City Commission - Regular Meeting

agenda. Move to approve the agenda as published. Second motion in a second. All in favor? I I

motion passes 50. Um let's see. Any public comments about items that are not on the agenda? All right, we've got Cole. Good evening. Nicole Oliver with Lounge Law representing EKS Sooner Development, the owner of the property at the entrance of the gateway. Um, I was asked to come tonight to speak briefly on the first reading of the proposed impact fees that were passed at the prior meeting. We were not aware that that was in place and or was being considered and it has tremendous impact on the proposed project. just for the apartments that were being proposed. Staff let us know today it's approximately $475,000 worth of additional impact fees being proposed on top of the approximately $1.9 million that would already be being imposed under the the county's guidelines. That's sufficient that the developer who has that parcel under contract called today and is talking about backing out. We've been in this process for multiple years. It was, I believe, November of 2023 when the development agreement was approved by the city. We've submitted to the St. John's Water Management District, the Army Corps of Engineer, the city of Cocoa Beach, the city of Coco, the um couple other agencies, FDOT, amongst others as we work through the permitting process. The site plan is currently in front of the city for approval, but until all of that is done, we can't get our building permits to go vertical. So the threat of impact fee increase of this size threatens this entire project and they may back out and that may be the point of it. I don't know. That's for the policy um you know people to decide. Second, I would stress that I view the legality of it as questionable given your own draft report here that says that u expenses due to normal renewal and replacement of a facility

should be borne by all users of the facility or municipality, not an impact fee. The vast majority of the impact fees that are in this report are related to building this facility, which was replacement of a city hall that was built in, I believe, 1961. So, a 60-year-old building being replaced. I don't know how you call that anything other than a replacement of an existing facility, similar to the fire station. I believe this fire station was the 1951 building that they were operating out of. And then there's the other option, which is Senate Bill 180, which is currently still in effect. The Senate passed a provision that would amend it. The House has no companion bill, so the likelihood of one coming through in the next four or five days of the state legislation is pretty uh limited. I would say that bill does not allow cities to pass any more burdensome or um restrictive land development regulations. This is a land development regulation. From our perspective, charging $475,000 of new impact fees for a portion of the project. This does not count the proposed restaurant impact fees that would also be increased is to me considered burdensome. But that's uh my time. Thank you all.

Thank you. Um, I'm going to I'm [clears throat] going to bring this up under uh commissioner comments later to to to look into this a little bit further and maybe ask Becky some questions, but any other uh public comments? All right. Uh, staff reports. Okay. Good evening, Mayor and Commission. Uh, as announced on Tuesday night, Bsentennial Park Boat Ramp is now open for launching activities only. The restrooms are still um being worked on, so they're not open at this time. Uh the city has given official notice to waste management that we will be soliciting a competitive bid process upcoming. The dune crossover replacements at Flaggler and 7th Street South are now underway. We're currently waiting to hear back from the National Park Service for the D language on the Ocean Beach property. And uh we would just like to take a minute to recognize the passing of James Doyle, the first uh city manager of the city as well.

Thank you. Uh real real quick, um I had a question from from a resident. are is the the the bsentennial or s um boat ramp. Are they going to have the uh an outdoor shower still for for the I thought No. Okay. Um and is there a reason other than maybe you're afraid uh people will camp there or something? Uh former city manager Hudson advised us to eliminate the outdoor shower. Um, we we all agreed that we we wanted it, I think, didn't we? As a commission.

We'd have to go back to the record and check. It wasn't a game changer for me. It I mean, yeah, it's a it's a it's a water park sports [clears throat] sports park as well. In my opinion, I think it's it's pretty important for those guys to be able to to rinse off. But yeah, I think that's a simple fix. If if that's there's drainage. You got to put in drainage and you know you don't have a way a good way to shut the water off when the park closes and turn them back on every morning without sending somebody there. I mean Lori Wilson figed other parks and we [clears throat] have them we have one right over here.

I know. But have you ever been there when they left the water on? Well uh did you want to say something? Yeah, we can certainly look into that and get back with the commission on the cost and all that stuff. Yep, we'll take care of it. Thank you. Appreciate that, guys. All right. Um, let's see. City attorney, any reports or announcements? Nothing tonight. City commission, any reports or announcements? Yeah, I'll just say a few comments about the town hall. It was encouraging to see residents engaged, but I think you did a great job hitting the highlights and articulating some of the challenges and uh some of the good staff. So, I love seeing the engagement. So it was encouraging. [clears throat and cough]

Yeah, I wasn't able to be here in person to the last meeting, but I did talk on the subject that the speaker, Mr. Cole, um, brought up with respect to the proposed additional impact fees. And I asked that, you know, look into the projects that had current development agreements and were already you know basically had a project plan, a business model and uh were moving forward with their projects. Uh the only three of them there were was the the uh surf which is now built uh the pier who never signed their development agreement. So that basically null and void and their plans have changed. So the only other one that there is is the property at the 520 u interfaces to the city. And I asked at that meeting via a phone in that that property be exempt. And one of the reasons is it's going to be uh solely apartment buildings. So if homestead exemption goes through, we get the full property tax revenue from that facility, which is going to equate to, you know, in not very many years way over the $475,000 of increase that would be in burden on them. And um I I am going to state again when that comes up in front of this commission that it be property be exempt. It's the only one that uh currently has development agreement and has already invested a lot of money into the project and uh it'll be the most be in all apartments. It'll be basically

the most affordable housing in the city of Cocoa Beach and it'll probably be a trickle down effect where people come there, live there for a while, save some money up and decide they like Cocoa Beach and want to buy a house here. So, I think it the whole project's a win-win for the city and uh I'm going to make that uh follow up on that when it comes up on the agenda at one of our follow-on meetings. Okay. Thank you. Anybody else?

Yeah. Um I um at further review on that, I may reconsider my vote um on that particular issue um call. So, um we'll uh we'll discuss that, you know, at that meeting. Um but as far as my uh um comment tonight, we've got 12 wrestlers from Cocoa Beach at state at state championship uh today [clears throat and cough] and uh we're rooting on I haven't heard any results. I don't know what's what they've done today is the uh you know that would be their first matches. Um but um I'm very excited about the Cocoa Beach with our soccer team and wrestling team and our baseball team is going to be fantastic as well. So, um, lots of good lots of good stuff coming from Cocoa Beach High School, not just academics we've talked before. So,

very cool. Yep. Okay. And Karen, can you get it to put up a live feed of the wrestling? If you I mean, you can put this up if you want or you don't have it, doesn't matter. But yeah, be more interesting than

Yeah, I can cast it up there. I uh again because me and him both were not here and also just for you guys that are sitting in in the audience um uh we we do not get to talk outside of this this commission meeting. So uh next next uh meeting would be the second and final reading for this. So I really kind wanted to be able to it was hard for me to hear and kind of and see what was going on. So, I really wanted to to um to go over this a little bit more uh with some with some numbers uh because I I feel like we we could have used more numbers, but I wanted to say uh thank you to to Dave Dicki for um for thinking of ways that we can can um balance our budget and get get things moving as well. I appreciate you um and and everything that you do. Um, so this is this is something when I was looking through and some of the stuff that we went over was uh it was 1 half of 1% is what we were is basically what we were told on this. Um, but my concern was if you actually go through and you do the math on on a project like this, um, I don't know, I'm sure you guys understand, but there's more than just um, the county has impact fees and we have impact fees. The the county impact fees are 3.42% which you see right here for a $55 million project is $1.8 million is what just that of it. But Cocoa Beach is actually uh a little bit more if we add these these extra um which is actually 87%. So closer to 1% is what this would be adding to a project um for a total of 4.28% um of the Cocoa Beach fees uh for this project. So I I just wanted you guys to understand that it's a little bit more

substantial than um than kind of what what was out there. Altogether you're talking about 7 uh you know 7.7% uh of of total impact and connection fees and all that which you know you're talking about four you know 4.2 million somewhere around there. Uh that's that's significant and that that's um that in my opinion is a barrier to entry. My concern is now if you look at what we would actually make. So four uh $476,000 um is what we would we would make on the new proposed additional uh impact fee. But if you look at what a project of this scope would make in adorum taxes, we're looking at close to uh for our our personal miller rate for Cocoa Beach uh around $360,000. Uh so in less than a year and a half we'll be making back these impact fees. My concern is when we when we do stuff like this uh we would we deter somebody from from building um or we would make them possibly push the project out maybe another 2 years, 5 years, whatever. He's already pushed this project out quite quite a bit. Um and a lot of times people are just waiting for for interest rates to go down. But when you add something like this, um this project might not actually happen. Uh and I would with with what's going on with the uh with the the tax right now with the proposed homesteaded tax properties um being actually removed from our from our tax revenue base. Uh we need uh commercial properties to to kind of make up the difference between uh what we're going to be losing. And this would be a project for that. So my

ask is you guys just think it over for the next couple weeks and and understand that do we want to create something that could possibly build something when we could be making up that tax revenue uh if they start sooner. It only takes two years to recoup that cost in tax revenue. So, I don't want to I don't want to deter. If anything, it's we we should almost think about incentivizing um some of the the redevelopment so that we can get some more tax uh revenue on our books. So, that's all I wanted to say with that. So, can I ask our city attorney as I said and you probably was muffled over the phone um that I would like to exempt this project and to not call it out by name. We could add to the language in the the proposal that current development agreements that are in place and active and the pier would not be because they never even signed theirs. The other one's finished and this is the only other one left. So, if we put language in that says uh projects that currently have active and purchasing development agreements are exempt, would that be legal?

We Yes. Um we will work with community development to come up with some exact language that would fit on that, but yes, it would be legal. My only concern with that, Skip, is uh, you know, there's only a few properties and and is the is the juice really worth the squeeze on getting these other properties uh, developed and improved? I I don't really want to put a barrier to entry to anybody. I want to I want to make sure that we can uh get this commercial tax revenue. Okay, we you canever you want on the overall project. I'm just saying I'm not going to support it at all unless this this is in there to exempt this property. We can come up with language that does that.

And we got to understand too that they're they're already charging uh police and and uh uh fire fees and all that through the county. I almost feel like it's it's double taxation. Uh we don't get any of that. Uh I think we do get uh somewhat of it proportionately, don't we? We get that paid back into our police and fire. No. No. No. Okay. When we need to maybe petition the county as well because uh you know they don't have a they don't have a a police or fire station here or

problem is we created a you know a cross or interlocal agreement with them. Maybe the wrong term. Um when we had full control of the situation and we get that back. We have our own fire department, but we have an interlocal agreement with the county. [clears throat] Is that the wrong term? We do. We do have an interlocal agreement, but but we and and we don't get any money from them for that yet. Um, Snug Harbor and is all control. This this kind of off subject here. I mean, we're in the weeds now. Mayor, I do have this squad and a squad team. We need

Right. But we need to bring this up, you know, have put it on the agenda. So I just one clear question. So as I think about it till we have a second vote. You're proposing that it gets eliminated for perpetuity. You're presing that just a oneoff exemption right

to the usage fee. I'm saying let's just forget about this whole thing and just go back to what we're what we're doing because I I don't want I don't want to hinder growth right now for for our tax considering next year or the year after we could be losing our homestead tax. I want I want these projects to get on as quick as [clears throat] possible so that they can start subsidizing sooner than later. And the thing is you can always shave this way back from the from that amount. I don't I mean and then also uh yeah instead of it being that much of an increase we determine the rates right

I cut it back to 25%. Yeah. And this is not pointed at the individual property, but I

I look at it a little bit differently, right? And and again, not specific to the one that Commissioner Williams is talking about, but from an impact PE fee perspective, when we start making our policy decisions based on business deals, it does it you start cutting out a lot of other considerations. The way I look at it is we as residents have bought into an asset, right? The salt, sun, and sand of Cocoa Beach is highly desirable for businesses. And every time we add 1% here, 1% here, 1% here to their cost of living, right, to be here, instead of earning them 1% for what they've bought into. We're diminishing their asset, right? Every one of these people own property here. And it should be a benefit. They're paying a premium to be here. Businesses want to be here. This is an amazing spot. adding 1% to the business to the individual business to pay into it. That's the that's the right direction. Adding 1% each time we decide to charge the resident instead of the business. I think that's the wrong direction.

The problem is when when you delay a project, you're this is this is again this [clears throat] is not pointed at the property that Commissioner Williams is talking about, but this doesn't delay future projects. This this does delay pro. Nobody's But you could you could argue 1% is is a big deal in the business world when you're when you're operating on 5 to 10% margins. 1% is a make or break deal. I got it. But you know the service costs aren't there if they're not, you know, right? Our adalarmm taxes covers once the folks are here their service costs. This is a one-time Yep. connection capital investment to be city.

But otherwise the residents are paying it. I stand by my previous vote, but I'm going to be you guys are what all I'm getting at is you're you're looking at it like this because you want a one time a little fee basically in the scheme of 20 years, 30 years of getting that property has been sitting vacant for how long how long has that property been vacant? None of my comments were directed toward the property Commissioner Williams is talking about. I made that statement right up front. So any argument associated with that particular property falls flat on what I'm saying. It's not what I'm talking about. Okay. I just think it should be fair for everybody as well. I don't think we should we should res Yep.

So, all right. That's that's all I wanted to say on that and I I just hope you guys look into it and um I'm sure Hannah could could tell you some of the numbers and stuff as well. So, I would encourage talking to her um with uh and Wes Wes's approval obviously. Um but thank you. Sure. I think we've exceeded our three minute. Yeah. [laughter] All right, guys. Uh let's go to Where am I at? Uh this we are going to adjourn for the C. Oh, we are in we are in the Okay. All right. Um CRA uh number one.

Okay. One, approve the 2025 downtown Cocoa Beach Community Redevelopment Agency report. Staff representative Devon Tally, deputy finance director. RA recommendation approved. to approve as written and provided. Second. All right. Motion a second. Um any public comment? All right. All in favor? I All right. Uh while we're in CRA, I had one more thing. Sorry, I'm going to make it a little longer. Um could [clears throat] you put a picture up of uh force I mean Bard?

All right. So, this is something that uh last time we were had a CRA meeting, I I um brought up and [clears throat] the problem is we've got a different city manager now. So, I wanted to bring it up again uh and just so that he could see I believe we were all in agreement that uh Bvard is probably one of the most blighted areas in our area in the CRA district. Um what I would like to do and what I thought we agreed upon was um decide the between the sidewalk and the road. There's that grassy area that's full of weeds or or whatnot. Um, I'd like to maybe put some pavers in there so that it looks a little bit more presentable, a little bit more classy, but also it makes the sidewalk bigger and uh a little bit safer for for kids on the bikes. Um, I I would think that this is a project that our um that our road crew could probably handle easily, which would be not be a very big cost to the city. So, is it is that something that you guys would all agree on with with some of the CRFA funds that we could uh do this to uh

I'd be willing to see a proposal on it. Yeah, I think so. Have it have it looked at, priced out. Okay. And brought back. Cool. Thank you. All right. That's that's all I wanted to do. So, you heard that. All right. Reconvene as a commission. All right. Back in the commission meeting. Uh city attorney.

Okay. This is the consent agenda. Item one, approve the February 19, 2026 city commission meeting minutes. Staff representative, city clerk department. Recommendation approved. Item two, approve the renewal of two interlocal agreements with BVAR County Ocean Rescue for the provision of lifeguard services for 2026. This is a budgeted item. Staff representative Justin Grimes, Fire Chief. Recommendation approved. Item three, ratify the following memorandum of agreement for the wage reopener for the period of October 1, 2025 to September 30, 2026 between the city of Cocoa Beach and local 3570, the International Association of Firefighters, AFF. Staff Representative Cindy Deina, Director of Human Resources. Recommendation approved. Item four, board appointment. Appoint Dean Patterson to serve on the police pension board with the term to be completed April 2028. Staff representative police pension board recommendation approved. Item five, approved 2025 downtown Cocoa Beach Community Redevelopment Agency. Reward adopted adopted in the CRA added 3526. Staff representative Devon Tally, deputy finance director, CRA recommendation approved. Move to approve consent agenda as read.

Second. Motion and second. All in favor? I. Motion passes. 50. Unfinished business. Okay. This is um item one, adopt ordinance 1711 on second reading. An ordinance of the city of Cocoa Beach, Florida, regulating temporary signs amending section 5-04. Prohibited signs to revive sign types allowed to be displayed in public rights of way. providing findings providing for conflicts codification and an effective date staff representative David Dicki development service recommendation adopt on final reading to approve as second motion in a second we'll do a roll call you need to ask for comments

Oh yeah public comment any public comment on on that all right any commission comment public comment Janice isn't here all right uh roll call Commissioner Jackson. Hi, Commissioner. Hi, Commissioner. Hi. Vice Mayor Williams. Hi, Mayor. Hi. All right, we are journ.