roof with our public information office to be able to get that information out to the public as quickly as possible. Our crime intelligence analysts work very closely with our detective bureau to provide research and insight into suspect information or trends or see if there's other threats happening across other jurisdictions. So again, that coordination is absolutely critical. Another fact about our police department is that many of our officers hold various roles throughout the agency. So we may have a detective or a traffic officer or a patrol officer who also doubles as a EOD squad member, dive team member, unmanned aerial craft systems member. So it's important that even though they may have They may have desk duties. They may have investigative roles. At a moment's notice, they may be utilized for some other function. So our specialty team vehicles at this point in time are at Banyan. So that would require them to go out to Banyan to collect a vehicle, then either come to 6500 or the PD to get their equipment loaded up. And then the rest of the personnel, they could be spread out between 6500 and the police department. So getting everybody rallied together in one point, you can see will increase our efficiency, our coordination, and when seconds matter, that's super critical. um and the other thing that i would say is um there's an organic nature to to having everybody under one roof when you've got people overhearing conversations or ideas come up or people need to to get research on different aspects of of of their cases being able to walk one desk over or go to another floor another section and immediately get that information is crucial. Things get lost in transit, things get lost when people have to go far distances or schedule meetings because they're not under the same roof. For all those reasons and many more, it's absolutely essential that the police department keeps all of our critical operations under one roof.

Thanks, Chief. And then really before I go into discussing some of these alternatives, it's just, you know, I want to emphasize, you know, what you're seeing here today, these are, you know, they're planning concepts, right? That's what we're talking about. And these are not final architectural designs by any means. It's really just kind of making sure that we have the big picture. So before I did this, I asked staff to completely start over, okay, from the last project. And we started from the ground zero, and we took a look at what are our operational needs, and that's what you just heard is the command control and the communication is the most important thing. and and so how do we look at whatever the site is it doesn't matter I wanted to design the same components apples to apples and that way we can have a pretty objective discussion and then and then from council's direction we can provide You know more guidance and answer their questions, but ultimately, you know, wherever the location is we're going to be able to execute public safety in either location and it just comes down to What what what the location is so with that what you're looking at here is this location is called the central complex and downtown station and And it's on 16 acres over by Spanish River. And again, I just want to emphasize what you're looking at is the same components in this idea is going to be the same components in a downtown option as well. and so the last time we talked to council we were trying to figure out what the square footage we would need and we spent a lot of time and we ball parked it and we were pretty confident that it's about 90,000 square feet and I briefed that to council as a rough scope that's the scope we're using right now on both of these locations is about 90,000 square feet And it's not just a building. What you're going to see here is you've got a main building in blue there and the other thing I asked staff is let's not hurricane rate everything. I don't need the garage to be hurricane rated. How can we do some value engineering right now? And that is a good example of the central main building and this would be hurricane rated and then the other buildings would not be. And then we've got an evidence and storage building in green. We have a rolling asset building. So we have a lot of large rolling assets, about eight of them, all the way from our command center to our SWAT team to our bomb team. So that's what that is. It's essentially a garage. And then we have a firing range. And we currently have a firing range downtown. It's very small and outdated. And you're going to see that we want to include an up-to-date firing range there in red. And then of course every facility needs a central energy plant. So those are the components in this site as well as you're going to see in the follow-on downtown site. The difference here is, and it was mentioned earlier, there's also a downtown station here. And that's the lower picture there. And this is just an idea at this point, but we've done a lot of initial polling, talked to a lot of citizens, and folks wanted a downtown component. Well, this example is using our existing base building, right? And if anybody's following along, everybody in that base building is scheduled to move to 6551. which would make this building available. And so one option would be that's 9,000 square feet. So that's why instead of 90,000 square feet, you're looking at 100,000 in this example, just because with that downtown option gives you 9,000 more square feet. There was a question that came up earlier, what would we use that for? We haven't scoped that out completely, and I'll defer to the police chief for this. If you want to comment on potentially what we would use that for, you can comment in a second. Are you ready? Okay, go ahead.

Yes. We looked at that for housing the CRA officers, the Palm Beach County hot team, our community engagement team, a small public facing records component. We could be close to the CRA in the downtown, address those issues, be connected with the community, and also give a level of service with public records requests and fingerprinting and stuff like that. That's what our general use would be.

Thanks. So that's what you're looking at here is a central complex downtown station. The next slide just shows you the proposed site, what the current site looks like on the left. And then this is the downtown. You can see the base building on the left there and then the proposed downtown station option on the right. Okay, so the next location is a downtown complex, which is located basically where the base building is on that parcel, the parcel between the library and the current police department headquarters. The big difference between these two parcels is this is 1.94 acres. The other parcel that I showed you on the central location is 16 acres. So if we were to do something on two acres, we're probably going to have to go vertical. And that's what this plan shows is we're going to have to go vertical. And but big picture, it has the same exact components, right? It has a main building that would be hurt and the whole building would be hurricane rated. Of course, it's got an evidence and storage building. It's got a rolling asset building and so what you're looking at is a Basically a four-story garage with two stories on top You have a fire firing range in the building as well And of course a central energy plant and this is ninety thousand square feet. So same square footage of uh basically the same components uh and downtown on 1.94 acres so that is uh really uh the two options that surface is the most uh beneficial and easiest in terms of size and everything there's the current site on the left there's a proposed site on the right And with that I'll turn it over to our Public Works Director, Mr. Zach Beer, to talk a little bit about due diligence.

Yeah, thank you. Good afternoon, Mayor and City Council. Zach Peer, your Public Works and Engineering Director. As we went through this process and prepared for this presentation today, there was a request from the city manager to really go back through all of the existing properties in the city and take an agnostic look because we wanted to make sure, as we presented this today, we had looked in the entire asset set of the city's property locations. So with that we went into our GIS database and turned off all the uses and just said look at let's look at square footage availability and those items as we did an evaluation. So with that the top location that came up for staff was the location at Countess de Hornaly, the general Countess de Hornaly region or Spanish River. That is actually the largest contiguous parcel that the city owns. It's 208 acres. It has several uses. It has the fire support building located at it. It also has the Countess de Hornaly maintenance facilities, which is heavily used by recreation services. So you have fire recreation services and, of course, the Spanish River Library and many other park uses. Then the second largest parcel was the utility services location, which is completely occupied by our utility services department for water treatment and wastewater treatment. And then third on the list was public works and engineering. And I would invite anyone in the public, if you've ever come out to get a recycling bin or trash can, finding a parking spot out there is quite challenging. So the room at the end is full at public works. Then, as we went through on the other locations, starting from bottom to top to get to 6500, the glades south of FAU and Palmetto south of Paradise Palms, both of those locations have been identified as preserves. So the glades location is called the scenario scenario. Sonora sorry glades preserve and the Palmetto south of Paradise Palms is the Cypress nice loo and so both of those are environmentally sensitive locations and after evaluation while they have substantial land are useful for the environmental nature Then the eight acres east of Second Avenue would be combining many of the parcels in the downtown area around the base building together collectively and from a civic realm and what we've heard from the public about maintaining as much open space as possible. Staff did not add that at the top of the list. We also talked about the Banyan Training Facility that has been identified for expansion of fire use and fire support and outdoor training activities for our first responders. We're really trying to keep that available for both the expansion of Countess to Hornley Recreation Facilities and also our outdoor training needs. The 6551, I apologize for that scrivener error there, it shows 66, but that is the 6551 Commerce Park Building. That's the office building the city recently procured to move the base and some of the other city services staff. at that location, so that is mainly an office need and not fitting for police department headquarters. Which brings us to 6500 Congress. That is the current location that is a nine acre site, so when we compare the three acreages, the 16.4, the 1.9, and the nine acres, that is really just the current build size. It really doesn't allow for future expansion, and as the city manager pointed out in the no-build condition, The 6500 has not really been a purpose driven police facility. It's been an overflow location where over time facilities requests have come into public works. And we've built a little additional evidence storage here and the comms location and PSIMS. And then we added some road patrol locations, but we did not collectively and cohesively construct a police department headquarters at that location. when staff looked at the pieces of the parts and then really evaluated the whole it was identified from a the perspective of really unifying the police department together and meeting those user needs that was not the best fit so those are that's kind of the due diligence we've recapped as we've made sure we evaluated all options

Thanks. And this slide really summarizes the evaluation. And rather than really relying on opinion, we just compared each option really against some type of objective operational criteria. And on top, centralized command and control and communication by far is the number one priority in this city because we are spread out all over the place and that is the focus hurricane rated both of those locations can provide that rolling asset proximity both locations a firing range both locations and then we wanted we didn't want to impact patrol operations and and so folks You don't quite understand, but generally speaking, we have about 16 different patrol zones in the city right now. So it doesn't matter where the police department headquarters is located. Our police officers operate out of their cars and they're going to those zones from their residence when they report to work, not necessarily reporting into the headquarters. either location there's no impact to patrol operations downtown civic presence access both of them would provide that because that first option right also has that downtown station option because some residents were concerned about that and they wanted to have that site size this is where it starts changing right the first option is 16 acres compared to two acres. Future growth and expansion capacity, obviously a 16 acre site gives you more future growth, expansion, and there's ways to explain that, right? If we grow as a police force, yeah, we might have to add additional evidence storage or additional components as technology changes, but the way i presented this and the way staff kind of went through it we gave you that that menu so we we don't know what the price is we don't know what the cost is but if if for some reason that we want to build a firing range later right we can do that later You can do that on the first option, right, because you have a site plan, it's horizontal, you're on 16 acres. You can't do that with a vertical building necessarily. So that's what I mean by future growth and expansion capacity and that's why that location got that checkmark. Access to major corridors, I-95, was important to the police department over and over. Site security and perimeter control is very important. It's easier to provide that with more acreage compared to a downtown location that's densely populated. And and some other things that we looked at You know, we get a question. Well, you know, what's the cost? Well, we don't know Because at some point we'll do an RFQ process to hire an architect that'll take whatever concept The council selects eventually we'll take that and then start working that and that'll start Defining right exactly the scope in detail which would then inform us of what that cost looks like but generally speaking vertical construction is going to be about 10 to 12 percent more than horizontal construction. So is it a lot more? No, but we just need to be cognizant that it might be 10 to 12 percent more and that's why we listed that on there. So there's a lot to think about here, but really uh we really wanted to open this up to council because we're about ready to hit this heavy communication uh community outreach engagement council was very clear that that's they've directed our staff we are postured with the community advisory panel to take this information once council takes a look at it and we make the changes uh to go present this to the community I'm meeting with every HOA president within two nautical miles of, that's my Navy sailor coming out there, within Memorial Park, so I want to make sure I understand everything that we can put into this. uh going forward and we've got some other things we want to do and then come back to council with what we're hearing from the community make the adjustments and present the council some options for council to take a look at and then make make a decision on what type of funding methodology council wants to do and if that is a bonding then that puts us on a timeline if that's not a bond then then we have a little bit more time and then start that RFQ process you know earlier rather than later because some of you have been tracking our memorial park we're doing that tomorrow that's it takes three four months to get an RFQ done so we want to have some time to do that if council wants to do that and really set us up for success here. Get the community what the community wants and get it on time and get it, you know, at a reasonable cost going forward and really give Boca Raton what the citizens are looking for. So with that, I just want to turn it over to council and to the mayor for your questions. Thank you.

Before we have a discussion, any questions for the city manager or staff? Yeah, please, Mr. Rucker.

So I just have a question on the timeline. So you said it would come to council October 26. This is resolution consideration for ballot language and then ballot language to be finalized. Does it have to be in the supervisor election on November 10th? Because that is our actual meeting is November 10th.

Yeah, so the actual date, I don't know, Mr. Zeris, if you have the date, but the plan is we would have the ballot language complete in the month of October.

Because I thought ballot submission was due prior to November 10th.

I think it makes sense for it to be submitted prior to that, if we can.

Cause November 10th is an actual, um, there's an actual meeting.

Yeah. So in our timeline, if I can get the timeline back up, um, is that, uh, there it is. Um, so we, we, yeah, we would definitely in October have the ballot language finalized, uh, to be ready for November 26, according to this timeline.

My second question, Mayor Thompson, if I may. You said not every building would be hurricane protected, but does that impact insurance? Like, for example, in homes, if your garage is not covered or impacted, you don't have full disclosures. Does that apply to commercial? I don't know. It's something that I don't know, so I want the answer. If you're not covering it in one way, and then you have to spend so much more money on insurance, or if it blows the top of the garage and our equipment is damaged, then that's a problem because the equipment is very expensive. As we know, police cars, fire cars, all cars, everything related to municipalities, the cost is higher. So let's make sure we do our due diligence. If we're not going to get it to grade because it's going to save us money that, God forbid, we are impacted by a storm or any kind of disaster, could be flooding, et cetera, that we're gonna have the proper coverage. So those are numbers that I would like to see at some point.

Absolutely, and I'll have Mr. Zervas comment as well.

November 10th is the due date for ballot language to the county.

So, sorry. Go ahead. Mayor Thompson? Yeah. So, well, this is not anything that nobody knows, but I won't be on the dais on November 10th because my last day on the dais is November 9th. Everyone knows that. And if you didn't, it is public information. So just keeping that in mind that you have to submit that before. So if that's October, right? Yeah.

Sounds good. And if I can, Mr. Mayor, I'll have Mr. Bear comment maybe a little bit on the hurricane rating construction and how that's parsed out in terms of insurance.

Absolutely. So from the concepts that we laid out, which is the general stage that the design is at at this time, it was really about the flexibility. So when we look at those buildings generally from a structural perspective, the risk category four, which is very – they make it – I was confusing on purpose. Risk category four is the maximum rating, which at this time at the Sapphire Simpson scale is a category five hurricane or in our high hazard wind zones, approximately of the ultimate of 170 miles an hour. So it's really about that specific building that would be the EOC for the police and looking at maximally rating that building versus what those other buildings could be rated at. So certainly all of them will be meeting the current floor building code in the in the structural design standards. but it's parsing out that specific call it bunker for police operations to be maintained versus having to look at the entire building and really ultimately as we go through the design process it's trying to look at all those options for cost control as we heard from council previously and then managing that process as we go through the design perfect thanks mr thompson sure miss perlman

First of all, I just would like to comment just because we're talking about hurricane ratings. I was reviewing the documents on 6551 and we're about to proceed with possibly up to $12 million of renovations on that building and that building is rated for only a hurricane, a category two hurricane. That's the level of rating for that building, which is very low. When you look at other city hall you know City Halls in Florida typically when a City Hall is rebuilt with a large amount of staff working out of it it's most of them in these modern times in new construction is category four so I just want to throw that out there so we we should talk about that when 6551 comes up um I'd like to can you can you pull up slide number eight for a minute So Mr. Zohaney, in this slide for this downtown option, you have the building on this two acre parcel where the base building is. The parcel of where the current police station is is roughly four and a half acres. Why didn't you present options for a downtown option for A, having the new police station being built on the four and a half acre parcel, or B, having it built across the two parcels, possibly with a firing range or a vehicle garage and other elements on the two acre parcel with the main station on the four and a half acre parcel, meaning across the two parcels possibly?

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Burlman. I will enter this comment and then I'll turn over to Mr. Beer on the engineering aspect of that. Operationally, that building's occupied. So in order to use that parcel, we'd have to relocate the current police department headquarters, which would be pretty costly, as well as it would exasperate our command and control problem even further. So that didn't make sense to me operationally. But I did ask our public works engineer to disregard that and look at it from just a building and an engineering perspective. And I'll turn it over to Mr. Beer to comment on if we were to do that, what your commentary is.

Sure. Really, really good question. Thank you for that. And related to the different sets of parcels. So just to restate it, Mr. Pearlman identified accurately that the existing police department property is approximately four acres. And at the same time, it's a very unusually shaped parcel. So it's not it's not a perfect square. It's kind of a keyhole down to Palmetto and then another jigsaw up with the the tire property to the east of it. and then you have a second street with the base parcel and then another third street and then another small parking lot parcel to the north of that so in between the police department existing location and the base building is a 230 kv transmission line so it's a high voltage transmission facility which actually runs through the middle of memorial park and then heads over to dixie and goes north so If there was an attempt to try and connect those two parcels together, it's a pretty significant lift from an engineering perspective. Not that it is possible to do that. It's just one of our charges obviously is to produce this project in a timely manner. So that adds to the complexity. And then also what we found from a construction and contracting basis, especially looking at some of the other projects we evaluated, When the contractor is engaging in the construction process, when there's the staff that has to be relocated offsite, that adds additional challenges and complexity from a logistics and coordination perspective. So staff looked at each one of the options, and from a constructability and a design perspective, there were challenges identified trying to mix and blend some of the other parcels together.

that's correct and then just to add on the operational complexity of relocating a police department in order to do construction if you add in the current direction by the council which is an operational transition of city hall to 6551 which would occur simultaneously that to me was a non-starter If we're on that timeline. So I do appreciate Mr. Beer's construction, civil engineering aspect of this and the complexity associated with that and probably the increased cost executing that option. But we took a look at it objectively and it just didn't make the most sense given the things we just talked about. Any more questions, Mr. Perlman?

Let me just finish off. Not right now, but we're going to have a discussion. Yes, we will. Thank you.

All right. Deputy Mayor Brown.

I'm just going back to the de-scoped estimates that you provided us, and I was wondering, we have site work estimated for $19.3 million, and that would be for having it in the Midtown location. So I'm just not sure if we've done a cost comparison as to what, because the infrastructure is already in place downtown.

Go ahead. I'll let you comment, Mr. Mayor.

All right, sure. If you could go back to, I think it's slide either four or six, whichever shows the, oh, I've got the clicker, sorry. Oh, now we're both going to do it. There we go. One more forward. There we go. So the side-by-side is the most useful. So as we went through the original iteration of the, again, conceptual developments, the original design and layout was a little bit more expansive and really designed out several future years. And really with the request from council to really evaluate it from a cost conscious perspective, staff took just a fresh look at it and really identified to build to the current year. which which you know is is a is a business decision as development and so from that additional site development cost that really was a lot of the expansion elements which was adding in utility infrastructure for the drainage canal which you see to the south side of the picture on the proposed site and then also bringing a lot of the other utilities on site and where we saw a pretty substantial savings was from if i'll be able to point and you'll see it on the screen no uh on the current site up in the the top of the the picture image uh you can see there's an existing parking lot and if anybody drives by there uh it was i went and did some research on it was re repaved in 2021 so it's it's seen some age but is still in pretty decent condition And so the new proposal for the central complex really utilizes a lot of that existing infrastructure. So we try to maximize the amount of existing site infrastructure that we use for the current needs to be able to reduce that cost. So as we've continued to develop the ideas and concepts, that's where we've seen those cost savings. Then related to your comment about the downtown development, It's almost a challenge on the other direction because while there is existing utility infrastructure, the existing utility infrastructure in the downtown surrounding the government campus is significantly aged. It's really been, it was installed in the 60s in a lot of locations and has really reached long, I wouldn't say full at the end of its useful life, but if the city goes to redevelopment or redevelop or redevelopments we've seen which a lot of the other downtown developments have in their surrounding area. They've had to go in and update the utilities and build new utilities up to the surrounding areas to be able to meet the building's needs. So with that site cost, we took that into consideration at both locations. But a major savings is that horizontal construction and really reducing the footprint at the central site.

Thank you. I just have one additional question. And can the city manager, can you just go over what the public outreach is going to look like and what the community advisory panel is going to be doing?

Yeah, thank you, Deputy Mayor. So the first thing in August, we're going to get polling data back that's important from the last referendum and what the citizens want. And we'll feed that to council at the end of August. And then I've got meetings with all the HOAs in August. And then we have, on August 5th, a community advisory panel conversation at Spanish River Library. That's 6 p.m. August 5th. And then the weeks of August 10th, 17th, and 24th, we have the city staff and a community advisory panel every week doing an outreach session. And right now that's TBD, but there's one or two each week, August 10th, 17th, and the 24th. And then on September 2nd, we've got the community advisory panel community conversation again at spanish river library uh 6 p.m and then on september 22nd we'll take all that information and and the community advisory panel will make a presentation to the city council on september 22nd okay thank you any further questions for staff yes miss simple go ahead

Mister so Haney have we received the engineering reports back on the building structures.

No we anticipate receiving that at the end of this week close the business this week worst case early next week is when I'm tracking and then we'll get that out to immediately via email.

I'm just this I'm just curious as to what state the city Hall building is in because that's. Could also be a possibility for a downtown smaller substation, but thanks. Any other questions?

No? Okay, well then I think we can kick off our discussion. I see here that the staff is asking for a recommendation and direction to proceed with community outreach phase and polling. I think that was what you would hope for, Mr. Sahaney. I am speaking for myself anyway. I appreciate the staff's recommendation and I am inclined to go along with it. I don't believe that downtown is necessarily the best location for the larger police headquarters building. I do think a substation or a downtown station is an important component, but I don't think it needs to be the main one or the only one. I do think and I think many of us talked about previously when we had this discussion last regarding the bond question I think several members had noted that they wanted to have some community input on the location so I think the the that what you've outlined is a good start for that and I like the idea of you going out to the HOAs within I believe you said two nautical miles That's good. If you're going to be going by sea, that might take you a little longer. But I appreciate that. I think that's a good idea. Combined with a community advisory panel, I think that's a good way of accomplishing that, plus the polling. And I think that will give us enough for us to make the final decision, which isn't a today thing, but rather in September. I think this accomplishes the need for, and then, yeah, what I view as a need for community outreach and engagement. So who would like to go next? Ms. Grau, go ahead.

Sure. I just wanted to thank the city manager and Zach and for the interim chief of police for the tour of all the existing facilities. It was really eye-opening and I guess the most notable thing that I saw was how it was very decentralized, the whole operation. I think personnel equipment supplies were all spread out amongst all different locations. And I think it would just be very helpful for the public to be able to see somewhat what I would see. And I just by thinking maybe just get the project up on the city's website, have some of these presentations, maybe even have a couple photographs of the existing facilities, put the meeting calendars up there just to help get this going.

Okay, very good. Mr. Rucker.

Yeah, thank you to staff. Thank you, Mr. Sohaini. You know, I think I've said this before and the day is before. I think that I agree with Mayor Thompson. I like the central location. I like the outreach. I don't like a six-story building in the middle of downtown if we're trying to protect shadows and shades and parks. So not necessarily a great use of that parcel. And we need to keep our police station there where we build up the new one. So that's just kind of a common sense approach. I've always liked the Spanish River central location. The city is larger than just the downtown. I know that surprises some of you. But most of the city is not in the downtown. So I kind of like that central location. And then having a parcel in the downtown is also important. That covers downtown and the barrier island and surrounding areas. So I agree with this option. I like the public outreach. I agree with Deputy Mayor putting it up, showing some of the things that we've already seen on the tours and seeing why there's a need for this. And we don't have to go that far. Just look around our neighboring cities. They all have pretty... I just happen to be in Palm Beach Gardens, and they have a pretty new facility. I was in Boynton, and I also was in Lake Worth over the weekend. And these are cities that are not BOCA, and they have... newer facilities and everything is working just as it should. So thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Trucker. Ms. Sippel.

I will say that the tours were eye-opening, especially downtown. I don't think you can fit one more thing in that building. To the roof, there's just boxes throughout the entire building. There's hardly room for people in there. but i'm ready to go ahead and let's move forward but the most important thing i think is the community outreach i want to see you know what the community thinks first and then we go from there very good mr perlman

Boca is and has been an incredibly safe and low crime city. What's been presented here, it hasn't convinced me that we should change what's been working here, which is that we've had the police station in the downtown. And we know that other cities have had also great success to reduce crime by having a high police presence downtown. And it kind of leads to the next question, which is, what's the end game of moving everything out of the downtown? Because with what's going on now, out of this centralized location of where government has always been in the city, we're moving, possibly considering to move the police station out to Spanish River. We're moving the bulk of the city hall to the 6551 building. Thank you. And it's true in looking at the discussions with the chief and Mr. Zohaini talking about having command control and communication in one place. There's also cost savings and efficiency of having all of the government buildings in one place, which it always has been downtown. So I don't understand what the end game is of moving this all out to these different locations away from the downtown. obviously made sense when you know terror frisbee was seeking to acquire that land but we this is our public land and it's ours now we fought to keep it so i don't i i think i don't see why we should be moving everything out of there um and i mean if we do if we clear it out in the manner that we're proceeding with who knows that that whole thing can can rise up again because it's vacant we're moving everything out so I think that we've had low crime. It's been downtown. If you're going to try to convince me that we need to move the station out of downtown, there's going to need to be more than a vague checklist that was in this presentation. I'm going to want to see a crime map. I'm going to want to see response times from each location to different parts of the city. I'm going to want to see a full population map. um including the future and approved development because a lot's been approved and a lot of that is in the downtown because i think when you take into account the population locus i i we're we're moving to the downtown not not to that that other location in spanish river so we need to be thinking about how how to get the best outcome for the residents in terms of response times, the crime solved, community engagement, because downtown is a convenient location for the community to go and a lot of the population is there. also i i if you go to the community with with these slides i don't that's not a fair that's not a fair presentation of the downtown option what you you've crammed in that big building on on two acres that's not the correct representation of downtown The representation should be to rebuild the police station on the current parcel where it's always been. And Dan Alexander, the veteran police chief of Boca Raton, who was the chief for 13 years, he was actually going to make 6500 the main station. And he was going to put in the back a 100 yard rifle range in a garage. so he was going to do that that's and already 50 of of the police staff is working there now so to say that that building can't be used as an interim station um you know obviously there'll be some cost but to say that that can't be used while we rebuild the station downtown on on the current site i i don't i don't think that that's the case um So I think it is possible to build it downtown on the current site. I was interested to see that you included that second parcel actually for both options of where the base building is because I wasn't even thinking that that parcel could be included in the police station, police campus structure. So that shows that we could actually use that additional two acres. included in in the plan which uh you know i know you you there's an intention we i was at the site we need a new firing range and you want to have a garage um so i i believe that we if we go to the community with this we need to have um a a a true representation of what could happen downtown to be fair because Is it correct, Mr. Zohaney, that when you go to the community, as one of the things that you're seeking input on is for the location? Is that the case? Yeah, that's correct. Okay, so I'd like to see that option presented with the parcel, with the rebuilding on the current site. And I think we can include the other additional extensions or expansions onto the secondary site.

if we want to but at the very least show it on the current site any further comments mr perlman no thank you okay i believe you have the consensus mr director slash manager yes i think the consensus that we had it was four out of five with the recommendation of how it was presented by the chief by mr sohaini so the third option is adding what's there today which is we already know this is 6500 we're sitting in it like we wouldn't we wouldn't be able to sit in here i mean if we moved everything here like these meetings where we put them i'm not not sure where but i'm just saying the experts which is mr beer public works director and the chief of police have already given the recommendation and that the recommendation is what we saw and there is and there is a 9 000 square foot proposal to keep presence in downtown there's no reason you will need a bigger station in downtown with 9 000 square feet you're going to be able to get information there access fingerprinting um you know basic they said the cra officers would be closer to downtown etc etc so are we are we getting input to add a third option Because I'm not interested in that. I'm interested in that too. What was brought before the council today was, these are the two options that are being presented, and we need to get consensus. And as this body, I think four out of five consents that we move forward. And then it might come out of these meetings that some people want that third option. And then we'll have to listen to that. But I'm not looking to provide three options to the community. Because I think we were only presented with two options. So I haven't weighed in or done any research on my own on a third option. Because all we were asked to do were These options that were presented today. Am I missing something?

You are not. The direction comprises the majority of the council and the majority of the council has indicated that they are satisfied with the options presented here and going out to the community in terms of getting outreach and engagement from them in accordance with what the director, I keep saying the director, with what the city manager has proposed.

And can I say one more thing, Mayor Thompson?

Sure.

I just want to be clear to the people that are listening because I have a feeling that after this meeting there will be information that will be dispersed that is inaccurate. The information that was presented today is the information that's presented today. We're looking for an option that we would have a central area which would cost 10 to 12 percent less to taxpayers. That's really important with the property tax reform discussion happening every day. It's in the paper all day, every day, right? So you've got to always be good fiduciary responsibility of our taxpayer dollars. The other option is having the middle and having the downtown presence always. I guess the second option was just in the downtown and nothing here and that would go vertical, which would mean go up and obviously cost the taxpayers more money. So those are the two options. We're not removing anything from the downtown. We've never said that from the Tara Frisbee days. I know that's a very bad word, but we always said there was going to be a downtown presence with police. So from 18 months ago. So that's not anything that we're not doing. So I just want the public to understand that what we're putting out, this is the accurate information, and then we're going to go to you for input. And we want to get your input, and we want to have those conversations, but we want to lead with correct data. So kind of wanted just to put that out there. Thanks.

mr thompson all right so first of all staff made a presentation we're the city council so so what happens is my understanding is that there's a presentation made and then we have discussion and feedback on that presentation so my feedback today from the presentation because the presentation is not the final word the presentation is a stimulus for discussion amongst the council to figure out the consensus and how the council feels so based on this presentation i feel as though this downtown option isn't isn't a correct option to present as as the optimal option um to the community so that's my response to this so does anybody else on the council feel similarly that when when these public engagement sessions are had because again we're seeking from the community their input on the preferable location does anyone feel like like we like we should have an option for the downtown where it's being built on the current site of the police station and possibly expanded to the secondary site of where the base building is

Speaking for myself, the answer is no. I trust the staff. They've found that proposal to be unsuitable and too expensive to make workable. And so I trust them on that. And I think that that is all I need to hear.

And I agree, Mr. Perlman. When we come up here, we have discussions, and that's great. And I understand that your input is important, but we also have a council of five, and four of us have agreed with this option. And, you know, some days, you know, I'm on the wrong side of the consensus on something. You're going to be on the wrong side of consensus. That's just communication. But I agree that... The options that were presented today are the best options to not only protect the community, but also protect the taxpayer. That's the most important thing. And every decision that we make from now to November 3rd, we should be always keeping in mind the property tax reform and how it's going to impact our city, whether it's today, tomorrow, five years from now. So for that, I agree with Mr. Thompson with what was presented today that we move forward.

one last thing mr thompson lastly um uh in terms of cost i mean the only option thus far in terms of you know cost it was only looked spanish river was the only you know price tag that was given um so we don't actually know that it's it would be cheaper um to build there versus downtown there's a lot of site work there there's we we never got a price estimate for a downtown location so Ms. Drucker mentioned to taxpayers today that the option in Spanish River was, she said, 10 to 12% cheaper. But we don't know that, so maybe we need to look into that. Maybe because we don't have any estimates from downtown. But in addition to possibly looking into that, I would like at the next city council meeting to get further data to present to the council. Can we get a crime map of the city you know in the last several years you know or you know there may be the last year indicating where the the bulk of crimes and maybe we can we can divide it in violent crimes at the different types of burglaries you know maybe indicating what type of crimes they were and then I don't I mean has any has any analysis comprehensive analysis been done to determine response times to different parts of the city from each location and if not we I think we should get that to see you know to see how how response times would differ if we were to build it in spanish river versus downtown across the city and also in addition i think we because we talk about this spanish river location as a as a central location but we should i would also like to get a population map um which which includes forecasts with approved development projects that have already been approved uh because we need to take that into account So that way we can see where the heat map is for our population locus. Thank you.

Very good. And I think we can wrap up the discussion on this by saying the following, that more data is good. And I'm a fan of that. I know Ms. Drucker is. She's reminded us many times. But the good news there is you don't have to wait for a meeting to have that data provided to you. You probably will get it, my hope is, before our next meeting, which is some time away. And you can make whatever points you want to, but we don't have to dedicate time in a meeting to simply providing data. Data can be made available to all of us and to the public

quite easily without a need for a meeting I think that'll conclude our discussion on the police services headquarters I have one I beg your pardon go ahead one question so going with downtown even if it was a hurricane hardened building it's still in an evacuation zone so it would still have to be evacuated am I correct

Mr. Beard, I got you. So it is in one of the designated evacuation zones. And with that, it would cause a challenge with the regulators to identify that it should remain occupied. I mean, obviously there's some certain discretion for the governing body as a city to make a decision.

I mean, considering adding a category six.

That's right. It is in the downtown location currently is in an evacuation zone. That is a that is factually factually accurate.

thank you okay that thus concludes our discussion on the police services complex that ends our presentations for the day we have uh remaining we have time for public requests so if anybody who has anything they'd like to say regarding the city as a whole now is your time just state your name and address and you will have three minutes miss blank beg your pardon i'll get this right one day dr blank

Lorraine Blank, 545 Northwest 7th Street. I've been sitting here for several hours listening to the fact that Boca Raton does not have a vision. You don't know where the police station should be. You don't know where the skate park should be. You don't know where a lot of things should be. You're making decisions in silo. You're going to send the community advisory panel, which I served on. It's not qualified to go out and do focus groups with people. It is not that kind of group. You don't have a plan. You're planning in silos. You're doing it over and over again. The Boca needs a vision before you do Memorial Park, before you do the police station, before you do the skate park. You need to step back. Ask people by people with, you need to have people who are qualified to ask and lead focus groups and ask people what they want for this city and then you need to plan based on what people want, not what you think, not what one person thinks, not what another people, not what an old policeman thought. You need to know what the residents want and then you need to plan from there.

Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Blank. Anyone else for public requests? Mr. Chaffee.

Harold Chaffee, 6200 Northwest 2nd Avenue. I think she's perfectly right. You need a plan. The same with the skate park, the same with the golf course, anything you want to do. It's like even the beach and parks, they're just sticking things any place they want. There's no conformity. They have a plan. They're not going by the plan. They're not going by what the people told them to do, the original plan. Okay, they're just it has to be control has to be something you want to do a plan The second thing is that basically like we talked about the Jeffrey Street be continued through That talked about safety you're building a four-lane highway through a park and you filled out an application uh to get uh second the 28 23 closed off and also put a new crossing over on jeffrey street okay that document in my interpretation right is fraudulent because you told the railroad there wasn't going to be anything there it was an abandoned golf course there's no facilities no no homes nobody in the area there's 4 000 people live there As far as the park, that was way before the park. You approve the park and then you put the form in debate. That's ridiculous. You can't do that. So you're leading the railroad in the wrong direction. You know, that's like frozen. If something happened, you could be sued, I think. I don't know. I don't have great insight on that. I'm just saying that it's wrong. You know, talk about safety. How can you build a four-lane highway through a park that you just built? $30 million. And the traffic and the kids are going to be walking back and forth. You close 28th Street, where most of the kids cross over and go to school. You know, you've got to really think about some of this stuff. It involves, and I'm thinking, think of the word. It just, it involves a lot of people. Like 28th Street, there's a lot of buildings there, a lot of commercial buildings that basically close that road. The other two is I can't find it, but there was a report done by the police department and fire department about closing 28th Street. Okay, that they didn't approve of it. They said there would basically cause, there would be more of a problem trying to get across, right? Because then you'd have to go to 28th Street or actually Spanish River. okay the second thing is if you close 28th street that means everybody's going to go to 20th street to get across what about fifth avenue it's the worst intersection you could have ever imagined in your life so you're going to travel you're going to send all the traffic down to 20th street to go down 20 you know in 50 avenue would be nuts you know i just like i said this the more you should really look into more of what what really every action you do there's a reaction i don't think you really looked at the reaction enough

all right thank you thank you mr chaffee anyone else for public requests mr runchin

jonathan unji and 6501 congress avenue so we talked about the skate park then we still need the skate park downtown we talked about the police station we need a police station downtown i i agree in fiscal responsibility the only argument i had about moving uh the city's uh city hall in essence over to 6551 was i thought we could have negotiated that building at a little bit lower of a cost but here we are because that's the fiscal responsibility side of me but it doesn't sound like there's much fiscal responsibility in this discussion that we had today because first off I think the police have discussed where they want to be where they think their best site is I think that's an important point that needs to go right up there with the cost is where they think operating would be best for this city. I own a building right across the street from here. When I'm giving tours to potential tenants, I've mentioned this before. I say, listen, there's a good deterrent. There's about 15 cop cars right across the street at any time. Typically people aren't gonna commit crime when there's a whole lot of police cars. So that's why I think it's important the 9,000 square feet. But I don't think a police headquarters makes sense on that site and hasn't as the city has spread about considerably since that went on that site. Lastly, I'll jump on the planning discussion. I think it would be critical and I'd love to hear after this comment when the city's strategic planning will be. I saw the train evasion ladies here months ago. Didn't sound like they were very happy. They didn't discuss anything. But I was like, when are we going to have that? And there was no comment. So I think it would be good to get back on track as to what this city's top priorities are. Because all I keep hearing about is this police station, about the downtown, about the government campus. We need to grow revenues. This part of the town is ripe for it. I agree partly with Dr. Blank about having a bigger vision and plan, but I don't think we need to wait to realize that this part of town's zoning isn't applicable to what the current demographic is, and that we have overdeveloped the downtown, but we have the capacity to develop here, to grow the tax base here, And we're not in the right manner. We're passing density. That's how every developer gets a development done is by passing density. And if you don't know what that is, look into that. Because we're just keeping archaic old buildings right next to nice, beautiful ones. And then those archaic buildings have no development rights going forward. so we need a plan we need a vision and i love to hear when the strategic planning sessions are going to be so we can get back on track as to what the city's priorities are thank you thank you mr rungin anyone else for public requests to your city council miss morrow my name is judy morrow 1305 northeast 5th avenue

um it's been a very good discussion today um with the vision what do you call it in 2028 the 4035 is going to expire so we need to really really focus on how we want the city of boca how many stories high we want it because delray has a nice four-story limit and they want to keep their village that's one point the other thing is i love our slogan live work and play in boca that is so good so i want to do a lot for recreation and give meaningful suggestions and also with the police station the spanish river location it has it needs infrastructure that's going to cost a lot more it's very so that's a lot of money it's a lot of extra money and if i go to most cities most cities downtown have a police station and if you Look up the reports. I've lived here almost 40 years. We have the most crime in downtown. We have people coming into homes when people are home, invasions, and stealing their cars. I mean, we have major... Out west, they have a lot of country clubs that have their own security, their own... guards that go around they don't even want to be part of the city when the last council asked them to join the city or something the other thing is i want to mention i'm so happy about the skate park because our family has used skate parks i'm so happy when my grandson would stop playing the video games and i'd take him to skate parks we've been to a lot of skate parks and it's nice to have a really big one Also, with the community center, it would be so nice to have one big room and once a week, because they've gotten rid of so many dance places, the dance floor. 17 years we went to Yamato and we used to dance two or three times a week. they closed after 17 years there's no place there's less and less places to go dancing and that would be so nice in our community center to have a a big room or even outdoors like they had at addison we used to dance at addison before it became private kind of um what do you call it so it would be nice to have that also at war memorial it might be nice to make a giant big circle of cement like we used to do as kids down in crandon park and just roller skate and roller blade around and have an outdoor skating thank you and you all do a lot of work and a lot of research so thank you very much thank you miss morrow anyone else for public requests

yes go ahead yeah it's mr schneider right

basically i'm just oh 5500 northwest second avenue uh basically on this report again the ocean breeze park master plan all right on the packet that i gave you on the district fi fir program priorities the gal the uh skate park and boys girls club was not listed on the city needs assessment program priorities skate park did a little better rated number 20 but the golf and the open space and the community center was higher the page seven the beach and park district priorities that were once again the skate park was not listed but the golf the open space and the community center was a higher rating on page eight city of boca program priorities the skate park and boys club was not listed again while the golf and the community center in the open space was higher public worship program priorities of the 19 categories the skate park and the boys club was not listed while the golf the community center and the open space was higher rated on the statistical valid survey program priorities of the 27 categories uh skate park did better number 26 while the boys club and girls club was not listed while the golf and the green space and the community center was a higher rating on page 12 the open link survey priorities of the 23 categories the skate park wasn't listed neither was the boys park the golf and the open spaces and the community center was a higher rating at the open link survey once again the they were higher rated while the skating boys park wasn't even listed on page 13 the pros ocean pre's program priorities of the 20 categories the uh the the gulf the open green space and the communicator had a higher rating while the boy the skate park and the boys and girls club was not listed it has to you know you got to do what the people want and it's the red the residential areas do not want a skate park they want it near a school that would be the best part of it and the boys and girls club once again where it's located with the traffic many of the people have said it's it's the part the the the the boys and girls club would be better off in spanish river park because it would be bigger area they can park there wouldn't be a problem same with the skate park it would be a bigger area and it wouldn't be incompatible for a residential area. That's the key to this thing. You gotta do what the people want. That's what your representative here. All the Boca presidents have voted, the things I gave you today in that packet, one, three, four, six, and nine were against it. Residential development's important. put it where it's supposed to be and what they want is a golf course open space in a community center that's what the people want in that sense for in a residential area thank you compromise would be Spanish River Park for the boys and girls club in the skate park we appreciate your comments thank you no problem I just wanted to get a better idea you know I had time now to explain this thing over here yes you have anyone else for public comment

we will close the time for public comment at today's meeting moving on to future agenda matters mr city manager i believe there was one item that you wanted to talk about here yes mr mayor thank you i'm requesting that agenda item 13a the introduction of ordinance 5790 be postponed to a future meeting to allow staff additional time to complete our review okay

That was ordinance number 5790. It was one of the ones for introduction tomorrow, right?

That's correct.

Okay. Any other questions regarding any of the items on the agenda tomorrow? Members of the council? No? Then we can move on to city manager report. Mr. Manager, what do you got? Thank you, Mr. Mayor. No report.

City attorney report, Mr. Fernandez.

No report. All right. Why don't we start on the other side this time? Any report from Deputy Mayor Brown?

No report.

Thank you. Ms. Drucker?

You know, just really quickly, I just want to thank staff for the 4th of July event. Mayor Thompson and I participated. You took all four, but I participated in a few throughout two of them that were really well attended. Thank you for the community for coming. Thank you for the first responders for keeping us safe. Lovely event. Just a really feel-good moment. for the city and then the other only little thing that i wanted to just put on everyone's radar um the governor vetoed the e the e-bike bill and i know we have a lot of conversations about e-bike and i get approached a lot about e-bikes and the safety of e-bikes and i see some things not only in the downtown but even in throughout the city i've seen like the packs of the of the kids within the e-bikes so the mpo everyone knows of the mpo chair for the county He's going to have an e-bike training and micromobility seminar on September 3rd. It's a webinar. You can participate and you can just understand that we're bringing some experts from throughout the country that have enacted e-bike ordinances because the goal of the NPO is to provide kind of a shell and then the cities can come back and at some point... create if there's something that they want to an ordinance or you know with an e-bike solution some communities are having golf cart issues that we don't having that issue so far but I think it'll be a good one to start getting us thinking of the future because they're not going anywhere and it would be a good way to help regulate some of it so what we're looking at the approach is the training the experts and then once we get that information then every city can kind of do what it's necessary to protect their cities i know that palm beach gardens just enacted their e-bike ordinance a couple of weeks ago and i'm awaiting to get a copy of that so just wanted to put that out there thanks thank you miss trucker mr perlman no report thank you miss sybil no report

I have no report apart from seconding what Councilmember Drucker said, the 4th of July events were fantastic. I did participate in all of them to varying degrees of success. For example, in the pickleball tournament, I got crushed each and every time. There's a very high level of skill in the pickleball community here in the city of Boca Raton. I'm happy to report. I learned it the hard way as it turns out. but I appreciate very much the work that it took by all of our staff first responders to help make all of that happen and to do so successfully so I am wanted to make sure that gets passed along as did councilmember Drucker and I appreciate that and I believe that concludes our business for today so unless there's anything else we can conclude our business at 4 38 p.m thank you

Thank you.