City Commission - workshop

Were for each district and citywide. As we look at opportunities for this year, our team is looking to gain a lot of valuable feedback as we enter the budget development process for fiscal year twenty twenty seven. And with that, I'll turn it over to the team. We have a video prepared, and I'll allow the team who spearheaded this workshop to kick it off. Thank you.

Alright. Can you hear me without this?

Can everyone hear her back there?

Good.

Okay.

Is this better? We're doing better? Okay. Perfect. Alright. Yeah. So as we go through these goals today, the city commission will be sharing their goals, priorities, and direction for the city. Ultimately, you'll also be approving some funding later on, to move these and advance them forward. Whereas staff, our role is really to operationalize these goals, create work plans, and implement them according to your direction. I think it's helpful as we're kind of in the crossroads of '26 and '27 to share a timeline.

So today, we're hearing from the city commission on what those priorities and ideas are. We will take that in March through June and build it into our budget development process to make sure that we're moving those initiatives forward with resources. In July, you'll have the proposed budget where you'll clearly be able to see how we've articulated and funded each of those priorities. Fast forward a few more months, we'll have our final budget hearings in September where they will officially be adopted as part of the budget. And then in October, we'll have funding in place, we're ready to hit the road running if we haven't already by that point.

So that's really what we're as we're looking for where the process will end up. Now as a reminder, because I've said these priorities really serve to advance our five year strategic plan, we have six goals under this plan. The first is focused on public safety. The second is focused on housing, and this is inclusive of both affordable housing and how we address homelessness in our city. Number three is focused on infrastructure, really more so the pipes in the ground, whereas the next goal is focused on infrastructure in terms of transportation, our roads, our sidewalks.

Goal five is, all about making the city beautiful, welcoming our parks, making sure that it's an inviting community. And goal six is focused on economic development. Now if we're looking at the priorities that were established last year at this time, you can see that almost verbatim, they are perfectly aligned. We had public safety, homelessness response, infrastructure and resilience, the enjoyment of waterways, public spaces and cultural initiatives, and to bolster our thriving communities. So I'm gonna pause here for a second, and I'm gonna ask our AV team.

We're gonna pivot to a video to share just a little bit more context about the commission prioritization workshop as well as some of the progress that we've already made to date towards these 2026 priorities so we can catapult onto that as we talk about next year. So Andres, if you won't mind. Thank you. And while our AV team pulls that up, I do wanna mention that, staff and the city commission, you have what we call our resource guide.

Fort Lauderdale is a city

you never wanna leave. Not

just because of where we

And you can follow along with today's discussion in here as well. So with that, here is the video.

Fort Lauderdale is a city

you never wanna leave. Not just because of where we are, but because of who we are.

Our vision plan shaped by the community reflects what residents want Fort Lauderdale to be by 2035.

A connected, resilient, and thriving city where people want to live, work, and play.

The city's strategic plan turned that vision into action.

Guiding our work through focused priorities in public safety, housing, infrastructure, public places, and business growth.

Within each of these areas of focus, the city has outlined six goals. One, build a safe community that is proactive and responsive to risks. Two, enable housing options for all income levels. Three, be a sustainable and resilient community. Four, facilitate an efficient multimodal transportation network.

Five, build a beautiful and welcoming community. Six, build a diverse and attractive economy. The city is additionally guided by the principles of customer service, fiscal responsibility, innovation, the wise use of technology, and inclusivity. To ensure we are making progress towards our goals, accountability is key. City staff regularly report progress through performance measurement dashboards, allowing for course correction and reflection on how to better achieve our goals.

Also, commission agenda memos highlight how the strategic plan applies to any given item. It's a way to show how our operational and policy decisions are driven by the short and long term goals of the city. Everything ties back to our bigger vision. Each year, the city commission develops its priorities, which are work plans that align with the city's strategic plan and advance the strategic plan in targeted one year increments. This process starts in January with a priority setting workshop.

Then from March through June, staff works to fund the commission priorities through the budget development process. The proposed budget is presented to the commission in July. The city conducts public hearings and adopts the budget in September. And in October, we implement our plan to make the priorities a reality. Commission priorities are the product of collaboration and prioritization by the city commission to highlight areas of significant importance.

The commission priorities ensure the city is nimble and prompt to respond to an ever changing environment. As we move toward these goals, let's highlight some of the accomplishments already made toward the fiscal year 2026 commission priorities. Public safety. Construction of the new state of the art police headquarters is nearing completion and will open this year. Progress continues on the replacement of Fire Rescue Station 13, the construction of the new Fire Rescue Station 88, and the Heron Garage substation strategically located to enhance emergency response times throughout downtown.

The fire rescue department secured $1,300,000 in grants, which will be used to expand high rise response training. We're also expanding access to life saving opioid interventions by creating Narcan distribution hubs in areas with frequent overdoses. The police department is launching a cyber attack response and mitigation program along with a new pedestrian and bicycle safety campaign. Homelessness response. The city is strengthening its homelessness strategy through outreach and enforcement.

Through position reclassifications, we created three homeless outreach team positions, two caseworkers, and an additional community health coordinator while partnering with fire rescue's mobile integrated health unit and the police co responder unit to launch an intensive outreach unit. New funding is also in place to develop a safe overnight parking program to provide a secure space for people experiencing homelessness. The city increased assistance tenant based rental assistance grants, providing short term help with rent, mortgage, and utilities. Plus, we're sponsoring substance abuse treatment beds. In addition, $700,000 in SHIP program funds are supporting gap financing for seven new affordable housing units for low to moderate income families.

Infrastructure and resilience. Construction of the new Prospect Lake Clean Water Center continues on schedule, and staff onboarding has begun. The city is implementing a $105,500,000 public safety and infrastructure improvement bond, which will serve to finalize the new police headquarters and advance road, sidewalk, bridge, and seawall projects. Phase one of the Fortify Lauderdale program is also moving forward in Progresso Village, Dorsey Riverbend, and Melrose Manors to improve resilience to storms and flooding. From the recent $33,000,000 PFAS settlement, funding is being directed to capital improvements, including replacing the Bayview Drive seawall and the West Lake Drive bridges.

Public enjoyment of waterways. The city hired its first chief waterways officer and established a marine facilities fund to ensure clean, well maintained public boat ramps and marinas. Grant funding will support pump out boat, offering free services to prevent illegal sewage discharge into our waterways. In coordination with community partners, the city planted 100 mangroves this year with another 50 more planned and adopted a new ordinance limiting vessel anchoring to no more than thirty days within a six month period. Public spaces and cultural initiatives.

The voter approved $200,000,000 parks bond continues delivering improvements, including upgrades at the Jimmy Everett Tennis Center, Tarpon Cove, Hardy Park, and Annie Beck Park. The city also opened Bal Harbour Park and broke ground on the Sunrise Middle School joint use park. Funding is in place for streetscape improvements along Breakers Avenue and Sunrise Lane and new lighting for the iconic Wave Wall. Bolster thriving communities. We completed interpretive signs and a walking tour of the Sailboat Bend Historic District, hosted the Cistrunk Empowerment Summit to strengthen economic opportunities, and launched the CyberSmart FTL program, empowering our community for a more resilient digital future.

These efforts align with the city's commitment to economic growth, supported by the creation of a new economic development division. Now with fiscal year 2027.

Okay. All right. So, it's been a busy year, but now we're ready to really hit the ground running for fiscal year 2027. So if you're following along in your resource guide, we're now moving to the landscape review. This is the first tab.

But really the purpose of this next portion of the discussion is for to share a little bit of information, statistics, data about where we stand as a city. And the whole purpose of this is to create a shared context as a foundation for the rest of the discussion. So with that, the next few slides are really going to be about the city's financial future, specifically talking about looking at the taxable values. And I know over the last year, you've probably seen some of this information in a variety of other presentations, but I'm going to centralize it here this morning. So taxable values.

Over the last ten years, we've been fortunate in seeing, growth year over year, but specifically the last four years have been especially positive largely due to the new construction that's been coming online. Now each summer as part of our budget development process, we have our consultant, Stantec Consulting, come in and share with the city a forecast for the future. The general fund right now, considering some of the ongoing costs that are being added as well as a consistent millage rate, we are expecting some challenges, for the general fund specifically over the next five years. Now looking at some of the other funds that are not the general fund, we have some planned rate increases over the next five years to keep these enterprise funds financially solvent. So, you can see those on the screen here, our water sewer fee, our sanitation fee, and our storm water fee.

Now this next chart shares, what the population trend against what the personnel complement for the city of Fort Lauderdale looks like. So in the dark blue bar, you'll see the number of general fund employees. In the green bar, you'll see other fund, employees. So this could be the airport fund, our sanitation fund, parking. And then the light blue line would be our population trend, which you've seen has increased substantially over the last ten years.

If there are any questions along the way, just feel free to jump in.

Population dropped between

and 2021?

So '20

So this data is driven, by some of the census data. So it is reflective of how many people are participating in that.

Oh, okay.

And just for clarification, for 2020, we use the actual census data. For every year, we use what we use statewide, which is a population survey that is completed by the University of Florida. Right. And so that's why there's a discrepancy in those rather than

actual data. Okay. Alright.

No worries.

We don't really know what the population is at Fort Lauderdale, do we?

I believe it fluctuates probably daily, hourly.

Yes. It fluctuates. Okay. Alright.

Now, property taxes has been a discussion that we've been hearing a lot of recently, but we are very fortunate in the city of Fort Lauderdale to have a diverse tax base. And so you'll see in terms of the homestead of residential tax revenue, it comes in at just less than a third of our total tax revenue, which equates to about $76,000,000 for fiscal year 2026.

30 is

property tax of homestead property?

Yes.

So if they were to eliminate that, they would cut a 30% off of our income? Okay. Good to know when we talk to the people in Tallahassee.

All right. Now switching gears a little bit. At this workshop over the last couple of years, we talked a lot about diversifying our economy in the city of Fort Lauderdale. And so this is showing all of the different occupations by industry and how many people are employed in each of those. And you can see the top result is professional and business services.

This can be anything from legal services, accounting, advertising. You can see we know that, our tourism and hospitality industry is quite large in Fort Lauderdale. You can see that as fifth from the bottom. Now the marine industry is going to be sprinkled a little bit depending on the focus of what that specific company would do might be sprinkled throughout here. One thing that I know came up last year as a question was what does other services mean?

I did a little bit of research in advance of today, and this is really a catchall, but it could be anything from pet services, repair and maintenance companies, personal care services, salons, really kind of that catchall. Now when we're talking about the workforce, one of the contributors is obviously our housing prices in Fort Lauderdale. So when we look at the number of homes sold over the last five years, we've seen that drop a little bit, but really stabilize over the last three years specifically. And then looking at interest rates, those have also stabilized over the last year, hovering between 67%. Now if we're gonna talk the price of those homes sold, Fort Lauderdale stands well above both Florida and The United States for our median home price at 530,000 for 2025.

And if we look at the same chart but flip it out for rents of a one bedroom, we can see that that trend continues.

These are Fort specific, not Broward County?

Fort Lauderdale specific, yes. Is there a question? All right. Now we talked a little bit about this earlier. Our average daily population.

So on the orange bar, this is that number that you saw earlier, for 2024, which is the most recent data we have, the average daily population for. We're hovering about a 190,000 permanent residents in Fort Lauderdale. However, we know that we have many more people in our city every single day. So the blue and green bars represent what that average daily population. It's inclusive of our residents, tourists, visitors, commuters, really anyone that would be doing anything in Fort Lauderdale.

The differentiator between the blue and the green is the green takes into account our peak period, which we define as November through April, considering our seasonal population of snowbirds, spring breakers, things like that. Now the point I really want to drive home here is that our daily population that we serve as a city is substantially larger than our actual residential population. Obviously, public safety comes to mind, such as sanitation, tracks trash collection, keeping our beaches clean, transportation, as things that we consider moving forward. Now this is also something that's come up year over year, but considering the total percent of Broward County tourism tax, Fort Lauderdale is responsible for generating nearly half of that in 2025. Now I've shared with you a lot of figures, statistics, but one other thing that I wanted to bring up this morning is our perception based data because for our residents, perception is reality.

And so every year, the city of Fort Lauderdale conducts what we largely call our community surveys, but it's inclusive of both a neighbor or resident survey as well as a survey for our business community. So based on the most recent results, our residents reported that over half, 63%, are satisfied with the overall quality of life in Fort Lauderdale. Now the full survey results from our vendor for both of these is available in appendix c of your resource guide. I'm gonna highlight just a few things here this morning. So as part of this survey, the city really focused in on three areas, homelessness, parks and recreation amenities, and safety.

And as for those respondents that said that they weren't happy with the quality of the service, we asked them, well, what is the number one thing that you think we should do to improve this? So for homelessness, that was creating more affordable housing. For parks and recreation amenities, the number one thing was enhancing safety. And then in terms of the overall sense of safety citywide, the number one thing that residents thought we could do to improve this was having more officers on patrol. Now in terms of our business survey, the number one thing, that I wanted to highlight here was the factors that are important to businesses to staying in Fort Lauderdale, and that was reported as our access to customers or markets, the cost of real estate or rent and any financial incentives that they could take advantage of.

Now I am a fan of a matrix, so I put one together for you this morning just so we can kind of see the trends between the resident survey and the business community. So in terms of strengths, our residents overall reported that they were happy with the quality of services overall in the city, the acceptance of residents of all backgrounds, as well as the variety of art and cultural events, whereas businesses reported that they were happy with the regulatory environment and access to customers or markets, which we know from the previous slide is one of the most important things to keeping their business in Fort Lauderdale. In terms of some of the challenges, neighbors expressed that the cost of living or the availability of jobs that pay a living wage, was a challenge for them, as well as the overall sense of safety, the sense of community, their ability to give input, and the overall cleanliness and maintenance of the city.

So when they say safety, what does that mean? Is that because I hear some conflicting responses from Oftentimes people for example, what is that survey that we hear every year that Fort Lauderdale is the least safe city in the country? And what is that that often interprets as being the cost of living here? And they factor in cost of living as being a safety issue. But are we really talking about safety here or are we talking about other intangibles that are somehow categorized under the name of safety?

So the way that we ask this question in the survey, it's a little bit broad. We just say, what is your satisfaction with the overall quality or sense of safety in Fort Lauderdale? Based on those results so that's where we started asking, well, if you're unhappy, what is the number one thing that you would like to see us improve on? And based on that those responses, it is largely public safety in terms of police response that we're hearing. So if you flip in your resource guide, page 84.

Thank you, Yvette. And I'm gonna you have yours fresh. But we can see while the number one response was put more police officers on patrol, we also see, ideas such as develop or improve crime prevention initiatives, reducing homelessness, reforming police department practices, improving response times, as well as the increasing streetlights.

Okay.

Alright. And then for our business community, the top two two things that they shared that were challenges are infrastructure conditions and employee quality of life factors. Now this is a bit broad, but what this really means in terms of the context of the survey is cost of living, education, health care for employees.

So I think in terms of infrastructure conditions, that to me is a matter of messaging because the city is undertaking the most massive infrastructure redevelopment in the history of Florida and no city is doing the amount of infrastructure investment as the city of Fort Lauderdale is doing. So why isn't that being understood by the people that live in the city? And oftentimes people say, well, we want it now, we want we want to see instant results. But I think a lot of it now going forward is messaging and getting the messaging out. Other than the neighborhoods themselves that see the actual construction of pipes going underground and pump stations being installed, those specific neighborhoods see what's going on.

But 95% of the rest of the city doesn't see what's going on. So I think in terms of infrastructure conditions, because lots of times, very rarely, but once in a while, I'll look at responses on Facebook to see when we put something very positive out there about, let's say, we've just inaugurated the Chris Everett Tennis Center. Some of the comments will be, why don't you focus your money the money on building better infrastructure and stop wasting money on projects that don't address sewage and water treatment issues? Now why would anyone say that if in a city that's already doing that? So it's a lot of it is just messaging. So let's keep that in mind going forward.

And may I and I'm glad you said that because I was actually about to address something along those lines. Messaging and education.

If you look at if you look

at exhibit two, page 15 of one twenty, I don't think we actually had that up there as part of this. And first of all, thank you for all of this. What I noticed from year to year, and again, page 15, if you look at the three, four, five, the bottom six items, every year those are the same where the percentages are very high in terms of negative responses. And that to me goes to your point, Mayor, in terms of messaging and education. Because if you look at those items, again, we are spending significant resources on on these items, but I just don't think the message is getting through.

These are repetitive. Every single year that I've attended one of these goal setting workshops is the same. And I again, I I just think that we do have to step it up. I think it is a matter of education, a matter of messaging. I'll leave that up to you for the best way to do that. I'm not always so sure. I know social media has a part to play, but as the mayor says, people will chime in with everything on social media. So, you know, it gets lost. I don't know if we can somehow get right into folks' homes, whether it's through bills, whether it's water bills, whether whatever it is. But there we have to do a better job of and again, for me, it's not just messaging.

It really is education, so that people are very much aware of what we're doing so that these negatives to me it's just interesting when you look at this chart, the response to community characteristics, and you see what those percentages are. That's it. Thank you.

Just in response to that, we're in the process now of redefining our strategic communications function and how we go about promoting the city. And these are very good points that I think would be incorporated as we develop that plan on how we message positively. I think there's some opportunities for improvement. And I know that we've done a pretty good job of pushing out the Fortify Lauderdale successes. I know we had a strategic push to show that we've made a lot of progress there, but I think it has to be continuous so that the messaging is consistent.

It it does. And also, we have to prove that, and make it really clear that we can walk and chew gum at the same time. When the mayor mentions people will respond to a Jimmy Everett tennis center reopening with a question or a criticism of not doing enough for infrastructure, well, we're doing both. We we do a lot every day across a wide spectrum of issues, and I think folks need to understand, how we are able to multitask, and we do it every single day. That's all. Thank you.

Also, when it comes to efforts to address homelessness, I think a lot of people conflate panhandling with homelessness. They'll see people on street corners, and they they say, well, that's homelessness. And and, you know, are those people really homeless or are those people just panhandling? Because I think our folks do a great job in trying to address homelessness. And I think the real the barrier that we have in improving our results often has to do with finding actual homes for people to be able to live in.

Even if they have a voucher, we don't necessarily have a place for them to live. The cost of real estate is so high here, as mentioned, And a lot of landlords aren't so eager to rent at lower rates to accommodate homeless individuals. And it's not just the homelessness, it's the wraparound services that we often are we realize is necessary in order to take people out of homelessness and to elevate them to a quality of life that in many cases, we've seen such great success stories. So I know it's a challenge, and I know we through our community court, we initiated that several years ago, and it has is it has had its ups and downs. But I do know that, you know, the the amount of resources that we have committed as a city towards this effort is unmatched by anybody that I know of in Broward County.

And I applaud the staff for realizing how important that is. But too often, there's a misunderstanding of what homelessness is by the community. And a person who's on the street corner of 4th Avenue and Sunrise Boulevard saying, I'm a veteran and I need food and he's got a belly on him. I don't it kind of makes you wonder, are they just standing out there trying to shake you down for money and are they really homeless? And those are the people we need to address.

You know, our our outreach officers need to go out there every day and say, hey, do you really are you really hungry? Can we help you? Get in my car and let's take you to a place where you can be fed today, rather than people feeling like they're having to roll up their window and they don't want have to deal with somebody while they're waiting for the light to turn green. So those are the hotspots. We all know where they are.

And normally, they're right along Sunrise Boulevard or Oakland Park Boulevard. And I think the other day, I remember, there was a fellow that came up to me and said he needed money, he was hungry. I said, well, you know, you can go to Christ Church over on Oakland And 30th Street, and every Thursday, this was Wednesday night, I said, every Thursday, they have a feeding program, you can get new clothing, they'll help you with social services. And he claimed he didn't know anything about that, and I doubt that. But he claimed he didn't know anything about that.

So maybe it's a messaging thing on some of these nonprofits who sometimes don't always get their message out. But we have a lot of very charitable and generous organizations in our city. And we are, I feel, doing a heroic job in trying to help people who find themselves in difficult positions. Can we do more? Yes.

But again, a lot of it is misunderstanding what the true sense of homelessness is and whether or not these people are really homeless or just there to collect money. So but again, I ask our outreach coordinators and homeless outreach team to go to continue to go to these intersections and talk to these people and get them off the street. It's often dangerous. We're trying to navigate intersections when there's tremendous amount of traffic, and you see people weaving in and out of these lanes either on wheelchairs or on foot, and it's very it creates a very hazardous situation, and nobody should get hurt. But we know that in this city, right on Sunrise Boulevard in the last few years, people have been killed because of their interaction with traffic and their failure to get out of the way.

So we got to stop that. And there's a way to do that. And I think that a lot of it can be seen from the statistics here of what priorities we need to address going forward anyway. Thank you.

Mayor, if I could on that. Thanks. I think good points. Yesterday, I spent two hours riding along on what's called the Rotary Connect bus, which is a new bus that's funded by Rotary of Fort Lauderdale. And the purpose is to provide transportation from those experiencing homelessness to key service providers in the city.

So for example, that bus goes from, task force, for ending homelessness to get them, on the housing list to the DMV to get a license, to Salvation Army for food. I mean, so it's an amazing connector throughout the Has a circuit? Exactly. Has a circuit, has a schedule. It was the bus was packed yesterday with folks availing themselves of those services.

So, seeing what we're doing in partnership with providers is fantastic. And, a couple of thoughts on that is, one, we've done this with, city manager. We've done this with, the chief waterway officer providing kind of once a month, I think. It's a letter to the commission, right, of the waterway initiatives. I'd really like to have a one pager once a month of the homeless initiatives that we have and an update.

So in other words, here's the number of affordable and workforce housing units that are coming on board. Here's, some of the enforcement mechanism. Mayor, you you mentioned the, intersections. It's illegal to panhandle at high traffic intersections. And so that's and and we have the city attorney has kind of evaluated that, and we are able to enforce that. So capturing what we're doing there, how we're partnering with the service providers. Again, Raquel, just a one pager, I think would be good for all of us, and so that we can share that with the community to say, here's what we're doing, here's the progress we're making. Is that city manager or something like that feasible?

I think that is feasible and that's something that we're already working on. So stay for that.

Okay. That'd be great. Okay. And Mayor, again, it's to your point, we allocate $13,000,000 a year to support those that are experiencing homelessness. That's unmatched by any other municipality. I think part of it is the continued communication and sharing the results and the wins we're having to serve those. Thank you.

And city manager, perhaps, we, does strategic communications work at all with the Council of Fort Lauderdale Civic Associations? I think that maybe if we had a liaison to that group, it would be a much more direct way to get our messaging and education out through every single one of those neighborhoods, and perhaps we can just work closer that way with the neighborhoods, the specific neighborhoods.

I think in addition, we need to look at the way that our Neighbor Support division collaborates with strategic communications and the neighborhood associations, including the council. So I think multiple groups on the team need to be collaborating a little bit more so that the messaging is consistent and the collaboration is more intentional. Right. And but I

think as a city, though, we should probably attend every single one of those council meetings and have that kind of liaison and working directly. And as you mentioned, with neighbor support as well, it it really is a communications effort, but I think that everyone needs to be involved every step of the way coordinating with each other.

And I think we typically have representation by city staff at, the council and various other groups. Recently, as I've been doing a tour of each of the civic associations and homeowners associations, we normally have staff representation there. That's something that we're also fine tuning.

But we have them there sometimes only maybe to give a report or an update. We don't really have them working together in terms of the day to day or the actual, you know, the actual mechanics of that organization and and directly assigned as a liaison who is not just there to give a report or an update, but you know what I'm saying. Okay.

So I do wanna mention that we're taking notes and capturing everything from your conversation today, and this is gonna be part of what helps, drive what those priorities will be when we're done. We'll consolidate and bring those to you at a future conference meeting. Now shifting to the next part of the agenda. So now if you're following along, we're gonna flip to the second tab, opportunities. So city staff has prepared a number of topics. Some of it is to prepare and share an update on key initiatives. Others are areas where we need a little bit of direction from the city commission as we move forward. And our first topic for today is an update on our infiltration and inflows. So I'm going to ask our utility services director, Albert Carben, to come up and share with you.

Thank you, Erica. Again, for everybody, Albert Carbone, the Utilities Director. For inflow and infiltration, quick couple of quick definitions. Infiltration is the groundwater that seeps into the through cracks and leaks in in the the pipes, the gravity pipes in the lower reaches of the manhole. And then inflow is that surface water, that rainwater, the canal water that comes in from the surface that goes in through cracked manhole covers or clean outs on the private property that have been broken.

As far as our wastewater flows, it's estimated that going into our George T. Lohmeyer treatment plant, there's up to 40% to 50% of the flows are from an I and I perspective. This places stresses on our gravity sewer system, our pump systems that maximizes our pump stations and then our treatment plant, which gives us less available capacity and we require options to expand that treatment plan. The city has had a wastewater consent order that they've had since 2017. That was amended to extend the dates, completion dates, But we are scheduled to be completed with that that original consent order and the and the first amendment by March 2027 to date.

There's 71 of the 76 milestones have been completed, and 54 of those have been ahead of schedule. Congratulations. We are in a thank you very much, Mayor. I appreciate that. And for staff, we appreciate their hard work.

We are in negotiation for a second amendment to the consent order, which will focus in on the I and I reduction. The city, the staff, just before Christmas, supplied DEP with our our hopefully, final comments, and we're scheduling our next meeting to go over those comments and and looking forward to bringing that to city commission later this spring. That's the second amendment. So we are ahead of the curve on that that new second amendment because one of the first steps is the valuation of our INI. And as we discussed at the last meeting that that we are in the under that evaluation.

And we all also are are starting to crack pipes. We have a total of about $30,000,000 in contracts to reduce our I and I. And to date, our linear feet of pipe that we've lined is 33 miles. We have 40 manholes. We've lined just under 2,500 laterals.

And then we've made some point repairs, which are critical areas where the top pipe has been dislodged, we've made 300 repairs of those. So as far as the valuation is concerned, we're about halfway in through our manhole inspections, 4,400 inspections of the 10,000. We've smoke tested. So smoke testing tells us where those openings in that inflow on the surface comes, about two thirty six miles of pipe. And then we've done some additional night flows, we know where the low flows are to test where the again, where the inflows and infiltrations are.

So we're well on the path to start that consent order and to reduce our NII. So if I'm available for any comments or questions or can add some additional information if you need it.

So when you when we reach the 2027 milestone, what percent of the INI rehabilitation project will have been completed?

That excuse me, I may the original consent order and amendment, those are we are to complete those 71 projects by March 2027. Right. The new amendment amendment two will give us a seven year period to to help mitigate the INI. Now we're hopefully we're ahead of that. We want be ahead of that schedule. So we'll be the evaluation before we get the exam is complete. So we've also identified funding in the capital investment plan of around $130,000,000 $61 is that available in or is it identified for 2027 and then the rest of

it those Okay, following great. Alright, excellent. Thank you. Anyone have any questions? Okay, thank you.

Great work, Al. Thank you.

Thanks. Good.

So the next topic that we're going to be discussing is broadband access. So I'll ask our IT director, Ron McKenzie, to come and share a little bit more about this.

Feel like I should be spamming people in today.

Do I need to I don't think officially the truth, the whole truth. I think I need to

tell the truth. Exactly. Good morning.

Good morning. Good Good morning, mayor commissioner. Ron McKenzie, IT director, CIO. Before we get started, I don't wanna take for granted that everyone clearly understands the term high speed broadband or the methods used to transport it. So please allow me a couple of minutes to explain it. Broadband is measured in megabits and gigabits, and the higher the number, the more the flow goes back and forth. Picture a highway. A highway will have a speed limit, let's say, miles per hour. Right? If

the highway has

a speed limit of 70 miles per hour, we'll say that that's the bandwidth. You have that 70 miles per hour, but if you're driving at 02:00 in the morning, if you're riding at about, you know, five in the morning, you've got the whole highway. You can go 70 miles per hour. There's not a problem. Let's say that you're trying at 09:00 or you're trying at 05:00 in the afternoon, then it's gonna be congestion. The speed limit is still 70, but you're no longer able to go there. It slows it down. And sometimes if there's an issue, it stops. That's how coax works. Then they allow additional bandwidth for coax.

So if there's additional bandwidth for coax, which coax is cheaper, if you would dial additional bandwidth, that's like the HOV lane. The HOV lane says, okay, listen, everybody else is kinda here, but under specific circumstances, I'll allow you to go in this HOV lane. But still you're in that same area, and if an issue happens, it will slow you down. A game is happening or something like that, a major event. Now let's look at fiber.

Fiber works kinda like the pay lanes. It costs a little bit more, but in the pay lanes, going up and going down, it's pretty much open. If there's congestion over here in the Coax area, you're not tripping because over here, you've got your lane for fiber and you're going straight both back and forth. Mhmm. Then there's what we have is MiFi, right, or AT and T Air, those type of bandwidths. That's more like a helicopter. It depends on how many people you can put in a helicopter and how fast the particular vendor can go. Right? But it can either hold five people, 10 people, 15 people. And depending on the maker of it, you're able to go faster or slower, but it's direct. You don't have that congestion that other places have. So now that we understand bandwidth, I'll go a little bit more and talk about the slides. Right?

The city operates What if the speed limit is 30 and you're going 70?

What's that thought? You might get a ticket. No. Exactly.

Alright. That's another question for another time. Exactly. Exactly. So the city operates 35 public WiFi locations, including parks and public facilities, although bandwidth is limited.

The bandwidth is actually small, so the speed limit. There's an upcoming grant that we that we passed a couple of commission meetings that you passed or whatever for a particular wireless five g LTE broadband pilot in a portion of District 3, and the total cost of that was 713,761 inclusive of an annual subscription cost of 43,368 that's what it causes for the broadband there. Other available resources, neighbors have wired and wireless service in their home depending on the cost again, such as Xfinity, AT and T Fiber, AT and T Air, T Mobile and Verizon. As far as that goes depending like I said, on how much you pay, you may have a different type of service. Right?

When you have you have coax in your house and you also have fiber, but depending on how much you pay, you get more bandwidth. The providers offer various affordability programs, Xfinity Internet Essentials, AT and T Access, etcetera. Those are the less expensive. Those are coax. That's so nice. Sound nice twice. Okay. That's good. I

wanna make sure some people are saying they can't find it online. So I think we're good on YouTube. That right? Okay. Great. Sorry.

No worries. No worries. So the $14.95, the $29.95 a month is coax. It's the cheaper one, but that's the one, as I said, in the regular lane that can deal with congestion, etcetera, etcetera. And the t mobile project, t mobile has a project called t mobile 10,000,000. It also it offers a free service for eligible k to 12 students. That's my find. That's the helicopter way, is really nice for a household. You can connect up to five people or five devices in your home and be able to do that. That's already available.

Broward County offers hotspot lending through public libraries as well as public WiFi spots. And, of course, there's free Internet access that available in many local businesses including restaurants, coffee shops, and is also provided through public transit services. Some of the options that we have, options to enhance broadband access. One of the key elements is to educate our our neighbors and affordable the affordable means that they have. As I stated before, in the school systems, there's just free WiFi.

Libraries have free WiFi. And some of these services, especially from k to 12 depending on if you're on Snap or certain different other programs, they offer free WiFi for up to five years for students and their family. We can launch a unified broadband resource hub that lists all low cost plans, eligibility criteria, and public WiFi locations so everybody can know where to go and how to do things. We can integrate affordability program support into community engagement events. Training neighbors on how to utilize broadband equipment and services.

We wanna show them or one of the options is also to show them how to use Wi Fi, right, to connect and how to connect everybody. These things are available, but they may not know how to do it even if they were able to obtain some of these devices, and so to educate them is is important. Expand the city's existing pilot with Internet service program. That's the pilot that we talked about, couple of commission meetings that we that you approved, that eight by eight block, to be able to expand that if it's successful. That particular pilot, when completed, will work similar to, a college campus, where a college campus, once you get WiFi, you're able to walk all around that particular area, you'll have WiFi expanding that.

An expansion of the program would include either widening the perimeter or replicating the service program throughout the city. One of the other opportunities is to increase bandwidth As I spoke before, there are 35 parks and public spaces that we have to actually expand to to additional parks or to expand the bandwidth because the bandwidth that we have right now is a limited bandwidth. So, again, you're able to go up and down the highway, but the speed limit may be only 25, expand that to maybe 70. So those are some of the options.

Questions? Questions? I have a question. Yes. It doesn't pertain to what you just talked about, but talking about perhaps, something else we need to consider. So in terms of, crime deterrence, what's your what are your thoughts about trying to, add cameras throughout hotspots, crime hotspots in different parts of the city? What are your thoughts about that?

We're actually looking into that. There was some additional, projects that they had some money that was allocated, and we're actually looking into a few different areas on how to do that. One of the solutions that they talked about or at least that was quoted was broadband, but they also have WiFi access for cameras. So we're looking to see how sharp that image is to make sure that it can be helpful to the public safety people to see what's going on because, obviously, having a camera is one thing, but we want them to actually be able to pick up something.

Right.

But we are in favor, and we are looking into that.

So it'd be really important. I think the commission has mentioned in more than one occasion its interest in trying to expand the existence of cameras throughout the city, starting in high crime hotspots, but certainly in more and more areas. Because as we're seeing in today's world, everything needs to be captured on video because people's understanding of what happened and what didn't happen seems to differ. And capturing it on video is going to be important. And I think the city of Fort Lauderdale needs to step up its game in that regard.

We need to find more opportunities for installing these cameras. And I know certain neighborhoods have undertaken license plate reader programs and things like that, but that's their funding themselves and managing it themselves. But I think the city needs to consider a more aggressive program in terms of establishing cameras throughout the city because things happen.

And just to add a little context, the commission did approve a decision package last year inclusive of additional camera equipment for him or she downtown in Sistrunk. So if there's a desire to expand even further, we would be open to looking at that with the budget development process.

Have those cameras been installed?

I'm not sure where we are in the installation phase.

We're we're in the planning phase. We've been talking. There's a chief right there. We've been having a few meetings between IT and police, and we're still looking at We're stuck.

You know, we approved it, and here we are a year later, and we're stuck. So

This was approved in the fiscal year twenty twenty six budget. We just entered Q2.

Okay. So knowing that that's the commission has already expressed it as a priority, if we could just move that along, that would be really helpful. All right. I mean, we had an incident in Himachal recently. It would have been nice if we had that on camera, right? Bill, did you want to say something?

Morning, everyone. Bill Schultz, Chief of Police. We do have some video footage of that from city cameras. So that was very helpful in that investigation. Okay.

There you go.

And to answer the question regarding installation, we did luckily get some, money from you last year for more cameras. Those are in progress. I've been meeting with Ron, his staff and my staff regularly on this. There was a meeting during City Commission last week on-site on Hammersey. That's going to be the first installation of the new cameras. And we already have some. We have four, in our possession, and those will be in service hopefully by the end of the month.

Okay. Great.

Also, Mayor, Ron, thank you so much for what you brought to the table with this presentation. Everyone knows I'm always talking about the need and the expansion for broadband industry and then across across the whole city. And I'm really thankful for what I'm seeing here. These options for enhancement, I I I believe this is a a great direction to go in. And do we have, like, a timeline for these workshops and training opportunities?

Because that is key when I think about some of the, my neighbors that are in District 3 who, again, I say have no access. So we're giving them now this great opportunity. And, yes, they will need directions and instructions how to utilize this to maximum. So is there any, discussions, plans, timelines as to, executing these workshops?

The focus was to get that guidance. And so Okay. That's why we're bringing up these opportunities. And once we get that guidance, we can move forward.

Okay.

And so if you have any additional feedback on the options proposed, is it that the commission is interested in all of these opportunities or are there few that are more desirable? We kind of want to get that level of feedback so we know how to allocate resources.

With regard to which item?

This is the broadband access.

Oh, broadband access?

Yes, our options for enhancement.

And and we could take multiple approaches, so depending on what the appetite is.

I I like where we're heading, city manager. I I think one of the one things that sticks out most to me is the C expand the city's existing pilot Internet service program, and I'd refer to you, district commissioner, but that seems a fantastic, approach and where we're going.

And and and, again, in regards to that incorporating that training for the neighbors Mhmm. Again, because we do have those who are, just kinda existing off of what they're able to gather and and use as they move around the city.

So b

and c Yep. I I was really going for a b

s d n d. N d. I

think it's a full package.

And I think I think we could approach it that way

Yeah.

If that's Yes. The consensus.

Yes.

I like the idea of increasing bandwidth at at parks and public spaces too. One other along these lines, city manager, is I was just looking at our, some of our city social media. The I'd love to see us more celebrate the successes that we've had. So for example, just some of the what we've done with broadband. We've made some really good progress. I'd love to just see a simple graphic, three or four points capturing some of what we've already done. Same thing with I and I. This is great. There's a little box that says accomplishments to date, Great successes. Just and I don't know if it's so I think it should be a couple of fold.

One, on Citi's social media, just sharing tangible successes around numbers and dollars and improvements and then a way that we, as commissioners, can share that on social media as well so that can be us just liking, replicating, and so forth. But I'd like to see more of that.

We can do that, commissioner. We can celebrate all the wins. I love that.

Great. And another option for that is when I think of Lauderdale, the brief after the city commission meetings, we have a lot of what we accomplished. So maybe there's one or two graphics from that that just very simple we could use.

Any other questions? There being none. Thank you. Thanks, Ron.

Thank you.

Happy Valentine's Day. Thank you. You're welcome.

Alright. Thank you. So the next conversation that we have, I'm gonna ask our police chief, to come and share about, potential for an additional police district.

Good morning. Good morning again. Again, Bill Shultz, chief of police, mayor, commission. As I know we've heard in the past, there's been a lot of discussion for many years about whether there should be an implementation of an additional district, in this case encompassing the downtown entertainment areas. I will say, we've all seen that Holiday Park certainly now, Hamershey, Riverwalk, Los Olas, they have become, they are and have become even continually growing epicenters of our entertainment.

The slide earlier was telling as well when you, extrapolate the population residential from our daily population, by and large a lot of that population is coming to those areas. We have all been there. We have seen the packed house, whether it's Parker Playhouse, Performing Arts Center or, the new Iceplex. It has become a truly downtown entertainment district. So with this proposal, as you can see on the maps, what we are proposing to do is take a portion of the existing PD District 1 and PD District 3, and encompass an additional 4th District.

And just for perspective, especially because it's kind of hard to see on the map, to the North, that would be East Sunrise Boulevard. To the South, that would follow the river. To the West, that would be the Flagler Village area, basically following the train tracks. And then to the East, that would be the inclusion of the Lauderdale Isles. In addition to the research regarding the calls for service, which by and large are occurring in this area demanding a lot of our resources, this takes into consideration geographic boundaries.

When we respond, especially when it is a 09:11 call, continually our concern is encountering a stopped train on the train track or a drawbridge whether it is up normal operation or whether it is malfunctioning. This takes into consideration all of those aspects. Only one small section of course near the Broward Boulevard area would be impacted by train track, but the drawbridges are eliminated from the equation in that case. But by and large, the main reason we are looking at this would be you take a condensed area. This is approximately a three square mile area.

Take and condense the area and redistribute the staff, already work in that area, but condense them into a smaller area, you have officers having the ability to spend more time on calls for service if needed. But certainly in the area they are spending less time going far North, far South, far East, far West. They are condensed. They are not as spending as much time traveling. That opens them up for better customer service on the call for service, visibility and proactive patrol.

And in fact in recent year we have been studying our calls for service and we have seen the officer initiated calls have gone up. And that's attributed to two things. One, more officers are on the road because we have really impacted our vacancies. But secondly, the officers are able to make some time to go out and initiate contacts, initiate engagement which we have not done in years past. By shrinking that area and impacting three districts that would be with the inclusion of a fourth district, you have officers who are going to have the ability to not spend more time traveling, they are going to spend less time traveling, more time with the ability to be visibly proactive on patrol and spend time with those calls for service that truly demand a better customer service.

So, let me ask you though, are you wanting to add more police officers?

So I'm sorry.

Go ahead. No.

Is it adding more police officers or taking the existing complement of police officers and concentrating them and focusing them into a into a a more defined district?

That's exactly it. So by shrinking One or the other. Yeah. It's shrinking. So it's yeah. So if you look at the map, District 1 and District 3, you would be taking those portions. So those districts become geographically smaller. It's the same amount of officers that are working in there will be then redistributed in the new District 4, which is a smaller district as

So is that taking away from the other districts?

No, it's not because geographically those other districts are smaller.

Okay. So the the so but the idea here is to concentrate a more it's it's to concentrate a certain number of officers to be able to focus on a more narrow geographical area where there seems to be a greater call for service.

Correct. Yeah. That and that area has it's statistically has a large amount of our calls for service.

So why are you including the aisles?

That's the geographic portion of the Drawbridge response area and and the aisles traditionally not a huge call for service area. So it's not a strain on the newly created district.

So it creates the balance?

Yes, create. Yeah, it's all part of the balance of the statistical. And if you look at once you balance out the statistics, if a district four were implemented, all of the districts would have a very much sore assimilated calls for service rate as opposed to almost a 10% difference now.

Okay. Anyone have any Yes.

Chief, thanks for this. There have been times in the past where we have talked about creating an additional district and creating the districts in a way that mirror city commission districts. So if I'm understanding it right, this is would replace that idea and do away with that idea of reflecting mirroring city commission district.

So we've often talked about, mirroring fire response areas, police response areas with your commission districts. But as we know, those commission district boundaries change as well periodically. With PD, and to another extent with fire, with PD, our national crime reporting of statistics, is very complex. And each time we change a reporting area, that's going to impact the national reporting. So we try to limit when we do that.

But in this case, we are just we are keeping up, but actually future forecasting what the demands on the calls for service are, we will be able to redistribute those reporting areas. But again, there are several considerations that we always take into account, and that is especially geographic barriers, the railroad tracks and the bridges. And certainly, our calls for service are a very, very large factor.

So yes, Yes. It would certainly simplify if

we could keep and always change our boundaries when you change your commission boundaries. But over the years, we have just found that it's it's very challenging to do that.

Okay. So that it would be

if So this

is based on different this his his district fiscal barriers, calls for service, things, you know, very components that, we don't really take into consideration when we define our city commission districts.

Correct.

Thank you. You're welcome.

So, chief, I I really like the concept, and I understand the need for it. My one concern is with regards to the Barrier Island. I don't wanna lose the four officers

I know

you that are assigned there, and I I wanna make sure there's no decrease. Because as we know, even though, you know, this district is really not gonna encompass Barrier Islands as much as the downtown hotspots, I am concerned because of that entertainment district and because of what goes on on the Barrier Island. So we can be assured that we're not gonna lose anyone on the Barrier Island?

That is correct.

Okay. Thanks.

You're welcome.

Is there an estimate of how many, the manpower, how many officers would be assigned to the district?

Your district would not change. You'd have the exact same amount of officers and community support.

For the for the new district?

Oh, I'm sorry.

Yes. So that would be approximately when we're still working out the numbers, and these are gonna change over the next year. I need to caveat this before I give you numbers. We can't do anything right now because we actually next week is our annual change and that's contractual. So we couldn't do anything until January 2027. So approximately for your district, you would still have the 30 to 40 range normally, but that's going to be recalculated. The downtown district, obviously smaller. We are looking at closer to a 30 range. But as we also increase our staffing, all of those numbers are going to change. And that's for reminding you, this is just strictly patrol we are talking.

We are not talking about public service aids, are not talking about our specialty units, we are not talking about community support. So there is an and homeless outreach. There are so many other factors and variables. And those numbers are strictly in the planning phase.

Thank you. Got it. Any other questions? Okay. Thank you. Thank you.

Mayor, if you could provide consensus on a decision or an option that we've provided, would you like us to further explore the 4th District or would you like us to Well, think we've

we've we've been seeking more concentrated effort in this area for a while. So I think you're on the lot I think

of about future. Courthouse. I'm think gonna ask assistant the city manager, Ben Rogers, to come share that with you.

Good mayor, good morning, mayor and commission. Ben Rogers, assistant city manager. I wanted to just talk through, the federal the existing Federal Courthouse Building at 299 East Broward. As you're aware, the new Federal Courthouse Building is scheduled to be completed, at the end of this calendar year, with the expectation that they relocate by the end of the 2027. And so GSA has reached out to the city and to the county to start some predisposal conversations to see if there's interest in the property.

So I'm going to go through a couple of things, real quick, and then I'll be seeking your feedback on if we're interested in pursuing the property, and if so, by what measure. So the first thing is the building was built in 1979. It sits on a 2.08 acre site. The gross building square footage is 257,000 with rentable space or usable space, interior of 169,000 square feet. There are two twenty six parking spaces located in the basement, and it is eligible for the National Historic Register.

And that's an important factor as we talk through the considerations of this property. It does not currently have designation, but there is a review process going on right now. And if it is designated, then there will be restricted covenants placed on the title. And then if we would ask for any, changes, modifications through that process, there might be adverse actions that result in some city obligation to memorialize, record or create some kind of file system of the existing property. The value according to the Broward County property appraiser, the land is valued at, just under $10,000,000 and that's calculated at $105 per square foot with approximately 91,000 square feet.

The building value is estimated at $27,000,000 for a total property value of $36,000,000 If we would move forward with entertaining this property, we would obviously go through an appraisal process. GSA would do their own appraisal, the city would do our appraisal, and then we would have a negotiation period. As I mentioned before, they are looking for the end of the calendar year to complete the building, the new building, and that is around the time that the surplus efforts will start, on the GSA side. And what that means is they will be reaching out to, the municipality, City of Fort Lauderdale and the county and making us aware that they, intend to dispose the property. The process starts with the federal, screening.

So they'll reach out to other federal agencies to see if there's an interest in the building. My understanding right now is that they don't believe that, that will be likely. The federal government, we don't have a strong presence of a regional hub here in Fort Lauderdale, and they also have to pay the fair market value for the building. The next step would be, to reach out to HUD and determine if the building has a value or a use for homeless services. And if so, they would create that as one of the potential disposal, options. Housing? Yes. So it could be housing or there could be public services. It doesn't necessarily say that that is the use, but it would be one of the allowable public benefit conveyances. And I'll talk about that in just a moment.

So once that happens, then the

Pretty fancy homeless center. And if

there is an interest, they would go through an extensive application process. It's not just that you could say, hey, we want to offer homeless services and the title will be transferred over. And so right now, what we're doing is we're in conversations with GSA on the predisposal process because when they send out that letter at that time, they want to understand what interest there is in the property, because each one of these public benefit conveyances is up to the current term administration. And so there's different preferences at the administration if they want to retain property, have certain uses for the property or if they want to dispose of the property. And so if we have an interest in obtaining it through one of the public benefit conveyances, which I'll share in a second, they want to start that homework process through the administration and find out that would be an eligible option or not.

And then that way, when they do the disposal paperwork a year from now, that would be listed as one of the conveyances if it gets approved. So with that, I'm going to hand out the public benefit conveyances. This was previously shared with the commission in the 2025, through a letter to commission. And so these are the public benefit conveyances that would allow the city to purchase the property. The first one on the sheet is the negotiated sale price.

And so that is just like a regular transaction. There are no restrictions on the use. The city could use it for whatever purpose, including a mixed use facility. That would go through the process, like I said, of negotiating a sale, with GSA. The one thing to note on that is if you do a negotiated sale, there is a clause that will be in the agreement, and that is a three year, excess profit clause, meaning that if we would turn around and sell the building, improve the building or make surplus revenues on it, they would have a portion of those revenues back to the federal government.

As for the public benefit conveyances, you have the list there, and each one of them has its own benefit or opportunity, to acquire the property. And so what we're looking for today is, commission feedback on if we would want to pursue the building and if so, if we want to go through the negotiated sale process or if we want to identify a public benefit conveyance that we'd want to pursue.

So as I read your chart, as we go down the list, in the fourth the fifth column, which is discount. So any of these other than negotiated sale, other than that, all the other opportunities we can get up to 100% discount on the purchase price?

That's correct. And it would just have a restricted covenant on the title at the time of transfer. And then it's also important to note that when you pick one of these conveyances, you can only pick a singular conveyance. So you can't split the building and say half of it would be a public health facility and half of it would be a parks and recreation facility. It has to be one conveyance that's selected for the entire property.

Okay. Because I mean, does that complete your report?

Yes, sir.

Okay. Because I've said on more than one occasion, what I would love to see there is a charter school and mostly focused on artificial intelligence education from K-twelve. And I think it would be a step forward. This commission has shown itself time and again as being a commission that's very forward thinking and breaking itself outside of its normative boundaries what people expect its government to do. I mean just last week, we approved a parking garage, but it wasn't a parking garage.

It was a landing area for a vertiport. These are the kinds of things that I think allow Fort Lauderdale to stand out above and beyond many of the other municipalities around the country. Providing we all know that artificial intelligence is here to stay and it's going to only get more and more exciting. And I think that Fort Lauderdale should be ahead of the game and provide an educational locus that can be supported by the other colleges in the area as well as high schools in the area that would feed into an educational system. And we've been talking about doing a charter school for a very, very long time.

And this might be an opportunity for the city to step forward without stepping on toes that for programs that are already offered in other institutions. I don't think we would I think this would be a cumulative effort of combined talent and combined resources from within the South Florida area. And I think it would show that Fort Lauderdale is committed to the advanced education of its children, and this might be a step forward that we might consider. Just one option that we that I've thought about. Commissioners, any other thoughts on this?

I have just I have a question before we go further. I heard you say about destination of historic site. Could you explain that? Because I'm wondering if it's gonna be designated, does what bearing does it have on the options that's being presented?

So that is probably the the biggest wildcard we have right now is it has not been designated. It's going through a review process now to better understand that. Unfortunately, we don't have the ability at this time to understand what those restricted covenants may or may not be, which makes it a little bit challenging. What GSA provided earlier today was that during the process, when they would submit the offer or the amount that we would buy the building for, that would include, the initial set of restricted covenants. And then at that point, we can negotiate, what that means if we accept them all or if we negotiate some of them out or up or down.

And then also, I think the biggest thing is the adverse action. So if we would want to modify something, there would be a requirement of what that means. So for example, if we would tear down a portion of it, we might have to create an artifact or a history historical file that we display at the museum or a public building that highlights the significance of that aspect of the building.

So to answer your question, correct me if I'm wrong, usually refers to the exterior of the building. For historic designation, they don't really focus on the interior because that that's that building has been plagued by the difficulty in trying to repurpose office space and the whole interior has been kind of a conundrum. And that's one of the one of the reasons why federal courthouse wants to get out of there because it was never really properly designed. And so but to Ben's point, though, we would have to find out exactly what they mean by it. But normally, it means the exterior.

And there there are two interior pieces that they have acknowledged that would have some kind of restriction on them. One is a historical painting, which they plan on removing, as part of the relocation. And the second one is there is a wall sculpture that's built into a wall that would have some kind of historical Where

is that? I don't know.

Been in every part of that building.

I don't think I've ever

seen The nuance there is that GSA would actually retain ownership of that wall and then have some kind of restricted They don't have wall. We agree on that.

So, Ben, is the GSA actually conducting that review in terms of, the historic designation? Yes. And that would be strictly for the National Register?

That's correct.

Okay. So that's not a bad thing in a way that I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but local designation is much more restrictive than the National Register. The National Register is simply I mean, it sounds great and it's wonderful if you're on the National Register of Historic Places, but it doesn't have that local control. In other words, you don't have to get a certificate of appropriateness to demolish. You don't have to go through all of those things.

And someone chime in if I'm wrong here. But, again, that's a much easier level of historic designation than a local historic designation. That being said, so do we know when they might determine if they are gonna actually go through the process? Because I think then you typically have to go through the state division of historical resources to nominate a local structure for the National Register. I don't know. Can the can the federal government just bypass the State Division of Historical Resources and just put it right on the National Register?

I don't know the answer to that question, but I can just tell you that when my conversation with GSA recently, they identified that the process was starting now. So that way when they got to the disposal process, they would be fully prepared and have an informed, decision of what the building requires.

So we can look into that, though.

We we should look into that. Yeah.

We should. But I I honestly, I don't see how if they're gonna do this process, a transparent true process of this building will, I think, put this on the National Register of Historic Places. William Morgan, I believe, was the architect, very well known in the seventies for his brutalist architecture. I know a lot of people don't like brutalism. I happen to be a fan.

The movie, The Brutalist, was terrific. I don't know if anyone saw it. But I I this is a this is a in all seriousness, this is a very significant structure in the city of Fort Lauderdale. I am a fan of the structure, and I believe that we can do great things. I think that we would be very shortsighted not to have a placeholder on this building, especially if we're eligible for 100% of the cost.

Education, mayor, I agree. I think that's a great category, and I think it's broad enough that you could partner with other groups in some way, do something educational. I mean, think it's broad enough. If you look at all of these lists, some of them are not so broad, but education is a broad, placeholder, broad topic. I just think that we have to move forward with expressing interest to the GSA, in this structure.

You know, that corner has always been a place of public, comment, public gathering. People weigh in on a whole variety of issues. It's just significant public arena for our city. And I think, mayor, even though you said it wasn't properly designed, I think that a lot of the problem over the years has really been maintenance

on the building. Just the layout of the interior space. It was built in the seventies. In the '70s, we were very focused on energy what's the word I'm thinking of reducing our energy use. You'll notice that there are very few windows in the building, and the idea was to not expose it to the outside so that it was during the energy crisis. And we've

seen a lot

of examples of brutalism. Our city hall was brutal. But this was clearly a step outside of your normal brutalist architecture, kind of brought in classical elements. And but anyway, I think that the commission should support an effort to maintain the building and keep it within our orbit of properties because it's a treasure that I don't think we should allow to be demolished and or to be modified in a way that I think takes away from its significance. So Mayor?

And we can gut. I mean, that's you're a 100% correct. It's it's not even an entire exterior. Typically, what really is only important is the facade of what actually faces the street.

Is that

what it is? Yes. So you could actually just do, you know, and we've done that in the past. We've we've done that, with the old, Lauderdale Beach Hotel, which is now the Las Olas Beach Club and several restaurants in the front. We have examples of that. The Gale on the beach, we've done that. That used to be a well known resort in the 50s and 60s on the beach. So we have examples of how we have done adaptive reuse with historic structures in our city. And I I just think that we we have to, even if it means and as I said, we are eligible able to gut, the interior and make it work.

You know, excuse me just a second, Raquel. But, you know, this is consistent with conversations we've had this past year with FAU, who's looking to establish a greater presence in our downtown. So we could connect with, know, Adam Hassner has indicated, you know, they want to bring more of an FAU presence. Maybe this could be part of a campus that they would consider. So all kinds of opportunities.

Rakel I

think if I just may, I think that also, just so you know, there is great interest in this structure. I've attended several workshops and charrettes from the State Division of Historical Resources. They've brought people here. I went on tour. They've brought people here from across the state to look at this building. Yes. And there really is an interest in people that are, you know, pretty tuned into historic preservation. They know they know of this building, And I just think it would be a loss if we let it go.

I agree. I I mean,

it's we're not looking to put an Outback Steakhouse in there, you know, if we wanted to be a much more functional purpose. Raquel?

Thank you, mayor. I just wanted to allow Chris Cooper to chime in on the historic designation aspect and provide a little bit of color in terms of our local, context.

Thank you, Manager Williams. Chris Cooper, Deputy City Manager. So a lot of what's been said about historic preservation, in particular with this building, is is very accurate. So a local designation is really the more strict and stringent process by which a landmark or a structure can be designated. That report, whether it's state or it's local or national, will typically outline what aspects of the building are suitable for designation and should be preserved and sometimes how they should be preserved.

Historic designation doesn't necessarily mean that redevelopment or alterations to the site, whether it's interior or exterior, are not possible. Los Filos Beach Club was brought up, and that's a great example where a historic structure was added to and built upon and still retained its historic significance under its local designation, and it could retain it if it was a nationally designated site as well. So from a preservation perspective, it doesn't close the door on really, I think, many of the things, if not all of the things we've discussed here today. And redevelopment in addition to the site could still be possible even under those types of conditions.

And then further mayors, is there consensus around the eligible use?

Well, any of the uses where they give 100% discount. Yes.

Start from that. But You're pick one?

So what GSA is looking for is a way that they can start the review process to see if they would be willing to do one of the public benefit conveyances. So I would encourage the commission, if there's two or three of them, it's probably better at this point to narrow it down and let them start the research process. So that way, when they start the formal disposal process a year from now, it will already have that understanding if it can

or So can't why don't we if I could ask the commission if we could focus it as an educational site. I certainly don't want it to be a housing site and nor a correctional site, port facility, emergency management. I don't think we have other facilities for that, wildlife conservation, highway, public airport. We have other facilities for that. So that's why I think maybe if we could just focus on education, that might be a good first step.

Well, Mayor, thanks. What's I think we need we've just been talking about we need more workforce and affordable housing. What's why not consider

put do we want we want to put affordable housing there and one of the most most one of the most expensive pieces of real estate we have in downtown. How do you justify the cost? That's some thinking.

Justify the cost of having We have

to rehabilitate the building to make it for housing. Okay. There aren't

We would have to rehabilitate it for education.

Well Right. But educate first, let me for example, we'd have to put kitchens in there. We'd have to put more bathrooms in there, we'd have to put all kinds of things in there, whereas educational institution, you don't have to put all that stuff in there. The most of the facilities are already in place. You'd have to spend a lot more money to make apartments in there as opposed to creating it as a housing facility. That's all I'm saying. It's just there's not the to rebuild the interior for housing would be a lot more money than just

I we'll the think

I

we'll structural with and maintenance challenges. The roof has massive challenges from what I understand. So So

these apartments would have no windows Yeah. In Which I don't think is Yeah. I don't think it's appropriate. If you wanna make housing there, a lot of these house a lot of these apartments would have zero windows. There aren't any windows in this. There's some glass frontage in in the in the courtyard area, but most of the back area has no windows.

Which by the way is it has a big impact if this is declared historic because you would have to go into that exterior of that facade and just totally disrupt it with windows. And once you do that to this historic structure, you're gonna run into problems with that. Just so you know, that's a big ask if that's a big request for a certificate of appropriateness on a historic structure if you're gonna go in and just decimate the facility to put in windows, just just just as an aside. And I will tell you that I have had, several conversations with several development teams that are interested in this structure. So I I have met with folks that are looking to do things such as, educational components because they see the potential to team up with other projects that we have going on in the city.

And they they see it as a as a very interesting concept. But I I have been meeting for the last two years actually trying to even incorporate there's an incredible piece of land just to the west of it that's been open for how long? How many years has that land sat there? I mean, could do something. I mean, you Over twenty five years. Yes. That's a huge piece of land that could be a real revenue generator if it was connected somehow into the redevelopment of the courthouse. That would be a way to bring someone in that I see, financially is really a win win because, again, that's a significant piece of land that you could do something in conjunction, with the courthouse.

I'm not familiar. I know the the space that you're referring to, but not familiar with the background. Who owns it? Is it part of the the it's separate separate owners? A private owner. Private owner. Yeah. Okay. Alright. I'm I'm I need clarity. I I when it says 100% discount, are we talking about free? I like easy words. Does that mean free? Yeah. Okay. Alright. So where we were given this value of $36,000,000, we'll be, in a sense, gift this property to do Be

gifted by the federal government.

By the federal government to choose one of these options to okay. Alright. But I I do, agree with what Ben is saying. We should, include other options in case it doesn't fit their criteria. Kinda

I

was when Ben began to talk about the affordable housing piece, I was on that thought as well, but understanding that we cannot necessarily change to add windows that alleviates that opportunity. But also, with the others, what could we also do? Parks and recs, what could we do?

Carl Williams, how about a massive indoor pickleball facility here at the federal Courthouse? I see that as a real win win. We need some indoor. On a day like today, you're only a day like today. This was all indoor. This would be packed. I mean, what

do you

think, Carl?

Just just to clarify, it's it's not that an affordable housing development could not happen. The likelihood is that any use that would be selected would require redevelopment of the site and possibly require a partner to work with the city. And so the structure, it's we're not precluded from going in that direction. It would probably take a little bit more creativity, a higher level of partnership and investment to accommodate that, but it's not impossible that affordable housing, you know, could be done there.

Just to share, just to add, when National League of Cities, when we were out there in Salt Lake in November, they had offered a creative, competitive contest for developers to come in and say how they could and what you could do with properties. So even with that, maybe this is something that we can consider.

We have done that in the past.

We Tropic Magazine. Mhmm. I think we still have some copies of that issue. They did an amazing Mhmm. I don't even know if that magazine is still in existence, but the a couple of years ago, they actually asked, several architects in our city to come up with ideas for the federal courthouse. Okay.

I think

I still have a copy of that. Some of you could

share it.

Ago. Okay. And I think three concepts were created.

It was great.

Yeah. And one was a one was a mall.

Okay. Yeah.

But But just the you know, having those open conversations to see where we can go with it.

Yeah. Which is most cost effective, which

is more which

is more appropriate for us. Totally agree. But so if we want to look at affordable housing, we want to look at education, those are the two paths that I guess the commission could agree on.

Understood. And negotiated sale is something that the city would want to also entertain? Or is that something we

should No, don't think that we don't have the resources for a negotiated sale. Okay.

So we'll follow-up with GSA, provide them the feedback that we're interested in pursuing the property with, two potential private benefit conveyances, one being the education, the other one being affordable housing, and they'll make the termination of where

I'm And has supposed to be one or the other from what you said.

So at this point, we will provide them with both. They will then determine if they would want to offer this parcel for one of those reasons or not. And And then when they do the disposal process, it will clearly define which ones they will or will not offer as a public conveyance. Okay.

And then we'll come back to the commission with that information.

Okay. Great. Thank

you. Okay.

We're a

little bit ahead of ourselves.

Is there anything is there any more to your presentation that you wish to?

Yes. So we had originally planned to break for lunch. Lunch will not be available until 11:30.

Why we have

don't we

take a ten minute break and then maybe have lunch at around noon? It was eleven.

Ten minutes will put us at about just over 11:00. We could then finish up the last two topics, and we'd be right on schedule.

What other two topics are there?

We have the future of the one stop shop and an update on sale.

Oh, that's at the 12:00 meeting. Yeah. So we just push everything back

a little bit.

And so let's just take a little break now.

Okay.

And then I'm not

in favor of pushing it, Brian.

Well, just let me finish. Okay. Go ahead. Okay. Please. So why don't we take a ten minute break and do the one stop shop in City Hall conversation before lunch and then have lunch?

What time is lunch?

Lunch is scheduled for 11:30.

Okay. Well,

so we're gonna take

a ten minute break now.

Take And then we'll and then we'll have the we'll do the 12:00 program. And then right after the 12:00 program, we can have lunch.

Alright.

Well So

we'll have lunch at noon instead of 11:30. Is that gonna is that gonna upset your system?

Well, it's not my system. It's just that you're pushing everything back a half an hour and and

We'll still end at 02:00.

We will?

Yes. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Let's do that. Let's take a ten

minute That's a unilateral decision by the mayor just there, but out of my colleagues.

I'll resume our workshop, folks. Where's commissioner, Glassman? Commissioner Beasley Pittman? There she is. Okay.

Oh, you want a lawyer? Before we begin our next session, I just want to take a moment and thank the folks here at the Fort for allowing us and accommodating us here today. This is an amazing space and it really is an opportunity for all of us who haven't been here to see what beautiful facility has been built here that the city owns, by the way. And that's once again has activated an area of the park that certainly has shown how many hundreds and I would say thousands of people have now come here to the fort and they experienced Snyder Park. This was a great opportunity for the city and we're so happy that we were able to take advantage of it.

So as we continue, we're moving on to opportunities for the upcoming year, and we'll begin with the one stop shop, city manager.

So as you are aware, we've had recent discussions surrounding the one stop site. And today, Deputy City Manager Chris Cooper will walk through some opportunities for the future.

Good afternoon again, mayor, commissioners. Chris Cooper, deputy city manager. So as manager Williams said, I'm going to walk through a little bit of a very brief history of the one stop shop site as well Oh, as

have to

remind us. Yeah. Sorry.

As well as what the generally what the development potential is of the site and then seek your input on what some of our next steps could be to activate that site. So the one stop shop parcel is named after the city's one stop shop permitting site, which was used, I think, until the mid-2010s and then demolished around 2019. Since that time, it sat vacant as a green space in our downtown at the corner of North Andrews Avenue and Northwest 2nd Street. In September 2021, the city appraised the property and the 2.75 acre site was appraised at $26,000,000 Again, that was about five years ago. So we would expect that price to have increased since that appraisal, 26,000,000.

Dollars 26,000,000 for the three and a quarter acres?

Two and a quarter. Two and three quarters.

Two and three quarters acres.

The site itself, when you're thinking ahead about what the development potential could be, is within our RAC City Center zoning district. It's one of our it is our most permissive zoning district in the city. There's no limitations on height other than our FAA restrictions. There's no density limitation, and the site would allow for a single use or mixed use development that includes residential or commercial. Affordable housing is a potential use of the site, either under our normal development process within the RACCC zoning district or through things like the Geller Amendment, which allows for affordable housing on a site in the regional activity centers and transit corridors as well as the Live Local Act.

And the site also permits public purpose facilities, and some of those facilities include an active or passive park, educational facilities, cultural, educational and civic facilities, police and fire facilities, a government facility, library, a museum and art gallery. So the city's downtown master plan, which is one of our guiding documents for development in the downtown, actually contemplated what the one stop site could be used for when it was when the master plan was created. It doesn't necessarily mandate what the master plan has set for the use of the site, but it does suggest that the site could be one of the primary downtown parks. The plan considers six major parks in the downtown and the one stop site was included in that plan as a potential one of the six parks. So in 2020, the city received an unsolicited proposal for the site to redevelop it as a 98,000 square foot arts park.

The project would have included a number of amenities, including a cultural venue, believe, a gallery and a food hall. Since that time, the city has moved on from that unsolicited proposal, and that gives us the opportunity to reconsider what the one stop site could be used for. So some next steps that we're asking you to consider today are whether or not the city would like to entertain another unsolicited proposal in the term of a public private partnership to redevelop the site, if the city commission would like us to move forward with looking at the site to be converted into a city park or some other type of public asset, and whether or not the commission would like us to begin the process to engage the community to obtain feedback about the desired use for the space. Now some of those options could be done in tandem. So certainly, we could embark on participation and public engagement process to seek input on what that site could be used for, and it could lead to one of the other next steps that I mentioned.

And if we do that, it might be helpful if the commission could give us at least some idea of what potential interest there may be for the use of that site so that we could incorporate that into the engagement effort to help focus that effort and hopefully shorten the process.

Okay. Floor is open. We'll start with the district commissioner, commissioner Glasson.

Thank you, mayor. Thank you, Chris. So I have been in conversations with the immediate neighbors of the site. They actually were in favor of the direction we were headed in. They they like the idea of a majority of this space staying open and green. They also did like the arts and cultural component that we were pursuing at that time. So basically, would say that folks were like, keep going in that direction. Don't overdevelop the site. And again, I guess it's just for us to decide. I I have been a supporter of a lot of the p three projects that we've done, so I'm not adverse to that.

But I'm also open to hearing some of the ideas from you and the city manager about what we would do if we actually did explore this as a public park site developed, run by, operated by the city. I know that we had some concerns about that back when we actually did pick the development for the P3 where we thought it would be easier to have a private entity handle all of that development, operations, maintenance, security. I want to know if any of that's changed since that original assignment of that P3. I will tell you that I've also heard from others in our city. As we all know, we're gonna soon be going to an opening of Hazinga Park.

Those folks are interested in being part of this process. Other people, other agencies in our city are interested in moving forward. So I guess I would love to hear from city staff, what are your thoughts about that, in terms of either the city going alone on this or looking for partners or looking for other agencies that have had that experience now in developing these kinds of spaces? Thanks.

Alright. Before we get to city staff, if we could just poll the rest of the commission. Commissioner Beasley Pittman, do you have any thoughts on this?

Interested in also knowing, what the neighbors and the members of the city would like to do with the property. I am, as you know, a fan also of the green space and not, you know, overdeveloping is the word that you use. So if we can come to an agreement where the property is used to even look at what we were doing before because the project idea was good. Unfortunately, it just didn't, you know, go through the whole process. So I'm open to having that conversation where we could reintroduce something that was similar to what was proposed before, with not overdevelopment, but keeping a little bit more green space to it.

Okay. Ben? Thanks. Yeah. I think that one stop should be, public park public park space.

Just public park space? Yes. Okay. All right. So I have a couple of ideas also.

And I go back to the beginning of our conversation this morning in which we talked about strategic plan goals. And one of the goals, number three in particular, was sustainability and resilience. Now as you look at Flagler Village, we created a downtown which before didn't exist. We had the land was there, but there was very little activity. And for those of us who have lived here for a long time, we know that the transformation, the metamorphosis of that particular area has been phenomenal and has been recognized by groups around the country as being an amazing accomplishment for any city to have accomplished.

But one of the things that I've noticed about Flagler Village is that most of it is just housing. And when we talk about sustainability, we have to talk about why does anyone want to live there? It's all very exciting and fun and new and as it is now, and you see a lot of young people and some families that are living there. But the reality is there has to be something to do to sustain it, you know. And I had a conversation with Jim Carras, who's a well known expert on urban planning and urban design and urban sustainability.

And he happens to live in Fort Lauderdale, and we had this conversation. And he agreed that, you know, we need to take it to another level. We have to start activating Flagler Village more than what it is today. And the reason why it was exciting that the folks that were going to create the Arts Park is because it was helping to activate the area and at the same time maintain the open space so that we don't find it as a magnet for vagrants and homeless people because that area is traditionally known as being a location for where homeless people have gathered over the decades. But at the same time, Crete has something to do.

It was going to be a food hall, going to have entertainment, there was going to be theater, there was going to be art space. And to us, it was like a win win for, let's just say, for many of us, was a win win for what we're hoping to accomplish in Flagler Village. I'm not sure if it's possible. I know, Pam, you said that that would be a great thing to do. But because these folks couldn't come up with the financing, I'm wondering if anyone can come up with with the financing.

Is it a bankable deal to be able to have the kind of thing that we had envisioned for that area to be able to have all of these amenities, all these things that folks that live in Flagler Village could walk to because we don't have a lot of walkable things in Flagler Village unless you want to walk to a donut shop and a pizza place. We don't have grocery stores. We don't have prepared food establishments. We don't have hair salons. We don't have all the things that people want in their daily life.

They have to get in their car and they have to drive somewhere. Well, if they have to still get in their car and drive to where they need to go, then we failed in what we were trying to accomplish in Flagler Village because Flagler Village is supposed to be exactly that, a village. And we need to be able to keep this thing going. And part of it is trying to find locations and activities that help sustain the viability of what we've created so far. So having said that, I agree with those who said that we should look for ways to continue to activate this site.

Yes, keeping most of it as open space is great. Having someone monitor it, like the DDA in Heisinger, they're going to be managing Heisinger Park. So they'll be able to manage it and they're not under the same constraints that a public entity like ours is required to keep an open space open to everybody regardless of their purpose. So we have to be careful about that. So whatever we can do to try to encourage another applicant to come in there with an unsolicited proposal to see if we could again create an activated space.

And if you're asking for direction on how to do about how to go about doing that, yes, Chris, I think that we should perhaps put out to the public out on the street that we're looking for unsolicited proposals to see how we can best utilize that space, keeping in mind that we still want most of it to be open space, but at the same time, to be able to activate it for public use and have serve as a functional purpose, not just recreational.

So Mayor, I just want to address a few of the comments mentioned earlier. One of the things that speaks to the viability of downtown and how much that area has evolved, one of the concerns that we have from development standpoint is our ability to service new development in the downtown area. And so we have been looking at the one stop shop site as a potential opportunity for a store lift station that is much needed.

Have a lift station at Peter Feldman Park. Did we just install one there?

So I think we have some capacity concerns that could limit future development, and we know that we need a store lift station in the area, and the one stop shop site could provide that opportunity. Okay. But but what's happening with Peter Feldman Park, which, by the

way, is still a blank wall and has still not been wrapped and still looks as ugly from day one as it does today. What's happening there?

So I'll start with the list station itself and circle back to the wrap on the

wall. So

the city and including downtown, is split up into multiple basins, each served by a lift station. And so each lift station has the maximum capacity to the point that when it becomes surcharged and the run time exceeds what is capable of, we have a need for a new lift station. You can only expand lift stations and their capacity by so much. The motors and things that serve it are limited in that way. So with all the new development that we've had in the downtown in particular, there is a need to continue to split those basins that Ellipse Station serves.

So we're at that point in the area that is in and around the one stop City Hall, the Broward Boulevard area South 3rd Avenue. So it's a continuous improvement project to look to upsize and install that new infrastructure to keep up with the development that we're experiencing, and we're at that point with that basin. So what we're looking to do is split that basin, add

a new lift station, which is known

as the A5 Lift Station. Siting of it would ideally be in the area of the one stop site in that general vicinity. So what we're asking

What's for the footprint of that?

It's about 50 by 50. A lot of it's underground. There is some above ground infrastructure like you see in Feldman Park, but a lot of it is below grade.

50 by 50. That's a big block.

50 feet by 50 feet?

50. Yeah.

Well, out of isn't it like a three and a half acre site? 2.75.

But 50 feet or 50 feet. The one at Peter Farber Park is not 50 by 50.

Yes. I think that's the maximum. I think it's it could be 50 by 30, but it's generally that 50 by 50 box. Okay.

But that's just a corner.

It's a corner. So I think what the manager is asking is, as part of this conversation, we'd like to know if you're okay with us moving forward with designing this new lift station in this Deserve the Basin on the one stop site, understanding that we need to make sure that it's out of the way, it's not impacting the overall redevelopment potential of the site, which we'll be mindful of in that design.

Yeah. I think we need that. It sounds like we need that from an infrastructure standpoint. So This is an

adversity hearing of that.

Should be part of it.

Capacity we

need. How this conversation wasn't broached when when we were entertaining the Arts Park proposal. The Arts Park proposal doesn't contemplate a list station. What happens if they went forward with their plan? Where will we have put the

list station? We would have looked to the City Hall site as a potential opportunity or sought a partnership with a private property owner.

Yes. So Innards Park had significant control and say of what went on to that site. And we did have conversations with them, but there was concern that it would impact the overall layout and design of what they had proposed for the site at the time. So as the manager said, we looked at some alternative locations, but really one stop site is ideally situated to host the location. So

I think that we heard a desire for activating the site for green space, for public park, for a potential public private partnership. And I think one of the ways that we can accommodate that public private partnership is potentially through a solicited P3 where we give a framework, hey, we need A, B, C, D and E as a starting point as opposed to an unsolicited P3 where folks just tell us what to include, maybe we could give a couple of mandatory minimums for inclusion in the project and ask the development community, hey, what can you add to this? What can you propose to ensure that we're getting what we're looking for?

I like that idea. And I'll tell you why. Because lately, we've tended to almost take these unsolicited proposals and make them solicited proposals by telling them eventually through the process what we want and they'd be they look more like design build to me than unsolicited proposals because we have we have done that. So why don't we just cut out that whole path to that and just do the solicited and let everyone know right up front what it is we want and then we can, you know, bypass all that, you know, footsieing in around both a solicit, unsolicited design build and let's just get to the point.

Okay.

And How that process work? I mean, that's just a regular procurement then. There's no that's no different than regular procurement. We we define

So the not not an RFP process, which would have been a regular procurement process. So an unsolicited P3 leaves it open for the development community to add additional elements. But what we're saying is, hey, this is what's required from the city up front as opposed to figuring it out on the back end.

And

another consideration that was brought up is a partner to potentially manage and operate. And we have had some preliminary discussions. We know that there are groups that are interested in working with the city. And I would like us to work with the city attorney's office to make sure that we understand what the rules of engagement are on a public park, even if it is managed by an entity that is outside of the city. I think that there are some rules and regulations that carry through no matter who's managing based on the fact that it's a public park facility. So I think we can talk through that and what that means as we go through the process to look for partners.

Okay. All right. Any other comments or suggestions? All right. There being none, does that give you enough to work with? Okay, great. Thank you. On to City Hall.

So we have Yvette Matthews, Assistant City Manager. This is largely a discussion about the financing surrounding the proposed City Hall. And just for your awareness, we're already engaged with the developer. We've already begun that negotiation process. We're establishing collaborative working groups in various functional areas and one step in the process and especially with Yvette chairing that finance group, working group, we need to get a handle on where we see ourselves in terms of the financial capacity of the city for this project.

Great. Yvette?

Thank you, city manager. So I think we saved the best for last, but I know that you all want to get to lunch. So I'll try to

be brief.

Take your time. Take your time. So

You're gonna take

away our appetite anyways.

There we go. So before the holidays, the commission really tasked staff with beginning negotiations with the highest ranked proposer for the city hall project. And as the manager said, since that time, we've engaged with the city attorney's office, our outside counsel to begin drafting that interim agreement framework. Over the next weeks, we'll be making those interdisciplinary groups that the city manager talked about so that we can make sure that we have feedback from across the organization, including our charter officers, as we enter into this negotiation process. We're also beginning to consider what that cadence for public input looks like in the process as well.

But today we're really talking about the high level financial information, our financial framework. So the finance team or the financial team will include representatives from OMB, from finance, the city auditor's office as well as our financial advisor. And over the years, we've been sharing with the commission that we had built into our financial sustainability model a $200,000,000 project. We're still using that as the target cost for this project to include both the project cost as well as operations and maintenance of the facility. So that's what we're using as our starting point.

As we think through financing, we know that there a number of financing mechanisms that we can use for this project. One, leveraging the city's really strong credit rating. But we know that our project partner is really interested in making sure that they too have skin in the game, and we believe that that will help advance this project. We'll be working on developing the right myths of our debt financing as well as the equity that we would like the partner to continue to have in the project to incentivize them as we go through the process. And then the last thing is really as we talk about operations and maintenance, this is a once in a generation project.

And we know that this building has to last for decades to come. And so we're planning for the operation and maintenance of this building as we begin the development of the building. And so you'll also see some of that information as we go through our interim agreement process. So we wanted to give the commission early indications of some of these high level things so that if there was any additional guidance that you wanted to provide us as we go through the process, we could incorporate that.

And just to add to that, we have some preliminary indicators that working with the developer, we could deliver a project that's in alignment with our anticipated budget that we've been discussing over the years.

So their $344,000,000 projected costs can be brought down to 200,000,000

We have some preliminary indicators that suggest that.

Okay. That's magical.

Yes.

So why don't you continue with your presentation? I'd like to know how much of the FEMA money from the flood is going to be contributing to this process and what are your other sources of funding?

So that's really the end of my presentation. But at a high level, we haven't hit all of those details yet. What we're really working on more is the framework for how we're engaging with the developer in the process. So what we're using is overall project budget as we go through the process.

All right. So let's just let then discuss Okay. Wonderful. So what was the amount of money we've got from FEMA? 80 something million? 88,000,000. 88,000,000, right. Okay. So what is your office anticipating? How are you going to allocate that money, not so much with all the projects, but just with regard to how much you think should be devoted to City Hall? Have you thought about that? Who are you looking to?

Yeah. I'll handle this one. Okay. So if you recall a month or so ago, the commission approved a draft or action plan for HUD to consider, which provided a breakdown of the types of areas that the CDBG Doctor funding could be used. Part of that did include a public facilities budget. It wasn't a lot of money, but understanding that there's a lot of restrictions and rules around how that funding can be used towards a public facility. We didn't believe there was an opportunity for a high level of funding. So we'll look to that to see if there's opportunities to fund aspects of City Hall within what HUD allows us to do, but we're not certain on how much of that will reasonably be able to be used based on those guidelines as well as the timing of the grant.

Just to add to that, we're going to be working through our capital projects team with Quentin's leadership on refining the space plan and what those public spaces are within City Hall so that we can better estimate what might be eligible for the CDBG funds. But we don't want to bank on the CDBG funds knowing that there could be additional hurdles. There could be timelines associated that don't necessarily line up with the development timeline for the project. And so we're still exploring that and I think it's very fluid, but we don't anticipate a heavy reliance on the CDBG funds to fund the City Hall project.

Okay. Understand that. But to the extent that we receive that amount of money, part of it, I understand, was based on the fact that the City Hall was destroyed. So I think that I had always thought that was the intended purpose for some of the funds was to either allow us to rehabilitate City Hall or to apply it towards new construction. Maybe I misunderstood, but maybe you'll come back to us with that.

Sure. We can come back with whether or not some of that conversation was around some of our FEMA reimbursed funds, if

that was related to that, but

we can certainly circle back on that conversation.

Okay.

In terms of FEMA reimbursed funds, did they pay for the demolition of the City Hall? Did that come out of FEMA funds, you recall?

Yes, that was part of.

Okay. So it didn't cost so interesting how things happen. So okay. All right. Does anyone have any questions of Yvette or of Chris? So when are we going to get a more conclusive update, like in sixty days? This is a very rapidly advancing project, so we need to be kept up to date on everything.

Absolutely, Mayor. We do intend to have a robust communications and outreach plan that's specific to the community, but also to ensure that you all are kept abreast of our progress. We don't want to come to you so frequently that we're not really reporting anything tangible, but we do want to make sure that for the various milestones in the process, we are communicating and engaging with you for feedback. One of the things that the commission brought forward is a request to have, some additional transparency in the project and to allow for the community to provide some input along the way. And so we want to account for that while recognizing requested that staff expedite this process so that we can deliver it rather quickly.

So we want to find the right balance between seeking that engagement and also just putting our heads down and doing what we need to do to move the project forward. So I don't want to commit that we would report to the commission more frequently than we would have any new information. But I I do want to make sure that you're aware that we are making progress. And some of those communications might be a little more informal, and then some of those communications will be more formal, like a letter to the commission or even an update to the city commission at a conference meeting. Our intention is to bring forward a draft term sheet for an interim agreement as a first step in getting official feedback from the city commission, before having a finalized interim agreement for consideration.

So that's sort of the framework that we're going to be using. And, if the commission would like to engage more frequently, please just let us know.

And the timeline for that interim draft? So

we just started the partnership with the developer, had a kickoff meeting last week. We're going to be meeting with them on a weekly cadence as a large project team. And our goal is by the February, first meeting in March, to have the term sheet brought to commission and have their approval. And then based off of any changes, modifications, then the interim agreement would be a few meetings behind that date.

I would love to see it actually a little sooner than that if we're only going to get the interim by the February, March. It's still like two months away just for the interim. Don't know. It takes time. I understand. I'm just just voicing an opinion. Okay. And your take on how that first meeting went on gen on January 8, was it your first meeting?

I'll allow the city attorney to also weigh in. She was there, but I think it was very positive.

Yes. Commissioner, it was very positive. I think we have a good team relationship with the developer, and our groups are working closely together to advance this as quickly as possible. We emphasized more than once that we want this to move quickly. I think they understand that. We are working our own legal group is working with the external counsel to finalize term sheets and which will ultimately become the interim agreement. The first step of that might be ready this week to turn over to the other side. So while I believe the manager is making sure that expectations are realistic and met, we would strive to exceed them if we could.

That's great. Thank you very much.

Okay. Any other questions? Yes.

Thanks for your work. Keep it going. Great. And again, we are aiming for a $200,000,000 budget for this.

Well, think that's a little pie in the sky. I know it's going to be more than that, but that's certainly a nice target. I don't know how you go from $340,000,000 to 200,000,000 So something we're not only going to cut off 10 floors. It doesn't seem to make any sense. So let's not assume that that's going to be the final number.

I agree, Mayor and Commissioner Sorensen. I think this is a great target and I think we need to come in plus or minus somewhere, you know, very close to that $200,000,000 considering that there's a lot yet to be discovered and put together as part of the negotiation process. But I believe that, that $200,000,000 needs to be our focus, and any deviation from that hopefully should be in the other direction, so less I than 200,000,000

agree. Thank you.

Yes. I just want to make sure that we're understanding that we're building a building not just for today, but for the future. So I I don't want us to cut off our nose to spite our face, and I wanna see a realistic number and a realistic scope as opposed to just change ordering us to death as the process goes on, and then it's just laughable. So I I again, I just let's find the balance and and be realistic and remember that this is a building that's gotta serve our city for generations to come, not not just now. Thanks.

Okay. Anything further? Alright. Let's break for lunch, and we'll resume at Just just for

your consideration, the commission will convene downstairs, and preparations have been made downstairs. So no need to, consider the hospitality available up here.

And what time would you like us back?

So, according to the schedule, we have thirty minutes for lunch. Why don't we plan to convene at 12:15?

12:15.

12:15. Great.

Alright. Thank you.

Okay. Great. Great. Thanks. Let's resume our meeting and our workshop.

City manager.

Thank you, Mayor. I hope everyone enjoyed the brief recess and had an opportunity to walk around the site. We certainly wanted to take this meeting off campus so that we could enjoy the facility. So thank you. At this time, we're going to move forward with our agenda, and we have neighbor input as the next element. And Erica, do you want to kick it off?

Yes. So I'm not sure if anyone from the public has signed up to speak or is

No one has signed up to speak.

We have one.

David? We did we didn't do actual cards. We were just gonna have anyone

for the public, please raise your hand who wants to speak. Marilyn Amano, come on up. You have forty five seconds. No. I'm just kidding.

I don't have a timer.

Forty five seconds to

get there.

I I don't have a timer, so you're in luck.

Okay.

Okay. All right. Good afternoon, everyone. At your 01/13/2026, general goal setting meeting, Lauderdale tomorrow, our number one priority for 2026 is getting the charter revision recommendations regarding public lands on the November 2026 ballot. We especially support the revisions to Section eight that would close the sale lease license loophole.

Any conveyance of any interest in a city park should be for public purpose and require unanimous approval in our opinion. We are ready to participate in public information campaigns and rally citizens' support for these charter changes. In previous years, we have shared with you our complete list of goals and priorities for the year. Many of these have been accomplished while portions of others are being addressed, including monitoring improving water quality, attention to homelessness and accelerating stormwater infrastructure. While more remains to be done, the city has acknowledged the problems and began looking for solutions, and we appreciate your efforts.

We have drafted our priorities for 2026 and we recognize the importance of sharing them with you. The additional priorities in addition to getting the charter revisions done would be adopting a specific P3 ordinance, addressing conditional uses in the ULDR to protect neighborhoods and increase stormwater retention and green space, address citywide traffic congestion, road conditions and first responder times and review data on existing homeless programs to ensure that these efforts are actually being effective and what more can be done and increasing and enhancing green and open space. The discussion today on One Stop Shop is a great start on that. In years past and throughout the coming year, we are always available to participate with the City Commission and the City staff as you seek solutions. Don't hesitate to call on us for suggestions and feedback.

We wish you a productive workshop as you plan for our city and community in the coming year. Thank you all for your attention.

Okay. Great. Thank you so much. Is there anyone else from the public who wishes to speak? Okay. Very good. Anyone have any comments about any of these recommendations or do you want to just talk about them at a future? I love your new logo. Okay. Let us move on.

I just want to point out on the logo you spelled the word future wrong. We are building a brighter you have a forture.

Well, that's the French way.

Is that the is that the is that the French for the future? Forture? I just wanna mention. So you might wanna check

out that logo. You know, Michael Schneider is now a resident

of Paris. I know. He's taken it. Oui oui. Thank you.

Alright.

What what

go ahead.

Yeah. Thanks.

Yes. Thank you so much. Teacher Glassman.

Go ahead.

That's right.

That's right. Do you remember mayor when he used to the commissioner Glassman used to read through the minutes and give updates to the minutes? Do you remember that back years ago?

You don't do that as much. Edit. Edit them.

Yes. Yes.

With punctuation marks. We don't miss it. David works extra hard now to make sure I don't have to do that.

He's he's

thank you, David.

I know.

You have no idea. So pressure. The pressure, David. And the cams. Well, I Thank walk But you see, you don't you don't really see what happens in that pre agenda meetings. I know. Fix it after my pre agenda meetings. So when you see it, it's fixed.

It's fixed. It's all beautiful.

It's all good.

Well, we appreciate your service.

We're all working together. Thank Thank you.

What's the city specific p three ordinance? Is that something I just know if we've talked about that or considered that. What are we I know we fall under the state p three.

It's worked so far. Yeah. Mean, I think these the one of the recommendations that was made was to allow for another level of public input, but I don't know. I think we had discussed that, and I don't know. It's just worked so it's worked good so far.

So I'm I don't I don't know whether we really need to change any of that. Conditional use of the ULDR to protect neighborhoods, you know, I think we've been pretty respectful of of neighborhoods. The only the only time I mean, I'm trying to think what situation has arisen, which neighborhood feels that there's been overdevelopment that compromises a single family home neighbors. Let's see, traffic congestion, yes, well, definitely

Road conditions and part of the road conditions, Meyer, is the bond, right, which was what's going to road conditions for that? Want to say '27

About $27,000,000

27,000,000 I thought that's what it was.

27,000,000 we've allocated, yes, for road improvements. Exactly. Review data, existing programs on homelessness. We talked about that. We definitely were on top of that and increasing and enhancing green space. Well, we totally agree with you there. Alright. So now it's your turn, folks, members of the commission, to provide input and and feedback to the city staff. So we'll start with, well, vice mayor is not here, so we'll go to District 2. Commissioner Glassman.

Yes. Thank you. First of all, I want to thank all of you for the work today, for all of this. Really I want you to know how appreciated it is. Every single year, the work that goes into this, reading all of the backup and then listening today, to all of the highlights. So I just wanna say thank you for that. It's really important. And I I will say that holistically, I don't see us really changing a lot of our goals and priorities. I mean, they're all so important. They're all so strong.

And I did reach out to all of our neighborhoods in District 2 and receive feedback and they really fall within these categories almost every single time from all of the neighborhoods. And I will tell the neighborhoods that might be listening or just everybody that the the ones that we did receive that were very specific to neighborhoods in general I'm sorry, specifically those neighborhoods and not in general, I will share with the city manager's office and I will go over that when we meet, because again, they're very neighborhood specific. But in terms of overall, again, and I'll go through this very, very quickly, I hear the same thing over and over and over again in terms of what those priorities already are. So I again, they're so relevant. They're important.

I don't think our work will ever be concluded on those topics because they just continue, but they need our attention very much. Specifically, I did wanna mention though some from the neighborhoods that I think do have impact throughout the city. I'm hearing a lot of complaints about and again, this is gonna be it's gonna be important for us to work with some of these other agencies. I hear from about FP and L. When people when FP and L goes into a neighborhood, when they go into, our city, whether it's along a one a or anywhere else, the environment's not left as nicely as when they first encountered it.

We have to make sure, that we're making sure that our sidewalks look good, not just patches of asphalt all over the place. Aesthetically, I think we need to put more pressure on them in terms of how they leave a job, and that is really citywide. As I go through these really quickly, again, I see a lot of the issues like, you know, flood mitigation, keep working on the infrastructure. Again, some of my waterway neighborhoods are very concerned with illegal dumping dumping regulation of pump out facilities, things like that. Again, enforcement is a big issue, whether it's parking enforcement on the Barrier Island.

People have a hard time driving along a one a and maneuvering in between all of the delivery trucks. Is there a way that we can look at making sure that some cities I know have certain hours where they can have those trucks blocking off the streets? I mean, obviously, in areas where we have a lot hotels, and commercial enterprises, it really is difficult to navigate, on making your way through those streets. South Gordon had some really interesting, comments for us that I think apply to the whole city in terms of please let's keep working on king tide issues, heavy rain events, know, to make sure that we are moving quickly and expeditiously on all of these projects. I've seen issues brought up to us in terms of city seawalls.

People would like to see city seawall projects move a little bit faster in all of the neighborhoods that have that. I'm still getting a lot of concern, about Los Solos Boulevard and traffic mitigation, a lot of speeding. The e bikes, those electric scooters and the e bikes have been a real nuisance in a lot of our neighborhoods in our district, whether it's along Los Solos or whether it's in Holiday Park. Actually, the night that we were at World Memorial recently, there were a lot of lot of kids doing that same exact thing in Holiday Park, that very night. What are what

are you talking about? Scooters and

e bikes? Well, I mean, like, those electric you know what I'm talking about. Right? What what's the word for them?

I don't know. What are we talking about? E bikes. E bikes? E bikes.