Community Redevelopment Agency Board - Regular Meeting

Okay. Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to the City Commission meeting this afternoon. So, I think the commission had requested that, going forward, we should do the CRA Board meeting, in particular today's just a couple of simple items. So why don't we go ahead and do that? And that way those who are here for the CRA Board meeting don't have to sit through the entire conference meeting. So I'm going to call the CRA boarding to order and if you could please call the roll, Mr. Clerk. Vice Chair Herbst?

Present. Commissioner Glassman? Here. Commissioner Beasley Kutman? Here. Commissioner Sorenson? Here. Chair Trentellis?

Here. So we begin with m one, which is a motion approving the minutes for the 01/20/2026 Community Redevelopment Agency Board meeting. Someone please, move the item. So move. Do I hear a second? Been moved and seconded. Please call the roll. Commissioner Glassman?

Yes. Commissioner Beasley Pittman?

Yes.

Commissioner Sorenson? Yes. Vice chair Herbst? Yes. Chair Trentell?

Yes. And m one is now approved. Moving on to R1, this is a resolution approving the budget amendment. This is to appropriate unspent Central City community redevelopment area fiscal year ending 2025 fund balance. Anyone have any questions with regard to this item? There being none, would someone

like to introduce the item? I'm sorry?

Before it's introduced, I just want to highlight that we provided an updated cam. Yes. Some of the funding boxes were updated, so I just wanted to draw the attention of the commission to that.

So why don't you all take a moment and look to see the revisions on page three of the revised memo. It goes on to page four, page five.

So Raquel, this addresses the issue that we discussed yesterday?

Yes, vice mayor.

Perfect. Thank you. What was that issue?

Allocation. So you can't carry over funds for operating purposes. You're only allowed to carry over funds for project purposes. The methodology is to transfer the funds back to the general fund and then from the general fund back to the CRA. Right. So it's a circular pattern, and we just wanted to make sure that all the appropriate accounts were reflected for the audit trail.

Okay. Great. Anyone else have any comments or questions?

I I do. Thank you, mayor. So I and I have had this discussion yesterday with staff, but I just wanted to reiterate for the record. So, it is totally acceptable for us to be giving money from the central city CRA to the northwest CRA, for the, offices at the Adderley. That's okay?

So the Adderley is located within the Northwest District. The Central City CRA staff members will work out of that office location once it's built out. At present time, the central city staff members work within the offices of the CRA that are currently in the Northwest District. So it's it's not a new concept. It's just a different, building location that they would be utilizing.

Okay. Just wanna make sure legally it's okay, because actually the physical structure is not in the central city CRA, but we're giving funds from the central city CRA to the northwest CRA for the office space. I understand that. I just wanna make sure that with the location not being located within the central city CRA, we're still okay.

That that is my understanding, and I I also understand that CRAs can own property in areas outside of the district. This is an opportunity for us to consolidate the staff members and not have them in separate offices, which we are currently doing

at this Reka, let me help you with this. So I think where the commissioner needs some clarity on this is the apportionment between staff that's working on the Central City CRA and staff that's working on Northwest Progresso CRA, so that there is no crossover subsidization between those two. So I think that's really all we need at some point, maybe not today, but I think we all need clarity that the disaggregation of the cost is being appropriately apportioned amongst the two categories.

Yes, that is correct. And there's 600,000 that is coming from the Northwest, CRA district and then this 150,000 would be from Central City. And that really covers, the level of staffing appropriated for each group.

Okay. As long as we're fine and city attorney, you're concurring with all of this?

Yes, mister.

Okay. Great. Thank you. And then just a reminder, I have been trying to get a project going actually in the central city CRA. So now that I see that we did have about 900,000, left, I just want to remind staff that I'm really looking forward to have some progress on that merge on 13th Street, which is right in the spine of the central city CRA. It seems to me that if we can find dollars for other, for these five other things, we can certainly find dollars for something that's actually located within the Central City CRA. Thank you.

And we'll evaluate the budget going forward. And if possible, we can bring back

a budget amendment. That'd be great.

Thank you so much.

Okay. Someone like to introduce a resolution. Introduced. The resolution has been introduced. Please call the roll.

And, commissioner, that's as amended as the Yes. Thank you. A resolution of the board of commissioners of the Fort Lauderdale Community Redevelopment Agency approving a budget amendment and providing for an effective date. Commissioner Glassman?

Yes.

Commissioner Beasley Pittman?

Yes.

Commissioner Sorenson? Yes. Vice Chair Herps?

Yes.

Chair Herps or Chair Tortollis?

Yes. And that, resolution is now approved. Is there any further business of the CRA? There being none, that meeting is now concluded. So let us now move into our conference meeting. And There are no communications. I don't see any communications from the advisory board, but we do have two people who have signed up to speak for neighbor presentations. Is Chuck Hansen here? Hey, Chuck. Want to come up?

You're welcome. Now when you get to the podium, I'll need you to press the button at the bottom of the speaker to turn on your microphone. You can give it to the clerk after you finish. You have three minutes.

Good afternoon, mayor and city commission. My name is Chuck Hanson, and I've been a resident on A1A of this beautiful city for the past fifty six years. I've seen more changes in the city's landscape than most people in this building. It is because of one of these new proposals that I'm speaking to you today. The proposal that I'm referencing is the removal of the basketball courts on the beach across the Bahia Mar Hotel and replacing them with pickleball courts.

On the surface, that sounds like a good idea considering the popularity of the activity. However, my concern is the noise factor. The pickleballs used today are made of a hard compound that is inflexible unlike tennis balls or any other air filled ball. So when these pickleballs are struck by composite tiles, it results on a very loud thwack. That's an awful lot of thwacking when you have eight courses going pretty much day and night.

The noise is all well and good, provided that the residents living in the area cannot hear it. If the residents had to endure it, it would be comparable to the infamous Chinese water torture. Beside the residents of the Alina condominium located at 545 South Fort Lauderdale Beach Boulevard that could be affected, you would also have the guests at the Marinette Hotel, people aboard the yachts in the marina and all of the people on the beach adjacent to the courts who just want to relax or read, none of which want to be disturbed by the constant noise of thwack, thwack, thwack all day and perhaps all evening. Just a few months ago in Carmel, California, the city had to remove the pickleball courts for the same reason, disturbing the peace of the nearby residents. Here in Fort Lauderdale, we have an additional problem to deal with, and that is the prevailing wind coming off the beach.

It comes in off the beach from the Southeast and will carry the noise far from the courts towards the Northwest, which will directly impact the Illini condominium as well as the Maran Hotel. To not repeat what happened in Carmel, California, I'm asking the decision makers to appoint a committee to do a noise impact study, which I would volunteer to be part of before you make any final decision. My contact information is my friend chuckgmail dot com. Thank you very much for your time and consideration regarding this matter. Respectfully submitted, Chuck Hanson.

Last night, I spoke with my brother on the same topic, and he's a Boeing engineer and he tells me he plays golf on a wooded, heavily wooded golf course. And at some time while he's playing, he can hear the pickleball courts And I asked him approximately how far is he away from the courts when he hears it? 600 or 700 yards, which is about 2,000 feet. I thank you.

Thank you, sir. Do you live did say where did you Chuck?

The Illini. You live in the Illini.

Okay. Thank you. Our next neighbor presentation, Juliet Gray Williams. Juliet, how are you? You're staying warm?

Juliet is from the, Rock Island Homeowners Association, our caring community.

Thank you so much. And not too long ago, you guys gave me a proclamation on behalf of my husband, president James

We miss

Williams. I show this, my man. I miss him real, but it's two years it's been now. But nonetheless, I'm here standing before you. It's history in the room. You know that? If you're here this morning, you're in you're we're making history. And I was sitting there and I saw the brother Roosevelt Walters walk in the room. I was like, dang. I remember him.

He's history. Yes.

To the city commissioner

I think he's been designated

as

a I'm historic not the only one

remembering him. And to the mayor and the rest of you all, the staff and residents in the Zoom on watching. I am Juliet Gray Williams. I am a native, a proud native of Fort Lauderdale. I was born in Dixie Court because I'm history too. And I am a resident of Rock Island since I was five years old, and I'm at the ripe age of 68 now. I'm a just a little bit about myself because you need to know where it's coming from. Product of the Broward District Schools, I attended Rock Island Elementary, all that's in the neighborhood still. William Dandy, which was Everglades. Cradle Nursery, I started out over there.

See, I'm throwing some names at you. And I graduated from Boyd Anderson High School, class of '75. We just did fifty years. And graduated from Florida Atlantic University. Retired recently as a teacher in the Broward School District. Thirty years. So I love our city. As I said, sixty year 68 years old, and I'm a resident, and I have not decided to move away. So applaud those who take a stand and still wanna be here and patronize our city because many of us don't stay around. Right?

Yes. Okay. So a little bit about Rock Island. Our homeowners association boundaries are West Of I 95, South Of Northwest 26th Street, East Of Northwest 31st Avenue, and North Of Northwest 19th Street. We are a caring community, but we have some issues that's going on in our community and we need to bring forth to just let you know, you know, we're watching all of the development around here.

And I was just listening about that CRA money that we don't get none over where we live. And I was like, dang. We need to speak on that too. So I'm just saying that's why we come to the meeting so we can learn some stuff. Alright. So here we go. In our community, we have illegal dumping. I had some pictures somewhere around, but I asked them if they would display the pictures. Okay. Alright. Thank you. See, I did my homework. Alright. We have eyesores in the community that we want you to see what we're looking at twenty four seven. Illegal dumping.

We have facilities that have noise. The gentleman just talked about the noise in his community. Well, we have music playing all the way to whenever the window's shaking and everything carrying on over there. We have auto wreckage, body yards with just auto parts all over the place, pulled in the middle of the road, on the side of the road with their businesses. We have trucks that are coming through, backing in.

And not re recently, a while back, we had a young lady got killed over there from the trucks coming in and out. But we're still looking at these, and we have concerns. We've recently let me tell you this one. We got a tire shop in our community that stays open almost at midnight. Who does that? There's something wrong with that. I couldn't do that in Los Altos or anywhere else in the city of Fort Lauderdale. There are decent hours that you must recognize and shut down your business. They told me there wasn't a code for that. Really?

Well, we need to make one. So these are our concerns, and we just wanna make sure you recognize us too over in the Northwest community where we could use some support, assistance, and also let us know we are a caring community to our side of the town. Was that buzzer mean that was

it? Yeah.

Okay. I'm gonna stop that. Well, I'm a school teacher, you know,

I could go on

and on.

Yeah. So this is the thing. I know. There's a lot a lot of issues and a lot of

Yeah.

Things that you want to improve the community. So I would suggest working with your district commissioner and trying to get through each one of those situations. We'll do what we can as a city to to help out, and and I think your commissioner is ready and willing and able to to work with you and try to resolve those issues.

I thank you for listening to me.

Miss Williams, thank you so much for standing before us. And and through conversations so the diets know, I and I suggested that miss Gray come and share what some of the issues are that we are facing in District 3. And she and along with other civic associations in District 3, these are common, in a sense, issues that we're facing. And we are addressing them, but it's a slow process. And what I, with her inviting here, I want everyone to understand that when I also bring these complaints and issues to the dais, they're real, and we need the support of the dais to make sure that we move forward to get these items addressed.

The the roadway, the corridor that she was addressing was the Northwest 19th Street corridor, and that has been an issue for, I'm gonna say, decades. It's not anything that's new. Right now, FDOT is doing roadwork, putting medians in in that corridor, which we believe will make some change with the travel and the safety of the roadway. So we're looking at that. The we've been talking about that tire shop at the corner of 31st Avenue and 19th Street.

She said twelve midnight, but I've gone by, those times. I am out with my husband, 03:00 in the morning. Mhmm. That tire shop is open, and we are concerned about what activity is going on at a tire shop at 3AM. I can't understand how many tires are in need of repair at that location at three a. M. In the morning. So with that, we've been talking with CODE. They are listening to us, we are looking at opportunities how to address that. The legal dumping, we are talking about that.

Code is also working with us to address that. Also, a little, that will be a little south from the Rock Island area, which is the Lake Eyre area. We have illegal dumping where, it's being identified, and and police is helping us to remedy that. But to bring attention to what is going on in the district and wanting full cooperation because we're not a district. We are a city.

Mhmm. And we wanna make sure that, we get all the cooperation that we need to move forward because I'm I'm excited for the day that, the tourism, it goes beyond the beach because there's so much in District 3 that's waiting to be explored and enjoyed. So thank you, my neighbor. Thank you very much for coming. And

Can I say one thing? You know, this is February, and February is Black History Month. It's also American history. We are history, and it's three hundred and sixty five days a year. My homeowners association is here. Just raise your hand because we're here. We're here. Thank you. Love our city, and we're here to support everybody on every district. We love you all. Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay. Those are the only two people who have signed up to speak. Thank you both for being here today and, move on now to CF1. Is the presentation on the preparation of the City of Fort Lauderdale operations during spring break twenty twenty six. City manager.

Thank you, mayor. I just would like to let the commission know that staff has been actively preparing for the spring break season. We've had several operational meetings, two of which I've been at the helm of, and I'm gonna call Chris Cooper, deputy city manager, forward to provide a presentation. He will be joined by other members of the team. We would appreciate your feedback as we finalize our plans and approach for the season.

Good afternoon, mayor, city commission. Chris Cooper, deputy city manager. So as the manager said, this presentation is to share with the city commission and the public the city's preparations for the spring break season and key department operations during that time. Through this presentation, you'll receive information about the high impact period and from police, fire, transportation and mobility, community enhancement and compliance, strategic communications, parks and sanitation. So our spring break season begins around February 23.

I know that seems early, but it's right around the corner and extends through April 17. We see a peak of spring break visitors from the week of March 8 through the week of March 22. We base that peak season on the spring break schedules of colleges and universities that frequent Fort Lauderdale, travel and hotel bookings and our past experiences with spring break here in the city. What you'll hear throughout this presentation is how the city strategically deploys resources from multiple city departments to manage the high volume of tourists and the crowds that gather on the Barrier Island and in our downtown. This strategy includes the use of the high impact event ordinance, which I will talk about in a moment.

All of what do is communicated so there is an awareness in the community and those visiting the area for spring break as well as transparency and expectation set with our business community that engages with our spring break visitors. So during our spring break, the city has used the high impact event ordinance to mitigate potential issues with the large crowds that gather on our barrier island. If the city commission approves the amended high impact event ordinance this evening, portions of our downtown, including the entertainment district may be designated as a high impact zone. Our staff is currently evaluating the high impact zone areas and the potential measures that may be applied in each zone. Once those zones are identified and measures are developed, the city manager will provide a memo that provides those details and the memo will apply to the zones and measures to be enforced.

So when we look at those measures that could be enforced or included in the high impact zone, those measures include no coolers or tents, tables or similar structures on our beach, the prohibition of alcohol possession or consumption on the beach and this goes along with the prohibition of coolers on the beach. So those will be checked in and out of the area. However, this prohibition does not include the areas of the beach that are licensed to sell and consume alcohol, which are the beaches that are the beach hotels that are licensed to provide that service and the chairs designated through our city's beach chair vendor. We'll also consider a limitation of live or amplified music and with that primarily applies to our individuals using devices to amplify music or establishments that direct their sound outward from their business. We can also consider the suspension of sidewalk cafe permits.

We can look to age limitations that prohibit those under the age of 18 without a parent or legal guardian and some of those high impact zones. And we can also look to modify the operating hours for the parks and city facilities within those areas. The high impact ordinance does allow us flexibility, so some measures may be applied throughout spring break and others may be used as needed. The ordinance also allows for measures to be applied differently in high impact zones based on the needs of that zone. For example, coolers or tents, tables and similar structures as well as the possession or consumption of alcohol on the beach has historically been prohibited throughout spring break, but the suspension of sidewalk cafe permits may only be used when there is a large influx of people that creates crowded sidewalks.

To ensure clarity and transparency, you'll see later in this presentation how the city will communicate to businesses and visitors within the high impact zones to manage those expectations and share what our plans are ahead of time. So with that said, I'm going to turn the presentation over to our first presenter, which is Assistant Police Chief, Pat Hart.

Before you do that, can I just ask you a question regarding the suspension of this cafe permits? Does that mean they have to move all the tables and chairs off the sidewalk? How does that work?

So potentially, we can look at that in terms of the context of the situation. So if there's a large influx of people like we saw last year when some high school kids came down through the beach from Pompano, we may want to have the owners completely open up the sidewalk and move their sidewalk cafes. Some of those sidewalk cafes are double stacked, so there may be opportunities to just remove one row of that to allow for better traffic flow along our sidewalks, but that will be something as we see these things unfold and as we're responding to or predicting certain instances, we may work with those business owners to modify or completely remove the sidewalk cafes.

So I would think that a business owner would need some clarity, number one, and some certainty and predictability. So instead of it being on an hour by hour basis, how what are you prepared to do to try to help these folks out?

Yes. So what you'll see later in the presentation in our communication strategies are meetings that we have set up in advance of the spring break season and those meetings do include direct communication and meetings with those business owners, particularly on the beach, but also now in the Hemershee area to have those conversations about what that coordination may look like. But our staff, particularly through our police department who manages our spring break operations on the beach, have already built those relationships with the owners that have those sidewalk cafes. So there's there's always that coordination and communication with them about what could be, what might be and how those could be implemented. So it's very, very open and transparent.

Great. All right. Thank you.

Mhmm.

Chris, question for you. I'm just not seeing it. Geographic boundaries for these, is that

how So we're making those determinations now on the beach. Typically, it's from around Sunrise South to Harbor Beach, encompasses the area where a majority of our Spring Break visitors are on the beach during the day and the hotels that they're within. The Hemershey and opportunities are new to us as part of the ordinance that you'll consider this evening on second reading. So we are looking very closely at the Hemershey Entertainment District. Now the possible measures that we might apply there, we're still having that conversation about to know what makes the most sense and what we think is going to be the most impactful or mitigate those potentially impactful issues. But aside from that, those those are the two main areas that we've we've considered.

Okay. Great. Thank you.

Good afternoon, mayor, commissioners. Contra Cartesian chief of police. So today, I just wanted to cover, the police perspective as it relates to spring breaks. We will be up staffing, our personnel on the beach as well as downtown for the Hempsey area. That up staffing will start every day.

It'll cover from the February, roughly the February all the way through till the April. April will go through with that up staffing. The on a daily basis, our, our officers will start at 11AM and we'll have staffing covering both of those locations, all the way through to about 5AM in the morning. And we'll make sure that we have not only ample enough officers to deal with the spring breakers, but we also have enough officers to handle our cost of service, and we do not shorten our residents and have the ability to respond to any issues as it relates to, cost of service. We are bringing all our specialty units to bear as it relates to spring like we do every year.

Just like you see in the picture, we'll have our safety lanes on the beach. We'll have our mounted unit out there. We'll have our canine officers out there. We will have a DUI officer assigned every night for the month of March. So we will make sure that we're enforcing DUI as well.

And we've also invited, the Davie Mounted Police Unit to assist in in a force multiplier for the Fort Lauderdale Mounted Unit. We've, requested and got confirmation from Florida's alcohol beverage and tobacco to assist with underage drinking, on the beach as well as downtown in the Hemishee area, and we've requested FHP to assist us, with, traffic enforcement throughout the city, and we're still waiting for confirmation from them to assist us for spring break. We've, redesigned, our signage for the beach and for downtown. We're just waiting for those signs to be made. You will have, a frame signs on all the beach openings and all the access points to Himershey so, pedestrians can see all the ordinances that are in requirements of rules as it relates to how to conduct yourself on the beach as well as downtown.

We're also putting out message boards, for access ingress and egress for the beach as well as downtown. So not only, spring breakers, but our residents can see what what requirements are expected weather in those areas. We're gonna, initiate bar watch program like we do every year. That requires that we put up signages in all the bathrooms for all the establishments that serve alcohol in those areas, to educate the spring breakers to make sure that they do not become victimized. We've actually designed some handout material as like koozies and other flyers to go out to the to the students on the beach.

We put up different locations to make sure that that information gets pushed out. We also be, doing a training seminar with the staffs of these licensed establishments to teach them on what to recognize if somebody may be become victim victimized or had their their drinks potentially drugged, what signs they should be looking for, and then if they know do notice that, what steps do they have to do to get us involved so we can help prevent somebody be from becoming a victim. And then, with the messaging for spring break, we've, sent out the chief's letter to all the past colleges that have attended spring break that we've documented, but also the other major universities that we kinda anticipate possibly coming to Fort Lauderdale. We've also, are in the process of delivering the ordinance letter to all the hotels so they could give that to all the registries that show up for during spring break. So there the the residents can be educated on what the rules are when they step either on the sand or go downtown.

And then, for the most part, that's how we're educating those people, and, I'll be happy to take any questions.

Okay. Any questions of the police officer?

Yes. I have a question. Training, with the bar watch, I understand with the notifications of what to watch for if anyone's been on drug beer, like, through their drinks. Are we doing anything in regards to Narcan? Are we doing anything where we are having that available, in the city for, those who are visiting the Narcan, drug?

So, yes, our officers. You wanna you wanna? So our officers are issued Narcan have them, and then I believe fire is actually working. They can speak a little bit more. They have their own program to help pass out and distribute Narcan.

Okay. Thank you. And, the other question, you indicated that f FPH I'm sorry. Florida Highway Patrol will be, working with us as well. That's historical. That's nothing new. They're with us every year. Right?

Yes. We we have to make a formal request. We just we're waiting for them this year to get back to us to confirm that they'll be there.

Okay. Thank you.

You're welcome.

Mayor, may I ask

the question? Go ahead. Thank

you, chief. Thanks for your service. Thank you for the plan. I just wanna make sure know you're talking about the up staffing for spring break. During the peak time of I think that's March 8 to March 22, will we have even more up staffing in the peak part than actually the entire spring break? Will that even be more intense in terms of coverage?

Yes, you are correct. So we we kind of do a phase in program and a phase out program. So we initially start at the February, lower numbers, but up staffing. And then as we slowly get into that March, which is roughly about March 8, we really start to up staff a larger amount of officers for both the beach and downtown, which also complements patrol as well. And then towards the end, as we get to the March and in the April, we then start to phase down again to mitigate some of those overtime costs, but also still be able to manage the situation. We do see a dramatic change in populations as it relates at the beginning and at the very end. The biggest population of attendance is during the middle.

Okay. Great. Thank you for that. You're welcome.

Commissioner, you mentioned the March 22 date. So, in the backup, it speaks to the week of March 22. So going through the March like assistant chief Hart mentioned.

You're welcome.

Alright. Mayor, next up is our assistant fire rescue chief Leslie St. Floor, and he'll talk about fire rescue's response as well as the point commissioner BC Pittman brought up regarding the Narcan availability.

Good afternoon, mayor, commissioners. My name is Leslie St. Flair, assistant fire chief over at fire rescue. And to pick up where we left off in terms of the Narcan, for public education, We will be hosting a public seminar over at the W Hotel on the twentieth at 1PM. And again, we did this last year. The goal is to actually pass out NARCAN to the public and also education as to how to administer it. And we'll also be providing a d training and stop the bleed, and you guys are welcome to join us. The EOC, the emergency operations center will be at our level three monitoring, so pretty much we'll be, watching everything that's going on from day to day. The biggest key to this success is gonna be information sharing. That's between all departments.

So as information comes day to day, if we see a peak or if we see a concern, we will address it collectively. For staffing, ocean rescue staffing will be increased with additional personnel deployed in the high traffic beach areas, specifically between Los Olas and A1A and Poinciata and A1A. We'll also have the jet skis deployed in the water for the beachgoers. We are working closely with our EMS partners in local hospitals to ensure coordination during peak hours, which includes maintaining open communication channels with the with the hospitals to ensure that EMS units are post positioned to support both routine calls as well as excuse me, surge incidents. Excuse me.

Yes, sir. You took away our view. Oh.

I I don't know who took away your view, but this is the first time seeing this feature.

I'm be forced to listen to the speakers. I'm sorry.

Go ahead.

It's okay. Go ahead

and most importantly what's going to be helping us make sure that we are Ready for spring break is that we through our patient care reporting system That's how we're tracking underage drinking If we see any peaks within the Barrier Island or the Southwest 2 Street area at specific location based on address, we will definitely share that information over to PD so that way the necessary actions can be taken.

So let me ask you a question

about that.

You

know, young people are very smart and the Internet is very resourceful. And we were hearing repeated episodes where ID cards, driver's licenses can be forged or replicated. Do we have a system of knowing how to figure out what's a fraudulent driver's license or ID card? Because we're going to get underage drinking and or at least attempts at it and, it doesn't necessarily mean it comes from people from outside of Fort Lauderdale. A lot of them come from the area, somewhere in Broward County.

Many of the high schoolers want to join in the party and they think they can just show up there and they're a 16, 17 year old, maybe even sometimes younger. What precautions do you think we should undertake? I see Chief Schultz is here. Not to interrupt your presentation, but I'm just since you brought up the subject, I'd like to know how what resources do we have to try to mitigate that possibility?

Good afternoon, Commission. I'm Mayor, Vice Mayor, Chief Bill Schulz, police department. There are currently various types of scanners that the establishments in our city and other cities use to scan for DLs, driver's licenses. However, there are many sites that sell very realistic driver's licenses now. There are scanners who use multi types of verification and those are effective.

So those are really truly the only way to detect a fraudulent driver's license. There's currently nothing, in our code that would require an establishment to have that type of scanner. But at this point we are encouraging all of them to purchase those types of scanners that use the multi verification system.

Okay, because, you know a lot of kids may look older but aren't and we're seeing episodes of that even on a regular basis here in our own bars and entertainment establishments. So I'm just curious what our enforcement mechanisms are to be able to counter this ingenuity. In

combination with the state, alcohol barrel, we do various operations. We test the bars that are checking at the door. We test bartenders. We will utilize sources that will assist us in that operation, without getting into too much detail. But we do run operations throughout spring break, actually throughout the year, but especially during spring break to look for that.

Okay.

And enforce it.

Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Anyone else have any questions with the chief while he's up here?

Mayor, I have a question. Yes. Yes. I don't think it'll be for chief, maybe city manager and then code inspectors, specifically nighttime vacation rentals during spring break get challenging at times. So can we have seven day a week nighttime code inspectors during this period?

Yes. And we will have Katrina, our deputy director of community services ready to present on that. We intend to have 20 fourseven code enforcement available for our city during certain peak periods.

Okay. Great.

Yeah. Seven seven days a week.

And I love to hear what what's the duration of that peak period that we're is it mimic what's covered in the presentation?

Yes.

Same duration? Yes. Okay. Great. Thank you. Thanks, Mayor. Yeah.

Does that conclude your presentation?

Yes, sir. Okay.

Thank you. You're very welcome.

Your views back, by the way.

I knew you could bring light into the situation.

And just to clarify, that's till 03:30AM. Seven days a week till 03:30AM.

Okay. Okay. Great. Thank

you. Milos.

Good afternoon. Milos Maestorovich, Director for Cities Transportation and Mobility Department. So on our side, our micromover transit service will continue normal operation. In addition to that, during month of March, we will have up to six additional vehicles that will be staged at A1A in Los Oles in order to help, move, visitors from the Barrier Island towards downtown. From the parking services standpoint, we will have additional resources during the peak of the event, which will help manage really demand and supply in our parking garage on Barrier Island as well as any parking lots and facilities.

Our parking enforcement will also be adjusted and modified as needed in order to meet any operational, needs. From the standpoint of maintenance of traffic plans, in order to maximize roadway capacity, we will be mindful, and we won't be approving any lane closures that lead to Barrier Island. We will also be coordinating with the Florida Department of Transportation, who really owns and operates A1A and Seabreeze Boulevard in order to minimize, any and not approve any road closures unless, it's really for purpose of emergency. And we will also this is simply just to ensure that the full roadway capacity is available to anyone who is coming and visiting the Barrier Island. For the rideshare services, we'll be establishing geofence locations, for passenger pickup and drop off, both in Barrier Island and downtown areas.

This is communicated and coordinated with the rideshare services such as Uber, Lyft and also vehicle for hire businesses. These restrictions will be effective in the downtown area during month of March from eleven a. M. To seven p. M. Actually, for Burial Island from eleven a. M. To seven p. M. And for the downtown between nine p. M. And five a. M. Our police department will also help us with, educational campaign for the vehicles for hire services, related to both permitting requirements and, operational requirements. They have helped us last year on this aspect as well.

From the standpoint of traffic signal timing and traffic monitoring, our partner agency Broward County Traffic Engineering has conducted proactive site visits in order to make sure that all traffic signals are operational. They are actually making some modifications to signal timing in order to establish what we call optimized signal timing patterns along the corridors, which will be, implemented by mid February, so within the next week or so. We will also coordinate with the Florida Department of Transportation, a regional transportation management center to help us monitor traffic conditions to and from Barrier Island and leading, to Barrier Island. And we will be communicating to Broward County Traffic Engineering if there are any signal timing changes that are warranted in order to improve mobility to and from, the island. Finally, we have coordinated with Broward County Transit, and they will provide any support related to potential transportation of large crowds, if needed.

That concludes my portion of presentation. If there are any questions now or later, I'll be around and I can turn it over to community services department.

Great. Anyone have any questions? There being none, thank you so much. Thank you. Are we going to have additional vehicles, roaming up and down A1A, during the next question.

So with So

next So for we'll microtransit service, we'll adjust start based on demand that we're expecting there. Depending really what operational feedback is, we may or we may not. So we want to make sure that we still focus our services where it makes a difference in terms of moving people and not only necessarily along Barrier Island, particularly if we are moving people short distances and providing services to just short distances between the bars. But absolutely, that is operational. We can adjust.

Good afternoon, mayor, vice mayor, commissioners, Katrina Johnson, acting assistant director for Community Services Department. Community enhancement and compliance division, also known as code enforcement, is implementing a coordinated data driven operational plan for this year's spring break that begins with strengthening and, our staffing and coverage. So we currently provide nighttime enforcement Thursday through Sunday from 5PM to 03:30AM beginning March 1. We will expand that coverage to include Monday through Wednesdays from 5PM to 03:30AM. That ensures that we have our court officers in the field seven nights a week during the hours where activity historically increases.

We will also continue maintaining our full Sunday through Saturday daytime enforcement staffing. Our enforcement priorities for spring break are these three, noise in commercial and residential areas, vacation rental enforcement for the most common violations of parking, trash, noise, maximum occupancy, and gathering occupancy, and our entertainment venues and our nightlife, where we will focus on business licensing, noise, signage, our sidewalk cafes, and outdoor displays. We began our community outreach to our residents to ensure that they understand what they can expect from our division during this time. We started this messaging through Stratcom, our HOA and Civic Association meetings, where we are reporting the instructions for how to lodge your complaints either through our vacation rental hotline or through our Fix It FTL portal or by dialing our (954) 828-8000 customer support line. We reached out to all of the vacation rental operators throughout the city of Fort Lauderdale.

We've advised them as a reminder on noise levels, occupancy levels, trash and parking requirements, and what the penalties for violations during this time will be. Vacation rentals that are found operating during this time as we do have pop up vacation rentals during spring break, they will be issued an automatic notice for hearing, and we will request a fine of $1,000 per day for each day that we find the vacation rental operating without their certificate of compliance from the city. For our businesses, we have scheduled on-site meetings with each venue operator in the high impact areas of downtown, Los Olas, Hemashe, and the Barrier Islands, we are reinforcing our noise ordinance, signage and outdoor displays, and exterior maintenance requirements, including the sidewalks and the alleyways. Each week, our spring during spring break, our code leadership will review the complaint volume, our code enforcement cases, and vacation rental enforcement activity to ensure that we are continuing to advance our operations each week. Our plan has been aligned with our police, fire rescue, transportation and mobility, public works, Stratcom, and the city manager's office to ensure that we are prepared for this spring break season.

Can I ask you

a couple

of questions?

Yes,

sir. Does that complete your your Okay. I see a couple of gaps in enforcement. So let's help me out here. So with regard to the levy of fines for noise and so forth, against whom would that fine be levied?

The property owner. The property owner,

who's probably an absentee owner. And so we find the property owner and if they fail to pay it, is that a lien on the property?

Yes.

It is. And we can enforce that lien and foreclose on that lien?

Yes.

Is that true?

Well, ultimately you would lean the property whether you would foreclose on it or wait until a sale for example.

Right, but we have that. Can have that an option if the city chooses to do Okay, great. Secondly, not that I'm trying to keep your people up late at night, but, we have entertainment districts and they go past 03:00. So when the word gets out that no one's watching after 03:00 and these bars stay open till four and sometimes they can only serve till four, but they stay open till five and even later, who's going to be watching and paying attention to the enforcement if no one from the city is there during those during those Friday and Saturdays when they're allowed to stay open till four? Did I miss something? No. No.

So during those times Portia, do wanna say No? Okay. During those times, when, code enforcement is not available, all violations that are reported to the city are then sent over to Teletype, and then they request PD backup. During those times, from 03:30, our coach staff comes back online at 06:30. And so there's three hours that there is no coverage, but those

type of calls concerned about. And those are the times when people get crazy.

Those calls will go to the police department.

Yes. But those are the non emergency number calls. No one's going call 911 because it's noisy. And the police and I would understand the police would resent being called for on the emergency basis for noise complaint. So I would just ask that you perhaps revise your schedule so that you cover those time periods that are now open and unattended, because I just from experience, I have seen and heard complaints that can come after 03:00 that caused the environment to deteriorate.

And residents and business owners alike find themselves victims to these people that race up and down the street, that twerk on hoods of cars, that will do anything that they know that no one is watching. Okay.

Mayor, we can look at additional staffing for code to cover those gaps. The commission did identify about $900,000 in overtime resources for police personnel to augment our enforcement during this time period. So between police and code, we can make sure that we have the amount of

coverage that we need. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. You're welcome.

Okay. Is there any further any additional Hi, aspects of this

Hi. Good afternoon. Kevin Paleto, Director of Strategic Communications. So to really bring everything together, we're working very closely with all our, colleagues in the different departments. We're going to have coordinated messaging, throughout the spring break period that you're going to start to see from police, fire, our partners in code compliance.

What that's going to look like is a lot of different mechanisms, including direct outreach, directly to our stakeholders. I have some email, outreach as well. We're going to also rely on our media partners. There's going to be a press conference, towards the February that you'll all be invited to where we're gonna share our spring break messaging. And what we're looking for is for those that are coming to enjoy our city to do it responsibly and to have a to as they come, they know the rules.

They understand where to find the information. There's gonna be a website that's gonna go live, and it's gonna tie everything together. So if any residents, stakeholders, even visitors have questions, they'll go on that website, and they'll be able to see where to find the circuit, carts, the schedule for the circuit carts, where to find the different police information. That's all gonna be on our comprehensive spring break page. On the right of that slide, you're also gonna see some of the direct outreach that's gonna be taking place as early as next week.

So February 9, February 1119 and the '20, those are different stakeholder touch points where we're going to be speaking to the businesses and, those directly affected. Some of the other initiatives that our department is doing, we're working closely with police and fire to revamp some of the signage that you're gonna see throughout the area and make sure it's clear and legible for people to understand what not to bring onto the beach and what not to bring into the area, and especially in those entertainment districts that we were just talking about, to go ahead and have some of the information there also referring back to our website. So with that, happy to answer any questions that

you all may have. Any questions of Kevin? Okay. There are none. Thank you so much.

And last but not least.

Good afternoon, mayor and commissioners. Carl Williams, Parks and Recreation Director. I am going to be speaking a little bit about our restrooms, specifically our Southeast Restroom. We have a existing contract with Image, whom is our current contractor that provides services for, restroom cleanliness on the Southeast Restroom. And as such, the service levels are Monday through Friday.

They are serviced three, three times a day, and on the weekends, six times per day. If there comes an event where we need to increase those services, we can do that as that is part of our existing contract. In addition, as part of that, we can also look at any other needs, but historically, we haven't had to increase our service levels for our restroom needs there at South Beach Restroom. In addition, as we normally have our, cabana rentals as well as our hotel food and beverages, which will continue to take place during this time.

Carl was actually second to last.

Troy Geiss, assistant director of public works operations. So I guess that makes me last and least perhaps. So just very, very briefly for public works, we're going to be up staffing our sanitation staff on the beach, and we'll be doing similar to the model that PD had introduced that it'll be ramping up as the season goes along and we have the flexibility to adjust the scheduling during the week, to meet both the demand and the predicted

So the

biggest complaint we've had in the past is the emptying of the garbage cans, on a like every few hours instead of at the end of the day or the next morning because the trash piles up all along the sidewalks and everything because there's just obviously increased use of the trash cans and we appreciate people trying to use the trash cans rather than the sidewalks and the gutters to throw away their beer cans. But the point is that we really need to have enhanced service on the beach to make sure that trash is removed on a regular basis because all it does is deteriorate the environment.

Yeah. We'll make sure that we have adequate staff on there throughout the day. We are going to be placing Throughout the

night too.

Yeah, exactly. We will go, so our afternoon and evening staff will actually stay on as the police department closes the beach. Our staff stays on along with them and we'll clean up the beach. Where our schedule is tentatively stated to be until about nine, but that depends on how quickly the

Well, you see that doesn't make sense because the bars are open.

Well, but I'm talking about the beach, the beach once the beach is closed. Yes. Then we go through and we do we do Beach cleaning of the beach.

Right. Yes.

And then we will still have pressure cleaning overnight, both along the beach on A1A and in downtown and we'll do, nightly street sweeping as well. Right.

But that doesn't answer my question. After 09:00 when the party begins, okay, and people are going in and out of these restaurants, in and out of these bars, they're throwing garbage in these garbage receptacles that we have placed along A1A for example and they overflow and you're telling me no one's there

to empty them. We need

to have people emptying them after 09:00 into the wee hours of the night because otherwise I've seen it myself where it just cascades onto the sidewalk and it looks like it's a disaster. So we need to have personnel there, if you don't mind, after 09:00 so that we can address the refuse that gets disposed of late into the night rather than waiting till the next morning to do it. That's all I'm asking.

Okay. No, and you make a very good point. And so I know we will have the additional receptacles on the business side, but yes, we'll make sure that those are, emptied, especially so that there's everything is clean in the morning. That's our intent. You.

May if I may, also if we could, just pay attention to some of the the curb areas, and I'm talking about when you come over the bridges, especially Sunrise and Oakland Park, I I noticed typically along the curbs, especially along the medians, there always seems to be an accumulation of whether it's the landscaping clippings like on Sunrise or just garbage or something. I think we just need to step that up, not just even for spring break, but also in general because I get those kinds of complaints and I see it myself when I go over the bridges. Those bridges are like gateways to the beach. So I think that that entire area should be as pristine as possible. Also, there are many light poles that always seem to be not lit.

And in and around, for instance, the Oakland Park Bridge, there are a lot of decorative light poles that on any given night, can just count numerous ones that just are not lit. I don't know why these are not the typical overhead lights. These are, you know what I'm saying, the decorative poles. Some have, two lamps on them, some have one lamp on them. But we just need to, I think, just pay more attention to that, especially because now that there will be more people in that area, the lighting is important. Thank you.

Commissioner, we can have our street lighting team in Parks and Recreation take a look at that. Great.

Thank you.

Yes. Commissioner, only thing I'll add to that is that we will be doing, we do regular assessments and we'll do another one as well just to ensure that our lights are operating and also, of course, work with our partners in lighting to address that.

Great. I'm getting a lot of compliments, by the way. So thank you for the median on a one a that was completed with the not just the interior landscaping but also the rocks as the border. That was the one to the north to complement the one just south of it. Getting a lot of nice compliments about that. Excellent. So thank you for that. Thank you.

Okay. Any other speakers? All right. Any other questions? There being none. Thank you so much. Moving on to, business presentation of the city of Fort Lauderdale grant program update, office of management and budget.

Thank you, mayor. We will have our Did you skip business one intentionally, mayor?

Business two. Oh, I'm sorry. I apologize.

Yeah. It's

I I meant office and management budget, but only with regard to the city commission priority. That's it.

Yeah. Thank you, mayor. We have Erica Johnson, strategy and innovation manager from the office of management and budget. Good

afternoon. It's good to see you all again. As I was introduced, Erica Johnson, strategy and innovation manager. We spent some time together earlier in January at your annual commission prioritization workshop. So that's really what I'm here today to discuss.

We received lots of notes and action items and ideas and priorities and areas of focus as a part of that workshop. So as staff, we took that back and we spent some time consolidating it, seeing where different pieces fit, and also reacting to the feedback that you all had which was the priorities really should stay largely the same over the next year for fiscal year twenty twenty seven. So with that, we have in no particular order four priorities for fiscal year twenty twenty seven, public safety, homelessness response, infrastructure and resilience, and a fourth one, public spaces and thriving communities. In exhibit one, they are outlined in detail, but I'm just gonna take a couple of moments to touch on a few key themes that we heard. So the first one for public safety, we heard, one of the key themes was to continue expand the gun violence and intervention program, address concerns related to e bikes, and look at adding more cameras and license plate readers throughout the city.

For homelessness response, comments were made about deterring panhandling, connecting those experiencing homelessness with available shelter beds, partnering more closely with nonprofits, and then also, providing more frequent updates on homelessness and are the city's response to both the city commission and the community. The third priority, infrastructure and resilience is a two pronged priority. So the first part is focused on utilities and flood mitigation. So continuing to advance Fortify Lauderdale, accelerating construction of seawall improvements, and again, you're seeing that theme of communication on key projects and where we're at with those. For the other side of that priority, transportation and traffic, we recognized and heard the comments about planning for the Los Oles mobility project, addressing the root causes of sink walls, sink root causes of sinkholes in roadways, sorry, making sure that we're more coordinated when we're doing roadway repairs or installing utilities, and also likewise ensuring external contractors return properties, roadways, sidewalks to their original state, when they're completing their work.

We're gonna continue to advocate for a commuter rail tunnel, addressing the challenges associated with illegal parking and delivery trucks, and then also investigating opportunities for implementing traffic calming measures. Then the last priority would be public spaces and thriving communities, and this one has a couple of different elements related to parks, public spaces, economic development. So the key things that we heard there were to create opportunities so that every child can learn to swim, taking advantage of our public pools and the aquatic center, discouraging illegal dumping and pump outs into our waterways, continuing the progress on improving medians and landscape and maintenance on those, accelerating our public art installations. And then on the economic development side, incentivizing business operators to increase their amenities, specifically in Flagler Village, continue to advance economic development programs to attract and retain businesses. And then again, we've kind of seen this woven throughout several of the priorities, but in terms of communication, enhancing our communication specifically with civic associations, marketing the city under a more unified brand, and then lastly, expanding broadband access.

So with that, I'm here today to receive any additional feedback or clarification you wanna provide on these priorities before we bring them forward at a future meeting for formal adoption.

Anyone have any questions?

Mayor? Yes, please. You. Thank you for putting this all together. City manager, question on the incentivizing business operators to increase amenities. This is something, I know is a challenge in Flagler Village. It's also a challenge in a lot of other neighborhoods. So Edgewood, Croyson Park, River Oaks, some example, I'm sure maybe others have other neighbors as well. So could we expand that to really include those neighborhoods as well?

We could look at targeted areas across the city that might have this challenge. I think for grocery stores, we can more readily identify where there are food deserts in the city and where there might be an opportunity for a grocery store to come in through an incentive. So that is a possibility. It's something that we would be putting together through the budget process. In terms of a financial incentive.

That would be great. And yes, I'd love to hear more about the incentive options that we can articulate to business owners and so forth to encourage that in those neighborhoods.

Sure.

So we can make that adjustment on here.

Yes.

Great.

I think instead of saying offered in Flagler Village, maybe offered in areas throughout the city as needed.

Yes. I think that's

Yes.

I like that verbiage. Because it would include Right. District 3, and we know that is, recognized also as a food

Exactly. So thank you. Yep. Thank you. Thanks, city manager.

Okay.

So we'll make that adjustment, and we'll bring forward for a future meeting and then those priorities will be built into the '27 budget.

Okay, great. So I have a few questions. I'm not either you or the city manager. I want to refer to the memorandum that was also attached here, the city the commission agenda memo. So there are six items here.

I'd like to go through them. The first one is infiltration and inflow update. City staff provided an update on efforts and key milestones to address as well as the funding that is in place to support the improvements. I think we also wanted to know when are we going to get an evaluation of what the status is on our project, what percent of the INI project have we reached so far and what is the plan going forward to complete the INI project? How many years more are we going to take to complete that?

And I think that was one requests of the commission at the time. So I don't see that in here. I just want to make sure that we are in agreement that that's what the commission is looking for. Because I also understand as part of the consent order And so I want to make sure that we're in compliance with that. But also more importantly, an infiltration infrastructure supports our sewage treatment plant and doesn't overwhelm it when we have a compromised I and I system.

So that's really important to us as we continue to grow as a city. Number two, the broadband access, I think is really important. It says the city staff presented options to enhance broadband access across the city. I don't remember hearing a city staff presentation, but I do remember the city commission asking for a presentation showing what parts of the city and at what cost we could attempt to secure more broadband access throughout the city, especially in underserved areas. Broadband access is so important in this day and age where everyone's on a computer or phone.

And I think that we need to see a more detailed plans on where we're going with that. Mayor Yes.

At the meeting we provided the commission with some background information including four options for expanding broadband throughout the city and there was consensus from the commission at that time to explore all four of those avenues, which included, education and access and expanding the pilot program that we currently have Right. In place. And so our intention is to move forward with those recommendations from the commission. And if there is a need to come back to the commission to seek any funding support or to get any additional feedback, we would do so. But we took that, feedback, and we are going to be incorporating that going forward into our plans, especially as we embark on the budget development process.

Okay. All right. Great. Good to hear that. Next is the Police District four. The city staff presented options to enhance police response to the creation of a fourth Police District. I think we were waiting to hear more detail on that, correct? And I don't know whether that requires more police staffing or just a rearrangement of existing police officers and infrastructure. So at some point, we need to know where we are with that and how we're going to implement that if, in fact, we do decide to go forward. Number four, disposal of federal courthouse.

I hate that word disposal. City staff presented options and I do know that there are options, and I think we need to have a more full throated commission agenda item on this to discuss what options there are. I understand that it's not really up to us entirely. I know the federal government, limits the types of purposes that we could seek to put there. So if we could coordinate that with the GSA and get back to the City Commission because well, we do have time because the federal government is not moving into their new building until the beginning of next year, I believe.

And even then they're not going to be ready to even talk to us about how they would like to repurpose that site and at what cost. So, but I would like to have a more complete discussion on what our options are based on what options the federal government does give us?

We have been in communication with GSA since the commission prioritization workshop and they provided some feedback. We have a draft letter to the commission that we're working on to provide some more clarification. GSA is refining the eligibility criteria, and they're looking at, potentially options to determine how the transfer could occur, whether it would be at market rate or whether it be at a reduced rate or free to the city essentially. So we will be providing more information via letter to the commission and we intend to

bring an item back to the commission at conference to discuss further. Great. Thank you. The next is one stop shop. The previous proposal that we had entertained is no longer an option for us.

So we are looking forward to hearing what opportunities there are for this commission to consider. And I see in your statement here, the staff will explore a solicited public private partnership to develop the site. I'm not sure whether the commission needs to have a conversation on what we're looking to see there or are we going to wait until we hear P3 unsolicited proposals that might come to us because I have some ideas. I'm sure every member of the commission, especially the district commissioner might have some ideas. And I think the district commissioner is probably best suited to hear, or to be heard on this subject because he's in touch with his neighborhood associations and all the associations that are affected by this particular site.

And I think that is something that we should probably have a fuller discussion on what we need to do going forward on this site. Does that make sense?

Without a doubt, I appreciate it. No, I have had conversations with the neighbor associations all in that area. And then I was going to actually mention this when we do our reports later, but attending the Hazinga Park reopening, which I thought is just a stunning place, I really want to find out what we think DDA might have to offer on the one stop shops.

Has DDA made an overture?

Well, I've had several conversations with them. Yes. So I want to be able to explore that option as well and perhaps I don't know if that would be in tandem with soliciting public private partnerships or just to have that information at hand to see if we even need to do that. But I definitely, was impressed with Huizinga Park to the point of thinking, well, why reinvent the wheel? And there's a whole team there that just created that space.

I think they did a really, really excellent job. So, there are other factors. I think that one stop Flagler Village is still very much interested in seeing more of an art component, which a little bit more than just the one piece that you see in Hizenga. But we can have those conversations. But yes, as I think when we first had a conversation at the goal setting workshop, the communities around there are very interested in really not traveling that far away from what was originally presented there.

I don't think they would mind if we don't have two structures there. But I think that they really did like the open space and they also really like the the cultural The food emporium? Yeah. But I mean, some sort of event space might not be a bad idea, but we can, again, explore all that and but they really did like the cultural component, whether it be the cultural, actual structure, where at one time we envisioned our cultural affairs officer moving and staff. But they really did like the emphasis emphasis on, the arts and culture of that park.

Alright. What would be next steps going forward then?

So based on the direction that we received or the consensus that we heard at the goal setting meeting, the commission wanted to ensure that whatever happened there included active and passive public uses to include a park amenity. And so our intention was to draft a solicited proposal for a public private partnership and come back to the commission to review that, provide any feedback and input and then go out to the market and advertise this opportunity.

The kind if the commission we're looking to see happen there.

Yes. The thought was that if we express to the community our mandatory requirements, so those active and passive uses including a park, then the development community or the private sector could add to those ideas and bring their creativity and hopefully some capital in order to leverage the public asset and provide a development opportunity that has multiple purposes. And so we didn't want to be very prescriptive, but our understanding from the commission at the time at that meeting was that as long as we mentioned to the public that those are the needs of the community, those active and passive public uses, then the development community could provide input and creativity and innovation and hopefully bring a project before the commission that would be pleasing to the community as well.

Got it.

Commissioner Glassman, do you think a joint workshop with the Neighborhood Association might be part of the process going forward or do you feel that your interaction with them and your reporting to us their sentiments be sufficient? What do think would be the next steps?

Either I

or You have I to live with it.

Right, exactly. And either I go or my staff goes to the Flagler Bill of Civic Association meetings. They meet every month. There's no reason why perhaps we can devote one of those entire meetings to the subject.

I mean,

I think we can certainly figure that out.

All right. So if you could take upon yourself and try to get back to us on that because it's sitting idle and, you know, we'd like to be able to activate in some ways.

Yes, we do.

Okay. Great. Thank you.

This is just for clarity, mayor, is is the approach that staff is taking now, is that still agreeable that we come back with a draft for the commission to provide feedback?

You see that's the thing. I think we should listen to the community to see what the community wants, right, rather than what staff thinks should go there. And I think that we're more successful when we listen to people rather than telling people what to do. So, I think that perhaps having a meeting either with the DDA or with the Neighborhood Association or any combination thereof is something that I would like to assign the district commissioner and either have a joint workshop with those groups or meet with them separately and report back to us what the findings are, because we need to move forward on it. I think staff could then take those recommendations and try to formulate a public private partnership agenda that they can put out to the private sector.

Mayor, can I offer suggestion on that? Yes, go ahead. So I think we'd be best served and we've got a past history of doing a lot of charrettes where we engage the community and because this is not just a neighborhood park, it's also our downtown park. This is also the folks that work in the offices down here. And so there's a lot more stakeholders I think than just Flagler Village, although they're a big part of it.

So the folks that work in these offices want to be able to walk across the street and have lunch and sit in a park. So I think we've got a lot of people who have a stake in it and so I think a charrette or a series of charrettes that engages all the stakeholders in the community would be advantageous. And then I think a workshop with the commission where we get to weigh in before staff gets involved because staff struggles when they don't know what we want, when they're trying to figure out what our direction is and divine the tea leaves puts them into a very awkward position. So I'd rather progress from a position of what do our various stakeholders want, come to us, we give them sort of our larger oversight, what do we want to see in that and then out of that dialogue, I think we can then give a better direction to staff, so whatever they bring back to us more accurately reflects the larger needs of the community and the commission.

All right. So, so where did so who would head that up then? Do we ask staff to initiate a charrette program that would include I have done

that on many instances and throughout the city. In every district, they've coordinated charrettes for a variety of different instances. I think they're perfectly capable. DSD has

done this. Okay. So it would include the adjacent neighborhood associations, the DDA. Yes. Okay. Is that something you think you can put together? Okay, great.

Yes. While I don't object to that, that was not consensus at the goal setting workshop. If I remember the all these options were presented to us and I'd have to go back and look at the minutes, maybe we can. This was one of the options that we just sort of did not go in that direction. Correct me if I'm wrong.

What was shared

We did. You would have seen at the bottom of the presentation sheet or the slide that we, offered that maybe there's additional public input that could be garnered to help guide the direction of the one stop shop development or whatever would happen next. There wasn't a lot of communication at the time of that meeting that suggested that the commission wanted us to reengage, the community and understand what the current desires might be. So that is not the impression that I walked away with at that meeting. However, there's nothing binding at that time. So if the commission wants to change course, of course, staff is amenable.

Okay. Whatever everybody wants.

Okay. But whatever we do, let's just get started. I just think we need to move start moving on it because it's been sitting idle for a number of years. And while it's great to have open space, but there's a big fence around it. And the only people that are using it are the

Can we take the fence down? No. The fence down?

Kind of

like Riverside did. Green open space.

Okay. Thank you. And finally, City Hall. It says city staff provided an update on considerations for the framework of the interim agreement that will guide the construction and operation of the new City Hall site, including costs, financing and maintenance. City Commission supported a target budget of $200,000,000 Now reading this, it's, I'm led to believe that we're talking about the response to the unsolicited proposal and the Commission's selection of one of the proposals and we're going to at some point get a term sheet from you and when were you planning on presenting that?

So we have been meeting on a weekly basis with the development team that was selected for us to move forward with the public private partnership. We have multiple meetings every week, and our intention is to bring forward a draft term sheet for the February 17 conference meeting to get feedback from the commission. The commission had previously asked for touch points for engagement and opportunities for the public to weigh in, and we feel that bringing the draft term sheet is one of those opportunities. At the time of the goal setting meeting, the context by which we provided the framework for the budget, it was based on the public private partnership, based on the selection of the commission during the December 2 meeting.

Okay. And what day did you say? Which meeting are we going to present the, term sheet?

Our intention is for February 17. That's what

we're working So the next meeting. Yes. Okay. So this so I I just want I also want to bring up. So it's my understanding that, you, and or staff members, had been communicating with the folks at the 101 Building, as early as July.

Number of emails and meetings, actually one I know of one meeting in particular in December in which you met with the owners of the 101 Building. Just wondering, when we were talking about the city hall and next steps, why you would not have brought that up at the time of the goal setting session to at least alert the city commission of what you have been doing and what, and where you were taking this when at the meeting that we had when we selected the core industries or core construction that the city commission had made a decision on the direction it was going. And there were multiple meetings that took place of the city commission since July and at no time was any of that ever brought up. And now I understand that the people in 1 East Broward have submitted a request for us to review purchasing their building. So tell us where this is all going and, what direction do you expect this commission to go considering decisions that have been made so far?

Thank you for that question, Mayor. And just to address 1 East Broward, we did receive an email or at least I did, and I think members of the commission received the same email offering that if the city was considering the purchase of an existing building that the 1 East Broward building property owners would like to be considered. To landlordtenant issues. Last year, in July, the landlord did represent to staff that they were interested in an opportunity for the city to either purchase or lease the property. Staff was provided with an offer from the property owner and felt that the offer was incomplete and not viable.

The property owner was also told that there is an ongoing private Not

partnership viable in relation to the unsolicited proposal process or just not viable in general?

Not viable or incomplete because there wasn't information provided related to the structure and condition of the building and the details that would be required to make a proper determination as to whether this was a feasible opportunity. So there wasn't a lot of information provided at that time. Staff also made the property owner aware that there was a public private partnership competition period that was currently in place. The property owner, for whatever reason, opted not to participate in that process. It could be, and I don't want to speak for the property owner, but it could be that the public private partnership process called for a design, build, finance, operate and maintain type of structure, which is what the commission agreed to put out to the community.

Being that the offer was a sale or a lease of the building, my assumption is that the property owner did not feel they qualified to be part of the P3 process. In any event, the property owner went back to the drawing board, noting that the offer was incomplete and not seen as viable and provided additional information to staff in October 2025. At that time, we were fully engaged in the process of the public private partnership as directed by the commission. And so we have moved forward with that direction ever since we have been told to advance this project. And this city hall project has advanced more in the last nine months than it has in several years.

And that's because we've taken the direction of the commission and we've advanced it at its fullest speed.

But

but there were still meetings taking place or still communications taking place after October even though you were you were fully engaged in the other process.

Correct. The property owner reached out to my staff and asked for a meeting with me. I did have that meeting in late December with the property owner. At that time, they asked for us to look at their proposal and also to share that proposal with the city commission. They asked that I connect them with the city commission and I did so via email and that was shared with every member of the city commission. So it's not that we were That

took place after the goal setting session.

It did take place after the goal setting session.

My question is why didn't you bring it up at the goal setting session knowing that it was a key point and it's even part of your memo here. It was a key point in the discussions that we were having at that time and it would have provided us an opportunity to discuss in the sunshine at a time when we're all prepared to discuss the City Hall going forward. I just I'm curious as to why you kept it a secret, from us and then finally disclosed it to us, you know, at midnight, at our last meeting.

I did not disclose it at midnight at a meeting. I shared it via email the Friday before the meeting where it was brought up Mhmm. From the body. So staff did not bring up the one zero one proposal at any commission meeting or any public meeting. I did share an email, a few days before the commission meeting, and I assume that's why it was brought up at the next meeting. You may recall that the conference meeting was paused because of the length and the discussion that took place and was resumed after the regular meeting, which is why the commission discussion occurred toward midnight.

I understand that. But again, okay, I don't want to belabor the point. I'm just pointing out to you that if you have information and you're pursuing something that is inconsistent with what the policy direction of this commission has been and you're on your own pursuing things that this commission did not ask you to do and then you later tell us after the opportunity did it already exist for you to disclose this to us. I'm just saying that going forward, we need to know what you're doing, especially if you're doing it against or contrary to what the commission had agreed to.

I want to make clear that there was no pursuit of the 101 proposal or offer. There was no pursuit by staff or myself to engage them in an opportunity for there to be city hall. We took the direction from the commission, and we have done everything within our power to advance the p three project as directed by the commission. There was no attempt to circumvent the commission or to deviate from the path that the commission laid out, not by me and not by staff.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you. I have no further questions. Anyone else have any questions?

Yep. Mayor. Yep. Thanks. Raquel, thanks for that, update information. Are is staff doing an analysis of the 101 Tower?

The request at the last city commission meeting where it was discussed during conference, there was a request for staff to explore the Tower 101 offer. And so we have began that process of exploration. There are a few things that we are not necessarily engaging with at this time. We wanted to get some additional feedback from the commission. We've been having various conversations.

We intend to do an appraisal, property survey and a title search. We'd like to do a market analysis of office space in the downtown area. And should the commission like us to, go even further, we can do structural examination of the building with the consent of the property owner. It is my understanding that the property owner has already done some work in terms of evaluating the condition of the building and may have completed reports at this time, but none of those reports have been provided to the city. It's my understanding that the property owner may seek to do some additional due diligence to provide to the city, but has not done so at this time.

Okay. Thanks. And when will you be able to provide analysis of 01/2001?

So we can do a preliminary review of the offer as proposed with the information that has been provided. We will not be able to fact check every single thing unless we have some information, some additional information from the property owner. Some of the things that we would need to do in order to give the commission a more robust opportunity to make a determination on the viability, would take anywhere between thirty and forty five days from issuance of a notice to proceed depending on what the scope would be. So for example, if we wanted to do an environmental analysis or archaeological analysis, building inspection, tenancy review, market survey, those things could concurrently, but may take anywhere between thirty and forty five days following a notice to proceed. Some of the two appraisals that we would want to do as well as a survey and title search that would take anywhere between thirty and forty five days.

So we could come to the commission with a preliminary view based on what was proposed. We can look at the price per square foot. We can try to identify, hey, what might it cost to retrofit floors. We may need to get some additional information like floor plans from the property owner in order to start to make that assessment. But our development services team is already looking into this. They've already started to review the plans that we currently have on file, and we intend to provide the commission with as much information as the commission would like in order to capture the exploration that we were asked to do.

Thanks. I want be respectful of the kind of time and investment the builder is making in the P3 process. So I would want to as much as possible get the analysis done as quickly as possible, so that the commission can have the data to make the valuation. Is there information we can request from the Tower one hundred one owner that would expedite possibly this, analysis?

I I think so. I believe that the structural report has been, completed by the property owner. We just have not obtained that report. And I think the full building inspection is something that the property owner would be willing to engage in subject to the commission desiring to go further in the exploratory phase.

So, okay, thanks. I'd like to get to ask if we could just to get as much information as fast as possible from the owner of 101, so that that can just help Raquel's analysis. That's alright.

Well, then what do we do? Now that we've opened the door and one East Broward now would like to also offer up their building for sale. I mean, it's like how how many buildings are we gonna accept these office from? How many analyses are we gonna go through? How far are we taking this? I mean, how deep into the weeds are we just saying to every building owner in the city? Give us your tired, your poor, your old buildings yearning to be free. Like, how how far down that road are we going?

If that question is directed to me, I I would say that that is based on the will of the commission. So we will do as directed and take the lead of the commission.

I I think we absolutely have to look at the 1 East Broward Building. I mean, is the premier corner in all of Fort Lauderdale. That is an opportunity to buy below replacement cost, 350,000 square feet for $120,000,000 Right now commercial office space is on sale. I mean, is a buying opportunity that is once in a lifetime. We will never get property this cheap ever again. It's connected to our existing parking garage by a flyover bridge. It is a great building. We already occupy it. We thought about putting our commission chambers on the Ground Floor. It would be derelict for us not to consider this.

So I think we absolutely have to look at this. We absolutely have to evaluate it. It would be again financially irresponsible to the taxpayers not to do our due diligence. We could always reject it, but we have to look at it.

And I'd also like to point out that several years ago with, Chris Lagerbloom, we approached them to buy that building, for City Hall and

they blew us off and The markets crashed since then. We're looking at vacancy rates around the country and in places like San Francisco and Chicago of 40%. We've got buildings in San Francisco that sold for $260,000,000 a couple of years ago that are going for 60,000,000 So this is, I'm telling you, Mayor, this is a once in a generation opportunity to buy commercial office space at prices that we're never going to see again. Behooves us to look at

it. Well, you know, to Commissioner Glassman's, statement, I want to make sure that whatever money we spend is not putting good money after bad, especially these older buildings. Think that building was I

think they just redid that one.

Me finish.

I'm sorry.

I apologize. I thought they just redid that building.

Well, they didn't redo the whole building. The building still is over thirty years. I believe it's 30 years old. I'm not sure, but I thought it was built in the late 80s. And it was I agree with you. It's on a wonderful site, much better than 101 Building. The 101 Building never made any sense to me. And this site has it has atrium space that we can accommodate commission chambers and the layout is much more suitable to what we would want. It'd be less expensive for us to accommodate the city needs. And because it's a larger building, it could be income producing.

It's scalable. Yes. As we go up or down, that we can rent space out in that building, we can go up, we can go down as our needs fluctuate through the years. You all know I hate the word iconic. I think I've been outspoken about that, but this is actually an iconic location for us. Well, the location

maybe, but not Right, the Well, but honestly, to Commissioner Glassman's point, where does this end? Every building on the block is going to come to us now and say, hey, buy me, buy me. I felt we made a commitment. I thought we had a vision. I thought we're looking to the future. I thought we had, you didn't, Vice Mayor, I know that, but the rest of us had voted to do that. And now has that changed? Commissioner Beasley Pittman, what are your thoughts on this?

Well, when I asked to, I believe I used the word entertain. Let's look at what 101 Tower was presenting. I was more interested in what it looked like as in financial and what what else could be done with the building. I was not, moving in a direction of saying, let's shift from what we were looking at, but also what if the building was going up, is it a good price? If it's going up for sale, is it a good price?

Is it something that we as a city could assume this building? And we've talked about several things about, the federal courthouse, things that we wanna do with that building. And I was looking at what that whole block or campus block would look like, but not in an attempt to deviate from the plans that we have moving forward.

So you still want to move forward with the, unsolicited proposal that we had originally engaged?

Yes. I still want to move forward with that. Again, if there's a possibility, we, as a city, we make commitments, we look at things, we purchase, different, opportunities. And if there's an opportunity where the 101 or even East 1 East Broward is something that we can utilize that space for and it becomes, productive, iconic, and it all works together, let's make it happen. It is a true point about the value of the building and the price that it's going for.

So but, again, my initial response and the reason I asked to see what it would look like because I wanted to know the opportunities for the building, not an opportunity to move away from what we had voted for.

All right. So that changes things.

Mayor, can I add just Yes, a couple go more Thank you? So you bring up a good point about where do we stop. So I think the thing that I find attractive about 1 East Broward and the 101 Building is they're both directly adjacent to our existing parking garage. So I'm not looking to go five blocks away, 10 blocks away where people have to walk to the parking garage. I think the thing that makes those two buildings unique is they are attached to our parking garage and so we can utilize that facility.

So I think that's what makes them somewhat different. I also think there's an opportunity if we were to look at say the one East Broward building, there's always a potential that we could continue to include the folks that were participating in the proposed new building as partners in the 1 East Broward Building. We're going need somebody to come in and reconfigure that building. There's a massive contract for reconfiguration of that space. Styles can still come in and do the property management of it.

This isn't necessarily excluding the people who have participated in that process. There's still a lot of money to be made partnering with the folks who have been part of this process. This isn't necessarily exclusionary. It's maybe just reconsidering how we partner.

All

right, but there seems to be now a majority that wants to continue moving forward on the original. So be

it, It is what it is.

Right. So I don't think we really want to I mean you can come back to us with an analysis, a cursory analysis of the 101 Building and maybe the 1 East Broward Building, but I think we still it might present other opportunities for the city. But I think that the commission seems to now want to just move forward on the original decision that it made. And let's await the term sheet that you are going to present to us at the next meeting.

I ask one additional question too as you're looking at? So one of the things that I think would be very useful to know with these buildings is their possibility of owner provided financing with them as well. I think that would be an attractive inducement.

Well, it's interesting because each of those other buildings, they have tenants in them and tenant commitments. So I don't know how much space is going to be allotted to us at what point. We have to wait five years, we have to wait three years, we have to wait seven years. If we do I that don't was one of

the things in Ivy's proposal for 101. I haven't obviously had an opportunity to look through one East per hour because it just came in last night. But I Ivy's proposal for 101 said that they could work expeditiously with their team to get their tenants out within a reasonable amount of time and I think it gives us an opportunity to phase our move in. We've got people geographically dispersed around the city. Obviously parking is over on 3rd.

We've got different folks in different locations throughout the city, so they don't all need to be in there all on day one. We can move them in as space frees up. We already occupied 20% of that building, so we're in there. Again, I've been in that building for I think fifteen years and happily so. So, I think we could do a phase move in.

You're already in the one East Broward Building and so we could do a phase move in with that. There's vacant space in there right now. I think there's lots of opportunities. Mayor, at the end of the day, you know, I know I'll probably going to be on the losing end of this vote and that's fine, but I think it behooves us to take a long hard look at it. This is a huge financial decision that the city is going to be burdened with for the next thirty years financially paying for it and we're going to be living with the building for anywhere from fifty to seventy five years depending on how well built the building is.

So I think we really need to take some time, think about it, make sure we're making the right decisions for our taxpayers. Remember, are we looking at losing homestead over the next ten years. I have no doubt that this is going to pass. I'm voting for it. I'm pretty sure everybody in this room that owns a house is voting for elimination of homestead. So, you know, we What

do mean eliminate? You mean eliminate tax?

Eliminating taxes, right. Eliminating taxes on homesteaded property. So our tax base is going to be declining. We need to be leaning into the fact that we've got to start scaling down operations and preparing my favorite show, Game of Thrones, winter is coming and we need to be preparing for a leaner, more revenue declining environment and so let's think about that as we look at our cost structures going forward. You know, all these stantecs proposals that we've looked at whenever we do our budget, nothing nothing that they've ever done takes into into account this cataclysmic decline property Exactly

the word cataclysmic. We'll end

up firing police officers, firing Nope. Because that's what the law is gonna say is that you can't get rid of police officers. Okay.

Raise our taxes.

We get rid of everybody else.

So raise our taxes and and and double tax businesses and double tax seasonal owners and, that's certainly the best message to send around the world that Florida no longer is the tax free place. It's

Mayor, I'm not arguing about that. I'm telling you it's gonna pass. Okay. Whether you like it or not, I can't see the people in The States

That's a subject for another time. We'll worry about that later. It's not something that's gonna

So Let's just not put our heads in the sand. I'm telling you.

Okay.

May I Yes. I I just wanna clarify because I heard about, know, getting rid of tenants really quickly, but don't those leases carry over no matter what, no matter who owns? You can't just throw out tenants that have a lease. Right?

Correct.

So I so that's I mean, I just think that the items that you mentioned, city manager, in terms of what we're going to take a look at, it's not even comprehensive enough. And and we're talking about a city hall for the future of our city. These buildings are what? 25, 35 years old that we're looking at now? I mean, what is the life cycle of those buildings? I I'm not sure that that's gonna really take care of our needs going into the future.

Well, if we whatever money we spend, okay, you have to take in consideration that we are not going to have the same longevity in this in that in a used building than in a new building. So it might be a little cheaper to go into a used building, but ultimately we're going to be spending more money to keep it up and to reinforce its utility because we don't have the benefit of a new structure, which means new electrical systems, newer plumbing systems, everything about it. So any price tag associated with a used building has to somehow be discounted as in terms of its viability. I mean,

just the retrofitting, and I have been speaking to a lot of folks in the construction field and the development field the last couple of weeks since our last meeting. And I'm I'm almost unanimously getting that you might get these buildings for a good cost, but you'll probably spend that exact amount also in retrofitting. So at the end of the day, at the end of the day, the savings is not really that much. And and and you talk about, you know, these buildings and and and the infrastructure in these buildings. I know that in my offices alone in one East Broward now, there's no heat.

We found out there's just no heat at all. The offices are freezing and if we have cold spells like this, we're we're blowing fuses all the time. I mean, you're looking at all 25, 35 year old buildings that are gonna need a lot of work. I just don't see the sense in looking at these buildings at all. I wouldn't even waste any time looking at it, studying it, analyzing it. I I think we just have to move forward in good faith with the team that we selected, and then just wrap this up. I I don't really wanna spend

a I lot personally agree with you. Commissioner Beasley Pittman, you agree with that?

I have a question before that. What is the cost for these studies that are being cited that need to be done for these buildings? Do we have a a estimated cost of what it would cost

On us as a the low end, we're estimating about 120,000 for the two appraisals survey, title search, environmental, archaeological, historical, building inspection, tenancy review and market survey. So in total, that will be about $120,000 We do have, I believe, about $9,000,000 in the City Hall budget right now that we're utilizing. We also have the owners rep. That's how we are paying them for their services and other consultants that we have.

It's a lot of money to squander if we know we're not going to go in that direction.

City manager, or go ahead, commissioner.

I'm pondering. Go ahead. I'm pondering those figures.

Sure. Thanks. Thanks, city manager. For an analysis in a couple weeks, what the I think financial pro form a, basics in terms of square footage, structural integrity that we might know. In the next couple of weeks doing an analysis, what would be the cost of that analysis?

Think everything outside of the structural analysis would be relatively, inexpensive. And we could do a financial analysis. We can look at a pro form a. We can, you know, utilize our in house and external resources to to do that. I don't think that it would cost the city, you know, more than We don't we don't know

a build out is gonna cost.

No. We we don't know what a build out for the 101 Building would cost. No. We do not.

So here would be my suggestion is that, I think a very tight budget limited cost analysis of 101 as well as one East Broward. In addition to continuing the discussions with the builder over the next couple weeks, continuing to progress forward. And in two weeks presenting the analysis for 1011 East Broward and then the updated term sheet or whatever you're able to provide us for the builders, I think would be a great concept and then we can you know discard ideas at that point or you know move forward with the plan that we have.

For 1 East Broward the information that we have been provided with to date or that I've seen is very preliminary, and we would need to request more information from that property owner in order to do what we could do on the Tower 101 analysis. So right now, able get what

we're sense able

to the So

city manager to ask both 1 East Broward and 101, Tower 101, those owners for as much information as they can get, do a low cost analysis over the next two weeks and then bring forward on February 17 what we have at that point.

What are you defining as low cost? Because I'm looking at the figures and I'm really I looking at

would like to know what's the end game there. What is the end game? What So is the let's say there's an analysis, you come up with an analysis. We spend x amount of thousands, tens of thousands of dollars for the analysis. What's the end game?

So this this isn't going to cost tens of thousands of dollars in the next two weeks. City manager, you want to maybe get specifics on the next

two weeks? I don't know if Ben Rogers might have an estimate on what that might cost.

Good afternoon, mayor and commissioner, Ben Rogers, assistant city manager. So I want to take a step back before I answer the question and just say that whatever we do is the next step. There's a lot of components that go into it between getting a contract with someone to do the work, with the work being performed, what level of detail you want in that, and then the turnaround time for the report to be prepared. So I think it will be challenging for the next meeting, Commissioner Sorensen. But with that, I do know that we have some contracts that we have on place, already.

We have an owner's rep for the City Hall project that we could probably leverage that contract. We have a real estate broker contract that we could leverage. I can't answer the cost because I don't know what level of specificity that you are looking for, at this point in the game. But I can tell you that it will take thirty to forty five days, and it will probably be in excess of $25,000

May I just want to I'm sorry, go ahead.

Go ahead.

Commissioner Bisbetman, little more info there and if I think if the costs of the analysis is a concern, then we ask for you know a limited cost analysis with what we have available.

Didn't you say the appraisals were a

100 and something thousand, 120,000 No.

I listed about nine different deliverables or scopes of work, which in totality would be a $120,000.

For each building?

Yes. If we were to exercise all of those options for

for each building.

Correct.

So that's $240,000

That's a $05,000,000 and that's why I asked the question, what is the end game here? What is the end game? Are going to then want to buy one of these buildings or are we going to go with the original decision that we made to go with City Hall Partners? Without the information, don't know

that we can make a valid decision.

I think spending $250,000

and saving $100,000,000 I think is well worth the investment. I'm gonna leave you with one thought. I agree. This is important. You guys are all talking about how this is a 20 year old building. My high school in New York City was built in nineteen o four. They're still using it. Okay? 100 A and 22 year old building. Stuyvesant High School.

They don't

build like they used to. No. Hasn't fallen down. Okay? I know. Just letting you know. Still in use.

There are buildings in Rome that are 2,000 years old.

Exactly. It's 2,000 years old. Let's let's stop suggesting that 20 years old is like ancient. Okay?

No. Well, in South Florida, those buildings are ending they're ending their useful life. I I also wanna remind everyone that when we first went down this path of of building a new city hall, we solicited we got how many? Five, six people entered the bidding? There were six proposals. Correct me if I'm wrong, but one of them was an existing building already. Correct?

There was a proposal that included an existing building.

And how far did that proposal go?

It did not make the shortlist. Did not make the shortlist.

That is a perfect example, a perfect reason why I don't know what we're doing now by looking at every building that wants to be sold in Downtown Fort Lauderdale. And again, we've just gotten two now, but I can predict that the floodgates will open. And then when do we cut it off? Do we spend a $120,000 for 10 buildings that are gonna offer their building for sale at a great deal, at a great cost and savings to the taxpayers? I just think this is like a rabbit hole we're going down right now, and I don't get it.

We we made a commitment. I think that we owe it to the teams that entered the process, paid their $25,000. None of these buildings paid $25,000 to enter this process, did they? If they're really serious about selling their buildings, they should pay for the analysis. They should pay for the appraisals.

They should pay for all of those stuff that we would need to do to really consider whether or not to purchase. We should not be paying 1 nickel for any of the things that we would need to do to analyze any of these buildings that are gonna come forward. I think right now we have a discussion among ourselves and we decide is this worth it or not or do we just move forward down the path we started. And then we put an end to this one way or the other. If a majority of us feel that we should keep analyzing and keep looking at buildings and keep going down that path, great. Then we do. If a majority don't think so, then we end this discussion. You move forward in good faith negotiations with the team we selected and end the story.

With that being said, I'm I'm saying that, we move forward with the plan that we're already working with with the developers that we're speaking with. My concern, I'm making this decision based on what it would cost us to have these analysts analyzed to get to a point to decide, if one of these preexisting buildings would be, something or option we would really entertain. I'm if you all may not appreciate this, but whatever we're doing, I'm looking for more restrooms for the females. I I just cannot deal with the restroom problem. You can take it light, take it however you wanna take it, but these existing buildings do not have adequate facilities for females.

Okay? So I guess I see you back there. Yes. Okay. But, with that being said, seriously, the dollar amount that's being considered, I think we should move forward understanding what the build out may be, the cost assessing, that's been discussed about build out. I believe that we could put that into a new structure.

So we should just move forward with the new structure?

Move forward. That is what I am recommending. Okay.

Alright. Move forward. So let's just so That's it. That's it.

That's it.

So just so I'm clear, so stop all analyses of all other Yeah. Possible possibilities here.

Correct.

This is the will of commissioner mayor and commissioner? Yep. Okay. I think that's, I think we're missing opportunity just to analyze, but thank you.

Alright. Thank you. Thank you. Alright. Moving on to business two.

Mayor, before we get to that, so Yes. I just want to comment on this. Obviously, as you all know, I missed the goal setting session due to a personal tragedy in my life, but I do have one or two more comments. That was one of them. I do want to offer up a comment as it relates to the federal courthouse. So I, not fully in supportive of the suggestions that I've seen made about a charter school. I don't think that's the right direction. The school board is getting rid of schools and I think if there's an opportunity for a charter school, then I think we should utilize one of the existing schools. Take a school and make a charter school. Don't take a courthouse and turn it into a charter school.

I think that would be a mistake. I don't think it's also suitable for affordable housing. Retrofitting that building for affordable housing is not cost effective. There are a lot of cities around the country that are retrofitting office buildings for affordable housing or any types of housing. But typically the only buildings that that work with are office buildings that were built roughly around at the turn of the last century and it's because of how they were constructed, the floor plates, the light, the air shafts and things like that. Those are the ones that are that are typically worthwhile converting over

Or maybe a 101 should be converted to an affordable housing project.

No, it doesn't have the air shafts. It's the floor plates are not suitable for But what I would suggest, what I think the courthouse would be phenomenal for, and I'm trying to build support for this, so I hope my commissioners will get on board with me. I've already I've socialized this idea. Everybody likes it, so I hope you guys will get on board. Think this would be an amazing museum.

Museum. A museum, because the one thing you don't want in a museum is windows and light, because it damages the art. We could if you think about that space, we could have artist studios in there. We could have different floors that are devoted to different types of art. I mean, think about kids and you know, coming from the school district, you know, out on that open plaza. I mean, that is an amazing It interesting idea.

Yeah. The only concern that I have is the height of the ceilings. We'd have to break through a lot of floors, but I don't know if that would compromise the structural integrity of it, but it's certainly worthwhile looking into.

I don't dispute that. I'm not sure it's one

of the options. You know, GSA says, I've talked

with GSA all during that federal court facility. I was on that for fifteen years, and this is a cop topic that I broached with GSA because they want to maintain the cultural and artistic and historic fabric of the building, and I believe from my conversations with GSA that they would be receptive to this. To an art museum. Right. I think there's grants that we can look at at the federal level and at the state level for you know, a cultural repurposing of this. I think we can bring everybody together. I think this would be and I again, I hate to use the word it it it it I choke on it when I say it. I I

know it's it's stuck in my museum has been looking you know, NSU Art Museum has been looking for in a larger space.

I know. I know. They could they could transfer their entire collection over to this.

It's just the height, you know, It's just the height. That's the only thing I'm concerned about. There's there's the Ceremonial Courtroom, which is not very big.

Right. But you've got gallery spaces. The courtrooms are essentially gallery spaces where you walk from room to room. And I would love to see ArtServe

move there.

Yeah. ArtServe could move there. I mean, you know, we we talked years ago about creating an African American museum. Right. That could take up an entire floor.

An entire floor.

I mean, you got 300,000 square feet. Imagine the things we could do with it.

I've been to the African American Museum in Washington

Yeah.

And it's amazing how you can create in a space the things you're trying to put in a project. So Right. Certainly, I mean, I Right.

And again, space too, could take we could take we can make studios for artists and I mean there's so much opportunity. Okay. So anyway, I hope we can we can coalesce around this. I've kind of threw this out to the Broward workshop. They you know seem to think it's a good idea. Again, I think we can build a coalition around this with the county, with the state and get everybody on board with us if you think

it's good idea. Well, state doesn't give a lot of money for art.

There's a dollar or 2 left up there.

So, mayor, you're probably gonna remember that the charrettes that were done and and a lot of them actually did include the idea of a museum in Tropic Magazine. I'm gonna I know I can't send everything to my colleagues, but I'm gonna request that my staff sends to the city manager.

They have, and I can share it

with you share that with the entire commission? Was the art

museum part of that?

Yeah. I think one of them was a museum, Tropic Magazine. Although artist studios generally require light. But let's let's at least take a look at the the charrettes that were conducted about ten years ago with local architects and other organizations. They came up with a lot of good, ideas. And as I said, I've already sent that information to the city manager, and she can share it with all of you.

Thank We can flush out that idea and come back to the commission at conference. As I mentioned, we have a letter to the commission that's in draft form, that will provide some additional clarification that we've received since the goal setting meeting.

Yeah. Thank you. I just think I think this is a perfect time for

it. I think it's intriguing. I think it's an intriguing but again, it has to suit the needs of the curators who are looking for the appropriate space. Sure. Lighting could always be added to a space. And you're right, they don't usually like natural light because it tends to fade the I

mean, think of like the Guggenheim and places like that, there's no light. Right.

Okay, moving forward, business two, office manage office of management and budget regarding the presentation of the Fort Lauderdale grant program update. We have Laura Reese, director of OMB and Tamika McGibbon, principal budget and management analyst. Laura.

Thank you, city manager, mayor, vice mayor, commission. Laura Rees, director of office and management and budget. And I'm here today with some good news. So I'm gonna tell you a little bit about the grants management program in the city, and then my colleague, Tamika McGibbon, is going to share with you some of the results from 2025 and our awards efforts. Why are grants important?

So grants are important because every dollar we get from the federal, state, or a not for profit organization means that we can move forward one of the city commission's initiatives without asking our neighbors to pay. So it provides funding to enhance programs, supports the city's strategic plan, and allows city funds to be redirected to other priorities. As everything else in the city, the city commission leads our grant initiatives. You all establish your priorities as you've, just been speaking about in the last presentation. In our government affairs, Daphne and Ashley, Ashley, they really partner with our lobbyists to look for opportunities to request allocations at the federal and state level and to share those grant opportunities with our teams.

And the city manager and OMB, we make sure that there's a consistent process to align grant opportunities with priorities. And one of the key things we do is make sure that we're not competing against ourselves. So we don't want two different departments competing for the same grant without some analysis being done, and we want to make sure that match is in place when we apply. Tameka McGibbon leads the effort on behalf of OMB. We have other grant coordinators throughout the departments that do really the real work.

So some of them are here with us today. So if they might stand up, I'd appreciate it. Courtney Harris from Public Works, Dana Bagden from Police, Akila Holloway, and John Saint Hubert from fire, and Rachel Williams. So I don't know if anyone Rachel Williams. So Rachel Williams is here.

So the others are probably remotely watching. So, but they do the real work. They're the ones who are actually drafting the applications. They are monitoring the grants, and o n b gets to centrally coordinate that with the city manager to make sure everything is done in a clear and consistent way. Grant oversight and communication is a key part of our grants program.

At any given time, we have around 100 grants open. So those are grants from prior years that are currently being administered, grants that were closing out or they're in some form of being monitored. So that's a lot of grants for a city. Centralized grants administration is really a best practice and the city follows this best practice to allow for consistent centralized processes and to ensure that the city is strategic with its grant seeking and monitoring activities. A few items that I'd highlight from our process are the grant pre application form.

So if there's a department that is interested in applying for a grant, they'll fill out a pre application form, very brief process that indicates what they would like to apply for. Is there a city match required? They identify if a match is already in place or if we need to appropriate additional funds or come to the commission. And in that way, we try to make sure it's aligned with the priorities of the commission, that we have a match if we are committing to a match during the application process, and that the city manager is aware of what we're pursuing. And again, we make sure that we're not competing against ourselves through that process.

We make sure there's commission approval for each grant as it's accepted and the associated appropriation of grant funds on the budget amendment. And then this time of year, we share with you a grant searing review which you got a few weeks ago, and then we present to you the results from that review. And, Linda's team in finance, they head up the annual single audit, which is required by federal law to make sure that we're complying with all of the regulations. There's a few resources that we purchase and some that are for free. So there's grant finder, grants.gov, and then we create a resource guide in partnership with the departments.

So we memorialize each year, and that comes out in your grant year in review. We identify all of the grants we plan to our plan to apply for in the coming year so that everyone's aligned with which grants are being pursued by which departments. Our application strategy is that we align with the 2035 vision and strategic plan. We pursue the highest priority. We leverage existing funding to serve as match.

So we publish a five year, CIP plan. A lot of times you'll see that the grants that we're applying for are the parks bond initiatives where we know funding's in place and maybe we could use some additional funds or other capital projects that have been identified. If we secure funding, then we can reappropriate existing funding to other high priorities of the commission. So we're not just applying for nice to haves, we're really strategically aligning it with the city's goals. And with that, I'm gonna turn over the presentation to Tamika, and she's going to continue

the

going going And And to on received in fiscal year twenty twenty five. So And we received we're for the airport from FAA, the $8,800,000 grant for the Runway 927 pavement rehabilitation. We also received $3,000,000 for the Breakers Avenue resiliency.

Yes, Mayor. Thought I looked like I wanted to say, where is that? Where are we going there? What's happening there? I just wanted to to Are we fully funded for that project?

For the Runway 927?

No. For Breakers.

For Breakers Avenue with $3,000,000 I'll have.

Did I scare you? I'm sorry. I saw your face. I knew that you wanted to say something.

Afternoon. Milos Morisotovich again. So we have some internal funding and based on opinion of probable cost, before we issue solicitation to industry to advise what they would build the project for, we should be fully funded. We should be what? We should have all funding that we need at this point of time.

Because every year we wait. I've been asking for a repurposing of breakers since 2003, okay? That's twenty three years. How much it would have cost $1,000,000 back then. So every year that we wait, Milos, is costing us. And I thought we decided to go ahead with the money that we had and then eventually we would cobble together the rest. Are we in design phase?

Yes. It is the plans are at about 100%. And my understanding is that right now, capital projects department is handling this project. But within the next couple of months, the intent is to issue solicitation for the construction. Again, 100% plans over the last year. We were very successful in receiving a lot of money. So $3,000,000 is from the state, dollars 850,000 from the HUD and another $3,000,000 that we received from the Grand Match program from Assertag. So that's how we were able to close the funding gap because we really had only a very small portion of

the So we have the money, we have the designs, we just need what?

We are moving forward.

Yes. So when are we going to have when are we having groundbreaking?

So that really depends on the outcome of solicitation that is upcoming in the next few months.

Well, correct me if I'm wrong. I think F dot has asked for some tweaks and we're waiting to do that before we actually can start.

I'll allow assistant city manager Pugh to provide some updates as I've shared with your office this week.

Yes.

Good afternoon. Quentin Pugh, assistant city manager.

Come on. You're the expediter.

Alright. I'll start with the end in mind. So we're anticipating construction commencing October 2026.

2026, did you say? Yes. Okay. Well, that's a good year.

Yeah. The initial start date was in March, so we're we're we're slightly behind.

Yeah.

As far as timeline wise, we'll be initiating the ITP for procurement in March. We hope to come before you with an award in June. Notice to proceed for number one, which would be sort of the administrative tasks and the community outreach will be done in August and September and then actual construction, which is notice to proceed number two will be in October 2026.

So October 2026, we're going to begin the construction? That is correct. When do think construction will end?

We're estimating about ten months. Ten months? Yes, nine months.

This is shame we're

doing in the middle of season. Understood. Trying to get this done as soon as possible. Okay. The, total budget, I know you you all were just talking about that is roughly about $12,000,000 for the project.

Right. And we actually started with five from the city. That was that was our beginning with five.

So we're looking to expedite this project. I know it's been on hold for quite some time and with the help of the commission and other stakeholders in getting the funding in place, staff has worked very diligently to go after all funding opportunities and we're ready to move forward.

Alright. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank

you so much.

I didn't mean to interrupt you, but

No. That's perfectly fine. We've also received a $195,000 for the enhanced marine law enforcement that we received from Broward County, that would be our police department that actually manages that grant. Looking at for mental health and substance abuse housing program, so our how homelessness initiatives team actually manages this grant we got for $250,000 from the Department of Children and Family. And then we also received $1,100,000 for the emergency operations center safe room and upgraded generator, and our fire department actually manages that grant, and we got that from the Florida Department of Emergency Management.

We also wanted to give you a award summary looking at a number of different buckets with our awards. So for infrastructure which is of course very important for our city, we've applied for 36 grants that total a $105,000,000. We received 14 grants for 17,800,000.0. Public safety was 21 applications at 3,700,000.0. We received 15 for 2,028,000.

Public spaces and community events, we had five grants that we applied for at 1,600,000.0. We received two for $405,000. Education two grants for 506,000. We received one for $6,000 and we've recently been, advised that we are receiving about $350,000 of the 500,000 that we did request from the state. Economic development, we had two for $30,000 that we applied for.

We received one for $20,000 And historic preservation, we had two for $100,000 We received one for $50,000 And finally, homelessness, we had two grants for a million 250,000. We received one for 250. So we had a total of 70 applications that total a 112,000,000, and we've received 35, grants for 20 and a half million dollars. We wanted to know that 10 of those grants were applied for in prior fiscal years and those award amounts are about $1,300,000 We also wanted to show you based on our grant sources where we were receiving these grant awards from. So for federal government, received 10 grants. Yes, sir.

No. You're good?

Okay. I'm good.

We received 10 That was

a wink. It was a wink. Alright.

We received 10 grants for $10,200,000 and we have grant match of 103,000. From our state grants, we had 21 awards that we received for also $10,000,000 with grant match of 1,400,000.0. From the county, received one. This is going to be the Emile grant for 195,000. And then we had three private grants that we received for $30,222. So that's going to be the breakdown of the awards that we received this year.

Oh, every bit helps. Yes.

Every bit helps. We wanted to also talk about our active portfolio, the active grant portfolio, which is about 128,500,000.0. Majority of this is going to be our entitlement grants for HCD at $40,000,000 and then next public works is also pretty big up $36,000,000. We did want to note that we are not right now accounting for that CDBG disaster recovery grant for the $88,000,000 because right now there is a bit of a hold with HUD when it

comes to the action plan.

Finally, our five year entitlement grant summary, we wanted to just give you an idea of over the five years when it comes to our grants through our HCD department, the awards that we have received. So in 2025, we do account right now in this number, the $88,000,000 that we got for the disaster recovery grant. But if we were to take that out of the mix, we were still getting pretty much in line with what we received in 2024. We received $11,495,000 And that concludes my presentation. If we have any other questions or concerns?

Any questions or comments? Okay. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

And keep up the good work. Thank you so much. Okay. Moving on to Business three, New River Crossing initiative update. City Manager.

We have Milos Masstorovich presenting on behalf of the Transportation Mobility Department with additional follow-up from Ben Rogers. I just wanna remind the commission that we were, given an extended deadline from Broward County for February 13 to respond to them based on that letter we received from then mayor Beam Fuhr. The commission passed a resolution, we have been working to, ensure that we can respond to the county appropriately before that time period. We would like to get feedback from the commission as we prepare our response to the county.

You, manager. Good afternoon. Once again, Milos Mixtorri, the department director for City's Transportation and Mobility Department. So our presentation will cover the project background, progress we have made so far as well as some of the challenges and external factors that we might be facing. So in terms of the background implementation of the commuter rail service throughout Miami Dade, Broward County has been in worse for a number of years.

Currently, throughout our city or in our city, both freight and passenger rail traffic are really using a two track vascular bridge, which was contracted years ago back in 1978. There are approximately 60 trains per day that use that bridge every day. And with the proposed Broward Commuter Rail service, that number is expected to double. The current bridge is really outdated, visually unappealing and prone to a lot of mechanical breakdown. So given the low clearance of the bridge also of about four feet above the river, any time there is a train traffic bridge really needs to be down.

Any time there is a marine traffic bridge needs to go up. And understanding all these challenges, FDOT County and the city have conducted a number of studies over the last couple of years in order to come up with feasible solution that would, help, deliver this project with increased number of trains. So the city has determined that the tunnel alternative provides the most benefits, and, our consultants over the last couple of years have developed some, conceptual designs, including some of the opinion of probable cost for the preferred tunnel alternative. This

$887,000,000 figure, is that the figure we're going to present to the county, city manager?

So that was the figure that was developed by our consultant BDO a couple of years ago, and that was for the shorter tunnel. That would be the basically the numbers that we received from the consultant a couple of years ago back in, 2023.

So all right. So the city manager is telling us that we have a deadline, in another week or so, two weeks. So what are we going to what are we what's our Are going to do that? I didn't see it in the presentation. All I saw was this.

Yeah. We will take you through everything and including the next steps and some of the challenges we are facing.

I know about all that, but I want it but they want a dollar number. Okay? And I looked at your presentation. The only dollar number I saw was $887,000,000 Is there any other dollar number in your There is no other dollar number for

the tunnel alternative, not at this point of time. But I can cover other portion of a portion of presentation, which include also, the feedback that we have received from the industry. So everyone is willing and able to provide, assistance related to delivery of the tunnel. But really, the most accurate cost that we would be able to do is or receive is if there was a competitive procurement for this process and also some type of predesign effort, including some geotechnical exploration that would need to be done in order for us to get a better estimate of the cost because this is really level four cost estimates, which similar to what County did with our bridge project, we did with our tunnel project, right, which accuracy of those, cost estimates are pretty accurate, but there is still some level of

There's wiggle room. That is right. Get that. But again, we're being charged with coming up with a number. So where are we going to go with that? All right. I'll let you finish. We still have to come to that question.