City Council - Regular Meeting

Thank you.

You hear us, Josh?

I hear you.

Can you see me?

You hear us? Okay, we're good? Okay. We're starting in a few minutes.

Thank you. Thank you.

Good evening, friends. I'd like to welcome you back to the Boca Raton City Council. This is our regular meeting on July 28th, 2026. The time is 6 p.m. First order of business for us is the invocation, and I'll ask Council Member Drucker to deliver it.

Good evening, everyone. We are gathered here today as we come together again to do the good work of the people. Those of us sitting up here are always challenged on how to attain positive outcomes that are for the greater good of our community and the city of Boca Raton, and that our purpose is driven by our common goals and the end. I want to continue to thank all of our frontline workers, our first responders, essential workers, and those serving our country in military duty and community leaders in all of our neighborhoods. Tonight, as we are posed with big decisions for this council, I hope that we can all lead with patience, that we can all lead with compassion, caring, and loving and giving hearts. This is the only way that together we're able to improve this community and help move this community forward in a unified way. As I always say, the best is yet to come. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Drucker. And could everybody please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance. 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. Thank you. Mr. Deputy Clerk Daley, could you please do the roll call?

Mayor Thompson, I'm here that the mayor grow here Councilmember trucker here Councilmember perlman here Councilmember simple president all present very good.

And then as to the agenda you had mentioned yesterday, Mister city manager that we were removing one item from introduction. It was there it did any Council any other Council members have any other amendments to the agenda beyond that Mister Thompson, yes, was from a chair.

I would like to make a motion to resolve unfinished business from yesterday, specifically the unfinished business of the skate park and the police station before moving to new business. We continue bringing things up and not reaching consensus. We continue to not have an actual discussion. We are told what the staff has found and presented, and it is declared with no discussion that consensus has been reached. The absence of conversation does not equal consensus and we continue to make decisions and build policy in that way. Save Boca put these council members up here to give residents a voice and instead they just sit here in silence. rubber stamping whatever the unelected staff is suggesting with no discussion and no thoughtful approach whatsoever. Nobody is speaking and nobody can be bothered to have these conversations. They didn't send us here to rubber stamp. Let me start with the unfinished business of the skate park. I want to be clear, there should be one skate park and it should be in a centralized location in Memorial Park where it's always been. We started a discussion yesterday and consensus wasn't reached because everybody didn't weigh in.

i'm gonna let me pause you there uh what if you want to make a motion to amend the agenda why don't you do that say what you want to amend to add be succinct about it and we'll see if there's a second and if there's not we can continue yeah i'd like to make a motion to resolve unfinished business from yesterday is that's not a motion to amend what way do you want to amend the agenda

I would like to amend the agenda to resolve the unfinished business from yesterday. Is there a second? Specifically the unfinished business of the skate park and the unfinished business of the police station. Is there a second?

No way. I believe your motion fails for lack of a second, Mr. Perlman. Okay.

So with that- Yeah. Excuse me. With that, are there any other amendments to the agenda?

no so we can please vote to amend the agenda in accordance with the city manager's suggestion yesterday all those in favor please say aye aye aye all opposed very good opposed noted we can move on to the minutes we have three sets of minutes from the workshop meeting on june 9th the regular meeting on june 9th and the special meeting on june 18th uh do we have any corrections or revisions to those minutes Hearing none, I'll accept a motion in a second to approve the minutes as presented. So moved. That's a motion, good.

Second.

Second, very good. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Very good. Proclamations and presentations, we have none. We can move on then to board appointments. The first one we have is the Affordable Housing Advisory Committee. Is there anyone here who has submitted an application and wishes to interview for that board? I don't believe there are. I don't believe we have any applicants. No, we don't. So we can skip that one. Next one up is the Citizens Pedestrian and Bikeway Advisory Board. We have two applicants I see here. Is anyone here who submitted an application wishing to interview? All right, step on up.

good evening mayor and council city manager and staff thank you for letting me go ahead and speak to you tonight about the citizens pedestrian bikeway advisory board my name is fran knackless i reside at 2427 northwest 49th lane in boca raton one of the things i'm most proud of is that i didn't just vote on bike and pedestrian initiatives when i sat up there on the dais i got out there with staff and residents and rode the routes and walked everywhere myself as someone who rides and runs and walks throughout boca and enjoys exploring cities around the world i know firsthand that you notice things that you simply can't see when you're behind the wheel of a car that perspective helps shape projects like the boca bike rodeo the traffic garden, and our first micromobility safety symposium, and improvements such as the lighted crosswalks on Palmetto Park Road. Small improvements like these can have a big impact. I believe the best decisions come from listening, collaborating, and experiencing our transportation network firsthand. I'd love the opportunity to continue bringing that practical, collaborative perspective to the Citizens Pedestrian and Bikeway Advisory Board. And some of the ideas that I have for the strategic bike network that we have here in the city is one of the biggest things that I'd like to do that we've talked about in strategic planning is safe routes to school. Getting kids to school safely I think should be a top priority. And connecting the trails. We have a great foundation here in the city of Boca, but connectivity and connecting the trails is something that we could really work on. And I know that we have a talented staff, a very educated staff. They just need your support and they're willing to do it. safer crossings and intersection improvements connecting neighborhoods to schools park downtown bright line libraries and shopping expanding protected bike lanes where appropriate involves working with the county and state of course we make our own signs here in the city doing better signage and wayfinding bike parking repair stations and water stops and continuing education through bike rodeos the traffic garden e-bike safety that you all talked about yesterday and the micro mobility safety symposium So again, I want to thank you for the opportunity to for you to consider my appointment to this board. And if you have any questions, I'm happy to answer them.

Thank you. Any questions? All right. Thank you.

Thank you.

We have one other applicant, Ed Lynch. See here. Wishing to interview. No. Last call, Mr. Lynch. Okay, colleagues, we have two vacancies available on the Citizens Pedestrian and Bikeway Advisory Board. We have two applicants, one of whom has interviewed. What is your pleasure? I will go ahead and move that we appoint Fran Nockless, who just interviewed, to at least one of these vacancies. And maybe we leave open the other one until Mr. Lynch is able to come and interview. Does that work? all right all those in favor please say aye aye aye any opposed opposed i moved to appoint edward lynch okay so i guess in that case let's uh let's back it up then yeah so we have two nominations i'll convert both of those to mine including yours then to nominations well you want to point both i guess that's fair you want to do that uh sure i mean we have two vacancies in the in the past so we've had two vacancies

We've appointed, usually we wait till everybody interviews. I don't know, I'll turn over to the clerk, Ms. Siddons. Has Mr. Lynch said, sometimes they say they can't come, they're out of town, etc, etc. Is there anything? You don't have a voice, okay.

I think I know what she's going to say though. That's true, that is traditionally what we do.

But I have no problem, if we have two vacancies, then filling both vacancies, if you're okay with that.

I am perfectly happy to do that. So let me amend my motion to say that we will move to appoint both Ms. Knuckles and Mr. Lynch.

And I will second that.

Very good. So let's go around the horn one more time. All those in favor of that, appointing both, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Very good. Onward and upward. Next board, and by the way, everybody in the audience, please bear with us. We have a bunch of board appointments tonight. We're going to get through them as quickly as we can. This one we'll get through very fast, the Community Appearance Board. We have no applicants. We have three vacancies on our Financial Advisory Board, and we have two incumbents who have applied are either Ms. Ferreira or Mr. Crudeau here.

Yeah, please step on up.

Good evening, Mayor and City Council members. My name is Michelle Ferrara, and I am a tax managing director at BDO here in Boca Raton, and I have served on the Financial Advisory Board for over the past 80 years, and I have found this to be... something that i can kind of incorporate my professional experience and bring insightful comments as we work through a lot of the issues over the past eight years with the financial advisory board i've now moved east in boca and so being more midtown i see different issues of being more east versus more midtown and looking at the development growth and things that are happening in east boca So I have submitted my application to be considered for another term on the Financial Advisory Board, and I would appreciate your consideration. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Ferreira.

Any questions for Ms. Ferreira?

No? Thank you. No, you're all set. And Mr. Crudeau, are you here? Well, this seems like similar territory, I'd say, and both of these are incumbents. So Ms. Drucker, what's your pleasure?

I'll make a motion to reappoint I think it's well Michelle Ferreira and then Ron Crudeau and then there's still one vacancy for the next time I will second that any further discussion all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed very good congratulations on your reappointment

Next up, we have the library board. We have two vacancies and three applicants. We had one interview yesterday. We do have two additional applicants. Mr. Andreas and Miss Feinberg are either around to interview. I suppose not. Our sheet here says that they are unable to at this time. This one is the opposite of the situation we were just in. So, Council, what is your pleasure on this?

I would like to reappoint Jacob Andreas and Nancy Jo Feinberg. Ms. Feinberg has been on that board for quite some time. I don't believe, so that's my nomination. Those are my reappointments.

very good i agree with you and i second the motion do we have any other nominations i would like to nominate ronald lusk okay so we can convert that nomination miss drucker's nomination appointment rather to a nomination for the two all three have now been nominated what we're going to do is go around the horn and everybody vote for two okay so uh mr daly if you please thompson andreas and feinberg drucker

Andreas and Feinberg.

Grau.

Andreas Feinberg.

Perlman. Feinberg, Lusk. Sippel.

Feinberg, Lusk.

in the voting andreas received three votes feinberg received five lusk received two therefore feinberg and andreas are reappointed to the library board okay thank you that concludes our business with regard to the library board we can move to the marine advisory board also a short list no applicants if anybody's interested we have a vacancy there

That takes us to the Parks and Recreation Board. We have four vacancies and one, two, three, four, five, six, seven applicants. I believe we heard from nearly all of them yesterday. I don't believe we heard from Mr. Bisnoff. And if he's here, step up to the podium, sir. Name and address, you have three minutes.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, council members. My name is Ken Bisnoff. I live in downtown Meisner in Meisner Apartments. I've been here almost three years now looking to serve the community, looking to continue to grow and expand and meet people in the community. I leverage the parks within our city, and I spent 35 years in corporate America, telecommunications, executive sales, customer success, human resources. solving problems, working with people, collaborating and making things better and expanding and improving. And I'm looking to bring my resources here to this community. I've never volunteered in a community environment. I've always been very focused in my workspace. My wife has in the past. And I'd like to be a part of the Parks and Rec department. So thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bisnoff. Any questions for the applicant? Seeing none, thank you, sir. Thank you. The Parks and Recreation Board seems to be a coveted position because we have seven applications for four spots. So members, what is your pleasure as it relates to the four vacancies we have on the Parks and Recreation Board? Don't everybody jump at once? Ms. Sippel.

I would like to make a motion to reappoint Ryan Luring, Joel Rask, and to bring on Brianna Hagquist and Judith Morrow. I'll second.

Okay, I hear a second. Are there any other nominations?

I would like to nominate Keith Nelson.

Does that conclude your? Yes. Sorry.

Sorry. I'm trying to like, was there so many? I understand.

Well, in the interest of having everybody in the ring, I'm going to add. Put everybody? I'm going to throw everybody. So we're going to, I'm going to also nominate Jim Sumislasky and Mr. Bisnoff, who just interviewed. So that is seven applicants. We have four vacancies. I think we can vote with everyone to insert four names into your voting list. Mr. Daly. Thompson. Loring, Nelson, Rask, Sumaslasky. Brown.

Nelson, Rask, Hagquist, Moro.

Drucker.

Nelson, Rask, Sumalski, and Hagquist.

Perlman. Nelson, Rask, Hagquist, Moro. And simple.

Luring, Rask, Hagquist, and Morrow.

I don't want to check your math, Mr. Daly, but I believe that means that Mr. Nelson, Mr. Rask, Ms. Hagquist, and Ms. Morrow were appointed. That is correct. OK. Congratulations on your appointments, everybody. And for those who applied and didn't make it, this happens sometimes. These are scarce resources, as it turns out. Please do reapply. We appreciate your desire to serve. We want to see you come back. And I bet you by the next time you come back here, we'll find a board that fits your interests. So thank you again for coming out and for applying. So that brings us to our last board appointment of the day. Thank you, everyone, for your patience. This one's the Sustainability Advisory Board. We have one applicant, two vacancies. Is Ms. McKee in the house? She's not in the house. Ms. Drucker.

Mayor Thompson, I would like to reappoint Tamara McKee.

I would second that. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? No. All right. That concludes our board appointments for the evening. We can move on now to the consent agenda. Does any council member wish to remove any item from the consent agenda? Seeing none, now is the time for the public, if they so wish, to comment on any item on the consent agenda. So we have on our agenda, you'll see there's a whole host of items that are listed under consent. If there's any of those items you wish to speak on, now is the time. So if anybody is so interested, please step to the podium, give your name and address, and you'll have up to three minutes. Last call for public comment on the consent agenda. Seeing none. I will accept a motion in a second to approve the consent agenda so moved Second second very good any further discussion. No, it's a consent agenda.

Mr. Daly, please Yes Yes, yes Yes Yes Yes

Very good. It passes 5-0 for those of you listening at home. That takes us to resolutions and other business, item 9. Mr. Deputy Clerk, could you please read the title of resolution number 86-2026?

86, 2026, a resolution of the City of Boca Raton, Florida, ranking the firms submitting statements of qualifications in response to request for qualifications number 202635IG, Downtown Civic Area Memorial Park Master Plan. directing the city manager to commence negotiations with the highest ranked firm for a professional services agreement, authorizing sequential negotiations with the second and third ranked firms if the city is unable to negotiate a satisfactory agreement with a higher ranked firm, requiring that any negotiated agreement be presented to the city council for consideration and approval, providing for severability, providing for appeal, or providing an effective date.

Thank you, Mr. Daly. Mr. Manager, who will be making the presentation on this matter?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Our Deputy City Manager, Mr. Lukasik.

Thank you, Mr. Sohaney. Good afternoon. Excuse me. Good evening. That's a poor way to start. Good evening, Mayor and Council. Andy Lukasik, your Deputy City Manager. I'm going to give you a brief overview of what your task is this evening. You have a couple of interested consulting firms that have responded to an RFQ that this council directed staff to pursue as part of a competitive selection process. And that firm will actually go on to conduct a robust public engagement process as well as develop a master plan for Memorial Park and the surrounding civic area. So the purpose and where we are in that selection process, so you can see that by that chart towards the end of that slide, we're getting towards the end of our selection process. We're here with you today because part of this process involves a selection on your part. So you're here today to help us identify in a ranked order your preferred firm that you would like to have work on this project based upon their qualifications and their demonstrated ability to lead the project. So you're going to be taking a high level look at these three qualified firms based upon their ability to help meet your goals and objectives related to this particular project. As we've been going through this process, you're going to be hearing from three firms and asking questions of three firms today, but we've had an internal staff-driven evaluation committee that has gone through their own evaluation process. They've actually reduced the number of firms down from four to three, making tonight a little bit easier for you. Their selection process was really based on some defined criteria, largely based on the firm's technical abilities and their past projects. So they were able to give you a well-qualified pool of firms to hear from tonight and ask questions of. So tonight, what you'll be working on today is hearing presentations from each of the firms, asking each of those firms questions, understanding a little bit better and clarifying their background, receiving some public comments, and I'll talk about that a little bit more as we're going along here. Have some discussion amongst yourselves about the final teams, you know, comparing what your observations were. And then identify that order of preference. So you'll be ranking these firms from one to three. And that'll actually set the stage for staff as we negotiate a contract with the highest rated firm. So today, in terms of logistics, all three firms are here. They're sitting in separate rooms, not listening to each other's presentations. And one by one, in an alphabetical order of firms, they'll come and make presentations to the council. Now they'll have up to 30 minutes to present their qualifications to you. When each firm is done, you'll have, in turn, as a body, another 30 minutes to be able to ask questions of the firm. So after those Your 30 minutes are up or up to 30 minutes are up. Don't feel like you have to use all of it. We'll move on to the next firm, so on and so forth. So you'll have those three firms that you'll get interview, you'll hear presentations from, and you'll have an opportunity to ask questions of. Once that process is done, the firms will all come back into the chambers or be able to listen to discussions. And you'll have an opportunity for public input or receive public input. So this is going to be valuable because there might be some observations from the members of the public that are here listening, questions that they might have that you hadn't thought about that you might want to ask the firms when you start your deliberation process. Now, mind you, if you get that public input, still think about the fact that you're basing your ultimate decision on the qualifications of those firms. So it can't be, yeah, I just don't like that particular firm. It has to be some quality-based decision that you're making. So then the public deliberation piece, as I mentioned, you can take those comments that you receive from the public, help that inform any questions that you might have, any additional questions you might have of the firm. And then you all have that opportunity to discuss amongst yourself which firm that you want to select and in what order you want to rank those firms. So, again, what happens next, today you're identifying those firms in order of preference and you'll adopt a resolution that will authorize city staff to begin negotiating with the high strength firm. We'll begin those contract negotiations right away because we have a pretty short timeline that we're trying to hit in terms of getting the project up and running. If we're unable to successfully negotiate a contract with your highest ranked firm, we'll move on to the next firm. And if we're unable to successfully negotiate a contract with that firm, we'll move on to the third ranked firm. Hopefully we don't get there because we're on a tight timeline. Then we'll bring a contract back to you for your consideration. So hopefully we'll get to that space where we have a successful negotiation with your highest ranked firm and we bring that back to you in August. You've seen this timeline before. This is a timeline of our request for our qualification based selection process. We're right now at step five on July 28th. This is the interview and ranking process by the city council. We'll then quickly move into the contract negotiations with the highest ranked firms. We'll get that agenda out for the August 25th meeting. So, all goes well. We plan to have a contract back in front of you on August 25th. Now, in terms of the implementation of the project, just touching on it briefly, We've been planning on and all of the firms recognize that we've been looking at a six-month process to go through that public engagement and design process. And as we've talked about in the past, you know, this is really a listen first, design second type process. So if you, I won't go through this in detail, but if you look at this timeline, you go on our project website, you'll see, the public will see this posted, if not today, tomorrow. There is this iterative process where we're gaining information from the public, going back and doing designs and conferring with the public, making sure that we understand, hey, is this what you told us, and back and forth until we get through the end of the process and we have a master plan available. If you don't have any questions, Mayor, I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to you.

Very good. Do we have any questions, members? No? Well, I'm going to turn it right back over to you, Mr. Lukasik.

Okay, let's see. So we're the first firm. And again, as I mentioned before, we didn't select the firms come up in any particular order other than alphabetical. So there was no coin flip or anything like that. This is all alphabetical based. So Brooks Scarpa is the first firm to present to you this evening.

Just make sure I have the clicker here. It is working, okay. Sorry, can we pull it back? Thanks. Well, good evening, Mayor Thomas, or Thompson, and council members, staff, and members of the community. Thank you for the opportunity to be here. The downtown civic area is more than a collection of city-owned properties. It is Boca Raton's civic heart, where government, recreation, history, public memory, and everyday community will come together. So our premise today is simple. The right plan will not be an imposed upon Boca Raton plan. It will be built with Boca Raton, the city council, staff and all stakeholders. We call this approach orchestrated creativity, many voices, one transparent process and a plan capable of moving from public values to implementation. We're gonna cover four things today. The opportunity, the team, evidence that we can deliver, and our six month process. So first, the opportunity. We believe this is central planning challenge that Boca Raton must determine how City Hall, Memorial Park, recreation, the community center, singing pines, public spaces, the downtown connections, how all these can operate as one civic place rather than a collection of separate properties. So Memorial Park is a public land, an active recreational landscape and a place of remembrance, The City Hall is a public institution and the front door to the city. Singing Pines carries important parts of Boca Raton's early history and together these assets also need to connect safely and comfortably to the surrounding neighborhoods, downtown, and Meisner Park. So to do this within a cohesive plan that can accommodate a wide array of uses and activities that can become the civic fabric that can create a unified district for Boca Raton. The assignment is not to decide what goes where before the community is heard. It is to establish a trusted process through which these elements can be evaluated together. We expect City Hall and Memorial Park to be central to that and that these conversations and our process will give all components the explicit public and council decision points throughout the six-month process. This is why we're beginning as listeners, collaborators, and consensus builders. We will not arrive at the first public meeting with a finished rendering and ask the community to react to it. We will begin by establishing common facts, listening to shared values, and distinguishing underlying concerns from fixed positions. That is how a community moves from competing ideas toward choices it understands even when everyone may not be beginning in the same place. Each community is different and Boca Raton deserves a process created specifically for Boca Raton. So our team's previous work demonstrates this approach where we have brought together residents, stakeholders, city departments designers, engineers, resilience specialists, and then had translated those discussions into clear standards and implementable priorities. The lesson is that engagement cannot be imported as a template. The questions, tools, locations, and language must respond to the community being served. So orchestrated creativity only matters when it leads to implementation. The work shown here includes civic buildings, public parks, historic settings, memorial landscapes, civic hall plazas, and major public realm projects. Across them, the consistent task has been to bring many interested voices together, many choices to be made understandable, and collecting oral histories and convert a public vision into a place people can love and cherish. So that brings us to the team that will lead this process. Who are we? I'm Jeffrey Huber of Brooks Scarpa Huber. We are a design and planning practice out of Fort Lauderdale, and I will serve as the principal in charge. as the project architect, urban designer, landscape architect, and primary council interface. With the team support, we will be accountable for the schedule, team coordination, and delivery throughout this six-month process. Phillip?

Good evening, I'm Philip Dugdale with Sasaki. We are a national design and planning firm best known for shaping large-scale civic districts and beloved public parks, places where architecture, landscape, ecology, and community engagement come together as one destination. Working alongside Brooks Scarpa Huber, we are here to strengthen the landscape, public realm, and master planning expertise. I'll be focused on how civic life, recreation, and landscape come together in one living, workable plan.

Brad Davis with Kimley Horn. And our focus is on carrying many of the projects and conversations that we've had with you all in the community forward, both in terms of engineering, but also mobility, planning, and public engagement as well.

Hello, I'm Alexandra Whitehouse with KMF Architects. Our firm has extensive preservation experience across Florida and have worked with Brooke Scarpa Huber in numerous projects. I will lead the historic preservation coordination, including the documentation and evaluation of Singing Pines, the Civic Campus, and the historic layers of Memorial Park and City Hall.

So Irvin's Augustine of Urban Impact Lab. He's gonna be our community outreach, economic development and creative placemaking lead, but he could not be here with us tonight just due to an emergency. But he is local. He will be fully committed to this project and will co-lead the outreach efforts throughout the six month process. So the people speaking with you here today are the senior leaders of our firms and will remain directly engaged in this work. The overall team is organized around the city's priorities rather than around the separate professional disciplines. That's why you may see that there is some overlap. But Brooke Scarpa Huber will serve as the prime consultant and maintain schedule and one coordinated work plan. Sasaki, as you heard, will lead public realm, landscape, and master planning. Kim Lee Horn brings current Boca Raton mobility and infrastructure knowledge. KMF will lead the historic preservation and urban impact lab will lead outreach and implementation strategy. And finally Dewberry will also support the team through security and septet or crime prevention through environmental design considerations. Brad.

So as I mentioned, part of our focus is on bringing past conversations and community planning efforts through to this project. So that means bringing the east-west connectivity study that we're currently working on with the CRA, how to bridge the railroad tracks between Meisner Park and Memorial Park. continuing to bring in safety and vision zero components of mobility projects for the the city second avenue and palmetto are both on the city's high injury network and so focused on those but really more importantly you know past conversations about how do we connect fau and the el rio trail to downtown or just connecting across the tracks

we'll continue to have those conversations and work through those with you and the community yeah so our south florida experience um you know it adds civic infrastructure architecture historic reuse and resources coastal resilience public parks municipal implementation as well as we understand environmental regulatory and operational conditions that shape public projects here in south florida

And KMF brings the Florida preservation experience to the team through local historic review boards, public hearings, and regulatory processes. We also understand preservation begins with listening. The community dedicates the importance behind those structures. And in a community like Boca Raton, collecting oral histories is essential to understanding the people, events, and civic memories to align with the project's goals.

And Sasaki contributes national experience, leading major civic districts, downtown parks, memorials, public engagement and master plans built to be implemented, not just placed on a shelf to gather dust. Together, this is local knowledge, Florida experience and national expertise operating as one team. But this project cannot be completed through sequential handoffs. Landscape planning and public space design need to be considered alongside mobility, preservation, engineering, and implementation from day one, not layered as an afterthought. When residents are weighing in on a city hall option, we'll be looking at how it affects open space, accessibility, cost, and long-term operations. That integrated process allows the city to make informed decisions rather than discover conflicts after a direction has already been selected.

so this is the team that can deliver the work we are leaders in resilience adaptation urban design and planning i am the author of salty urbanism a design and planning framework for sea level rise adaptation our firm has also developed and helped codify in the city of fort lauderdale their design and construction manual for a resilient and sustainable community and cohesive public realm that was their title not ours the effort brought together city departments neighborhoods community organizations and the public integrating together as one and looking at also transportation landscape architecture urban design and implementation standards the result was more than a vision document it gave the city practical tool to guide streets parks infrastructure and future public and private investment That same progression from shared values to a clear guidance and coordinated effort and action is essential to Boca Raton's downtown master plan. At Hollywood Art and Culture Center, we transformed a municipal cultural institution by connecting a nearly century-old historic building with contemporary arts education addition. That design preserved the original structure's civic presence while opening the campus to a street through new public spaces, visible programming, improved accessibility, landscape, and resilient infrastructure.

KMF worked alongside Brooks Scarpa Huber on this project, helping the team understand how the historic structure you see on the left and the new structure on the right took its community role, and its future use could reinforce one another. For us, preservation extends beyond retaining a building. It means identifying the stories, uses, and the memories that give it its place meaning, then carrying those layers forward through design. The same working relationship continued at DC Alexander Park, if you're seeing on the screen now. At DC Alexander Park, KMF and Brooke Scarpa Huber again worked together to connect the future of the site with its history. Before becoming a parking area, the site was associated with Fort Lauderdale's historic casino pool and forms part of the broader cultural landscape of the Tequesta people. Through the research and interpretive signage, those histories become part of the park experience rather than remaining invisible. This prior collaboration is important. Our team already understands how to work together, coordinate historic research and integrate it into the design and translate complex site history into a clear public story.

So the city asked to transform this former parking lot into a civic park on a highly vulnerable coastal site. And the project combines public gathering, play, native ecology, universal and multi-generational access, flood adaptation, and a strong visual identity, as well as preserving every tree that was on that site originally. We are currently working on another coastal park here in Highland Beach, not too far from Boca with a similar histories ecologies. And that's becoming part of the story of that place as well. These projects demonstrate, you know, the public space and how we perform several roles, or they can perform several roles at once. And it can protect infrastructure, support recreation, interpret communities' histories, as well as express civic identity, and become a place for people to value. And that integrated thinking is the fact that our team has already been delivering it together. And we are, we will be, or that will be important for Boca Raton as it considers the future of Memorial Park and the downtown civic area.

Bonnet Springs Park demonstrates what it takes to take a plan and deliver a major public destination at scale. Landscape ecology, circulation, and day-to-day operations were designed together as one system, not stitched together as an afterthought. Boca Raton doesn't need to become Bonnet Springs, but the lessons carries over directly. A plan only succeeds when the design, the operating model, and the everyday visitor experience reinforce one another. Lozner Park in Homestead is especially relevant. It ties together historic city hall, a new police station, the surrounding streetscapes, and active downtown through one cohesive civic landscape. Its redesigned Veterans Memorial brought previously embedded names up to eye level, giving remembrance more visibility and dignity while keeping the park active and welcoming. It's a good example of how civic identity, downtown connections, and everyday public life can thrive in the same space. At Mallory Square, the public realm carries real and sometimes competing demands from residents, businesses and public agencies. Our plan relied on open and heavy engagement and visible design testing to shape the project alongside the community. We didn't sidestep disagreement. We gave people a clear way to see the choices in front of them and understand exactly how their input shaped the outcome. Finally, at the Sarasota Bayfront is one of the strongest examples of a community-led plan that moved into implementation. This 53-acre plan reached more than 39,000 community members through public meetings, online town halls, surveys, and focused conversations, and that input directly shaped the final plan. The first phase of this park opened in 2022 and implementation continues today, which speaks directly to our ability to carry community confidence all the way through from planning through construction.

So collectively, our team has completed more than 100 master plans for communities, civic campuses, downtowns, parks, and cultural districts. Across these projects, our firms have also served as prime consultants and led coordinated multidisciplinary teams. that involved planning, architecture, landscape architecture, civil engineering, engagement, and implementation. And the value is not simply the number of plans, but it is the repeatable discipline to listen, to frame the problem, to develop clear alternatives, to test feasibility, to build alignments, and to establish the next actions. So our experience informs the six month process we will implement and Boca Raton has already laid out and established a great framework to build upon. Every month has a purpose, a public outcome and a decision. So month one is launch and alignment, and we will begin with city staff coordination, individual council interviews, stakeholder mapping and detailed engagement plans, as well as a project website. Month two is community listening. This is where we will meet with residents, veterans, recreation users, youth and families, community elders, businesses, nonprofit organizations, preservation advocates, and other stakeholders. Surveys, collection of oral histories, and interactive mapping will allow stakeholders who cannot attend a meeting to participate or cannot participate at a meeting, we will still be able to engage them. And we will also look at engaging the Boca Raton Historical Society as well as other stakeholder and community groups. In month three, this is validation and issue framing. We'll publish a clear what we heard. Report and ask the community to confirm whether we understood it correctly. When then, or we can then establish the questions, the evaluation criteria for City Hall, Memorial Park and the Community Center, as well as Singing Pines and Civic Area Connections. In month four, it's the public design charrette. The studio will be open and visible and alternatives for City Hall, as well as public space, recreation and connectivity will be developed and tested in real time. We will recommend a mid charrette as well as an end of charrette council briefing so that policy direction is confirmed before refinement. Month five is refinement and testing. strongest alternatives and evaluate will be evaluated through open houses surveys targeted discussions costs as well as phasing and operational analysis and then at month six it will be the final validation and recommendation and the city can receive the preferred plan and and other viable options that were considered, implementation priorities, as well as preliminary costs, phasing pending policy decisions, and a complete record of how that public input shaped the recommendation that we were putting forward. The monthly council touch points and visible decision log will keep the project moving without brushing the community or allowing unresolved issues to accumulate. So our team connects public engagement directly to implementation, and we use a clarifying set of priorities. We test feasibility. We build partnerships and create a path to delivery and implementation. And so Urban Impact's lab would be able to demonstrate this approach through multiple projects that they have. at North Miami's Stormwater Neighborhood Park. They looked at fixed engineering requirements that became a clear community choice and adapting it around recreation, safety, identity, and daily use. That helped residents shape the infrastructure into an actual neighborhood park. Through Public Space Challenge, more than 90 projects were funded, over 200 finalists received support, and over $2 million in grant funding was also found. On Flagler Street, temporary arts programming drew more than 10,000 attendees and supported local businesses and tested future uses during major construction. So for Boca Raton, this means making constraints understandable. separating quick wins from long-term investments, and sustaining engagement through implementation.

But before we even begin sketching a single alternative, we really need to establish an agreed baseline. This involves mapping the site's physical and historic fabric together with its ecological systems and infrastructure, understanding patterns of movement and how it links to surrounding neighborhoods and downtown. Starting from the same set of facts really helps keep conversations later focused and allows us to understand trade-offs rather than competing versions of reality. every alternative will be illustrated at a comparable level of detail and judged against the same criteria that's open space recreation the memorial city hall operations accessibility cost and phasing that consistency lets residents and council see clearly what each option delivers and what it takes to get there and what it gives up will keep a visible thread running throughout the design process. A shared value becomes an evaluation criteria. That criteria shapes a design alternative. The alternative gets tested for feasibility, and the direction that survives becomes a project. That matters because people should be able to see exactly how their input that is set in month one shows up in what is recommended in month six. A master plan succeeds when it helps the city steward change over time, and our final plan will separate near-term actions from intermediate investments and major capital projects. every recommend every recommendation will carry a clear purpose a cost range a responsible party and a credible funding or partnership path lozner park shows this discipline in practice a clear civic framework that let public space the memorial and downtown and surrounding investment to reinforce one another over time so this is your civic site but more importantly it's boca overtones opportunity

We are not presenting a design today. We are identifying the set of issues, the process that must answer that decision making, and how we can orchestrate this in showing you these previous projects. So how should Memorial Park continue to serve as public land, an interactive recreational resource, and a place that honors service and sacrifice? another question what should city hall feel like to a resident arriving for assistance attending a public meeting or participating in civic life should it be retained renovated expanded replaced or considered through a combination of approaches Another question, how should singing pines and the broader history of the civic campus be preserved and made more visible? How can people walk and bicycle safely between the civic area surrounding neighborhoods, downtown businesses, Meisner Park, and transit? We will test these questions without presuming that growth, development, preservation, or no change is automatically the correct answer. That correction or that correct direction should emerge from public values, documented facts, and transparent trade-offs.

We also understand that not every good idea needs to weigh on a major capital project. We will use a catalytic project matrix to weigh smaller near-term actions against public benefit. This lets us identify moves that start building momentum and public trust early, while the bigger decisions around City Hall, the Community Center, and Memorial Park continue working through design, funding, and approvals. These temporary interventions can also help test ideas before the city commits to anything permanent. Tactical urbanism isn't a substitute for permanent design. It's a real disciplined way to gather evidence and build public confidence before the city breaks ground. Our engagement process blends a high-tech and high-touch process. Some residents will come to an evening workshop, others will join online, and others will catch us at a pop-up in Memorial Park. We blend live and asynchronous formats, digital and no-tech options, scheduled sessions, and informal drop-offs. The point isn't to use every single tool available. It's to make sure that participation never depends on someone's schedule, mobility, or familiarity with municipal planning. and every engagement activity ties back to a specific decision. Our engagement plan spells out who we need to hear from, what we're asking, when and how the response gets documented. We'll track who's participating, flag voices that may be missing, publish a what we heard report and follow it up with what's changed because of your input. Public input should leave a visible trail. Residents should be able to see where their ideas went and council should be able to see the evidence behind every recommendation that we make.

So success here requires equal care for Boca Raton's future and for the civic history and the city that has inherited it. That includes Memorial Park's connection to the former Army Air Corps base, the evolution of City Hall and the civic campus itself, as well as Singing Pines building. So Lex will explain how we will approach that work.

As mentioned, our preservation work begins with documenting and identifying what the community holds significant before our recommendations are made. We will document the post-war evolution of the City Hall and the Civic Campus, Memorial Park's military history and the 1947 dedication and singing pines and how the community has adapted it in the past and how it might serve the future. We will then evaluate options such as retention, rehabilitation, adaption, and how we can best integrate historic integrity, continued use, accessibility, resilience, cost, and community values. Preservation should not be treated as a decorative layer added after planning decisions are made. It's a method for carrying civic memory forward while allowing public places to remain extremely useful that's how we keep our historic buildings alive that approach ensures history helps shape the plan rather than merely being reinforced or referenced within it

In closing, why this team? First, we bring Boca Raton knowledge, Florida experience and national expertise through one integrated, locally led process. Second, we understand that the community engagement can bring conflicting ideas together when it is transparent, when it is inclusive. and tied to real decisions third we bring the technical rigor required to address city hall memorial park recreation historic resources mobility infrastructure costs and phasing and it is all and within one coordinated effort and fourth we lead with design but we do not arrive to a predetermined design. So at the end of six months, Boca Raton should have more than an attractive concept. The city should have a documented community mandate, a clear understanding of the choices considered, in a preferred direction realistic implementation steps and a greater public confidence in how that decision was reached we would be honored to help boca raton reconnect to its civic heart thank you and we welcome your questions thank you brooks scarpa huber team colleagues who wants to go first with questions

And I'll remind you, I think we've allocated 30 minutes for questions for each group. We may not use all of it. I hope you all understand. Does anyone have any questions for this group?

Sure, I can start.

Ms. Sippel, go ahead.

So what do you see as Memorial Park's largest opportunity and largest limitation for that site?

It's its largest opportunity, I think, is some of the existing mature trees that you have on that site, as well as the fact that it's a cohesive and a large site within the kind of civic context, which is incredible to have as an asset. I think some of the liabilities that we may see around it and I know Brad may be able to talk to some of that as we were talking. I mean, some of the liabilities is obviously some of the traffic, how safety, some other considerations that may need to be

looked at and and addressed but brad i don't know if you want to add something yeah we definitely want to be thoughtful about how the city grows around the park and one of those components is being thoughtful and considerate about the transportation you know on the kind of north and west side you have a neighborhood context and on the south and east side you have an urban context particularly along um Palmetto as well and so we want to be thinking about not only what happens at the site which we've talked about but also how the park can be better connected to the adjacent community as well so how would you have more good

So what would your ideas be for preserving the banyan trees there while still being able to utilize that area and adding more shade throughout the park?

Yeah, I mean, one of the careful things is we would have to look at how do we successional estate like landscape opportunities there. And, you know, one of the biggest things we look at as resilience is how do we start to plan for the next stages? So those banyan trees obviously are of an age. I mean, we would have to assess them. We'd have to get an arborist in there. And I'm sure you probably have a report that we just haven't been privy to yet. But we want to, again, look at that succession. So we would look at the next evolution or the next um trees that we would go ahead and place into there to ensure shade i mean one of the biggest things that we need to think about is heat resilience especially as we we have more heat in the future and shade trees are going to be one of those premises and we're going to look at the right tree in the right place because you know part of this is also going to be storm water management as well as heat resilience and the right tree in the right place can evapotranspire up to 150 gallons of water in a single day and you can imagine what that kind of infrastructure because we're not going to be able to to lean a lot on hard infrastructure so we're going to look at a lot of nature-based features and solutions that could possibly be integrated in this park to to further create um you know an opportunity for the city to to be demonstrating resilience sustainability and future climate adaptation okay um what do you think is one of the largest potential cost drivers for this project that's a great question and so some of the things that we would look at is if you're looking at a tabula rasa plant completely overhauling everything um and so what we always look at is a concept called urban acupuncture i'm not saying that that's the appropriate one right now but that's sometimes a tool that we use so you can influence a larger greater whole by just going ahead and doing a few strategic investments philip talked about tactical urbanism these are ways that we can test things in a very affordable way before we permanentize or before we really go ahead and make a lot of investments. So when Brad was talking about some of the safety along some of the streets and some of those kind of aspects, we can test things very simple to make sure they work before we go ahead and take taxpayer money, investing it, you know, more wisely through some of these potential other concepts. And Philip, you probably have some other thoughts or ideas on that.

Well, I think it's also kind of talking to flexible framework and kind of phasing to understand where you can get the best kind of function out of the investment. So as we come up with a final design, there are interim designs to also allow, you know, to kind of, as you can mention, kind of test out ideas. So really thinking both immediate and long-term in the planning will allow us to really make the best investment we can and very intentional investment.

Okay, I see you're very focused on the public engagement, which is very important to us. How many other projects, if you were chosen, would your team be managing at the same time as this one?

I'll let the rest of the team speak, but I know that this would be the priority for myself. And that's why I know for the next six months, you know, and we know it's an aggressive schedule and I'm actually just coming off of a lot of construction administration projects. One of them I'm going up to tomorrow at University of Florida. and as soon as that one's done it's already substantially complete i mean i have a very open schedule and this is a top commitment to somebody like me who's a an architect a landscape architect and urban designer i mean this is a kind of dream project for for a team like ours and this is why you know we felt this is the dream team having kimley horn with the knowledge having sasaki who is probably world renowned for what they can do from a standpoint of community um in urban design and creative place making you know as well as with kmf and we saw the historic preservation so i know personally i would be able to devote i i would venture to say 80 of my my time and being that this is just i mean it's a park right but

I think if being Boca Raton resident, we're very picky about our Addison Meisner architectural character.

Absolutely.

That we've kind of drifted away from and we want to make sure that that is included in there. Can that be done?

So one of the things I want to say is, is our firm could probably never be accused of having a very specific style. If you look at our work, we've worked, we just finished the largest affordable housing project in the city of Miami Beach in the last 50 years. And that was in a historic preservation district. Yes, it was Miami modernism or post-war modernism. but where we were able to look at the vernacular tradition of the architecture of that place. And we're going to listen. We're going to go ahead and work with the council, with the residents, and look at the material palettes that we want to be steeped in place. One of the things that you can say about our architecture is it's idiosyncratic. It's of a place. It's singular. I have always appreciated Addison Meisner. It's actually his son that did that Mediterranean Revival house. The Art and Culture Center in Hollywood had a very different way. They wanted the architecture of the new to blend with the architecture of the old. I can let Lex speak to this because she's also a historic preservationist as well as an architect.

Yeah, I just want to reiterate that that's where my passion lies is in historic preservation and keeping those elements sacred that the community holds sacred as well. I have a lot of experience working with Tallahassee and getting those things approved through the State Department if we ever choose, if you guys ever have any desire to make that Florida master site, as well as following the Secretary of Interior standards when it comes to preserving your historic sites and then integrating it well with new design that doesn't threaten the old but cohesively joins it.

Okay, thank you.

Why don't we go down the horn. Mr. Perlman, go ahead next if you have questions.

The history of Memorial Park is deeply rooted in recreation and you can see all of the recreation facilities there. Can you talk about some parks that you've designed with heavy recreation and what are some examples and how you integrated it into the park?

Yeah, I mean, one we just recently did was for youth sports complex in Pompano Beach, and that was actually a former Elks Lodge that the city converted over. It has new soccer lacrosse fields where we actually looked at a field house that actually became the gateway between a large parking space or a large parking lot. And interestingly, right across the street is actually the sample McDougal House. So it's a historic structure, one of the oldest houses in all of Pompano Beach. And we did an open air pavilion there that actually integrated in with that and created some other passive, not necessarily active recreation, but passive recreation facilities. And so one of the things that we also looked at in DC Alexander Park, for instance, is it's not a active recreation park, but it's a passive. It was a multi-generational park that one of the things that the city wanted was to be able to have a grandmother and her grandchild to be able to walk through there. And so some of the things that we look at when we're designing around that is You all have heard of ramps, but we look at sloped walkways. Sloped walkways are usually 5% or less. And so it's how you kind of design the landscape, design those aspects for, again, a multi-generational accessible recreation area. But we've also done a lot of sports. I mean, currently we're working on a skating rink. I know that's more of an enclosed indoors one, but we've done quite a bit of master planning efforts as well as other community park space that integrate active recreation fields too.

Thank you. I think we do want to maintain a lot of the recreation that's there. We definitely want to keep the tennis center there, possibly expand it. We are considering to rebuild the skate park on the site there. One of those ball fields is a historic ball field of 1947. That would be part of the historic element. So when you think about maintaining and expanding the recreation of the park, At what phase of the conceptual process do you start thinking about that in relation to, let's say, architectural features or other elements of the park?

Yeah, and that was one of the things that we were communicating in the presentation is that we would do an asset mapping and kind of understanding communities, you know, desires. But if there's some of those historic elements, there's those oral histories we would collect, we would identify what is almost untouchable. So if it's the banyan trees, it's the tennis center, it's one of the ball fields that starts to allow us to understand what's not movable. And then what is other flexible areas that we can begin to look at, obviously to the the town hall or the city hall being there, you know, and how you want to kind of look at that. And again, there's there's going to be those fixed elements and and we'll just, you know, begin to use those and then weave the other ideas and what the community or what the residents and the council desire back into the project from from holding those specific elements, you know, sacrosanct.

Okay. This team that we have here of the five companies working together, you've presented a lot of projects here. In this packet, has this team been involved in conjunction together on those projects? And if not, which ones are the foremost projects that this specific team has worked on?

So, one of the things that we did, I mean, and I'll just be in full disclosure, this team, I've worked with Kimley Horne on several other projects, I've worked with KMF, and we've worked with Sasaki. Some of the projects that we were presenting today were more specific to what we felt was going to be relevant to Boca Raton, so we haven't done, you know, some of those projects that I'm showing, KMF and Brooke Scarpa Huber have worked on together. I believe one of them, Kimley Horne, actually, I'm sorry, three of them Kimley Horn did work on together, the D.C. Alexander Park and as well as the well, youth sports complex. So as far as well as the Art and Culture Center and a few others, it wasn't specifically Brad and his team, but it was other people from that same organization. You know, in Sasaki, some of the the the projects that Philip was showing like Lozner Park, the the Bay Bayfront. I was a a local expert they brought in for the Sarasota Bayfront, but I wasn't working directly with the Sasaki team, but I was involved in helping that project team through.

I don't know if that's specific. Which projects has this team worked on altogether?

What we showed today, none of those projects is where all of this team has worked completely together.

Do you see that as a challenge and how will you overcome that?

We do not see that as a challenge because, again, I went ahead and brought this team together. I kind of think of us as the dream team because we have a mutual respect across this team. I felt like when we saw this advertisement, this RFQ, there was some very specific things that we wanted to ensure we had the right team in the right place. And not every project has that. So, you know, I even mentioned Milani Park. I know during the conversation I didn't show it, but we're also working with Kenley Horn on that one. You know, I think the only thing that we haven't worked on or showed you a project today was one that was us working with Sasaki directly. But we have that relationship and there's a mutual respect. They are national experts. They do this day in and day out with community organizations. We have Kim Lee Horn, who's the local component. They also have a familiarity and have been working in Boca Raton for decades. um our team brooke scarpa hubert doesn't necessarily have that but we have the local knowledge and the wherewithal we can understand the regulatory the building codes and everything to that standpoint um and so we felt like that team really gave the most uh benefit to the city of boca raton okay this is my last question um the the project for example in hollywood the art and culture center is a very modern design the the citizens and uh

we are thinking about a Meisner-style design, which Councilwoman Sippel mentioned. So have there been projects where you've implemented that design and how would you be able to do that? Because I haven't seen that in any of these projects.

Yeah, none of the projects that we showed today probably show that kind of historic stylistic. But I can tell you that we've worked within communities in historic preservation projects right now. We're working on a fire station in downtown Los Angeles that you probably if I showed you, you probably see that was familiar. It was in Ghostbusters back in the 80s. But we deliberately went in there very almost like a scalpel rather than a hatchet but to preserve that building's architecture and actually enhance some of the architecture with additions and other features so it just again it depends on the context it depends on the place it depends on the community so if that is the mandate if that is the people's will and the council's will that's not an issue from our perspective to go ahead and and um you know take that and move that forward again it's about place it's about timelessness it's about um you know the respect of the community and that's where i think great architects can always work within those those communities and and understand how to kind of tie that in so thank you yep mr trucker you're up next

Thank you, Mayor Thompson. Thank you for the presentation. I have a question. Do you guys have, and I guess the urban planner is a gentleman that's missing today. Is that the first? No. Who's the urban planner? Is that?

So everybody, Phillip and I are, but he's a creative placemaker and he's as well as a community engagement.

So does your staff, so The reason I ask is because so we don't know what the community wants right now So we're gonna go out to the community So we don't know if the skate park is going to be there if the baseball field or softball field Excuse me is gonna be there. We don't really know that so those are not accurate statements because we're gonna go out to the community That's why we we're doing this process. So once we understand from the community I think the big part of the downtown is a place making area Why will people come? to the downtown not only our residents but also business also tourists so with that said to me it's important to have an urban somebody that has that urban planning background because that person is going to work with folks like Kimberly Horn to connect I see a lot of nods on the head so hopefully they'll have an answer and I'm getting to the question of the connectivity it's really important that when you look at that area it creates a neighborhood where people are going to come and you know stay there maybe they start there in the afternoon and they play tennis And then they take a little break and they go have a coffee and then at night they'll meet their families for some food or a bike ride. I don't know. So I think having someone on the team and someone that understands like urban planning to create this neighborhood concept that will connect not only to our Brightline station, but also to Miser Park is really important as we go through this process. So can you give a little bit of feedback on how you would incorporate this area and how do you see it as a placemaking area? Like if you had a blank canvas and we have this beautiful space, right? What is the vision for that?

Yeah. And I'm an urban designer. I mean, and what you're talking about is a lot of urban design related issues because urban planners usually deal with zoning and some other. But but designers really look at how do we make creative places and how do we build place? And I don't like to use the word placemaking because Boca Raton is already a place. It's how do we build it? How do we go ahead and keep it? And those are the kind of issues and the balances that you have to look. But what you're talking about is the kind of everyday life, something that's there 24 seven. and something that people can have as a as a downtown kind of civic heart and that's what we would definitely be looking at um this is one of the reasons why you know we brought Sasaki into the team too but I have I worked at a community design center for 10 years working with a multiple multitude of communities around creative place making these kind of exact issues and so yeah actually I'll just let Philip like you if you I'm sure yeah

No, I mean, I think the way that we would approach this is, you know, it's listening first. It's understanding, as we're mentioning, oral histories, really trying to get the essence of Boca Raton. We're not just looking at within the boundaries. We're looking at the neighborhood, the district. We'll do research on aesthetic qualities, on how people get here. We'll ask people, how do they come to this site? How do they move through it? What are they doing today? And what would they like to do in the future? as we go through that process is really, you know, we're not just looking at this one singular park, we're looking at it within a network of parks and open spaces. And I think that's what we will gather initially is to really understand this as a district and then how that influences what needs to happen here within this space. And then as we move through the kind of design approach, we will intentionally come up with varying ideas, like big range of ideas, you know, three options, for example, all with very different priorities to, again, raise questions. It's not saying that the project would be any of those options. It would just be to really kind of tease out from the community, tease out from the council, what are those priorities and some may have kind of quite strong reactions and we kind of intentionally want to get those reactions to really understand the critical priorities for this project and from that we will then come up with some basic principles kind of the north star for the project and that will really drive our design so that we're really being very critical on on ensuring that this park and this open space and this the civic area is something that feels of boca raton and for boca raton so it's really kind of drawing from everybody that's here today from communities that we won't haven't seen in in the in the room today and kind of really ensuring that we hear the community and instill that in a in a project moving forward thank you that's all

Yes, I just have one additional question. So Memorial Park is a dedicated World War II living memorial with significant historical importance to Boca Raton. But how would your team research and incorporate that history into the plan and structure the proposed improvement so the city is well positioned to pursue grant funding? And how would you identify eligible grant opportunities?

This is my bread and butter. This is what I do a lot and really love working with Tallahassee actually, because they are so pro helping in the SHPO office. And so I'm gonna feed off my team and say, I don't know what you guys need yet. But I'm excited to hear that because that's how I start integrating that design into what is appropriate for landmarks or memorials as we move forward. So there is no one way answer. But as we hear from the community, I will know which grants I can feed into or I can reach out and say, hey, I haven't approached this before. What do you guys know? But that hand in hand relationship with Tallahassee and the SHPO office exists on our team, which is it's nice when it's flawless like that. Thank you.

OK, I think I'll conclude our questions. I just have one myself. I think, as was mentioned earlier, this is a park that is steeped in history and has a unique history, a specific kind of history. It's a memorial history. Have you all worked on in the civic realm like this memorial parks of this nature or a park that had a memorial history? And if so, how have you been able to honor that history as part of the project that you all completed?

I'm gonna hand this one off to, yeah, Lex, if you.

Yes, with KMF, we have worked on smaller portions or even on the UF campus that we're working with, they've had dedicated landmarks or statues that we have to consider through construction, protect, save, and then move forward with. Same with the city of Orlando, but personally as well have worked within the DC and mall environment at a larger scale to know how Those different scales can relate to what's appropriate. And again, I'm going to relate to the Secretary of Interior Standards and how that outlines for us, because that's going to be our guiding design force when it comes to historic landmarks.

And actually, I'll refer to the Lozender Park project that was in the presentation that had a veterans memorial. They had a redesign to it. It wasn't kind of keeping it. They wanted to be able to make the names more visible. So through that whole process, we kind of were very sensitive to the historic nature of that landmark and integrated it into the center of the public realm. And so that's in the main gathering space. So when people were moving through the site, it was really at the core of that park.

as they had kind of events and programming it was you kind of felt that memorialization of of of the park and the importance of that within the the Civic space and lozenge Park was the one in Homestead is that right okay okay I believe that concludes our time for questions for this group thank you all for your detailed presentation thank you and uh we'll let you know thank you thank you I think we can bring up the next presenter which I believe is Chen Moore and Associates Do you need a minute, is that what I'm seeing? Okay, why don't we take a, you guys wanna take a two minute break to let them get set up? Okay, we'll see you back in two minutes. All right, if we could take our seats, please. We can reconvene. Just one minute. All right, I believe we are ready to reconvene and continue on with our second applicant in our request for qualifications, that being Chenmore and Associates. Welcome, the floor is yours.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, council members. I am Nilsa Zacharias, director of planning of Chenmore and Associates. We are thrilled and we are grateful to be here presenting with our team. Please.

Good evening. For the record, Lance Lilly with Chenmore & Associates. I'm a senior planner and project manager at the firm.

Good evening. Rick Gonzalez, president, REG Architects.

Good evening, Aleli de la Vega with REG Architects, Senior Project Manager.

Good evening, Sarah Colon, Urban Designer with Chenmore & Associates.

Good evening, Santiago Cleaves, Associate Planner for Chenmore & Associates.

And Suzanne Dombrowski, Principal Engineer and Vice President with Chenmore.

Our presentation focuses on three key elements. The first question is, and it's meant to supplement the proposal that we provided, submitted to all of you. The first question is, how can the Chenmore team help to create a welcoming civic heart to the city of Boca Raton? How are we advancing your community goals? I think that's a key question. The second part of the presentation will focus on what is our community-driven approach? What are the specific steps? And the final section is why are we the best team? What do we bring to the table that will complement and will be a successful and meaningful plan? Section one. Again, our main goal is to support Boca Raton community and to accomplish its own goals. And we truly understand, and because we are a local company, we know this area, we know how important is this civic district for residents. And we are committed to assist the city to create this heart vibrant district. And we understand includes all these facilities. Because we are local, then we truly understand that this city is committed to enrich the quality of life of its residents. We know that is a paramount goal for the city. And let's just take a moment to look at the demographics of the city. It's very obvious that reflects the vision and the commitment of the city to improve the quality of life of its residents. We as a team, this multidisciplinary team, are committed to provide you a welcoming and enduring civic heart. We will go through our approach and we will explain how are we going to do that. The main theme for all of us is listen first, design second, and implement with purpose. Those are the focus and core driven Now let's say, what is exactly our community driven approach? Again, I will repeat, it's paramount to listen first and decide second. And it's grounded in deep respect for Boca Raton values and vision. And part of that is transparency. As we go through this process, you will listen more than one time the word transparency, how it's a key element. Part of the proposal that you have seen explains one by one all the phases and so, but let me just repeat how important is our teamwork approach. We will work closely with the city staff. Communication is paramount to provide this meaningful master plan. uh depends we can do bi-weekly meetings weekly meetings because we are just a very short distance from the city hall we can meet us anytime so the next slide will explain in detail each of those phases Again, what are we doing in month one? This is a really critical month because we are confirming the scope, the timeline, and we are also doing the project launch, the public project. Part of this, again, It's important again to reinforce that this will be a transparent process. Because we are community builders, because we have extensive experience in public participation, let me assure each of you that the process that you will receive, it will be driven by the input that we receive from residents and stakeholders. Also, the month first, we are going to focus on existing conditions. We need to collect the data fully, have an in-depth understanding of the buildings. We need to focus on the city buildings and the programming needs. Existing conditions is a base for the upcoming phases. Our proposal is also providing for branding. I mean, branding is critical. The branding, for example, this poster, and I also pass around those little cards that I believe you receive, is the identity of the project. It's what creates a buzz in the community. So basically, every time that you see this color, this poster, we can put it in the social media website poster cards. Branding, we believe, is an important part of this initiative. And now I would like, please, to call Lance Lilly to walk through the next steps.

Thank you, Nilsa. So it's paramount, as mentioned. So in month two, our plan is to do community listening. And as part of the community listening, we have an idea that we call the 4Ps. 4Ps stands for Proactive Public Participation Program. Through that, it includes emphasis on transparency, active listening, but then also getting meaningful involvement from the community as a whole. That photo that you see below is actually an initiative that we did with the city of Lake Worth Beach, which is not that far from here. where we actually went to a park event that they had and we spread the word for a particular initiative that we did. And that photo shows all the different kids showing up the survey that we had. It's key for the key themes for this particular initiative. We want to focus on civic identity, public space character, future roles for the city hall as well as civic buildings, programming needs for the community facilities, open space, recreation, and connectivity. also do some type of public involvement and consensus building, which that would include meetings with stakeholders, focus groups and outreach with residents, business owners, the youth and also community organizations, engagement with the recreational department for the city, as well as recreational entities as a whole, the veteran stakeholders for the Memorial Park. And then also, as we mentioned, some community surveys which we'd like to use for the fact that we'd like to get feedback for this actable planning direction and transparency through the consistent communication. So this is the same flyer that we just showed just a while ago. This just actively shows how we do our branding exercises. As mentioned, branding is paramount just to get the word out there. We've done it many different ways, one of which was a poster. Another one was the little card that you received. And that allows the ability to not only get it on your phone, but also if a person attends an event and they want to share that with their friends, they can also grab that and spread the word that way. also we've done one-on-one interviews whether it be with stakeholders or council members commissioners board members we've done that to also get feedback from the applicable stakeholders there and also have meetings with any boards or council or commissioners as well and then lastly what we do is also charrettes and visioning exercises which i will touch upon here shortly It's important that not only do you have events in your city hall or city chambers, but also you meet the people where they are. So I know that Boca Raton has a lot of different events that Boca Raton has. The goal is that we plan on having meetings at these events, such as green markets or art festivals or any special events that you have within the city. and through that we also spread the word which is what you see on the left hand picture of the survey the survey that we provide is usually in two sometimes three different languages which provides the ability for people to fill out a survey in their native language and also we believe it's a strong idea that you have some type of online presence whether that be on the city's website or social media that way you're actively getting participation for this particular initiative Our team is also well-versed in design capabilities. These photos show how we did a charrette in Lake Worth Beach, as well as the village of Tequesta. And that was focused on getting feedback from the residents, the business community, the youth, which you see on the left-hand side, and then also the community organizations. Then we move to month three, which is the validation and issue framing. Through this, we'll have a presentation, which is what we've heard from the community during that process. And that will validate the key themes that we were discussing previously and the community priorities. Those are focused on the civic buildings, the park facilities, the adjacent commercial entities, and then also focus on multimodal connectivity for residential as well as commercial. And then we move on to month four, which is the design charrette and concept design. As mentioned, our team is well versed in charrettes and also design exercises. We have a team that has a planning architecture, landscape architecture, architecture, and also engineering. And through this, we'd have a multiple day charrette process that would allow the community to come in, provide us with their ideas, but also get real time information from those stakeholders. And the Charette will also generate various alternatives that could be provided for those key entities, which would be the Civic Hall, the Community Center, the Singing Pines Complex, and then also the Memorial Park. And through that, we'll get the actual long-term vision for these particular civic buildings and also areas. Then we move on to month five, which based off the design charrette, we would have some type of concept refinement, which we would take what was provided to us and see what changed because of the community's input. And through that, we would refine those designs to be something that would be what the community actually wants to see. And these are just different graphics that we've prepared for different initiatives that we have done. As I mentioned, the refinement would be based off of the public engagement and the stakeholder feedback that was provided. These are just examples of us using the concepts that were previously provided from the community that we drew together and we brought that back before the community so the community could actually let us know which one of those three concepts were the one that they wanted to move forward with as a final design. And also the survey data provide us with the different alternatives and trade-offs for those particular initiatives. Lastly, we get into month six, which is the final report and recommendations. Through that, we'll have the concept plans and diagrams, which will be prepared by our design team, implementation of considerations and phasing, which will also include some type of cost estimates. It would also have some policy decisions, which could be used forward for different phasing. And then lastly, it would have a summary of the robust public participation that we conducted throughout the process. This just demonstrates our design capabilities that we've done for decision to demonstrate to the commission here. And like I mentioned, what we'll have is a validation and decision making for the preparation of this downtown civic area, which will have a concept plan and then also a final report. It'll also have the summary of the community input and shape the outcomes, and it'll have the recommendations for the civic areas. And lastly, the improvements of the public engagement will show a final open house workshop and also a lot online review and comment period. And I'm going to turn it back over to Nelson.

Thank you. As Lance explained, step by step, the approach process, we follow, this was provided by the city. So our approach follow this and enhance, even enhance, such as the, for example, the branding is something that we added to this process. Again, on month one, we'll work one-on-one with the city to secure the scope in the specific process, but this is what we are following. Our proposal was based on this. Section three, why Chenmore and RIG Architects? Why are we the best team to provide you a meaningful and comprehensive master plan? First of all, we have the local knowledge. We are very short distance from the city. We come very often to go to your beautiful restaurants to walk around. I mean, who doesn't want to come to visit Boca? you know so yes uh then chen mur is we have been serving florida communities in 1986 we have more than 170 professionals and we have a multi-disciplinary team planning urban design landscape architecture and engineering so and for this specific project we brought along reg architects We all know R.E.G., we all know Rick Gonzalez, and this is a company that has a very established reputation for architecture and historical buildings. As I mentioned before, we will serve the city of Boca from our office in West Palm Beach. We provided very detailed resume on the proposal. I have more than 25 years of experience in planning and architecture. My bachelor degree is in architecture and my master degree is in planning. I am a Fulbright Scholar that went for a master degree at Iowa State University. And also, as you see, Osnia Leon, Principal Planner, Lance Lilly, Senior Planner. We are all AICP American Certified Planners. Also, we have an amazing team of urban design. Sarah is here. Heather, a senior planner. Santiago Cleves is here. And landscape architects, Eric, Brittany, Angelica. Also, we have a great team of engineers, Suzanne, Shaheem. Ben is also an engineer. And please, I would like to invite Rui Gonzalez.

Thank you, Nilsson. And again, it's a pleasure to be here with the city. We've been in downtown West Palm Beach living, working, and playing for 40 years. I live and work in downtown. That's what I love to do. I've been fortunate over the years. I've been able to work for the city of Boca Raton at Meisner Park. I've also had clients in Old Floresta. We specialize in historic preservation, in downtown work, and in civic work. We'll show you some of our examples in a little while. And then Aleli is my senior project manager, and my son Ricardo is now the third generation in the firm. Thank you, Nilsa.

There is no doubt that we are leaders in our field. We provide superior graphics. I just wanted to share with you this slide where in April 16, 2026, we conducted a training for AI to the planners throughout Florida. We had more than 100 people attending that specific. It was an online training. We are experts in all of those platforms. Those renderings were actually created first using regular 3D rendering to motion and then apply AI. So if we want to talk about graphics, please, let me assure you, we can provide you all different kind of graphic capabilities and motion videos also, which I think are really important. to have an overview of the proposed project. Also, because we are a team of planners and engineers, we can conduct a QC. We do that at 30%, 60%, 90% reviews with documented minutes. And now I also want to emphasize this. And these projects are part of the proposal. And just to showcase our level of experience, this was our master planning for community center and parks with very robust public engagement that we did for the Village of Tequesta. They are part of our reference. And I understand the city have contacted them. And we did, you know, we did also conceptual design for public spaces, including Remembrance Park and Tequesta Park. And Rick Gonzalez, they did the design, the specific design of the community center. This is also another project that we provided to the Village of Tequesta. It was about the urban corridor by the beach. And again, the most important part of all this project is the amount and transparency of public participation. None of these projects were possible without the input of the resident, which was paramount to create these amazing public spaces. This is a project actually that is going on right now, is the Ocean Inlet Park Coastal Resiliency and Restoration Project, where our landscape architects are working hand by hand with the team of Rick Gonzalez. Another of our more than 10 years client is the city of Lakewood Beach, and we conducted a master plan with them. And actually, later on, if you would like to see the final report, this is the final report of the master plan and has, again, has a very robust public participation process. Please.

Yes. Okay.

Next, I'm going to showcase just a couple of civic and historic projects to show you some of our capabilities. All of these projects also were involved with charrettes to quest as a small place, a small town. So there was maybe 75 people all the way to West Palm Beach and Lake Worth where we did the casino building on the beach and that was over 300 people. And let me tell you, Lake Worth is a very diverse city, so we heard just about everything. In Jupiter, with the city manager, I just noticed that he used to be up there, and the main street project that we did along the waterfront was also pretty exciting. The community center, the requirement was that it had to look like a one story building. The community gym is set back on the facades. The entrance is defined very well. They also wanted an old Florida Key West style of architecture. So we made sure that all of those things, we listened from them and we incorporated them into the process of the project. Next building. A City Sebastian is very similar to your campus. It's about 20 acres. They had a very small city hall which they demolished and we replaced with a nice significant size city hall. There were two historic buildings that were turned into community centers. The police station was doubled in size, and it was active the whole time while we did the additions. And then on the north side of the property, a community park with a Boys and Girls Club was added, and that touched a 200-acre Indian River County park on the north side of it. So it was a very challenging project, and we enjoyed working with the community up there in Sebastian. And then also design charrettes were involved in Royal Palm Beach in the center of the county. We helped them identify a theme. We got inspiration from Frank Lloyd Wright, who's a very well-known American architect. And we were able to do the building like we've done many times where we build it right adjacent to the prior city hall. which when the new building was built the old one was removed and it's part of our practice of move one time only which i think is critical some places move two times or more and that's expensive so we try to do that and also with a lot of multi-purpose space the the the city hall has a lot of multiple flexible space for community use too with a community park and a pavilion right on the lake too so all of those things were in part of the work that we did at royal palm beach

This is our last slide in summarizing what do we bring to the table to the City of Boca Raton. So we have a best qualified multidisciplinary team, 35 professionals. We definitely know Boca. We have shown our experience and expertise in master plans with several examples. And also we have worked together in more than one project. And we also explain step by step our approach and community participation. I just wanted to add one thing about community participation. Our team was selected by the Florida American Planning Association to present last year in Daytona at the conference, our approach to community participation. I thought that that was very important because there are so many teams throughout Florida, but we were the ones selected to make that presentation because we have created the proactive public participation program. It's four piece, it's an integrated process, it's multidisciplinary, and it's concurrent. You don't have to do, first we're going to do this and then that. No. Different events can be happening at the same time and that's make it a successful event. Also, we are definitely committed to deliver the plan in six months. That's a requirement from the city and we provided references and successful projects. Again, we are a local firm committed to the city values and vision. This is our contact information. And then we use this slide to, here is from the site, but we love the sign that says stop. So we include it, you know, as a final slide. So we know when we need to say thank you so much, and we are here to answer any question that you might have.

Thank you, Ms. Zacharias, Mr. Lilly, Mr. Gonzalez for the presentation. Why don't we do the questions like we did for the last presenter? Can we start on our left, Ms. Sippel? We'll have about 30 minutes. Let me restart the clock. And let's just say that we may have 30 minutes of questions. We may have less. We had less in the last one. But we're giving everybody just about the exact same time. Go ahead, Ms. Sippel.

Thank you for your presentation. For this particular site, what do you think are its greatest opportunities and its largest limitations?

I love that question because actually I have a map that shows the specific location of this with regard to the downtown. This is part of the downtown. That's the greatest potential it has. I mean, it's fully integrated, very close to Meisner Park, you know, so I believe that this is completely... the heart of the civic the civic all the civic program and this project must take advantage must really cherish that opportunity to make it very clear that is the heart of the civic district is such a great location very integrated with the with the whole downtown area

Okay.

How would you preserve the Banyan trees that are down there right now?

Again, we have a multidisciplinary team. We have landscape architects. That's what they do every day. They look at these amazing trees, and they know how to protect it. And through the design that Rick Gonzalez and his team, we will incorporate, we will integrate these trees into the design. And they will actually be a focal point. OK.

Do you have any ways that would help reduce irrigation needs, fertilizer requirements, or energy needs?

I believe definitely yes because again, we have a team of landscape architects that this is what we do. We are actually working into zoning codes to improve landscaping in two different municipalities and we are focusing on irrigation and green measures. I mean, we have to. Okay.

That's all the questions I have. Thank you.

I just wanted to add one thing here that please look at. I think you all got these. These are where we put the surveys and the QR codes, you know.

Very good. Mr. Perlman.

Thank you very much for the presentation. Were you the consultant for Curry Park in West Palm Beach?

We were part of the team.

Okay, why didn't you include that in the deck of the presentation? Is there a reason and are you still involved with that? Because I believe construction is going on right now.

Yes. Just to clarify, our presentation and proposal focus highly in public participation. Hi.

good evening suzanne zembrowski again with chen more so we are part of the curry park team and the project is currently under construction um so i'll let nielsen you know respond why it wasn't included i think that there was other projects that we felt were a better depiction of what you needed here for the city but we are underway with that project it's going very well and it is a showcase project for us for you know a resilient park design um coming through

And what is your role right now and has been in that project?

So we are the prime consultants. We are responsible for the civil engineering landscape architecture.

Okay. And the civil engineering, the civil and the landscape, uh, that's all done in house. Is that correct?

Correct. Yes. So we have the majority of our landscape architecture group are reside out of our West Palm beach office. And we have, um, gosh, more than 10 professional engineers also out of that office.

And so the only external professional I guess you could say would be REG for the architecture for this project, is that correct?

Yes.

And how long have you worked with REG on projects together? And are the projects in this deck primarily, are they primarily a joint ventures between both of your companies?

Yes, we included some of the projects in Village of Tequesta, and now the one that we are doing at the county, Ocean Inlet. And we have been working together 10 years or more. City of Westlake, City of Lakewood Beach, Village of Tequesta, and now with this park at the county.

Okay, that's good. Thank you. I see what great experience you have with public engagement and participation. That's really amazing. What do you view as your most successful public outreach project and why do you think that was so successful?

I will say, I mean, the Village of Tequesta has been an amazing process. We created, again, working with Rick, the community center and also the master plan for all the other parks in Tequesta. And I will also say Lake Worth Beach, I mean, We have been providing services for more than 10 years as a consultant to the city of Lakewood Beach, and we have done several communities outreach process. And the last one, like I said, that's the big document, the master plan. So anyway, you want to add, please?

If I could also add to that with NILSA, I would say the Lake Worth Beach Casino and the Cultural Council in Lake Worth. The casino in particular because a very controversial site, very controversial project. It was a site where the buildings had lived their life right on the ocean. They had to be replaced. It was 2010. There was no work. They decided to go out to a design competition. We came in first place out of 14 vendors, and our very first assignment was a design charrette with over 300 people. So no regrets. We just rolled up our sleeves like we did in Jupiter, and we got into designing and providing a building that had to be completely reconstructed based on the historic integrity. It's the upper picture over here. the original 1920s building so very proud of that project because it left it's the living room of Lake Worth right it's the beach the building placement the use of the building it's really the heart and soul it's where you go when friends are coming to visit you and you live in Lake Worth that's where you take them to is to the casino and and to the beach so that's what we want to do over here too you know you do have some challenges you ask about a question about challenge you You know, you have major roads right to the south, major roads right to the east, right? And how do we bridge that? How do we get people from the east side of downtown, from the south side? You have historic, wonderful, one of the most historic, most beautiful neighborhoods in Florida, Old Floresta, adjacent to this site. So there's going to be a lot of challenges and a lot of opportunities to work on this site with Chen Moore and Nelson's leadership.

And one more question for you. Do you have experience, I think I saw in the deck, of designing Meisner-style buildings, right? Oh, yes. And do you think you could provide a good Meisner-style architecture if we wanted it here?

Boy, that's a great softball. Because when we did a house in Old Floresta, and I don't know if there's anybody here from the Historic Preservation Department of Europe. First of all, we were referred to the house by the Boca Raton Historical Society. We worked with that couple in a design in Old Floresta, and it was approved in the first review by the Historic Preservation Board, and then they said to us, can we keep a copy on file so that when other architects come, they can see how to do Meisner-style architecture. Right now, today, we're working on a 1925 Meisner house in Palm Beach. that was converted into six condominiums 40 years ago. So we're dealing with bringing all the historic quality of that building. So yes, Meisner is like a second. My last name is Gonzalez, but yes, I understand Meisner pretty well.

That's really good to hear. Thank you.

Is that it? Okay. Mr. Strucker, please.

Thank you for the presentation. So a couple of questions, the same questions that I've asked for other folks. So in this area that we're trying to create, it's really a sense of place for the city of Boca Raton. As you said, you've referred to the Civic Heart. You know, I refer to this area as a neighborhood. So I just want to see like what your vision is of connectivity, connecting not only Misner Park, Brightline, and connecting into this area. If you had a vision of what this would look like, you know, conceptually just protecting our Memorial Park, of course, and all the public space that's there. It's really important to create that for not only our residents, but people wanting to come and visit the area and creating that sense of place.

Well, you just say a key word, connectivity. Unless you have, you can design a beautiful place. How do you access that beautiful place? I mean, unless you provide meaningful connectivity, that place will be just an isolated piece there. So, connectivity through pedestrian, bicycle, by car, that will be part of the engine to design this meaningful place. The place needs to be vibrant. The place needs to bring people together. The place needs to provide the vision for the city of Boca. So in order to be that type of place, You need to have access. You need to have connectivity. So that will be a main, main element when we are designing this. And the reason is because we have a multidisciplinary team. We have transportation engineers. civil engineer landscape architects obviously the design through our rig firm architecture and we from the planning side we're going to look at it at zoning code we are looking look going to look your comprehensive plan and make sure that that place is a vibrant inviting warming place thank you is that all you got mr

That's right for good.

Hi, I just wanted to ask you if you could provide me some examples of historically significant parks or memorials sites that your team has worked on.

Historical sites, yes, please.

Historic sites, well, the Sebastian had a portion that was historic. The town of Palm Beach has also historic opportunities. We've worked on over 100 parks in our 40 years. We've done all sizes, small parks to large parks. And we're very familiar with historic architecture and historic landscape architecture, which is also very important. You have some phenomenal trees on this site that need to be conserved and be part, essential part of the project.

As you know, Memorial Park is a dedicated World War II living Memorial Park. That's right. Has significant historical significance. But how would your team research and incorporate that history into the plan? And so that is well positioned so that our city could pursue grant funding.

So I'm a Florida Historical Commissioner, so I review grants every year. Every year we get 90, 80 grants, every year cities, very few by the way from Palm Beach County apply for grants. So I encourage you for the Children's Museum, for the Memorial Park to apply for grants in June of every year. You can have up to three $1 million amounts of money from the state if you apply with a good grant. The research is done at the state level through the SHPO's office, the State Historic Preservation Officer. Locally, you have a phenomenal historical society, one of the best in Florida in the Boca Raton Society. You have great historic preservation staff. We would do all that research to make sure that we don't miss anything on both the Children's Museum and also the Memorial Park.

In addition of all that, we believe that it's paramount that we will listen to the groups that are using, the veterans that are using this part. I just believe that that is a very important part. It's paramount to listen to them because they are the ones that will commemorate, will celebrate, and their memories need to be very, Real there in the park. So anyway, that's part of the community engagement process that we will basically we will engage between listening the residents and listening these group communities and all the information that we already have it has to be married into both those things you cannot just have a lot of information or you know have to be both integrated and

Is that it? Okay. I guess the last question is going to follow up a little bit on what Deputy Mayor Grau just asked about, but specific to parks with a veteran or memorial focus as this one has. If the answer is none, that's okay, but I was wondering if you've worked on any parks that have some memorial or veteran significance, and if so, how are you able to honor that history within the park itself?

I will answer very briefly, and then he will further explain. One of the parts in Tequesta, we call it Remembrance Park. The Remembrance Park, we did the conceptual design. We work with the community. And that was... it's a neighborhood park it's not a large park it's a neighborhood park it's surrounded by homes but it's such an important caliber that because it really reflect the the vision that the residents had and that the village had so remembrance park we are very very proud of the final conceptual plan that is actually was built now you can go and visit remembrance park in the village of tequesta

And in West Palm Beach at Curry Park, the southern portion is the Martin Luther King Memorial. That was a pro bono design that my father did for the African-American community in West Palm Beach. And proud to say that it's still there and it's going to be part of the new park. So we have had that experience working with groups that have memorial requirements to their project scope. Okay.

I think that concludes our questioning for our second group. Thank you all for the time and the fantastic presentation. I believe that we can now bring in the third applicant, the Corradino group, when they have a chance. Thank you guys.

Thank you so, so much. Truly appreciate your time.

And it looks like we're going to take just a two minute break. Welcome back, friends. I think we can move now to the third and final presenter in our RFQ process, that being the Corradino Group. So welcome, gentlemen, ladies. You have 30 minutes. Take it away.

Thank you, Mayor, Commissioners. My name is Eddie Nang. I'm the technical vice president for the Corradino Group. On behalf of the Corradino Group, Our partners at Valiant and Valiant Partners, Savino Miller and the Cultural Planning Group, we appreciate the opportunity to come forward this evening to present our qualification. We know you're on our third presentation, so we're just going to get right into it. We know that this is a master plan for your Civic Center area, and from where we have constructed this team, we have the certain objectives we know you want to meet. They are having a shared vision for this area that is rooted in community values and ownership, centered on a list and first approach that considers a distinct area identity that is vibrant, activated, and civic, and which considers all the things that need to be considered here, your historic St. Pines building, a memorial park as you noted in April with your resolution, City Hall, and other ideas that will come from the public. and we think about a plan that will promote connectivity and accessibility to the place and ultimately also and very importantly be realistic and implementable. To accomplish this, we have a team that meets your critical areas of qualifications ranging from architectural services to landscape and architectural to urban design and project management. We have a local team that understands South Florida. I myself am only 15 minutes away from Boca Raton right here and the rest of our team you can see are in South Florida. We are headquartered in South Florida as well for Corradino. Our team has certain critical things that we want to highlight because, you know, in the midst of all these presentations and our proposal, they might not necessarily be seen. Urban planning, design, landscape architecture, those are all items that you see from every firm. What we've done to differentiate ourselves is think about how do you include the partners from the arts planning standpoint? How do you think about historic preservation a little bit more deeply? and ultimately we uh we want to bring to you our expertise in implementation oriented consensus building not only with the list and first approach but one that has an iterative process with multiple rounds of input and feedback uh that's rooted in computer ownership of ideas and future programs and needs so that we can use the process to create debates for how we bridge the past present and future and balance possibilities and flexibility I know I'm talking right now. I am not only your project manager for this, but your urban design lead. With me today, I'm going to have folks speak. Matt Wojciechowski, who will head up our public engagement. Eric Dye, our principal architect. Adriana Savino-Miller and Barry Miller, our landscape architect. And with me, I have Estelle Avalle and Brian Harrison and Corey Lafferty from our team who will also be here to answer questions during the second part of this. But enough from me. I want you to first hear about how we're going to take a community data-informed approach to approach public engagement, a critical component of the process. So Matt, take it away.

all right thank you eddie so my name is matt wojohowski i am with the cordino group and i am in been designed to lead for the public engagement aspect of this and that is a very exciting position to be in because i know how much this community cares about this project and about making sure that their voices are heard. We all saw the inclusive grassroots movement that came about that got us here today when the community banded together to show that there is strength in those numbers. So what we want to do is harness that energy and take those take all of that momentum and really put that towards this process so that we can pull the ideas out of the community we can listen to them and make sure that this is your plan rooted in your community's ideas so there's a number of ways that we do that both through some high tech and some very standard low tech old school methods so i'm going to go through some of those right now So this slide gives an overview of many of the different tactics, formats and kind of the strategies of why of why we do public engagement and how we accomplish that. So we harness we like to approach the community through, as I mentioned, some high tech tools that can range from visual preference surveys to arcgis story maps and also getting out into the community meeting the community where they are in the coffee shops at the community events and really listening to them and making sure that we are going to the community and that they're not having to go out of their way to try to make a night meeting or just a certain time frame so this process is really about making sure that we can hear everyone's voice and making sure that that process is transparent so we have a number of ideas related to a project website where there's a landing for everyone to make sure that they're they are accessing accurate information So as part of this outreach program and the community engagement program, we have a number of tools that create a feedback loop. So we do that by first gathering some information from the community through surveys, through these different tools, and then we go out and we meet the community where they're at. One of my favorite community engagement events is our walking tours, our meeting at the site where people are, where they're looking at, where we're planning for, and to really get those ideas and get those conversations going outside of maybe a more formal stakeholder or charrette group. And then we take those ideas back and we can develop visual preference surveys that allow us to confirm, is this what we heard? Are we getting this correctly? And again, it creates that feedback loop of hearing, listening, responding, and moving on. So our community engagement, this was really apparent in the Miami Baywalk project where our partners with Savino Miller here, we worked on them with that. And that project, as you can see here, kind of moving from left to right, really started with some broad data gathering. And as the process moved on, it was refined and it eventually landed on an adopted and implemented and adoptable design guidelines that are in place today. And then another example of where we have harnessed this recently was in North Miami Beach with their TOD project. And each of the images that you see on the screen right there was rooted in a community idea that was heard from the community, vetted, discussed, and confirmed with them to really land on this shared vision of what they wanted their community to look like. And that's something we're hoping to provide for you as well. And now I'm going to pass it over to Eddie to talk about another recent example of some public engagement.

Thank you, Matt. I was the project manager for the Las Olas Boulevard project. It's a streetscape project but involves different aspects of connecting five neighborhoods where we had 46 stakeholder groups that were stuck for seven years trying to bring, being brought onto the project. And what we learned from that is it's about consensus building. We need to move past what we don't want. to what do we aspire to? And we thought this was a fitting thing because this is what we heard here, right? Where there's a lot of what we don't want. But when we first listen and then we translate and do iterative check-in process to the public, we then create aspects of what are alternatives? So we can translate those ideas from the public to pillars and concepts that you saw in the last slide, to alternative developments that can be bold or implementable or safe. depending on how you want to go with. And we did this in a way that we got through the controversy and created walking tours, online engagement, websites, and created a process of identity for the entire Corps to unify it. I'm proud to say that that passed by a 5-0 vote at Commission and it's under design for construction. Another project I want to highlight is the Orange County and City of Orlando cultural plan called Canvas, where we had a variety of concentrated stakeholder meetings and general public surveys. Here, the lesson we took away from that we want to apply to this project is that when we engage the various groups and we go to them, And we think about those nonprofits and the community groups that think that will provide your programming for the civic area. Now we're building in a network of not just listening, but creating the groundwork for the future of where you have potential future partners and tie that back into neighborhood ownership of plan and approaches. And in this way, you concentrate, you're looking at opportunity for branding community needs and benefits. It's not just a listening exercise. It's a plan-building exercise that's rooted in that listening process. We're proud that through this effort, this specific approach, we got the award for the best cultural art plan from the National Association of Counties this year. This is something that I was the lead planner on with South Coast Planning Group who are part of our team and the project. And now we hear about what makes the place worth living. And I want to turn it over to our architect who would go more into those details.

Good evening. What I'm going to share with you is that I'm not an architect, I'm a community architect. And that's what I want to share with you here. So for 40 years, I've been designing cities and practicing architecture across the world. Throughout this journey I've always asked myself one question, and simple question, what makes the place its soul? And today I can share that I've discovered over all these years 16 timeless ingredients that give great places, that great places have in common. The first of this is, as I've shown in the slide here, is public spaces, or as I call them, the living rooms. These plazas, squares, all of these are important. The second is great architecture. Cities need great architecture, and it reflects its history, culture, and identity of place. Great buildings create identity and give cities their personality. These are all projects, by the way, that I've done everywhere all over the place. The third is civic pride. Great places inspire people to care. Beautiful streets, plazas, squares, waterfronts, civic buildings create a shared sense of ownership that encourages people to protect, celebrate, and invest in their community. Lastly, applying to your project sports and recreation, sport fields, cycling paths, recreational spaces. These all build healthier communities and bring people together. More importantly, they encourage people to move naturally every day, and this is what I've learned to call active living. Lastly, five years into my 40-year career, into my practice, there was a gentleman called Peter Katz who ran around the country from California to Florida, identifying seven firms that had been practicing both planning and architecture in the spirit of what he coined as the new urbanism. So yes, I'm one of the original founders of this new movement. And in fact, I was working on those two cities that you see there during that time. Specifically, a book was published last year by Wiley that encompasses 30-year spans of the new urbanism, and it's titled The Art of the New Urbanism. We have many projects in this book, and one in particular I picked because it speaks of our long-term collaboration with the Corradino Group. Specifically, the town of Cutler Bay, the US 1 corridor study that they asked us nearly 20 years ago to participate in and where we were studying how we can bring density within the corridor along US 1 away from the town's relationship we had with everything else. This project was conducted in a public charrette and it was studying again one mile stretch. 15 years later, we came back and my colleague here, Corey Lafferty, we actually did this architecture, which we got approved last year, which is a mixed-use project that included multifamily and so forth into the project, mixed-use, and more importantly, a civic plaza that was coming off of US 1, which would be the first of its kind from Florida City to the Palm Beaches. More recently, more specific experience, we were awarded recently the design of this historic Overtown Metro Station in collaboration with Salvino and Miller. This is a complex project where we are coordinating with the City of Miami, Miami-Dade County, the Miami Brightline Station, Public and Public Arts, the Overtown CRA. Here the Overtown CRA is trying to implement or revive what was one of their art and entertainment district. This will be a $20 million renovation that will greet the people when they come off the Bright Line into the city of Miami. Another project I decided to pick from a second book that just came out, and specifically because this one ties directly to your project, to your RFQ, I thought. This is, again, it happens to be the town of Cutler Bay where they wanted to build a municipal center at the heart of the town. We were selected to design this on a 16-acre track, like your 17 acres, very similar here. The program included a community town hall, police station, fire station, community civic center, and their legacy park. We held many workshops, charrettes, and so forth with the citizens who wanted their community center to be the community hub of the city. We did traffic assessments, we did all kinds of studies for them. Again, the community center, the town hall, all these different programs, all part of a very interactive process. ultimately what you see here is the results of that design here the foreground is the City Hall background is the fire station the community center we created at the front end on a four acre parcel we were able to put all their program and make it more community oriented in fact when you're coming off an old color road this would be part of that architecture the style of the architecture was part of what our architects had just finished another project in Calabasas in California, which is another city hall. Beautiful, it's very similar in architectural appeal, and we use that as kind of the vocabulary that the citizens wanted to implement. Here is on the edge of the first four acres, the rest of it is the Legacy Park, but you can imagine with me the kinds of activities that can happen in a space like this. After months of meetings, and you asked the question, after months of meetings, I asked the question, successfully convinced the residents, we were able to successfully convince the residents to vote in favor of a $37 million obligation bond so that this study would not just end up in the shelves, but actually lead them towards that journey of building their civic pride for their community. Lastly, I will finish with this here, which is the city of Homestead, another project with the Coordina Group. Here I start with one of the four districts that we worked on. This is the civic center of Homestead where we went ahead and looked at ways working with the citizens of what we can possibly implement in this ended up being a 400 acre parcel. 245-ACRE PARCEL. THESE ARE THE FOUR DISTRICTS. THIS MAY LOOK DENSE, BUT IT'S ACTUALLY NOT. WE WERE ABLE TO DEMONSTRATE IN WORKING WITH THE CITIZENS THAT WE CAN KEEP THE ENTIRE DENSITY TO LESS THAN 15 UNITS AN ACRE, BUT ALLOWED WITHIN DIFFERENT DISTRICTS TO HAVE DIFFERENT DENSITIES. AND WE SUCCESSFULLY DID THAT. The whole process generated this outcome, which is an award that was given to us by the American Planning Association just this past December. Their biggest honor is this 2025 Award of Excellence for Public Outreach. So we listened to you, and we were able to actually create something that we thought was a citizen's vision. We also have a lot of experience in restoration of old buildings. We noticed a couple of them on your site. Here's a house that we've restored. These are two very significant homes in the area of North Miami and Coral Gables. Lastly, I hope that this demonstrates that we have a seasoned team with longstanding collaboration, which is very important, that delivers projects that become enduring sources of civic pride in the communities that we serve. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Eric. I'm Barry Miller with Savino Miller Design Studio, the landscape architects. Our mission for this project and like we do for all our public space projects, I'd like to paraphrase a little quote from Thoreau, to carve the very atmosphere through which we move and breathe and to affect the quality of the day. That's the basic components of what we hope to have happen here in these 17.4 acres. uh we try to do this by incorporating the principles listed here the goal is to make our landscapes responsible to our environment number one respectful of place and culture and what you all want and work to bring people together to celebrate place Our work over the last 30 years has focused on creating public spaces that are beautiful, resilient, respectful of their history and culture, and designed to foster community engagement and interaction. We look forward to creating a collaborative design again with you and Corradino and Valle Invalid. So we start off with, this is the Miami Beach Civic Center project. It's just a four acre project. We worked with the city, future stakeholders, and residents to design an integrated campus that included the city hall, which is there now, the city administration office, and a new public garage to create the Miami Beach City Hall complex. The public space design that we worked out called for a network of pedestrian connections, a streetscape, and elevated plaza that facilitates ADA access. Our design included a new fountain to mask the surrounding traffic noise, custom-designed light pillars that define the plaza edge, a sunken garden room that helped protect existing trees, of which you have many really beautiful ones, and paving with exposed shell aggregate featuring Miami Beach's signature red concrete. At Española Way, one of the most iconic historic streets in South Florida, we designed one of the nation's first Woonerfs. If you're not familiar, it's a street without curbs, using decorative concrete pavers to invoke the character of a Spanish plaza. This approach allows for flexible use, mainly so you can put sidewalk cafes and they can spread across, not just in a five feet sidewalk, allows for markets and community events as well across these intersections. At Dinner Quay in Coconut Grove, we prepared this master plan incorporating a new marketplace, working boat yard, and plaza. As a site of the historic Pan Am Airlines seaport, because way back to the 20s and 30s, last century, we paid homage by designing a long pedestrian runway linking the street to the bay with an airplane sculpture as an entry feature. this site as the old army airfield or proximity to it and that relationship to the army air and the radar facility we think might be interesting to uh to play around with that Gateway Park in Sunny Isles Beach is basically a living room park right across the street from a multi-family, very, very dense neighborhood. It was designed as a multi-use park for informal play that included a stage for outdoor movies and concerts. It's five acres and includes a butterfly garden, splash pad, playground, and oak-lined walkways. the residents in the building to the south the park played a major role in developing the park program we never come in with preconceived ideas we like to listen first hear what you have to say and we build in the program to your needs and goals So the graphic shown on the right illustrates our Bayshore Park design process. It exemplifies the design approach we usually take for public landscapes. On the outer ring, all the major stakeholders are shown, and this project included surrounding residential areas, two schools, and a youth center. The inner gray ring diagrams, the program goals, such as activities, event space, and ecological improvements that everyone wanted. At the center is a 20-acre site itself, reflecting its use as a historic golf course. The site's history and existing conditions inspired us to create large landforms and a new lake, which previously was just a grass field, which was excavated to cap the site's contaminated soils. big idea for the park was to address resiliency and sustainability and respect to neighborhood flooding we did this by merging the city's ongoing progressive street raising project with the park project which diverts storm water into a new retention lake and drastically reduces polluted runoff flowing into biscayne bay here's a recent photo of the park you can see the lake there it's a new lake and it also we included passive and active uses again which include a competitive tennis center where we're proud to say carlos alcarez and and anamanda anisimova recently practiced before the miami open alcarez loft first round and sunset hill built using excavated soils from the lake the lake is surrounded by a half mile levee that functions as a running track with a coquina shell surface that was selected through the collaboration with the city and a celebrated marathon runner frankie ruiz So this park has become a catalyst for the community in South Florida and was recently featured in the Guardian's Design a Better World article. And finally, Sunrise Park, Hallandale Beach, not far from here, is a small 2.4 acre neighborhood park surrounded by single family residences. A robust community outreach process, being right across the street, people had their hearts and souls in this project, led to the park's final design. It allows for, again, passive active recreation, including a playground, fitness center, outdoor fitness center, walking path, butterfly garden, game tables, and a play field, and a rain garden. So you can get a lot of stuff in a small little space and really address a lot of people's priorities and concerns. And thank you.

Thank you, Barry.

We heard a lot of concepts here from Matt and Eric and Barry, but what does it all mean? How do they tie together? Well, when you do master planning in urban design, like we spoke about a lot earlier, taking these aspects like programming, what makes the place, the identity, the aspect of how we program a place, the connectivity, the resiliency, and bringing together like we did on Los Olos where we had to think about designing parks and creating that connectivity of space and assigning that space while being true to how we connect the form and the function of place. There's no difference in what we had to do for the North Miami Beach TOD project. We had to go in and think about, hey, this is what the public told us they need for economic opportunity or for public space like a linear park. And so when you think about urban design master planning and especially relevant to this site, it's about the program. It's about the design and regulations. It's about the connectivity to the public realm so that once it is designed and built, the public can access it and the public can take ownership and have programs in there. It's important, particularly for the site, when we think about the fact that you have a ball field. And I'm a softball player on the weekends, so I totally am all about your 1947 ball field. How does this fit in the greater whole? So we wanted to also not show you the fact that we have master plan from a site standpoint, but we can think about the holistically from the city standpoint, because whatever you do in the Civic Center master plan area, you have to consider how it connects to the whole. Does it duplicate processes that affect the budget you have to approve every year? Does this then, you know, predate the situation where folks have to travel a little bit differently? And this is, you know, when we look at the site, this is your downtown Civic Center area. Our first impressions, you know, we drove around. We really tried to look at the site not to provide preconceived notions, but, you know, understand the pros and cons. You have many large, beautiful trees and a diverse recreational municipal uses already on site. Where you take it from here are critical questions. What is civic to the council? What is civic to the public? you know how do we create that place identity when we drive around and we don't really sense that there's a state identity that there is a lack of pedestrian connectivity and this project needs to infill the gap in a meaningful manner for you to be a viable and implementable plan You know, we understand and agree, based on all project plans that we've given so far, that this six-month process is what will help you achieve this with an iterative process. We know this because we've done this so many times before. I've been a project manager or principal in charge for many of these various projects, ranging from Los Olos to the city of Doral, where we know that it's about the combination of these different aspects in a meaningful manner that creates that the desired result that you're looking for. Knowing your RFQ, you have planning and by extension engineering, right? Because we got to think about how we connect both from a multimodal standpoint, not just walking and bicycling, but also architecture, landscape architecture and public engagement. When translated a little differently, it's about the place making, about place keeping, about the branding identity, about the land use in the public realm, sustainability, and also because we have to be budget conscious, design choices, funding and implementation. You heard from us earlier about how we're going to connect to the public and the various groups. Well, that's how you create the buy-in and understand the rules that are needed to implement these projects, where it's about the programming from a culture art standpoint to tell us how we're going to program in indoor, outdoor spaces to alternatives through the process when we help you translate what the public is saying and think about, hey, what about this? What if? These alternative elements then need to come back during the implementation process so that you can make conscious design choices that do affect the budget. So when we do take it back to the public, or help to take it back to the public about value and financing, you have a viable plan, just like Cutler Bay was able to convince its voters that a $37 million obligation bond was the right way to go, where we can look at the plan and say, hey, these are grant funding opportunities that will help you finance it. So it's not just about the Avalon taxes, but leveraging outside resources. It's also about leveraging programs you currently have, like the public arts PPIA program with cultural arts grant funding that lead to how you create the root basis for how the public base will be used in the future. It's about that translation from listening and what we heard. We can get messy. This is from North Beach Ocean Terror Project that I was attached to as a younger planner. But then we took them there and Matt told you about translating to concept. Concept the public can come back and say, hey, this is what we want. Or no, this is what we don't want. Do they have ownership? And ultimately, provide the final recommendations and approaches where we know short, mid-term, and general long-term recommendations so that your staff can carry out the plan on your behalf in a meaningful manner. This is not just a pretty picture at the end of the day. It's not just a report. We are looking at how we can create a successful plan. And we think about that from a pillar to project success. Everything you see here should be familiar because it's from your documents at the city. We create fairness and integrity by listening to our residents, to our businesses. We create trust through the process, and that is our measure of what a successful project should be. With that, we appreciate the time that you have provided this evening and are happy to go into questions and answers.

Thank you. Very good. Thank you, team from Corradino Group. We'll start our questioning on the left side, my left side, your right side. Go ahead.

Thank you very much for your presentation. So my first question is what opportunities and limitations do you see with a specific site?

Hmm. Well, uh, options, uh, limitations, I'll start. And then, uh, my, uh, my teammates can join in. Well, there are very pro to the site. You have already diverse uses and you have proximity to a major connection point, uh, not just the bright line, but your general corridor. There's, um, You know, there's an established use that the public has latched onto. The challenge there is how do you evolve, right? Do you evolve by keeping certain facilities? Do you evolve by moving certain facilities? We have the same issue with the TOD project. We have the same issue with the Los Olos project. It comes from really having frank discussions with the public about how you assign space to what programs do you want to keep or do you want to move forward with. the other aspect that is a challenge here is that when you go to the site there is a lack of place identity um there's ad hoc configuration of parking lots you know it's not just about programming right once you program it it's like how do people get there are they going to park and then walk around or um you know what the financing behind that it has to be realistic right correct um so speaking of public and oh go ahead go ahead um

We think, first of all, going around the site, you guys are really lucky. You have within a five-minute, 10-minute walking radius, which is the urbanistic kind of goal. You have the Bright Line. You have a public library. You have City Hall, the community center, historic buildings. You have just a huge amount of really valuable things happening within this site and within this small space radius. but it just doesn't have, there's no there there. It doesn't have any identity. There's no character. And what we need to do is, what you would recommend is, with the community, is to figure out a way of how to, we have someone coming in to help to what is civic? What is how do we get to the Bright Line? I think Corey, one of our teammates, came to the Bright Line and was going to Meisner Art Center, the cultural center there. And it was just not a very pleasant experience. So the idea is to make it something that activate it and bring it to some to where everybody wants to go there and be there with families and friends, et cetera, to come to it. So The advantages, great, amazing trees. Everybody wants to chip in.

I'll keep it real simple. I think you have a great opportunity of taking City Hall and making it the community hub, the place where everybody wants to come together. It's real clear to me.

That's it. I wrote down the question, what is civic? When we talk about what is civic, you may talk to 10 different people and they may give you a variation of the answer. What we did here was present to you a variety of options. Not that we're beholden to the aspect of something ultra-modern or even though that is something that we are capable of doing. but rather asking that critical question for the opportunity standpoint you know the modern community health that eric talked about include something like what you see important b where they build a the library of the year in florida into the second floor and combine the building into a beautiful new building and left the outdoors at the amphitheater for a beautiful night market this past week um about that activity about that opportunity but the first start the opportunity starts with having that definition of what is civic to you as a council what is civic to the public

So in the public outreach, what visual materials would you use so our residents can clearly understand the alternatives versus the trade-offs in the charrettes, et cetera?

So we have a charrette process within our scope. It's in month four. However, before we get to that point, the first two months really is about listening. You have to go out and talk to the residents and not only do surveys, but actually go out and walk these events with them. We need to understand what is it they either want to keep or what they're lacking in programming in their lives so that we get to the crux of daily activities or desired activities. This can be done either through walking tours, where you have focus groups, or through QR codes, through surveys. We've done all of the above. What we see here would be pretty effective is to actually do the outreach with pop-up events to go out to where the people are. having an alternative not only just for the workshop but to have them be able to follow online with uh with uh be able to provide us feedback even if it's just simple words to target questions like what is civic to you what is it that you are missing what is it that you want um i said earlier it's not about what we don't want right we have to change the message to to outreach first and foremost about what is it that you do want so that we understand how to provide options and then so the second point of where you are are going for a council member is um how do they know the alternative through that iterative process we are going to um like in oslo for example we have to provide alternative one two and three for example based on their ideas Then the public came back and said, well, one had this concept that we like. Two had this concept that we kind of like, but we wanted to combine one and two. And through that process, through a charrette process, we were able to come up with a consensus build that people were able to get behind. It may not be on everyone's wish list, but the one everyone says, hey, this is something that we collectively agree on. That's how we got a 5-0 vote, and that's why the project is being built.

Okay. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you. Mr. Perlman? Thank you very much for the presentation. Can you talk about one of your most successful public outreach projects and what you did and why it was so successful in your mind?

I would say that the most successful outreach project would be one of the Los Olos projects that I just said. 46 stakeholder groups, none of who agreed, and we were able to get a centralized plan in the time that we were provided for, and it is being built. What made it successful? What made it successful was that you have to force people to be real for each other. you have to facilitate because right now at the end of the day we might be saying we're listening and we are listening but you also have to communicate with each other so as facilitators in the process we have to have you talk to each other because there's no way for a community to really truly own a project unless they get together with themselves and understand hey this is what my neighbor wants this is what i want and come from a human standpoint That is the reality of every project, whether it's this project or the Cultural Arts Plan, which we've just won an award for. Now, I believe that the other aspect that's critical to public engagement is that when you say listen, you actually listen. you have to go in with our preconceived notions. I have gone through a lot of other projects where I had to sit back and say, hey, are we listening or are we dictating? and if you're playing for the latter then you're not really translating that's why this process you have before you start with that listening phase before we even think about the pillars about the preconceived notions uh while so reluctant to talk too much about the site opportunities because we didn't want to come in overly colored our job here is to first listen and then translate okay thank you very much mr

Thank you very much for the presentation. So my question that I've asked all the participants tonight is the area in that area, and some of you alluded to our Brightline Station, our library, Meisner Park, et cetera, et cetera. So that's really important to me is a sense of place. What are your vision for that area, especially when it comes to connectivity? Because you want people not only from our community but outside of our community to have a destination. Why you want to go there? Why you want to spend your days there? Uh, so what, what do you kind of envision without any specific, but with the environment that's there today? Um, so I'm just open to your suggestions.

I'm going to let our designer start off with this and then I'll wrap that. I want to get up because we just spent two and a half hours talking about that specifically, saying to ourselves, I was talking about all the experiences that I've had and I said, look, what we need is we need to understand the culture of place. We need to understand the people. We need to understand what are the things that brings them together. I design plazas at certain sizes because I'm accommodating folks up in Houston that need a certain size because they have certain bigger events. You need to understand space and understand the culture of the place. I need to know what kind of events do you have. I was trying to look at your calendar. trying to understand, okay, why is everything only happening over at Miser Park and not happening here? What is it the things that we need to do? And I think that becomes one of the first steps that we would take. Can you say something? Go ahead.

Adriana?

Adriana?

And then I'll wrap up.

I would like to chime in a little bit. I think one of the most important things that you can think about is creating a cohesive a place, a place that has identity, a place where the signage, the lighting, and all the components and materiality comes together. Also, this site is like, for us, what we were thinking and discussing, it's like a critical site in the city, in the town. It's a place that can be a hub for resiliency. It's a place that can be a hub for the community, for cultural events, for recreation. The only thing right now that is missing is that it's not cohesive. It's all chopped up by parking lots. The open space is a little bit here, a little bit there. Also, it doesn't have any shade around it. People, it's not very inviting. The edges are very hard, I think. But it has all the elements. You have historic buildings. You have a community center. You have all the elements to create something really special. And that's what we see. And we don't know the specifics.

It's about cohesion. i said when you saw the slide about master planning and i'll bring all the concepts together it's about cohesion it's also about opportunity because there are things that you're we're going to hear where you have today and we want to make sure that we program the space for them whether it's on the ground or an adaptive reuse of your buildings where City Hall becomes a community hub, or it transcends that. We've been to other places where City Hall was also an art gallery, where there's a ballroom inside, where there's a library inside. We can give you those ideas because what we have is a team that, once we hear about potential opportunities, we say, this is what you can get. We might also give you some food for thought from our experience elsewhere. What is it that can be? And then you tell us if you want to include it. We'll tell you what the cost would be. And it becomes, in that sense, an iterative process where we can push the boundaries for you. It's just how far you want us to push them for you.

Thank you. That's all my questions.

Ms. Grau.

Yes, I wanted to ask who will personally lead our meetings and charrettes and are those same individuals here tonight?

Yes. As a project manager, I always make sure like I'm not the one that I am first and foremost, but you have our lead architect here tonight. You have our lead designer here today. In addition to being an urban designer, I'm also a transportation planner and I've written a lot of master plans, so I will also fulfill that role on accessibility and mobility as well. And of course, you heard from Matt, you know, supporting our staff will also be folks that you might see at a charrette because you don't just run a charrette with five people, especially when you have many members of the public. So other folks are here as well.

Thank you. And then also our, as you know, Memorial Park is a living memorial and has significant historical importance to Boca Raton. How would your team research and incorporate that history into the plan and structure the proposed improvement so the city is well positioned to pursue grant funding?

Well, as with any place right now, all we see is a sign, right? And I think we need to first look at the history and then look at various concepts to honor that history and provide that connection. Now one idea that we have also thought about is we have the cultural planning group here for a reason to think about cultural arts. How about we think about public ownership in the sense of What about our artists who live in Boca Raton? Can we include them in the process in a meaningful way where we can think a little bit differently? It's not just someone outside, but someone within our community who knows how we must honor our legacy here at Boca Raton. So there's many ways that we can approach this as well from our landscape architecture standpoint.

well again it's it's a listening process about what kind of memorial you want we we uh did some preliminary work on the 8777 champlain south building uh where it's very controversial the one that came down on uh in surfside uh where it's an extensive argument now about the memorial placement where it's going to go who's how it's going to be done, curated, and they're just now approaching, after two years, a design. So it's a very sensitive process, especially in this site, and we've read some of the history in the community that there is a wide range of opinion about what it should be or could be. That's just a long process we have to go through and get through. You have an Arts in Public Places program. You could probably bring in artists who memorialize or to look back into historical airfield kinds of installations. So there's lots of creative things you can do. We just have to sit back and get working on it.

OK, I'll just follow up with one last question kind of on a related topic. So as was mentioned, this is a memorial park with a war memorial history. If if you have it sounds like I heard just a reference to the Champlain Tower. In what way were you able to honor the history, provide ideas to honor the history of the memorial nature of that of that place?

well um it's a tough site uh and you want to go back to the slide oh no that's okay it's it's and i'm not the the artist or that was commissioned for the actual site what the city decided to do was to segment uh leave uh the developable parcel inviolate and they could do what they wanted to, very controversial, and they take a right away, right next to it, 88th Street, right next to it, and they use that right away to create the memorial, which is still going and still being designed and still underway. So that's how that, that's kind of a different situation as this situation because of the tragedy that happened. This is more something of a remembrance of a cultural thing that happened here. It did happen, we read something that the reason why they picked this site is, you can verify me if I'm wrong, that it is high ground for Boca Raton. It's one of the reasons why the Army Air Reserve picked the site for the radar facility. So there's lots of different things we can move towards, but we'd be interested in continuing the conversation.

Okay, that's all I have, and I believe that that concludes our time for questioning. The third and final presenter, the Corradino Group, thank you all for your presentation today. So you guys can take a seat. I think at this point we would normally move to discussion and ranking, but I've been told that not necessarily to heighten the suspense, but I've been asked to give us a few minute break for some of us to go grab some food really quickly. So why don't we take a 15- or 20-minute break, and we will come back and commence the discussion and ranking at that point. Does that sound good, team? All right, 15, 20 minutes it is. We'll see you all back. All right, we are back in action and we can commence discussion on the ranking of the applicants for our request for qualifications. If everybody doesn't mind, I'll lead off and let you know where I stand. And I propose before we get started, I would say when we get to the point of the ranking, I would suggest each of us indicate the top three in order of preference among these final three so we can then compile that and the ultimate decision is as to the top ranked firm will be the lowest ranked score so for example if we rank one applicant one two three if you add them all up the lowest number would yield the highest ranked and then likewise with the second and third Ranked applicants I would say as follows first I think I appreciate everyone that came out and made the presentations today all of the groups that Came and we heard from today would be or would be quite capable and we would be in good hands with any of them You all have very very impressive qualifications and experience in this realm. I think you would do the city well Whichever one was chosen Ultimately, I think what came down for me and what put one group slightly ahead of the others was what I saw as significant and, in fact, compelling experience with municipal governments in projects similar to this one. We saw a series of them right here in Palm Beach County. They had, I think, a strong focus on community engagement. both in terms of experience, but also in the methods they would use to accomplish that. And they had architectural experience in civic spaces and particularly with parks. And my number one ranked applicant is based in Palm Beach County. I find that to be significant. So as for me, I would have Chen Moore as number one. I would have Corradino and Karupp as number two. And I would have Brooks, Scarpa, Huber as a close number three. Who else would like to opine? Ms. Drucker.

Thank you, Mayor Thompson. So thank you very much for everyone that came out and participated. Thank you for taking the time. I know it was a tight timeline. And thank you for understanding our city and really putting your best foot forward with this place that we call home up here. the day is so um for similar reasons or for similar things that mayor thompson just kind of put out there i mean i believe that for me um the ranking had to do with how many people so i have all your different you know like personnel stuff but it's really important for me to have people that are local that are people that understand the actual um county and the way that i ranked it and i have been in all three scenarios maybe not even even in this one even in in huber I have been to the Boston redo, so I had been to a lot of the facilities, actually, which I was surprised, but I ranked them similarly to Mr. Thompson. A, Shenmore is number one, and number two, I did Corradino, and number three was the Huber Group, or the, you know, I think it was, I can't remember the first name right now, but Reason being, because they've done a lot of projects, I've been to Cuesta. I said earlier yesterday in the meeting that I had been to Lake Worth by whatever reason this weekend. I spent an enormous amount of time in Lake Worth for just random reasons. And I kind of feel that the team having everyone in one area, the public engagement component of it was really important to me. They have urban design, they have the engineering, they have a traffic engineer, which is really, really important to me. Landscape architecture. my ranking is chen morgan corradino and then um the group uh brooks um scarborough and hoover so thank you so much for your time who's next i want to thank everybody for coming out um i looked at

All the recommendations, I went to your websites, I did a lot of research in advance, looked at a lot of the projects, and I'm going to have to agree with my council members who've already spoken, but my number one choice is going to be Chen Moore, followed by the Corradino Group, and then Brooke Scarpa.

Very good. Thank you. Mr. Perlman.

Thank you very much to everyone who came out and I've reviewed all the decks and the materials and thank you very much for putting all of that together and taking the time. In reviewing it all, I feel as though Chenmore presented a very strong presentation and experience in public engagement. I liked how they had an in-house team. I liked how they have been working 10 years with the architect and who this architect also has experience with. uh meisner style architecture which i think is is very likely going to be implemented in the vision so um in alignment with my colleagues i i'm going to rank chen more number one brooks scarpa huber number two and quarantino group number three very good that leaves ms grau yes i also want to thank everyone this has been a very tough decision everyone's extremely well qualified um i am going to go along with my colleagues

with Chen Moore, Coronado and Brooks.

OK, very good. The deputy city mayor just did remind me that we had set aside some time for public comment and I will leave my mind open depending on what the public has to say. So if anyone has any public comment on this matter, now is the time. If yet, Mr. Warner, please step forward. After that will be Mr. Liebelson. State your name, address and you will have three minutes.

Richard Warner, 1322 Southwest 9th Terrace. Three minutes. it seems to me that the same people who picked terror frisbee have come up with another group of terror frisbees and to make this decision in one night seems crazy to me to pick any of this this is not what the city wanted in an election In any way, the city wanted to fix what was there, not to develop the park in any of these ways. The city wanted more than anything to fix the fields, to fix the bathrooms, to make the community center better, to make sure the tennis center was good, to fix maybe the children's museum, to do some tweaking. personally i think the city should have done all of this themselves because we actually know particularly you guys who just got elected what the city wants what the people want I don't think the people want anything fancy. I don't think they're worried about Meisner architecture in that park. I think the people want it to be the park it has always been. Want the fields to be more playable, the tennis courts to be restored. the community center to be the place that our kids went the whole deal city hall fixed i won't even get into the east side of second avenue but i i think it's a horrible mistake to take one night and vote it's the same mistake that gave us terror frisbee which probably we could all agree was a very bad period of time and a bad choice and a bad decision so i guess maybe i vote i have no vote you guys have the vote i vote that you table it and really think hard as to what you want as opposed to trying to pick between three diaphanous visions that maybe are going to be what you want and maybe will be another terror frisbee for what it's worth thank you thank you mr warner mr liebelson

Mike Labelson, 398 Northeast, Third Court. I would also agree that it would be Chen Moore, but I want to talk a bit about the process, perhaps, about how this council and staff should work with Chen Moore, based upon my experience hiring and firing and getting good results out of consultants. I think it's really important that the council speak with one voice and make some key decisions before launching into this consulting effort. I think as Councilwoman Drucker said, connectivity is a huge part of this, but as I understand it, the scope is the 17 acres of the park. It doesn't include connectivity, but it should include connectivity. it needs to how do people come in where's parking going to be is it going to be bright line and so forth and so on so the scope has to be very clearly defined by this council before launching into the effort as part of that scope The decision on what's gonna happen with the police station and the city hall has to be made. I don't see how you can develop a plan here when you might change it where where that station is going to be and and where the city what's going to happen with the city hall so i would say spend some time getting consensus on the council and make some clear major decisions which we have before us right which started discussions at the workshop yesterday and I don't really see why we need consultants to tell us what the people of Boca Raton want. I mean I agree with Richard there that at least, you know, with four folks who just went through a very recent election, you probably talk like I did to thousands of people and you know what the people want. They basically want to say, okay, we now have a council that we've elected and we trust that council to make the right decisions for us. You then have the consultant come up with their plan. And at that time is when you go back to the people and say, here's our plan. What do you think about it? Are you in agreement? Are you not? Maybe we need to trim it, change it, and so forth. But I think it's not a good process to go out initially and say to everybody, what do you want? we we know we i'm kind of in agreement with richard on this they want to park and i don't really even see what the consultant does when you say already we're keeping the tennis courts and making them better we're keeping the softball fields we're keeping a skate park what else is there to do with this consulting contract so um thank you that would be my comment your time has expired thank you for your comments anyone else for public comment on this item mr starkov

Earl Starkoff, 3260 St. Charles Way. Good evening. Well, with only some slight difference from these other two gentlemen. First, tonight we heard a presentation from all qualified multidisciplinary team to facilitate a community planning process. And I support that process. However, at the city's june 18th special budget workshop the proposed capital improvement program included project number 1440827 community-led memorial park enhancements and it allocates 7.5 million for design and engineering in the coming fiscal year and 150 million for major reservations through bond proceeds. If you're following in your playbook, it's pages 79 and 80. That funding sequence reflects the previous Council's downtown campus project, a concept that the voters rejected in March of 2026, and several of you got elected. Then at yesterday's workshop, we heard the preliminary results from the engineering assessment are due very soon, and that's been advanced in schedule, so that's good information to have. And it may turn out that that report may have impact on what will happen to the city hall building, the police station building, and all of that can be taken into account. So my request is simple. Complete the community planning process, review the engineering findings, design a scope of work, and then solicit proposals and negotiate the appropriate fee. Now to me, that isn't just some housekeeping issue that I'm coming up here to speak about. My deeper concern is if you approve a $7.5 million budget, it's gonna get spent. So there's no budget that needs to be approved until after you have a proposal in front of you. And the other part of this is the good news, bad news is credit the city staff that came up with three very qualified teams. They all gave basically the same presentation. And the bad news is you had to listen, not impolitely, because I'm familiar with all their work, to three very similar presentations and make a distinguishing remark about Any of them. I'm very impressed that the three, that there is five people, the five of you in consensus, because having listened to a lot of these when I was in the Beach and Park District at Doe Hornley, the reconstruction of Gumbo Limbo and the advancement of its mission of education, and the reconstruction of the Science Playground, you came together in consensus. And what drove that to me, I'll tell you very frankly, is Mr. Lilly, the silly planner for your chosen firm. This is a man who lives the community-driven approach. They all include place and connectivity. But this is a firm that I hope you all recognize really will bring back the community consensus that will give you the guidance to confirm what you support. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Starkoff. Next up, I think we have Mr. Caicedo, who's coming up to talk. There you go.

Good evening. Juan Caicedo, 5560 Northeast 7th Avenue. And I guess it's a little bit too late because you already voted for your chosen one. But fortunately, we have three really good groups. I think what caught my attention the most was the last presentation was the part of listening, how important it is to listen to create a community. that is actually a project that is responsive to the community. And I think the last group actually has had and has chosen in the project that they've done that they listen. So I think that right now that you have voted for the group that you voted for, I hope they have the same attitude towards listening to the community because what happened in the previous version of this master plan was that there was something put in place in front of the community and nobody really listened to the community, to what they wanted to have built, and that ended up in that chaotic problem that we had. In any case, I think that the three groups are very qualified. I wish you had selected the last one because I have a personal inclination towards that group. I went to school with the architect, and I believe they're very, very talented. They have done really good projects in the city of Boca as well. but in any case i think the listening part is the important component of the chosen one and i hope that the the group that won the competition uh really understands that thank you thank you anyone else not mr starkov just one bite at the apple sir yes

Hello, Robert Duquette, One Town Center Road, Boca Raton. Very good presentations. I think that I really like the idea of proactive public participation. I think that that's something that's sorely been missing in some of the activities that have gone on in the past, especially with One Boca. And that's why at least probably three of you are up here today. Thank you for your support. And I can tell you that the people in my neighborhood of Boca Tica have been fully supportive of this. And I would fully support considering the skate park remain in the center of the city in downtown Boca. I think that that is going to be important. It's not in a residential area by and large. And I think that the skate park would be good in that area. I have talked to several of the people that were here yesterday regarding the skate park and at other meetings and they just want a skate park. They want an improved skate park. They don't care about North Park, Spanish River or downtown. So I think that a new skate park would be fine. Yes, it probably needs to be better than what you currently have, which is about 25 years old or so. But I think that if you ask any of them, they would like to have a nice skate park. And I think that hopefully that will be a part of the Memorial Park. The other issue is, I don't know why you're limiting yourself to just Memorial, other than the fact that it's probably the worst maintained. But you also have phase two of the Hornley Park, Which definitely needs to be considered. Phase two would be soccer fields replacing some other soccer fields. But as the city has grown to over 100,000 people, you have a lot more need for fields in that area. So again, I think that it's important to expand on this, not just for downtown. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Duque. Anyone else?

Martin Bell, 761 Southwest 3rd Street. I'm going to talk at the public request session about the police station. I just wanted to kind of reiterate what Commissioner Perlman said, that we need to convey foundational beliefs and building blocks to the company that we hire. including the historic softball field historic north section of the city hall tennis center we withheld funds for many years from the tennis center we have the money to spend there we can the city can use a second skate park we got to fix that up so we have to foundationally just keep those assets that we have and let them kind of complement uh what the city came together to protect in the first place 75 we wanted to protect our park let's uh let's dictate to the winning company those foundational building blocks and i'm sure they'll come up with uh some nice ideas how to complement that thank you mr bill anyone else public comment last call for public comment on this matter in that case we will close it miss morrow

say by the bell okay uh judy morrow 1305 northeast 5th avenue um i'd just like to say that i understand you have to follow rules and everything i understand procedures and everything i just want to make sure that tennis gets some of that 7.5 million and i want to make sure that war memorial park has a big big sign that says war memorial park so that everybody knows and i hope we add more tennis courts but i like all sports and fix up our our softball fields thank you thank you miss morrow anyone else

Okay, I will then close the time for public comment, and I'll address a couple of the comments that were made. One, the first comment to Mr. Warner saw a similarity between this and what happened previously. I think there's some significant differences in that this one, the entire first phase of the scope of the project is to Is for public engagement is for the public to let us know and I appreciate and you're not wrong in a way that We did listen to a lot of people tell us a lot of things about what they wanted in that part of town I appreciate that but I don't think that any additional public input or engagement would be a bad thing So I am eager to hear and give the folks another chance to opine as to what they want to see there that's basically the the mechanism that these folks are being brought on to do is to conduct a a city-wide form of public engagement to allow for those opinions to be distilled and to illuminate what it is that will go and and happen or not happen at memorial park um i at this point i think we can i will go around the horn again i've conveyed my thoughts on on the ranked firms i appreciate the additional comments and and thoughts that were provided a moment ago I think I am prepared to stick with my ranking as it was. Is anyone else, is anyone on the dais in a position where they want to change or modify their rankings as they've outlined them? No? Okay, well then I think we can go and I'll entertain a motion to adopt this resolution inserting the Chen Moore Group as the highest ranked firm, followed by the Corradino Group as the second ranked firm, followed by the Brooks Scarpa Huber Group as the third ranked firm. Do I hear such a motion?

So moved. Very good. Second? Second.

Ms. Sippel, thank you. Any further discussion on this? Seeing none, Mr. Daly, if you please.

Grau. Yes. Drucker. Yes. Perlman. Yes. Sipple. Yes. Thompson.

Yes. Motion passes 5-0. Thank you, everyone. That concludes our resolutions for this evening. And if you guys want to take a minute to, you can stay. By all means, you're free to stay. But I don't expect that. We can move on to quasi-judicial and related public hearings as they go. Do we have none?

It'll take a minute.

Quasi-judicial and related public hearings, we have none. regular public hearings we have none of those either so that can carry us then to item 12 on our agenda which is public requests so if anyone has any thing to be that they wanted to share with the city council please share your name and address and you will have up to three minutes to speak yes ma'am

Martha Parker, 64 Northwest 7th Street. I just had a couple of things. I've been trying to come to the meetings, but it's kind of hard when they're during the day. A little bit about the property tax amendment. I've been trying to dig into the numbers and educate myself and see how our budget has grown over the years to make sure I understand where um the increases in our budget have been going and where they've been expended and where those plans are i know in east boca you know we have a lot of aging infrastructure a lot and i want to make sure that going forward into the future we have the resources available to make the necessary improvements to keep all the neighborhoods in in good order so i want to know you know what are the potential additional fees and maybe bonds that we have to take what would that look like for a typical resident if we need to update um sidewalks in in palm beach farms and we're going to assess the homes only in palm beach farms for those sidewalk upgrades just kind of like thinking through I think it's really important for people to understand how these changes would impact them personally as I've kind of been working through this process I've also was looking at my mom's property tax bill she's a retired school teacher and just trying to help her plan what her future might look like as somebody on a fixed income I'm deeply concerned for our very vulnerable seniors, both those that are renters and those who have long homesteaded properties like my mom. Because of that 3% Save Our Homes assessment cap through this exercise, I realized how much of the city services my mom consumes, how much more than what she's been paying. Her property taxes to the city and county have been heavily subsidized by the non-homesteaded. and commercial properties, so much so that I think this particular demographic is at an extreme risk of ending up net net paying more out of pocket if we move to a more fee based service. These are people that are very, very vulnerable. so i think it's really important that we get an idea of what those fees could potentially look like for things like if she needs an ambulance to come to her house is that a one-off thing and you have to pay five thousand dollars to have them come to your house or is that a regular you're paying like the fire assessment fee so i think we need more information so that we can make really good a good decision on how the gap in the future will be reduced, both through meaningful cost reductions of things. Maybe we have some cost to cut, but I just don't think we have as much as what is going to be lost in the budget. So I think it's really important for everybody to know that. Also, our seniors that are renters, they could potentially be paying twice both because renters are taxpayers just indirectly they're indirectly paying those property taxes so I'm very concerned about that particular demographic so I have some other comments but those are I'm out of time so thank you so much

OK, I do have some cards here. Next up on my list is yes, go ahead.

Miss Drucker. Can I address Miss Parker? I usually don't do that, but there's been emails that she sent me in the past about things related to this. I just kind of want to just put it so a few months ago. I think thank you Miss Parker for those comments. So a couple of things I just want to give an update and I'm not sure if anybody else could talk about property taxes. I was into at the end of the meeting so might as well do it now tomorrow and Leon County. The amendment language is being heard in terms of Amendment 3. So that we're monitoring. I'm tracking that. The council that we use, Weiser Road, even though we're not a part of that, one of their litigators is on the litigating side. So we'll get more traction tomorrow as to what happens with the amendment language because the lawsuit that was filed says it was very biased in one way. So tomorrow we'll know more on the fate of the actual ballot language. So that's the number one thing I wanted to tell you. The second thing I wanted to say is folks have approached me about town halls. So unfortunately, because I'm an elected and because we are a city, we are not allowed to do town halls with city money. And I'm not allowed to tell you how I feel about Amendment 3. What I can tell you is you know my opinion on cutting services. So that kind of gives you a little bit of the background. What I wanted to see is I know that Mr. Service, you presented a few weeks ago during one of our meetings the impact. And maybe if there's a way, this is what other cities are doing is putting up that portion of the meeting online so people can really listen into the impact so that you can do because that's like we put everything public record so it's not really um but i would like to check with legal i know other cities are doing that um i sat in palm beach cities last week with Holly Smith, who did an incredible presentation that's also on the Florida League of Cities website. She came in, she's the president of Florida League of Cities, and we had a robust discussion. So I think that there are tools there where we can help educate the vulnerable, like you said, folks on fixed income, people that don't understand without

violating any of the ethic requirements so i just wanted to to put that out there and we will continue to educate and advocate and just monitor and i'm always free to have a one-on-one thank you thank you councilmember drucker i would inject my own comments only insofar as to say and i'm sure legal will correct me if i'm wrong on this the city can't use city resources to advocate but they can use city resources to educate right but elected officials Thank God. Still retain their First Amendment right to do something so long as they're not using city resources. So you're allowed to have an opinion and to convey that.

You have an opinion, but you're not going to recommend them. You can't use city resources to advocate it. And you can't recommend how people should vote.

I use my First Amendment right. I provide insight as to how I think people should vote all the time. But I don't use city resources to do it. Not me either.

But you could take me offline. But yeah. Thank you, Mayor Thompson. I appreciate that.

Yeah. Next card I have is Richard Warner.

Richard Warner, 1322 Southwest 9th Terrace. Thank you, Martha. And I think people should vote no. Okay? That's out of the way. The point I want to discuss involves the language of the proposed referendum. that's been brought to my attention through a variety of circumstances involving the people who wanted to build the new art school next to the amphitheater. The language that we have in that referendum is flawed. It's flawed because that land that they want to build that museum, that art school on, is not covered by that language because it's owned by the CRA. and i think that the language should be changed immediately to cover not just city land but all cra land and any land that cra or the city might purchase or any assigns of cra or the city or any like body that the city might create that might own lands i think The purpose of John's referendum language was to do that. I hope I'm correct in stating that, was to protect all the land, not just the park and the city lands we were talking about, but all other lands. So... I just want to bring that to everyone's attention. I thank the people who've helped me figure this out, and I think the art school building a 60 million dollar taj mahal next to the amphitheater is a real bad idea because it appeals to and i'm an art person but it appeals to a very narrow group of people i know it was removed from the agenda but as long as i've got the mic in 22 seconds i'd throw that in as well i think it can be used for something that will benefit a great

bigger slice of the city of Boca thank you all again and thank you Martha again thank you Mr Warner next card I have is Bruce Gibson first are you still here does not seem like it Marie marini

Marie Marini, 5700 Camino del Sol. Good evening, Mayor Thomson, council members, senior staff. In February, retirees received a letter notifying us of upcoming changes to subsidized health plans, increased premiums, discontinuance of the HRA benefit, and transition to a high deductible plan. Mr. Zervas, I thank you for reaching out and providing some clarification on the changes, and I look forward to the new letter to retirees. We took great pride in serving the residents of Boca Raton and helping make our city the exceptional place that it is today. We were deeply disappointed to learn that the city is eliminating its contribution toward retiree health insurance premiums. For many retired employees, this benefit is not a luxury, it's a lifeline. Some retirees still have dependence on these plans. When we chose careers in public service, we accepted salaries that were often lower than those available in the private sector because we believed in serving our community and because we trusted the city to honor the commitments made to its employees. Health insurance and retirement has long been an important part of that understanding. Most retirees live on fixed incomes and cannot absorb what could amount to thousands of dollars in additional annual healthcare costs. At a time in life when medical expenses naturally increase, eliminating this contribution places an overwhelming financial burden on those who devoted decades of their lives to serving the city of Boca Raton. I respectfully ask each of you to consider the human impact of this decision. Behind every retiree is a person who answered emergency calls, who maintained our parks and streets, who kept our utilities operating, protected public safety, supported city services, and worked diligently every day to improve the lives of Boca Raton residents. This group of retirees served through the anthrax threat, three backs to back hurricanes, pay freezes, layoffs and COVID. We stayed because we love this city and we made a commitment to its residents. A city's reputation is not measured not only by how it treats its current employees, but also by how it honours those who have already given their careers in service. I urge you to explore alternatives that preserve retiree healthcare support for those who have already fulfilled their commitment to the city. If the current 143 retirees on healthcare subsidy were grandfathered in, within five years, 71 of them will transition to Medicare, reducing the city's financial commitment by 50%. Please remember that today's employees are watching how retirees are treated. Decisions made now will influence employee morale, recruitment, retention, and trust in the city's promises for years to come. Thank you for your time, your consideration, and your service to the city. I sincerely hope you will reconsider and protect the retirees who helped build the city of Boca Raton into the community that it is today. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Marini. Next card I have is, and if I say the name wrong, I apologize in advance, Avi Yesovic.

Good evening, distinguished members of the Council, Mr. Mayor. My name is Avi Yeserwich. I'm the VP of Operations for the Waterston Resort and Marina. And I'm coming to you today with what is truly a county issue, but which we need the city's support. And I want to thank the members of the Council who responded to my inquiry about the highly subpar response to the sarcasm or the seaweed situation on our community beaches. i'm also a resident of the boca raton area and i think that this issue impacts not only the business community but every single resident in this room in which the community and the county did not do an exceptional job making sure that the beaches were tended to over the past several weeks with a sarcasm situation which was atrocious this year impacted every ounce of the area of the community, certainly in the Boca Inlet area. And I would invite any member of this council to come see and experience that in the Boca Inlet community at the Waterstone Resort and Marina. The stench is unbearable. And as you walk down the beaches and you see the pictures and social media taken of black beaches and dead seaweed throughout every corner of the beach, it's just not a proper representation of the wonderful book community that we have. And again, while we understand that this might be a county issue, it affects the tax revenue, the perception of Boca Raton as a city and the experience of every resident in our community that expects to have proper beaches clean so we can experience them both as guests and as residents and tourists alike. and i would ask you on behalf of the business community to please work with our county to make sure that we have appropriate understanding and resolution for what we can for this year to address this issue but also for future years because we know the environmental impact is only getting worse and you can see that as you see the accumulation of the sargassum on our city beaches thank you so much i appreciate your time thank you sir next card i have is theresa dwyer

Teresa Dwyer, 1178 Southwest 3rd Street, Boca Raton. Good evening. I understand that city retirees have been notified that those in the city employee health insurance plan will have substantial changes made to their plan, which will probably result in much higher costs for them. I am a retired city employee and I've served for 22 years as a city safety officer. i am not currently in the city retiree plan but i am here in support of those employees who are and for future retirees whose hope is to be able to be a member of such a plan as Quite often city employees serve at a lower salary than they know they could get in the private sector. But quite often they do that because they wish to serve their community and also they have sometimes the promise of retirement benefits that might not be available to people in the private sector. Although city retiree access to the city employee health insurance plan is not in a written contract, for many years it has been something that has been made available to employees. Employees carefully save and plan for their retirement and calculate into their retirement budget access to and the cost of insurance, health insurance. I can tell you from my own personal experience that my husband and I saved and planned for our retirement, and then I was on his City of Deerfield Beach retiree health insurance plan. A little ways into our retirement, the City of Deerfield Beach substantially changed their retiree insurance plan, which led to extremely high costs for us, which had a serious impact on our retirement budget. I ask you as both the city resident as a retired city employee to please give serious consideration to maintaining for both current retirees and future retirees access to reasonably priced health insurance. I thank you for your time.

Thank you, Ms. Dwyer. This is the second comment I think we've heard on the retired employees insurance. I think Mr. Zervas, at the conclusion of public comment today, can give a little bit of background on the city's approach here. Next card I have is Raquel Paul. Ms. Paul? No? Michael Schneider.

my name my name is michael schneider 5500 northwest second avenue boca raton there was a lady doctor here yesterday that talked about a vision all right and my vision would be for the golf for the golf the community center the golf would give us the green space i foresee like a community center with an exercise room a meeting room weddings whatever all right i think it would be important and we would we would be paying a lot of the presidents that have recommended that a fee the maintenance fee should be charged in order to maintain let's say a community center and even the golf course what happened was we had a community center in a sense with the hotel but unfortunately it wasn't kept up by the developer and it became a drug then so i foresee there would be a very good way to in order to pay for it and make it better i have in the packets that i left you yesterday you know my reasons for the incompatibility of the skate park and the boys and girls club Ms. Sippel, you had a thing with your children wanting the skate park. I have no problem with that. Let them have it. Let them enjoy the activities you want that because you feel it's a good activity for your children. Fine with me, all right? The question is where to put it. i think the spanish river park would be the best thing and to do it it would be a large area it would be a good place to put it be easier to get to a lot of parking you wouldn't have trouble with the traffic on northwest second avenue And the Boys and Girls Club, that should be another place too in order to have it. And I think by doing it, it would be the skate park people would have there. I don't think they seem to mind where they put it. I think just to have it. And to me, the Spanish River Park would be the best place to put it. And the Boys and Girls Club, good organization. and that to put it in the middle of a block and with the with the buses and the traffic it would be better to put it in spanish river park because it's better it's it's larger area but the buses would have no trouble going in and out and a parent would have no trouble going in and out to drop off their children And my next vision is, please, put the heat up in this building. Everybody's cold here. I mean, they're dying here. I mean, people are snorkeling. Please, put the heat up. I understand it's programmed, the air conditioner and everything else. Thank you, Mr. Schneider. Please do that. Thank you. Well, it has the benefit of keeping people awake for the most part. I don't know. It makes people fall asleep. Thank you, sir.

The next card I have is Robert Duquette.

Hello council members and the residents. Robert Ducate, One Town Center Road. Up on the monitor there is the Pompano Beach Skate Park, which was opened last week to much fanfare on the social media. This skate park is in the middle of a major park in Pompano Beach, between tennis courts, ball fields, and the high school there. That location could be very easily replicated here in Boca Raton at Spanish River Park or potentially as we discussed previously at Memorial Park. But one of the things that should be kept in mind is that for parents with multiple children, you might have one child interested in skate parking, but you also might have a child interested in tennis, softball, or other activities. Instead of having the parents run around the city, dropping one kid off and watching the other kid do their recreational activity, or you might have more than two children doing this, this is much more reasonable, much more traffic friendly, being less traffic intensive for one place to go. I know, well, I have talked to many of the skateboarders, like I mentioned before. They would like to have a new skateboard park. The skate park in Pompano Beach cost $1.9 million, I believe, according to press reports. It was 20,000 square feet. Look in the media, and the kids there were using that during the opening weekend, the opening period. They were really ecstatic. We're talking about over twice that size and over twice that cost. for what's being proposed by the Beecher Park District, which is just not suitable, not compatible in any residential area in the city. Well, most skateboarders are very friendly and respectful of everybody's property. If you look on YouTube or TikTok, you will see videos posted daily, if not hourly, of people doing tricks down stairwells. on handrails, on public and private buildings. You also go to FAU and you can see the cleats along the concrete walls to keep the skateboarders off there. So again, that type of property damage is certainly something that we would be concerned about in the Boca Tica area. And lastly, I want to also mention the Northwest 2nd Avenue and Jeffery Street proposal for crossing the FEC railroad tracks. $20 million, $15 million, and stopping the ability for children to go to school on Northwest 28th Street just does not make any sense. From a public safety standpoint, for both the children riding their bicycles to school to bisecting a 70 acre park really makes no sense. As I pointed out before, that report that was given to the city or sent to the city to the FDOT did not indicate any of this information about the park. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. DuCate. Anyone else for public comment? Mr. Liebelson.

Mike Labelson, 398 Northeast Third Court. I was just gonna speak regarding the presentation for the budget amendments, but first I just wanna set the record straight. I'm a fiscal conservative. Property tax collections in the city of Boca Raton have gone up by 70% in the last five years. Population has gone up by 3%. This is why the state is saying that there needs to be property tax reform because we, as a city government, have not cut millage rates to offset the fact that appraised values have gone up so much. Now, I seem to recall that the impact from the amendment, if it passes, is a net loss of 16 million dollars in property tax revenues that's about five and a half percent of our general fund it's a just one or two percent of our total expenditures so it's not something that can't be handled by judiciously looking at what our costs are my concern is that we passed a budget not too long ago in last september we had one budget amendment i'm not quite sure how much that was for but we have another budget amendment coming up budget amendment two which is eight million dollars it's literally half the impact of the loss in property tax revenues i think that's going to be introduced tonight it's going to be voted on perhaps next next hearing but within that eight million dollars is five million dollars which is a 25 increase in the city's health insurance premiums that they're doing through self-insuring. So we need to take a look at our costs. There's no reason we can't handle $16 million of lost revenue, which is a few percent for us. I realize in other parts of Florida, it's much bigger. It's not a big issue for us. And just in closing, when we present these budget amendments, I think it's really important to say, here's budget amendment two, Here was budget amendment one and here was our original budget. So people can see how much we're now spending beyond the original budget, which was just approved just a few months ago. And I'm hoping that this council is really carefully looking at our expenditures and in particularly how we're changing budgets. To me, budget sank or sank. You pass a budget and you live within your budget. know in the corporate world they have something called a forecast if something's unanticipated you create a forecasted number but you still have your original budget you compare against so i just asked for the public's purpose let's see what our original budget is whenever we look at these budget amendments thank you thank you anyone else for public comment mr caicedo

Good evening again. Juan Caicedo, 5560 Northeast 7th Avenue. And just for those of you who don't know me, I've been a resident of the city for 38 years. I'm an architect and I have a practice of architecture here in the city. And since I sold my practice, I've been dedicating my life to sketching places of this city that are significant. And I see that we miss a lot of opportunities with the small interventions in streets, sidewalks, anything that has to do with the Polar Realm, where we could actually make significant um improvements in terms of the beauty of the city we just go to the basic standards of engineering to design what could be a wonderful place so i'm just here to encourage you to look at every time you have a opportunity to approve a sidewalk or a street improvement to look at it from a static perspective look at it from the design perspective in terms of aesthetics And I actually have met with the staff many times. I've had sketches of all over the city. Somebody mentioned that they reside in Hidden Valley. I actually have sketches of Hidden Valley, the golf course, and the connection of that potential connection of Jeffrey Street. If it happens, it needs to be studied so that it becomes a safety issue as well as an aesthetic place, a beautiful place making opportunity there. So I'm here just to offer my hands if you need them. If you want to see my sketches, I'm more than happy to share them with the city. and Andy knows actually I've let him use some of my sketches in the downtown area and I'm here to whatever I can help with.

Thank you, Sir. I believe I saw Mr. Bell getting ready to stand up before. Go on ahead.

Martin Bell, 761 Southwest 3rd Street. It's way past my bedtime, so hopefully I don't forget what I wanted to say. I wanted to talk about the police station. And the data does support two police stations. I'm going to talk within the context of the Spanish River complex gets built. And then you've identified you've done a better job this time around identifying that there's a need for downtown station previously you were referring to that as a substation and it the it was not budgeted as part of the expansion expansion of the police facilities and Anyway, so you can see the data there supports that from a square miles perspective population. Right now we're at 31.6 square miles coverage out of one police station. If we go to two, that's 16 miles and that's still much higher than Delray Beach Point and Lake Worth, which all have two police stations. And that brings me to We're talking about the base building, using that as a police station downtown. I don't think that makes any sense because we have this big, beautiful building right here. We're talking about miser architecture all day today. This building, we can do all kinds of stuff with that. and i don't think time is of the essence because 90 the bulk of the new police facilities needs are going to be covered in spanish river so we can come back we can move out of this one and then we can come back and populate it with the uh with the the other use of it the cra and what have you The other thing too, so we can be a little bit patient. We can use this building. If you really feel like there's a need for a local presence, we can use the base building temporarily, but we're better off using that base building as a pocket park, a two acre pocket park. So today we talked about connectivity that would help with connectivity. We heard about hard edges that would take the hard edge off. The proposal for the base building using that for a police station has like half half a green space on that site. Like half pregnant, let's just take the whole green space because that's the last piece of land in the downtown that we can claim as a green space and we should just grab it. And that's a nice little segue from the downtown into Memorial Park. It can be dog friendly that will attract people. So I think we should just grab it and not look back. Also with the building with the police station. it might be more than we need for a downtown station but we can multi-purpose it we can use it for uh you know a downtown city hall branch office or maybe lease out part of it to a post office we're going to need a post office and we need to take back some green space that we gave away and all these silly variances over the last 5 10 15 years thank you thank you mr bill anyone else for public comment go ahead

good evening my name is alexandra abelo i'm freezing here tonight uh next time i gotta be my poncho anyhow um just please oh yeah this is four nine i'm sorry four nine eight southwest twelve terrace boca raton i just have uh three questions one question for mr sohaini about the homelessness um I don't know what has been done at all. Have you sat down with the NGOs already to fix the problem of these people who come in buses or little vans and left them here? And then the churches also are the ones who are giving them food. So maybe you can explain to us if you have sat down with NGOs so they can take care of them at this point, because I don't think it's the problem of Boca Raton. is the other cities' problems. So that's one of the things. The second question is for Mr. Mayor. These three consulting firms, especially the first one now that you guys kind of chose the chamber, did they charge us already for this consulting? There is a consulting fee for these services that they did today? or not. And in the case that there is a consulting fee already allocated, is this going to be embedded in the project price, in the whole pricing of the whole project, in the case that this shows? Well, you guys showed us already that one. And the last question is for the financier of Boca Raton. Which company is the audit company? I guess we need a dodge in this Boca Raton because Palm Beach County has been considered a number one county in the whole country with the fraud and abuse. Basically, Palm Beach County, it is amazing. Out of the billion dollars that they get, it is a waste of that. It is incredible. So that's the question for you too.

Thank you, Ms. Avello. Anyone else for public comment? Last call. Public comment. Very good. I think I had promised before that we would have a discussion from our city's CFO, not financier, but CFO, regarding the retired employees and their health benefits. Mr. Zervas, could you please?

sure mr mayor if you'd allow me i'd like to address a few of the comments that were made that were finance oriented and i'd like to go in reverse order because it's a little easier that way so the last question was asked about who the city's audit firm is the city's audit firm is cbiz c-b-i-z so they're a large public audit firm the city is under contract with them they've and they've audited the city for the last several years The second comment I'd like to address, Mr. Liebelson's comment. Mr. Liebelson, thank you for the input as far as seeing the impact of multiple budget amendments. I totally understand. I appreciate that. We'll consider that future. The the budget amendment, which we will talk about in extended at the next meeting when it's actually up for discussion and adoption. If you look at that supporting documentation, the bulk of that is related to compensation adjustments that were approved as part of a larger pay and compensation plan that was approved after the budget was adopted. But we it was it was the financial impact was not known and determined until we were able to negotiate that agreement with SEIU, which is on today's agenda. So the bulk of that, and that's why it wasn't included in the initial budget, even though we were aware that it was coming, we didn't know the dollar amounts. Regarding the health care adjustment, yes, there's a $5 million increase in health care costs. There's actually a $2 million offset to that for subrogation or stop loss recovery. So it's a net $3 million increase this year. It's just experiencing higher claims. And again, we'll get into more of the details, I think, at the next meeting. But those are really the two big things. You actually see a project's been canceled and $3 million is being returned to the general fund or the CIP fund for a future project because we were able to cancel the project. So again, we'll address that in more detail at the next meeting. now retiree health care miss marini i appreciate the exchange that we had over email it helped me understand the confusion and where we fell short in the letter that went out in february because there were some inaccuracies in that letter we have a letter drafted now that's going to to correct that and actually was informed by some of our dialogue to help clarify some of the questions that are out there for retirees on what these changes are so i appreciate the input and that'll be forthcoming i was kind of waiting for this meeting and then we were going to to release that shortly I do want to talk about a couple points on retiree health care. Yes, there's some changes that are being implemented, but the policy of the city has not changed. The city has long held to allowing retirees to be on the city's health care plan under the same rate structure that city employees enjoy. So the city retirees have always been able to choose from any available health care plan that the city offers to employees and they're costed at the same rate. That is not only city policy, that is also state law. So that can't be taken away. That's actually in statute. And that's what we do. The city had, and the city works hard every year to try to offer a suite of health care options that can meet the needs of our employees and retirees both. As far as a direct subsidy for retiree health care, that didn't start until 2022. Prior to 2022, retirees were paying the full premium cost for their health care options. Subsidized health care for retirees was never a benefit offered by the city. It's never been explicitly offered. It started to occur in 22. I don't know why we identified it in 24. We developed a strategy to transition back to the city policy in 25, and that was implemented with the letter in 26. We tried to do that thoughtfully and over a couple years, which is why there's one change with regards to the premium, January 1st of 27, and then a subsequent change with the HRA in 28. But that doesn't change that the city's long-time practice, really, and policy was to not subsidize retiree health care. And I'm going to read a sentence here from the city's annual financial report from 2010. The same language exists in all subsequent annual financial reports, as well as other documentation by the city. And it reads The city does not directly make contributions to the plan on behalf of retirees. Retirees and their beneficiaries pay the same group rates as our charge to the city for active employees by its healthcare provider. And that reflects the city's law and standing policy on this issue. So, you know, I apologize for the confusion in the letter. We're certainly working to make that correction as soon as possible. And we're working diligently on plans to make sure that we offer affordable coverage to all of our employees and retirees. We do that every year. And every year we're looking at ways to improve those offerings. And that's not going to go away. There was a reference by another speaker about changes made to the plans themselves. That is not occurring. There are no changes being made to the plans themselves. It is simply the way the city's direct subsidy that's being changed. And again, being corrected back to what it was prior to 22. so i'd i'd be happy to talk with you more you you have my contact information be happy to engage more on this subject if you like or i'm happy to answer any questions that the council has thank you thank you mr service are there any questions

Okay. That I think will conclude our time dedicated to public requests. We will turn now to introduction of ordinances. Item 13A, we remove from our agenda so we can turn to item 13B, ordinance number 5792. Mr. Daley, could you please read the title?

5792 an ordinance of the city of boca raton amending chapter 5 animals article 1 code of ordinances by creating section 5-4 feeding of certain nuisance animals prohibited to prohibit the feeding of iguanas rats mice or pigeons in a quantity or manner reasonably likely to attract or sustain their presence or congregation amending chapter 9 miscellaneous offenses article 4 section 9-60 supplemental code enforcement procedures code of ordinances to authorize the enforcement of such prohibition through the issuance of direct citations providing severability providing for repealer providing for codification providing an effective date thank you mr daly i will introduce that ordinance ordinance and that leads us to ordinance number 5793 could you please read the title of that ordinance Ordinance 5793, an ordinance of the City of Boca Raton amending the fiscal year 2025 through 2026 budget through the second budget amendment, providing for severability, providing for repealer, providing an effective date.

Thank you, Mr. Daly. Who will introduce this ordinance?

I will introduce ordinance 5793.

Very good. Thank you, Ms. Drucker. That concludes our introduction of ordinances. We can turn them to city manager recommendations and reports. I think we have a couple of items here on our agenda, so I'll turn it over to our city manager, Mr. Sohaney.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Mr. Zervas, he's going to address the millage notification as well as the fire services assessment fee, and then I'll follow up with the remainder of my report.

Very good. Take it away, Mr. Zervas. Thank you, Mayor and Councilmembers. In your packet today is a memo from the City Manager regarding the proposed millage rate. This is in line with the budget workshop that was presented which reflected the same operating millage rate as was in effect in the prior year. That is a proposed operating millage rate of 3.6476 per $1,000 and a debt service millage rate slightly lower than the prior year at 0.0163 for a total millage rate of 3.6639. The rollback rate this year would be 3.4941. So this reflects a 4.39% increase over the rollback rate. This is not an item that's up for action today. It's simply information for the council members because this will be transmitted to the county to be included in the trim notice. that doesn't obligate this millage rate to be imposed what it does is say that we can't impose a millage rate higher than this amount so when we come back to you in September with a proposed budget for adoption and there will be an opportunity to approve the millage rate at that time it simply can't exceed the number that I just quoted to you today that will be included in the millage rate

Thank you, Mr. Zervas. I believe that concludes item 14A. Item 14B is the fire services assessment fee, and I believe you said, Mr. Svaney, that Mr. Zervas would do that presentation as well. Go ahead.

Similarly, this item is being brought to you in advance of being transmitted to the county because it will be included in the trim notice as well. So this is the non-advalorum assessment for fire fee and there are some changes being made this year in that fee. This is in line again with the proposed budget that was brought forth to you and so I'm going to walk through a PowerPoint here, but the actual report itself has been transmitted to the council and made available to the public in advance of the meeting. So for the 2026, 2027 fire assessment, we look at the total FY26 revised the budget at 99.8 million dollars of that 53.7 million of that or 53.8 percent is accessible and we'll talk a little bit in a minute about that that what's what's accessible and that's what's not accessible The proposed fire services assessment net of exempt properties is $18.2 million for the upcoming fiscal year, and that's at a proposed assessment of the maximum allowable cost of 33.9%. And that represents about 18.2% of the total fire budget for the upcoming fiscal year. so there are two parts to setting an assessment legally they must pass these two tests ones there must be a specific property benefit so this has been long upheld in the courts so this has to do with fire services that are specifically benefiting properties by protecting them against fire reducing their insurance costs and and those types of direct benefits to the property other life-saving activities that THE FIRE RESCUE OPERATION DOES OR THE ADMINISTRATIVE COSTS, THOSE KINDS OF THINGS ARE NOT DIRECTLY BENEFITING THE PROPERTY. SO WE GO THROUGH AN APPORTIONMENT OF OUR COSTS AND ALLOCATE THOSE ACCORDINGLY ON WHAT BENEFITS THE PROPERTY AND WHAT DOES NOT. AND THEN SECONDLY, THOSE COSTS MUST BE FAIRLY APPORTIONED. So we can't just be arbitrary in how we assign costs. We'll look at it in just a second, but we actually have to look at the calls for service by different property types and allocate costs according to the actual calls for service, and then allocate those at a property level that makes sense according to the different types of properties. so again allocations for each property category are based on fire service calls for volume so we look at the number of calls residential properties are attributed to residential properties say versus commercial properties exempt and vacant properties are not assessed they can it can be assessed we have had a long practice of not assessing exempt properties for non-advalorum fire assessments and that is continuing in this proposal And then the fire assessment fee for each category is a result of the percentage of calls attributed to that category, the number of units in that total category, and that portion of the fire department budget that's assessable. So looking at the different categories, you can see we have commercial, residential, warehouse, industrial, and then you can see the exempt category, which is removed on the bottom. You can see the calls for service, the counts and the percentages there. That is how we allocate the total assessable costs. And then we have a total number of units. and then that gives us a rate for each type of category and you can see the category assessment as far as how much is being collected from each category the rate you will see in the residential category is 224 dollars per dwelling unit so if you have a duplex that would be two times that as an example or a multi-family would be the number of residential units at that rate single family residential is the 224 number for commercial and warehouse we have different tranches based on structure size and so that's why it says varies and and we'll take a look at those in just a minute so you can see the total assessments 20 million but when we take out the exempt and governmental properties uh that puts us down at 18.2 million dollars net that compares i think i That's about a $4 million increase over the prior year assessment. So this this focus, this slide here focuses on the total allocation for for commercial and warehouse industrial. So we know the residential rates $224, but this is a comparison or this is the commercial rate. And you can see the different rates based on the square footage of the of the structure. So this is a per structure assessment. So if you have a commercial or warehouse property with multiple structures, then they would each be assessed independently, just as if they were on separate parcels. In prior years, the rate had not been implemented that way, and there was only one charge for one structure. That really wasn't implemented the way it was intended. It was intended to be based on the number of each individual structure because irrespective of property lines, it's the structure that's being protected and it shouldn't matter if there's a property line dividing two structures or not. But this gives you a view of what the gross assessment is for both warehouse and commercial. So overall, when we looked at the fair apportionment, what we saw this year versus the last time we updated this report was a shift in calls for service away from commercial properties and to residential properties. So consequently, what we see is an actual reduction in the rates for our commercial tranches here. So you can see, for example, under the commercial 3,500 square foot or less than 3,500 square foot tranche, that's actually a reduction in the rate from $464 to $406.38. So a reduction of $57.62. So you can see in every case, we see a reduction in the rate for our commercial and our warehouse industrial properties and that is simply having to follow the fair apportionment rules in how we apportion the fire costs conversely the residential per dwelling unit sees an increase of 69 dollars going from 155 dollars to 224 dollars So that residential rate, again, will increase due to an increase in fire services. So if you recall, really this $4 million net increase in the fire fee is funding the additional staffing at Station 8, the rescue unit at Station 8, and it's also funding a second EMS division within the fire department. and so that increase in service level is is really what's driving that residential rate increase as far as the the commercial rates again those are actually reducing so we see 90 percent of commercial and 96 percent of the warehouse industrial properties so individual property control numbers pcns will actually see a decrease so all of our kind of smaller businesses will definitely see a decrease 90 to 96 percent of the total 10% of commercial and 4% of warehouses will see a decrease in their rates, but an actual increase in their total assessment. And that's because these are properties with multi structures. So in prior years they were only getting charged for one structure, but we're implementing now multiple structures so that. smaller portion the 10 and 4 will actually see an increase these are properties again with multiple structures on their properties and so they would be charged the same way as if those were separate parcels so if you had one property with two warehouses on it it'll be charged the same way that if you had two parcels with one warehouse on each one exempt properties remain exempt This is just a snapshot of the history of our fire assessment on the residential properties, and you can see the rate was held at 80, 85 for quite a while, and then 145, 155 for quite a while, and now we're at the 224 level. um now that compares to our neighboring cities on this graph so west palm beach and boynton are lower than the 224 and you can see the rest of those coral springs pompano hollywood deerfield and fort lauderdale are all higher so just to give you an idea of how this puts us in the market relative to other cities So that concludes my presentation. I'm here to answer any questions, but also in the back of the room waiting patiently is the consultant that prepared the actual report that developed these fees. And he's here also to answer any questions that you may have. Thank you. Again, there's no action needed to be taken here. The final assessment will be approved in September when we bring it forth, just like the military.

great thank you mr service any questions for staff i would just on this last slide if you can go back one to the comparison to other communities uh not necessarily germane to the discussion but somewhat germane west palm and boynton beach do you recall mr service where they land in relative to us in terms of their millage rate i'm looking don't worry i know i'm i'm looking at the omb team in the back it's okay no it was more rhetorical than anything because west palm is the millage rate is in the eights yeah in boynton beach the millage rate is in the sixes or sevens so they're charging significantly more in terms of millage

Yes, I know they're higher. I don't know the actual rates. It sounds like you might, but that's in line with my understanding on those issues as well. It's really six of one, half a dozen of another. You can put those costs into the operating millage rate and increase the millage rate, or you can do it on the fire fee. IT'S ALL IT'S ALL GENERAL FUND REVENUE HERE THERE'S A MORE DIRECT RELATIONSHIP OF WHERE THE MONEY'S GOING SO THIS MONEY HAS TO GO TO PAY FOR FIRE SERVICES IT CAN'T BE USED FOR ANY OTHER PURPOSE SO THERE'S A LITTLE MORE NEXUS THERE UNDERSTOOD OKAY I BELIEVE THAT CONCLUDES THE TWO ITEMS LISTED UNDER THE CITY MANAGER'S REPORT BUT I BELIEVE YOU DO HAVE MORE OF A REPORT MR SOHANI

yeah thank you mayor i just want to briefly highlight a few accomplishments first of all you know please join me in welcoming chief jared phelps following this week's swearing-in ceremony on thursday i also really want to thank our acting chief seth dubinsky our whole command staff and really every member of the police department that's been so outstanding in this transition they've done a lot of work the transition of the park rangers into the police department is now complete i also want to talk about let's talk boca we're going to do that on august 19th again we did that about three months ago that's at 6 p.m august 19th at spanish river library we're going to focus on public safety the operational aspect of that also for fire rescue our whole blood program was recently used by our advanced ems unit uh during a serious traffic accident highlighting really uh the advanced life-saving care of our fire rescue personnel so i get my hats off to them uh the transition of ocean rescue to our fire services is complete uh yesterday i want to thank council they approved staff's recommendations related to our homelessness public space management and quality of life initiative uh the staff's now working on moving into implementation establishing a community quality life and work group as well as the community resource coordinator uh the sargassum piece that came up uh mr ave yesovich i think he's gone but i did get his email on friday staff took a look at it we did see the letter that he sent to commissioner woodward and the Waterstone Resort and Marina as most of us know is toward the south end of the city and that's at the mouth of Boca Inlet and that's closest to the south inlet park there and of course that's owned and operated by Palm Beach County so and then to my knowledge I don't think the county has a daily cleanup process for that but staff's going to look at that and we're going to coordinate with the county and just make sure we have the right answer uh and make sure that we've got the right area identified uh to address those needs and then a bigger picture you know what we do as a city is we we clear sargassum from our guarded beaches uh and then the the beaches that are in front of condo associations that's the responsibility of the homeowners association so that's the big picture there The other thing I also wanted to mention, great job by our CFO and really all of our employees that we got that agreement with SEIU done. My hat's off to Human Resources and Finance, and that was a big lift. It took a long time, Jim, and I really appreciate the whole team's effort. It was the right thing to get done here. also i want to mention effective august 1st we are transitioning our communications and marketing division to public affairs division on august 1st and then transportation we talked a little bit about jeffrey street extension and the closure of northwest 28th street railroad crossing and of course that extension has been part of the city's long-term plan for quite some some time and there was a lot of extensive traffic studies done that determined the northwest 28th street crossing carries the lowest amount of traffic so that's moving in the right direction design work continues there and we anticipate construction to begin in 2027 following a council approval and permitting there And then the last thing I wanted to mention is we've got Boca Raton day with Miami Marlins on Sunday August 23rd And I hear the mayor is going to throw the first pitch probably definitely Please please join us for discounted tickets. They're also hurricane season is well underway. Please get prepared and then I also encourage everybody to sign up for alert Boca and And again, I just want to say thanks to the whole city staff that's put a lot of work together this month. And thanks, Mayor. And that concludes my report. Thank you, Mr. Sohaney. Mr. Fernandez, City Attorney Report.

I don't have one, but I think Mr. Kaler might, and he's on the phone.

All right. Mr. Kaler, take it away if you can hear us.

I do. Mr. Mayor, members of the council, you can hear me. I look like you can. I will plan to send the council a writing on the Amendment 3 discussion that was had and on the law with regard to A ballot advocacy versus factual information. There is a Florida statute on point, but I do want to say absolutely the Council members can express their views on Amendment 3 during the public Council meeting and say whether you oppose or support it. You can even tell residents how you believe they should vote. You don't have to remain neutral or silent. The law is about prohibiting the city from spending public money on communications that will be decided by the voters. But as Mayor mentioned, the law does separately protect the right of individual elected officials to express their own opinions on the matter. So again, I plan to a little bit more in writing to make sure you all have the guidance that you need because you deserve that guidance but certainly the holding or the recording of the broadcasting of this meeting doesn't prevent council members from expressing their opinions and And moreover, the law does contain a critical carve out that allows the city to post factual information, distribute factual printed materials, hold public forums, answer questions, and even post the prior staff presentation or relevant meeting segments online. But again, as far as expressing your views as council members, that is something that you are expressly allowed to do. as you have a First Amendment right to do so. And I look forward to sending you all that, a little more clarification on the law, so that you can feel comfortable between now and November, again, monitoring the litigation Councilmember Drucker mentioned, which I believe is being heard, if not tomorrow, it's eminent being heard by a circuit court on that ballot question. So I will provide an update to the council on that as well. And that was it.

Thank you, Mr. Kaler, for that clarification. Does that conclude your report? Okay, very good. Let's do council member reports. I'll start on my left, Mr. Perlman. No report. Thank you, Ms. Sibyl.

No report.

Thank you. Ms. Grau, let's go around the horn.

No report.

Ms. Drucker.

No report.

Likewise, I have no report. So if there's no other business to come before your Boca Raton City Council, we will conclude our meeting at 1058 in the p.m.