Regular City Commission Meeting - Regular Meeting

We'll be starting in about 30 seconds. If everyone could please take their seats. Okay, we're going to begin. I'm going to call this meeting to order. The time is 6, we'll say 31. There you go. Thank you. Today is Wednesday, July 1st, 2026. City Clerk, please call the roll.

Commissioner Schwartz? Here. Commissioner Simone? Here. Commissioner Rosano?

Here.

Vice Mayor Caggiano?

Present.

Mayor Serrio?

I am here. And now for a moment of silence, followed by the pledge. Do we have a pledge leader today? All right. For the fourth, we'll go with Commissioner Rosano for the pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the All right. First up, we have presentations by our state representative and our state senator. Who wants to go first? There you go. You got it. There you go. Representative

Representative Christine Honchofsky we both represent the entire city of Margate amongst other great cities in Northwest Broward and We are here today. We're going to give you a brief legislative update some of the things we've been doing and we have a Check presentation for money that we got from the state. So we're excited about that and I wanted to talk about some of the tough bills that we had this past session. The past session that went on for four special sessions? Six? I don't know. We were supposed to be done in March. That's the nine week session and we went through June. So it was really hard on everyone. And unfortunately, we couldn't get everything done that we were supposed to get done in the time allotted. So they call it special sessions. We did redistricting for congressional seats, which affects you all very much. Unfortunately, we had to come back for the budget. And so we were only recently back from Tallahassee. I wanted to talk about a couple of bills that I think really affect local governments such as yourselves. You may have heard Bill SB 1134 called Official Actions of Local Governments prevents local governments from taking any action on diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, potentially even leading to the removal of elected officials who promote any of these kinds of activities. It leaves local elected officials such as yourselves in very difficult positions of having to decide what fits into the definition, leaves your attorney in a tough spot to try to interpret this very vague and difficult language. There are lots of exceptions within the bill. So it's very challenging. But most of all, it's a preemption. It's Tallahassee telling you, you can't do the things that your community might want you to do, whether they're DEI related or anything else. So I think that is a really difficult, problematic bill. Yeah, please.

I could just jump in on that as a former local elected myself. The issue was we would ask questions like, does that mean, for example, a city can't have an Oktoberfest? And we wouldn't get good answers to these questions, which would put cities in the position that they don't know what falls underneath this vague language and what doesn't fall underneath this vague language. the penalty could be removal from office for doing something like that. The very least you would want is to know, well, what exactly does that mean? Does it mean a St. Patrick's Day parade or not? And there were a lot of questions asked that were never definitively answered. And I hope at the very least next session, we can bring some certainty into the language so that you know exactly what it means and your attorney knows exactly what it means so that you're not doing anything that you don't realize might be against the law.

In addition, there was a bill HB 1217, which prohibits local governments from creating greenhouse gas policies. So if you all, larger cities have electric buses and different things and different programs that they've initiated to become like say net zero in X amount of time, They don't want any of that. Tallahassee's telling you, you can't do that, which it kind of boggles the mind that you can't make those decisions that affect the environment of your community. Again, vague, unclear, couldn't answer all the questions, but it keeps your attorneys busy to try to understand what you can and cannot do. But just the concept that you, if you have plans for environmental concerns, that some of those may not be allowed, according to this preemption. I wanted to skip to a bill, not necessarily for local government, but that everyone should know about in this elections bill. Kind of every year we have what I would call a bad elections bill. And the one this year, just to really make it harder and harder to vote. Even though Florida really has excellent elections, you know on presidential elections we're one of the first to report, After the debacle of 2000 election, they really cleaned it up. And everyone appreciates the mail-in voting and early voting for two weeks. They will really give a lot of options for people to vote. And there hasn't been a problem, there hasn't been any real fraud that has been calculated. You know, if there is fraud, it's caught. And that's the point of having people who can catch the fraud. So now they want to take it a step further and require proof of citizenship. Not ID. We're not talking about that. We're talking about proof of citizenship. And the problem with that is there are many people who don't have, half the people don't have passports. People can't find a birth certificate. They may not have a birth certificate. There are people who were born in homes, older people. Women who have changed their names may have problems proving their current name with whatever documents they have. And if they have to get documents, that costs money and time. And you could see a situation where it's October and they're going to vote, and they get flagged for some reason, and then they don't have the right documents. And how are they going to get that all in time to vote in November? So really, there's a great concern that it is going to keep people from voting. And there was an attack on students as well, because many students who register to vote in their college town will go to the polls with their student ID. Now, they had a license or something when they registered to vote, but when they just show up that day at the poll, they've always been able to use student ID, and now they took that away. So it seems to be an attack on students voting as well. So those are some of the kind of bad bills that I wanted to let you know about. I'll let Rep. Honchowski talk about some but I will come back to property tax amendment because that's really important but before we get into it I wanted to

Appreciate that Senator and a couple of other things that one that would have impacted local government was the e-bike bill. Unfortunately, that was vetoed by the governor. All our communities are experiencing issues with e-bikes and safety. All that this bill did was saying that if you're on a shared pathway with a pedestrian, you have to provide an audible warning, you know, like a horn or let somebody know you're coming. It limits e-bike speeds to 10 miles per hour when pedestrians are with within 50 feet and it put together a micro mobility, it would have put together a micro mobility safety task force so that you can study some of the crash data and accident data dealing with e-bikes in order to come up with better legislation. It actually passed the House and the Senate unanimously AND THEN WAS VETOED BY THE GOVERNOR. I'M HOPING SOMETHING WILL COME BACK NEXT YEAR BECAUSE I KNOW THE CITIES ARE LOOKING FOR HELP WITH MANAGING E-BIKE SAFETY. ADDITIONALLY, A BILL THAT WASN'T GREAT WAS, AND IT APPLIES TO PALM BEACH COUNTY, BROWARD, AND MIAMI-DADE, IS THE INFILL REDEVELOPMENT BILL, SENATE BILL 1434, WHICH ALLOWS CERTAIN REMEDIATED CONTAMINATED PROPERTIES OR BROWNFIELDS TO BE REDEVELOPED FOR HOUSING. IT SAYS THAT LOCAL GOVERNMENTS MUST ALLOW QUALIFYING PROJECTS THAT MEET STATE REQUIREMENTS AND THEY MAY NOT IMPOSE STRICTER REGULATIONS THAT WOULD BLOCK OR LIMIT REDEVELOPMENT. AND IT'S AGAIN, ONCE AGAIN, THE STATE DECIDING WHAT'S BEST FOR THE COMMUNITY. ADDITIONALLY, THERE WAS CYBERSECURITY, LOCAL GOVERNMENT CYBERSECURITY BILL, THIS IS A GOOD ONE, SIGNED INTO LAW. which creates the Local Government Cybersecurity Protection Program, which is administered by the Florida Digital Service. And this helps local governments strengthen cybersecurity and defend against cyber threats. It also allows local governments to purchase cybersecurity services through state managed contracts in order to get a better rate. Good news for our firefighters, the Firefighter Cancer Benefits and Prevention Bill passed. It allows firefighter beneficiaries to receive Line of duty death benefits for up to one year after a firefighter leaves employment. And the bill that was dealing with allowing long guns in city commission meetings, county commission meetings, I had a bill to prevent that from happening. It did not get a single hearing. So I hope to bring that back again next year, and I hope it will have a little more traction going forward. Regarding the property tax language, before the senator gets into it, I just wanted to let everybody know THAT THE FLORIDA PROFESSIONAL FIREFIGHTERS TODAY HAD A STATEMENT DEALING WITH THE PROPERTY TAX AMENDMENT NUMBER THREE. AND I JUST WANTED TO READ FOR THE PUBLIC SO THAT YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR FIREFIGHTERS STAND. Their statement says, we believe tax relief and strong public safety can coexist. Unfortunately, this amendment does not provide a clear path to achieving both. Until there is a reliable plan to provide the revenues necessary to support fire protection, EMS, and disaster response, we cannot support a proposal that could jeopardize the services Floridians depend on every day. And again, that's the Florida professional firefighters who made that statement.

Thank you. I'll start with just, you know, the basics of the property tax amendment and then, you know, you can fill in anything that I missed. And it's really important because this will be on the ballot in November. And it's up to you, the voters, to decide if you want to pass this particular amendment. So a lot of people would like to see some relief on the property taxes that they pay. We have a very unequal system in the sense a good plan, Save Our Homes, to cap your property tax every year creates serious inequities. So you could be living next door to someone who has been in their house for a very long time and they pay so much less than you do. And then when people go to sell their house, the property tax goes up exponentially. So that's a real problem for first-time home buyers. So it's a problem because it's a good program for homeowners, but it creates all these inequities. It also keeps people in their homes maybe longer than they should. And so we want new people to kind of move in and the next generation. But people don't move because they have this great property tax benefit. So we need to do more for portability so people can move. So the answer this year on property tax was unfortunately not a good amendment, not a good option that was thrown together and you're not going to believe this, we had it and voted on it in two days, completely upending the whole property tax system for the whole state. It has enormous implications and we did it in two days. So that's not the way to deal with it. The governor brought this up over a year ago. The House had multiple options and proposals. The Senate did not. They were kind of waiting to see what would happen. And the ironic thing is there's a group called the Tax and Budget Commission, whose job it is to study these things, do proper economic analysis. It's a bipartisan group. It's folks that are appointed by different leaders. And they're meeting next year. They meet every 20 years. They're meeting next year. And they can put amendments on the ballot. So they're the ones who should have put together a proposal for next year. So the legislature can do a proposal. that will go on the ballot. That is one of the functions. The governor kind of forced this down our throat. The legislature, a lot of them gave in, not all of us. And so that's why this initiative is here. But again, not well thought out. So what it does is the first year, the amount of your value of your home that is exempted, it goes up to $150,000 from $50,000. And then the next year, it's supposed to go up to $250,000. If your house is worth $250,000 and you're homesteaded, then you won't be paying most property taxes, but you will still pay school property taxes. So nobody is getting away with nothing. School property taxes will always be required to be paid. If your home is worth more than that, then you're still going to pay taxes on the remainder, and there's not too many places where that's the value of homes in our area. So people are still going to be paying taxes, so they should realize that. The language is very unclear of what you're going to see on the ballot. It is being litigated right now. That may or may not be the language that you see on the ballot. So I really urge all of you to do your own research, listen to your elected officials. I hope that they will be able to explain to you how much less revenue they are going to be taking in for services that are absolutely essential, security, police, fire, parks, environmental concerns, drainage, roads, and some of the nice things that are able to be done, you know, senior centers and things of that nature. So if they don't have the revenue coming in, how are they supposed to maintain the city? So I hope that people really take the time to understand, and that's not to say that we don't deserve property tax relief, but we need to dig into this issue in a much more thorough way with proper economic data, not the way that we did it voting on it in two days in the legislature. And one of the reasons I voted no is because it's on us as the legislature to give you the best product that we can so that you are voting on something that's a really good idea. Because the legislature is suggesting that this is something you can do. And this was not a good product. So we hope that in the future, It can be looked at in a lot, as I said, a more thorough way, coming up with ideas that won't hurt cities entirely, will help taxpayers, but we will come to some kind of balance. So the local officials are kind of hamstrung a little bit in what they are allowed to talk about. They can't give a political opinion, but they can certainly give you the data of how much money is in their budget, based on the analysis, if this amendment passes, what services might be lost. So I hope that they will be able to give you that information and you can make your own decisions about whether or not you want to see this amendment passed. It requires 60% of the voters to vote for it in order for it to pass. And then the legislature has to do certain implementation of it after the fact. But really, and a lot of the legislators said this, they said, when we were debating the bill, they said, well, I don't really like it, but I want the voters to decide. So basically, we're throwing it to you and hoping that you all make the right decision. You know, personally, I don't think it's the right way to go about property tax relief. So, you know, I'm certainly hoping that it doesn't pass and amendments are hard to pass with the 60% threshold. But that is one thing that you are going to be facing on the ballot this November. So I wanted you to be aware. Do you want to go ahead?

It is really important you do your homework. I had a town hall a couple of weeks ago and I actually pulled up my own trim notice. And for those of you who don't know how to pull up your taxes bill, you can go to the Broward County tax collector's office and pull it up. Or you can go to the property appraiser's office at bcpa.net. It's really important to do that because I think people think they're going to be saving a lot of money that they're not going to be saving. Schools are about a third of your tax bill. And the tax bill is really the top part is your taxes. And then the bottom part are all these other fees that get thrown in. Fire assessment fees, if you're in a CDD, those rates go up. So you have to distinguish between the ad valorem on the top of your bill the non ad valorem at the bottom the non ad valorem will still be there no matter what and then it's just important to do your homework on that the concerns that came up in debates from the fire chiefs and behind the scenes from a lot of public safety officials were and businesses were that this will be a tax shift because the taxes will have to go somewhere the concern is it can go to Fees for businesses, and you don't know kind of where that will end up. My concerns were that the ballot language is at best misleading. And that's why there's actually a court case about the ballot language right now. Currently, the ballot language says, ensuring funding for core services. And yet, there is nothing in this amendment that can guarantee funding for core services. In fact, the incoming speaker who proposed this amended language said there was not going to be a trust fund. Originally, there was a trust fund as part of this amendment, and there was talk that it would get backfilled by the state. We were told on the floor of the House by the House sponsor that there would be no trust fund and that maybe some cities would have to merge with other cities. Additionally, it says it protects small businesses, but that's not the case if there is a tax shift, which could very well happen. And it says it ensures ensuring fairness for Florida residents. And yet we know that it will have a negative impact on renters because they're not as protected by the Save Our Homes. And it won't help anybody who is a first time home buyer because they would have to wait in order to have this benefit. So it makes it harder for those first time home buyers. So all I ask is that do your homework. Look it up. Talk to people. They're all here for the budget process. I know you have a bunch of meetings and workshops. Come and ask them questions. Ask them why there are things in the budget and what can be done there. This is your best place to handle these things is locally where you can actually not have to drive seven hours to be at a meeting and you have a longer period of time to speak than the sometimes one minute if you come to Tallahassee and so I would just recommend doing your homework and then no matter who you are and what you think about things I think you should all make sure that you're making that your voices are getting heard in November because that's the beauty of this country that's celebrating 250 years really soon and let's end on a good note so the governor finally signed the budget and

The budget was $117.63 billion. But today we are very excited to present to Margate after a couple of years of being vetoed, $350,000 for your stormwater infrastructure system that you requested from the state. And so we were hoping we could do a check presentation that amount and we hope that the money helps with keeping you know stormwater floods and you know your your environment and infrastructure intact so we're excited to finally get that across the finish line thank you to those of you who you know came up to Tallahassee to lobby for it to your outside lobbyists who did a great job to my partner here who we have to get it through the Senate and the House and get past the governor's veto pen. So we're very excited that we were able to do that this year. And I want to say one more thing. Personal note of privilege, please, before we do that. This is probably the last time I'm going to visit Margate Commission meeting. After eight years, I'm not running for re-election. My partner, Christine Hanchovsky, has been re-elected without opposition. So she will continue to represent you beautifully as she has done for so long and will continue to do so. I could have run for just one more term, and I chose not to. I hope that I can see you in another capacity going forward. But for now, there will be, you will have on your ballot for my position, State Senate District 30, you will have a new person to vote for. But it's been my honor to represent you over these last, I think, four years. I've had Margate six years. Six years, Margate. And I thank you for your support. the support of your amazing local elected officials. I'm still the Senator for the next almost six months. Shayna and Savannah are here. If you need anything from our office, please let us know. I'm on the clock till November 3rd, but I'm happy to hopefully continue to be of service. So thank you from a personal note, and now we can do a check presentation.

Let me balance this out of height.

Before we go to public discussion, usually if anyone has any comments on the state rep and senator, so I have a couple things quick and then we'll go down and then we'll go on to public discussion. On the tax thing, thank you for bringing up the renters could be affected. Over a third of Floridians are renters and this will not help them more than likely. I mean, most landlords, if they're taxes go up because there will be increases in other areas, they're going to probably pass it on to the renter. If you own a second home or investment properties, same thing. I've said it before, I'm not going to take a position per se. I think that's something that each person has to decide. There's a lot of people hurting, and I'm sure tax relief would be interesting. I do think that there should be some tightening of budgets, but this is a little bit extreme. So just do your homework. um because it's not and i think the other thing that was interesting was and i'm not saying whether someone's for against the governor but he had pushed this push this push this and then the other today yesterday or something he's today he said that you know let me step back last ballot initiatives for the marijuana and the abortion he he had his pack spending all this money and fighting it and did a really good job well i want to say good job but he did a good job fighting it He said he's not going to do that for this, so this is the one that wanted to done is saying well i'll probably vote for it, but i'm not going to really be pushing the initiative on it anymore, so I thought that was interesting to. I do want to thank representative on trotsky you brought up the info redevelopment act which. Does target golf courses not exact specifically there's other things too, but it's basically any property over five acres in palm beach Broward and Miami dade counties. It's something that, you know, I was in opposition to, and I know that you voted no on it. Unfortunately, it was kind of a bipartisan thing from my understanding, and other local elected up at the state in Tallahassee voted in favor of this bill, taking away our control. So thank you for always looking out for us and always voting against things that take our control away. Vice Mayor.

I want to agree. She's always been up there fighting for us, and... Mayor, you and I have been talking about the state taking away our ability to represent ourselves and preempting us. We've had people come here, everything from our lobbyists to other people who have come here and said, this is happening. And we've talked about making deals with developers as early as we could because we knew that this was coming. And it's here now. And it's going to give us a whole lot less control over development that's going on. and where people are going to be.

And that's on top of Live Local, which is a separate thing that takes our control away.

Correct. So you and I have been fighting to make deals and to get things done, and now they don't even have to come in front of us anymore and do what they want, basically. It's pretty sad.

And one other thing, it specifically targeted these three counties. Yes.

And renters are going to get hurt. Businesses are going to get hurt. The Chamber of Commerce is looking at opposing this. I'm thrilled that the firefighters came out against it. The taxes, I'm just thrilled that, yeah, the tax is part of it. And it's, sometimes they just throw up these bad ideas and they expect us to swallow it. Thank you.

Commissioner Rosano.

First, I want to say thank you, Senator. Thank you very much for Thank you very much for everything you've done for our city and Christine, you guys have been awesome. I got to say that this, this tax thing that's going to be on the amendment. I mean, on the ballot, is it something to eventually phase out taxes? Cause that's what I've heard for years that this is just the start of it to phase it out. So I don't know if you have the answer to that.

The, the, David Tulsa, city attorney. So the amendment itself does not provide for the complete phase out of property taxes.

But it is a two phase. It's 150.

150, then 250. Yeah. And it's funny because if you go up to Tallahassee, all the Republicans supported this. Democrats didn't support it. But then you come back to Broward. Seems like all my Republican friends support it and my Democrat friends don't support it. It's definitely a tough pill to swallow. Do you want to put the money in your pocket or do you want to give it to your elected officials and let them do what they want with it? It's very tough. You know, we do have a broken tax system. Our property appraisers' system is horrible. I hope you're listening. But it's not fair that in my home, I've been there 25 years, and I pay, just an example, $6,000 in taxes, and my neighbor right across the street who just bought their home, same size as mine, is paying over $30,000. And that's the problem. You know, that problem, it wasn't created overnight. It was created over many, many years. And now it seems like we're all going to get penalized for it. so we'll see what happens you know i don't i don't agree in case you don't know this every dollar that you give to the city you pay your taxes on one-third roughly goes to the city one-third goes to the county one-third goes to the school board i think that's ludicrous first off the the county no comment school board definitely no comment no comment but you know what i don't know if you guys realize that but the money you pay only one-third of it comes to the city and i think we do a great job and it's going to be tough if this does pass it's a tough one you know do you want the money in your pocket or do you want it in the city's pocket i said thank you guys again appreciate it good luck tina commissioner simone

Thank you, Senator. Thank you, Representative Honchoski. You guys have always done a wonderful job for us. You've always fought for local government. You know what it's like for us up here making these decisions. So I really appreciate everything you've done for us. I wish you the best, Senator, on whatever your new endeavors will be. I hope maybe you'll come back at some point. And Representative Honchoski, keep up the good work. Absolutely phenomenal. Thank you.

Commissioner Schwartz. I echo what everyone has said about what a joy it was to have you serving us and to have Christine doing the same. And I will say to people, be careful when you vote against your own self-interest because we are 26 out of 31 cities of what we collect and what we do with our tax money. We spend 79% of our budget on union contracts and to pay the people who Make sure that the toilets flush, that the streets are paved. Be careful what you vote for because cities are going to have to find a way to continue to pay for those things. And so you're going to give up an increase of 3% for what you don't know is going to follow. Better would have been if they had looked at property insurance. I pay $8,000 a year. He only pays six on a house much bigger than mine. Not mine. The point is, that hurts everybody. Property insurance, because we live in South Florida. There was a special session for that. Nothing got done, because big donations are made by people who own property insurance companies. So keep in mind, what may sound very good will save you a couple of dollars, but they will take it back next year and flood your property insurance. And with that, thank you. Okay, thank you.

Yep, go ahead. What people don't realize is that people have been here since before the 50s. One of the biggest problems down here was no one was moving down here because of alligators and mosquitoes. At a certain point in the 50s, they decided to start spraying. And it's the spraying, the constant spraying that has made Florida habitable for people. No one thinks about mosquitoes anymore. Well, if this goes through, there's not going to be money for the county for mosquito spraying. Because it's not considered a core service. What's made Florida livable is mosquito spraying. Because the amount of mosquitoes that can be on the size of your hand is in the thousands. And I believe they breed every six weeks. And so we're talking about this place can become quite uninhabitable. Real quick, if there's not money for spraying and it's not a core, it's not a core item. It's not going to be a protected item, mosquito spray. So be careful, once again, voting for something that literally, you know, you thought Zika was bad. Well, when there's no spraying being done, it could be quite deadly to you and your family. So that's it. All right.

Okay. Thank you again to both of you. We're going to move on to public discussion. You'll have three minutes, any member of the public, to speak about something that's not on the agenda. No personal attacks, no campaigning. You want to criticize, you want to say how great we are, horrible we are, that's fine. But no personal attacks. If there's a couple, I see some new faces in here. If you're here to talk about soccer related stuff, that will come up later. So this is for things that's not on the agenda. Go ahead.

Hi, Tracy Van Winkle, City of Margate. The 4th of July and the 80s and 90s parade in Margate was so good. Floats covered in red, white, and blue, companies, families celebrating Independence Day. 4th of July, you know, it was just wonderful. 4th of July, today, present, horrible. Margate politics. companies. Some of them get in, some of them don't. I think last year we had a set of kids that belonged to one of the city employees. They were the best thing out of the whole parade because they were kids having fun. I wish we could get that back and get rid of everything else that's going in. All you see is commissioners fighting over spots for seats. Hopefully it'll get better next year. I keep hearing on social media about towing bids. I just find it funny that a towing bid's coming up and you guys are trying to get rid of J&J towing. And I just want to point out a few things. I know that there's been some contributions to a running candidate and another that's already up there, the mayor, that got a $1,000 donation to their campaign. I think that's illegal. I think that's wrong for you to take it, especially if you're going to be voting on that new Westway coming in, number one. Number two, has anybody really thought about when those cars are towed down to Westway Towing? You guys are talking about saving money and how we need money because of this tax thing coming up. Who's going to pay for the gas for people to go down there and check those cars? Because we have J&J Towing that's right across the street from the police department. So where's that gas coming from and where's the money going from or coming from to pay for the gas for us to go down there to check those cars that are being towed down there? I think that would maybe be a balance for the gas versus the bid that you're going to get from Westway Towing versus J&J Towing that's been in our city for over 20 years. And is Westway Towing even a City of Margate business? So you're going to take away from a city of Margate business. This is how you guys keep running businesses out of Margate is by the way you treat them. Thanks. Have a nice night.

Good evening. Elsa Sanchez, Margate resident. Um, thank you for having representative and Chelsea. and Senator Tinopolsky, they gave us very important information. And Representative Chomsky, you're always present at our Marigate events. And you have been an important voice for Marigate in the legislature. Thank you so much. You are excellent and we are so proud of you. Well, they did it again. Congratulations to our Margate Police Department for once again earning the accreditation from the Commission for Florida Law Enforcement. We have the best police department. They always respond with professionalism, dedication, and accountability, and also caring for the residents. May God always keep them in his care and keep them safe. We have a great city. Our Margate Police Department, our fire department, our city employees are caring and dedicated. They work hard and they're making our city a great place to be, safe and beautiful. Our commissioners, well, you know, I have been critical of some of them, but it's only because I care, because I expect professionalism and accountability from all, and sometimes I get disappointed. Commissioner Rosado, great job with the flag committee this past weekend. You had done it before, and I'm very glad that you have started to do it again. Thank you. Thank you for the beautiful Paradise Garden sign. It's looking very sassy and very pretty, and I'm very happy that it's there. Thank you so much. You see, I'm not always critical. I recognize when we have good things. And happening, I'm happy to say that too. We have a great city, and thanks to all that work for it. Looking great. Happy 4th of July, and may God bless this grand country. Thank you.

Jonathan Kraljic, Margate resident. Last meeting on June 17th, the Presiding Officer once again failed to follow the Commission's Rules of Procedure regarding public comment on a specific agenda item. Rule 9 states, after the City Commission has discussed a specific item on the agenda, the Presiding Officer will inquire whether any citizen wishes to be heard on the matter. That did not happen on June 17th for Resolution 7A, the Centennial Park Improvements Change Order. The commission discussed the item for nearly 30 minutes, then voted without allowing the public to speak. The agenda item was published in advance. Residents may have been attending specifically to comment on that issue, only to be denied the opportunity to be heard. It's as though the public's voice is a second thought to the mayor. or not a thought at all. And the public's voice regarding public parks does not matter. The commission approved plans that include nearly $200,000 for park lighting, despite repeated public opposition from nearby residents. It was brought up in your discussion that people reached out expressing concerns about losing the basketball court. What did you do? You gave residents what they do not want and voted to remove the basketball court from Centennial Park. Being that it was a change order, the commission could have amended it. One reasonable compromise would have been to eliminate the light in at $200,000 and have one tennis slash pickleball court and one full-size basketball court. That would have addressed resident concerns and reduced overall costs. Instead, the commission approved lighting that many residents specifically posed. The survey responses were clear. We don't want lights because it would encourage people to be in the park after dark. Lighting will affect the home space in the park. Adding lighting will significantly change the character of the space. I don't think the surrounding residents will like the bright lights. And at the April 15th meeting, I asked why the lighting was being added. And not a single commissioner answered the question. which shows no respect for the public. Now, if residents were opposed to lights in the park, couldn't some of that $200,000 have been used to have a full basketball court? Or is that the public's voice means nothing to you? It shows with the snarky comments made in the past by the mayor, who mocks, ridicules, degrades, and even laughs at the public's comments and concerns.

That was so chat GTP. and name calling of residents who expressed concerns.

Public participation has only value if elected officials are willing to listen before decisions are made. Thank you.

I do have one quick question. The survey you referenced, is that the same survey you came here like two meetings ago and said was irrelevant and you disregarded that survey, but now you want to pick and choose? Is it the same survey? I'm just curious. Thank you. So when it's ideal for you, you use the survey. But when you disagree with something, you say the survey is garbage. Next speaker, please.

Hi. Good evening. Nina Culver, Margate resident. I'm actually glad that Ms. Van Winkle brought up contracts for the city. For far too long, contracts have just been renewed. The bidding process has been bypassed, and that's not what is supposed to ever happen in government. Every time a contract comes up, a new bidding process needs to happen, no matter what business is, no matter how much we like it or how well we can work with it. We talk about giving opportunities to different businesses and things in the city. and that can't happen and work can't change better ideas can't be developed if we're not looking around everywhere instead of just focusing on the one we've used for years and years, thank you.

Any other members of the public wish to. Excuse me, please no outbursts from the crowd you'll be asked to leave. Ma'am if you outburst again, I'll ask you to leave.

I ask you every meeting. Richard Kinney, Lakewood Circle. Well, I'm just going to come here to talk about just one thing. Now I have about 10 things to talk about. I won't get them done in time.

Ma'am, can you please leave? I asked you, officer, please. I asked her. I warned her several times. She's been warned at other meetings. She has to leave the meeting. She can talk to me, but I can't talk back. You're the one that I hear outbursting. Ma'am, I'm asking you, pause this time. We're pausing the meeting and we will begin once she's out.

Madam, the presiding officer has the right to remove somebody who is not following the rules and is yelling out from the audience. You have officers behind you who are willing to escort you out if you don't want to leave voluntarily.

Rich, let me know when you're taking a breath and you want to stop. I gave you back the three minutes.

Okay, thank you.

So let me know when you're ready.

I'm back after the comedic relief. Okay, yes, lots to talk about. So Richard Zucchini, Lakewood Circle. A couple of things. One is some time ago we had Ron Book here. He's a paid lobbyist that we as a city pay for. He gets us grant money, and he represents us in Tallahassee. He spoke about the loss of our home rule autonomy, and he warned us about that. Unfortunately, at that time, Commissioner Rosano pointed him out and criticized him because he felt there was a conflict of interest. No, he was just trying to warn us of what is to come. And since Commissioner Rosano is a great influencer on Facebook, which, by the way, I don't get to read anymore, I don't know why, I would love for you to describe, no, turn the camera back, I would love for you to describe to the residents and to your followers on Facebook what the Infield Redevelopment Act does. I think it'd be very interesting to them. So when you rah-rah up the troops to be against departments and against this and that, and have surveys done, it'd be very good to provide them with facts. Now when we're talking about property tax, Property tax, commercial properties are going to still pay property tax. And guess what? Newly built apartments with a lot of amenities that charge high rents, they're going to be paying very high property tax. So when developers want to come in and develop apartments, it's not just, oh, my god, as one of your followers said, the dregs of the universe would be coming into the apartments. No. Not when you're charging $25, $28, and $3,000 a month for apartments with good amenities. And in fact, they will be paying very high property tax. So it's something for this commission to look at in terms of development. because at this point in time, if that does pass, apartments are going to be strongly in need. We spoke before about insurance. Just to let you know that there is an insurer called Peninsula, and they are getting insurance with prorated premiums based on the age of the roof so that you share in some of the insurance. And it's called Peninsula, and you can get some low rates from them. I knew I wouldn't finish, not even close. 33 seconds, Rich.

Yeah, that's it. Put pressure.

CRA chair, again, Commissioner Rosano and Board Member Rosano said and felt that every year the chair should be rotated and changed. I'm going to recommend that the city put that on the agenda. I think it's time. And I'm going to nominate and suggest that Arlene Schwartz be the CRA chair. I think it's about time she chairs something like that. And I think it'd be a great time to do it. Thank you, Rich. And I would suggest that we end as vice chair. Thank you, Rich. And I still have plenty more to talk about.

Lauren Baraka, Margate resident. So... we're not allowed to be political up here. Um, so I always speak vague and I think people know who it is that I'm speaking about. Um, I am not for, um, the building. Um, I'm not for the building period. And now that there are the elections that are going on, those of us that look on the site are able to see who gets donations from where. And I think that it is sad that that the residents are being sold out. Well, I felt bad about that until the school board elections are coming up. And it's been kind of messy because school board members should be representing everybody, all the kids, all the teachers, all of the staff, and yet we have, I feel like some have sold out now our children and not just our residents in endorsements of people So I think it's sad. I think it's really sad when you think your political associations are more important than the children in our city that will be represented, have been represented, and then because of your political dealings.

30 seconds.

you think that it's okay to pick some money just from another city. Thank you.

Any other member of the public wish to speak? All right. Seeing none, public discussion is now closed. Commission comments. Commissioner Schwartz.

Thank you. Fourth of July on Saturday, please join us. Weather permitting, we're going to start at 9 o'clock down 76th and Margate Boulevard until we get to here. That's going to be followed by a pool party at Calypso Cove from 1 to 4. And then after that, the evening concert and fireworks. You can show up, actually, right across the street will be the fireworks. The empty lot across on Margate Boulevard on the west side We'll be where we'll set up the stage. There'll be music. And at 9 o'clock, there'll be fireworks. So hopefully, the weather will hold out. And if not, we're going to be on the parade, even if it rains. What we may not be doing is throwing candy at people at that point. I want to ask, actually I want to bring this up to the city manager because it's been brought up to me and I forget. What do we do about the Carolina golf course and the fact that unless we really go after the owner, he doesn't mow the grass? What do we do about the upkeep and how many times, if any, do we fine him to the point where it costs more to pay the fine than it does to pay the lawn guy?

Good question.

Good. I'm waiting for a good answer.

So are you looking for the amount of fines that we have on the property?

I'd love to know that, too.

I don't have that information. No, but I'd like to know what it is. We know he doesn't know. I believe they have a repeat order. You know, they've got violations. So if we go out there and cite them, it is a repeat offense, which is an automatic appearance before the magistrate. And then they're subject to our city fine process for that.

And if he doesn't pay, can we lien him?

That's the process, yes.

at what point is there an amount by which we lean them or just if he doesn't pay the the lien is tied to fines that are unpaid on the property and so I want to make sure that people know even if code can't see the violation from the street you can invite them into your house so they can look out your window walk out your backyard and see what hasn't been cut and then they can write them up as opposed to being upset that nothing gets ever mowed and we can't necessarily see it. I'm not wrong with that, am I? I didn't think so. So with that in mind, and also, go USA because it's USA against Herzogovina tonight. And if you know anything about American history, that's how World War I started, when the Archbishop of Herzogovina was shot. No, but anyhow, and then you'll notice that we've become very patriotic up here with our shirts and stuff. Go ahead, show it off. That's all for me. Thank you.

Commissioner Simone.

Thank you.

First, I'd like to give my condolences and my support to the people of Venezuela who are suffering tremendously from all the travesties and the earthquake that hit that country. So please keep them in your thoughts and your prayers. And another sad note, I'd like to extend my deepest condolences to Sean, the son of Lonnie Donahue, who was a police officer, did a tremendous job for our city for 28 years before she retired and also to her father and the rest of the family. Um, I knew Lonnie well when she married Brian and we became friends. So it's a tremendous loss. So again, my condolences to the families. Congratulations on a positive note to our police department for their re accreditation. It's quite an accomplishment and certainly a job well done. Hail the manhole covers on Margate Boulevard seem to be a little bit low when your car runs over them there. They're too low. So is that being fixed or has anybody looked at that or I will be glad to look into that.

Thank you.

And, uh, July 4th parade, it's going to be hot, hot, hot. So, uh, possible rain as well. So make sure that you stay hydrated. You dress appropriately. You bring an umbrella both for the sun and for the rain, but it should be a great time as always. And if you're going to light off fireworks at your home, please don't think of your neighbors. Think of the veterans. Think of the dogs that are next door to you. Think of your neighbor's property. Nobody wants to wake up in the morning with soot and ash covering their cars. You wouldn't want that to happen to you. And you don't want to be responsible for a dog having a possible heart attack because it's for your enjoyment. The city, has a wonderful display, please come to the city for their display, but please be considerate of your neighbors. And lastly, despite opposition and not having any city, state, or federal license to display exotic animals, Mr. Wallach, better known as the Sloth Guy, is still looking and posting he is opening up a store in Margate. This concerns me greatly and I think it should concern all of you. There are numerous reasons the USDA will deny a license. In Mr. Wallach's case, and I quote, otherwise unfit to be licensed, unquote. He knows the loopholes and can exhibit animals through other people's licenses. Past records show that he has little to no regard for the law or following rules. In 2022, in New York, he converted a former pool supply location into a pet store and sloth encounter room where customers paid $50 a person to get up close to sloths. Is this what he's planning for Margate? He wants to open up a pet store. Is he going to open up under a pet store but yet in that pet store put a sloth encounter room? Should I remind you that sloths are not to be used in human interactions? due to the stress level it causes and potential death from the stress. Some people say this is educational. I know Mr. Wallach reported to a newspaper, this will be very, very educational. And I quote him on that. There is absolutely nothing educational about this. It is animal cruelty, plain and simple, and a way to make fast and easy money. $50 a person to see a sloth. You are putting these animals in a cubicle where their instinctual behaviors are being thwarted. You are removing their ability to do what they were born to do. Where is this education? These animals are not pets. They're not domesticated, nor are they meant to be. You know from last Commission meeting about sloth's behaviors. Now let me educate you on 10 kangaroo facts and behaviors. Kangaroos are social, and I repeat, social animals that live in mobs. groups. There can be 50 or more in a mob. Do they belong in a pet store when they are social animals? They travel primarily by jumping. They can jump 30 feet long and 10 feet high in a single bound. Can they do this in a pet store? They can reach speeds of up to 40 miles per hour. Most of the time they hop 15 and a half miles per hour. Can they do this in a pet store? They can grow to be eight feet tall. They are unable to walk or hop backwards due to their large feet and muscular tail. They have few, and I repeat, few natural predators. They are good swimmers. They have the same bite force as a grizzly bear, 975 PSI, six times that of a human bite force. They have powerful swiping force with their paws. And they live 23 years is their average lifespan in the wild. How are you going to see these behaviors in an enclosed area or cubicle in a store? To be educational would be laughable if it weren't so serious. You have taken away their God-given natural instincts and natural environment. Where is the education? What is going to happen to the kangaroos when they get too big for the store? Sell or trade them to wildlife traffickers? Aside from being concerned about the animals, where's the animal waste going to go? In the back of the store in a dumpster? I am pleading tonight with my colleagues and appealing to your heart to please give consensus to have the city manager and staff impose a moratorium on issuing any license or permits for any pet related stores or any facility with live animals, excluding a dog or cat rescue organization for one year. Orange County, spearheaded by one of their commissioners, is working on a county ordinance with regard to sloths and other exotic animals. When this ordinance comes out, I will be presenting it to Broward County Commission to do the same. Please, these animals deserve better from us, from mankind. They did not choose for themselves to be locked up in a store or in a home and suffer. They are not commodities. Again, this is not for educational purposes. It is animal exploitation for the almighty dollar. They say money is the root of all evil. In this case, it is. So I'm asking again for my colleagues to have a heart, you've heard all the evidence, please give consensus to a moratorium for any license or permits to be issued for a pet-related store with the exception of a dog or cat rescue organization. I'm asking for that consensus, please.

Joanne, I want to ask, would you also put a Exemption in for a place for people to take their animals when they go away? Like a pet hotel?

I would.

Okay, thank you.

Joanne, I can't support that. There's no way I can support that. What you're saying is kangaroo could hop 30 feet, shouldn't be in a house or in a room. I mean, it's the same thing with a dog. Dog can run 20, 30 miles per hour, and you're sitting there smirking. However, correct me if I'm wrong, you did have a bird company, I think, where you would take birds from the wild. Wings were clipped, and they were put in cages. So to me, I don't really see this. I see it more being personal. And I'm going to tell you, we shouldn't go after somebody for their past or whatever it was. Because, Dwayne, I know that you've called Florida Wildlife. I've heard. You made complaints about him and whatever, and you called him out for his licenses that he supposedly has. Heard all about it. But to go out and singly go after one person, I think is absolutely ridiculous. There's people out there that buy and sell snakes, turtles. You're going to say they can't do that? So I don't think the city should put him in a moratorium. As long as we go by city rules, the rules are there, and he qualifies. It is what it is. But to me, it's more personal. Just to let everybody know, the PETA people that came here, hope you're watching. I had nothing to do with the guy coming to any of those events. Just leave it at that. Nothing to do with him. That's it.

Then I'm going to, let's see. He said he had nothing else. Do you have anything else? You have nothing. Okay.

I'm going to start off.

by saying thank you, Commissioner Simone, for how you feel about animals and animal cruelty. I agree with you. Now, on other notes, Commissioner Schwartz, I'm not sure when you were sharing about what was going on that you touched on the one to four Calypso Cove.

I did.

You did? Okay. I apologize.

Repeat it.

It's okay. I didn't hear it. I just wanted to make sure people knew that Calypso Cove with a...

On the 4th of July. What about our commission comments? That's right. We just asked you if you were done. There was something she brought up. Commissioner Simone asked for consent.

I was going to say, I was a little confused, too. That's why I was asking if you were done. That's why I asked you. That's why I asked you.

You asked me. You said, I'm done. With her comment. Because she was done. Yes. And that's why I asked you.

I don't know if she was done. I was just done with it. No problem.

Then again, let him go. Let him go. We'll go back to the vice mayor in a moment. Yeah.

Commissioner Rosano.

No, I'm waiting to see if you can call for a consensus.

And I gave my- Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of information going around with the Mr. Welsh thing, okay? Wallach. Wallach. But you're looking at punishing a whole industry or a whole slew of potential people because you're not in agreement with one of them. So, I mean, listen, I don't support animal cruelty. Okay, it's not like don't pin this as like your four animals or not. But I'm not just going to blanket not have any type of pet store in the city of Margate just because of one person. As far as my understanding is concerned, he can't open.

Yes, he can.

Well, then why hasn't he?

He can open as a pet store, which is, he could not open as a wildlife exhibit, but he can open as a pet store because we don't have anything as pet stores. And if he comes in as a pet store, and then when he's in the pet store, puts a sloth encounter room, it's going to be very, very difficult to get him out. And he knows the rules. It took the Supreme Court in New York over a year to get him out of that store in New York. I don't want anybody, whether it's him or whether it's anybody who's dealing with exotic animals to come into Morrigate and open up a pet store for we don't allow animal exhibits it's not if he opens it up and does that then he's having an exhibit and try to and try to get him out and how many years is it going to take for code to go and try to remove him it's going to be a long process meanwhile the whole time is in there these animals are going to be suffering

i don't have a problem with imposing a moratorium right now where we take a look at some rules because you're talking about imposing something on one particular industry i haven't seen that other than the unfortunate thing that happened in orlando pop up anywhere so maybe there's a reason that that should be prevented from happening but no more though i want to see alligators sitting there for people to to see or black bears or Key West deer that are protected or burrowing owls. If there are certain class of animals that should be left alone, then maybe we need to protect them.

I'll be a third on that to have you look into it and see if we can come up with some rules. We know what we don't want. If we can figure something out to get what we don't want, I want to explore it.

I would say that. I'm not for a blanket. No, absolutely. I already asked for an exemption. If there are specific things that we can tweak, I would listen and see what the possibilities are.

Yes, because I agree with Commissioner Simone. It's very tough to get somebody out of something once they're in it. I agree with you on that. So I would love to have the city manager and the city attorney look into it and see if there's something that we could do to make it so that we're protecting animals that aren't even indigenous to this area. And

you know, if there is consensus to direct city manager and city attorney to research the issue to see if any kind of ordinance that would enact some type of moratorium, we could do that, research it, and get back to you. I do know that Orange County is discussing the issue. It's my understanding they haven't drafted an ordinance at this point in time. They're looking at it specifically with respect to what happened with the sloth world up there.

So is the direction to come back with an ordinance for moratorium on pet stores, on issuing any licenses and permits to pet stores, or is the direction to come back with an ordinance that implements restrictions on the types of animals that can be put in a pet store?

The problem with a restriction is that if you make a list of 10, there's always going to be the 11th.

Yep.

Um, so I would, you have a general idea of general idea of what I, if we have to, at this point, uh, put in a stoppage of moratorium for a certain look, we'd put it in that way. We don't want any more, um, uh, uh, poppy mill, poppy mill, but there's also one with the massages.

Oh, massage shop.

We didn't want those either. And we didn't want any more pawn shops. P-A-W-N shops. Make sure my accent doesn't make it. It's porn.

If someone's already got an application in for a business, are they locked in under the old...

should be that's i mean that's my understanding well it's just but in order to have an application for a business don't you have to have a license so it all depends upon how the moratorium is worded um that and you would need to adopt that through an ordinance when you're dealing with a specific type of use you know you're looking at a use is it a pet store are you looking at animal encounters are you looking at animal exhibits you know those kinds of issues so those are the things that we would need to um if we get direction to research uh and uh provide possibly some options let you discuss uh which way you want to go and then come back and draft a draft an ordinance that meets your expectations as opposed to at this point just drafting something that may not necessarily meet the majority of the commission's direction i would say please do all right

Do you agree with him?

No, I don't really agree because I was asking specifically for a moratorium on issuing any license or permit for a pet-related store. I think that's probably pretty clear.

Okay.

If that's the consensus, we will look into that and bring that back for your consideration.

I'm fine with that because we can always tweak it if we don't like it.

Fine.

And the first reading being July 8th? Please?

First reading could be July 8th. I don't think they'd be able to do a first reading by July 8th. There's not enough time for that. I don't think we could. Who says? Well, how about we let them come back?

Do proper research and get it right? Yeah. I mean, well, just for the record, reflect. I was open to tweaking the ordinance to object to certain types of exhibits, but I'm not in agreement with a blanket, so I'm no right now. If it's just a blanket pet store ban, I'm a no, but it sounds like you do have consensus.

All right, we we will. We will look to see what we can do to bring it back for July 8th. If for some reason we can't due to any timing requirements under florida law, we will let you know.

Okay, thank you very much. And thank my colleagues.

Yeah, I wish you guys were business owners. Honestly, you don't mess with businesses.

All right.

Christine, congratulations. You ran unimposed. That's awesome. Nice job. There was a resident that came up here and talked about our lobbyists. I got to tell you, there's a project going on in the golf course out there. Somewhere out there. I'm totally against it, developing it. Apartments, townhomes, whatever. And I find it kind of weird that you guys, taxpayers, pay a lobbyist to go up there and represent us in Tallahassee. However, when the developer comes here promoting the apartments, promoting the townhomes, he's sitting next to them saying what a great job it is, what a great idea. So, Rich, I don't agree with you. I just don't agree.

No. Rich, we don't want to throw you out.

Rich, you know, it's so funny. Years ago, we were good friends. Incident happened. I get it. You don't like me. That's fine.

One person. I don't care.

All right. Next, Rich, the tow truck companies. I'm going to be honest with you. From what I've heard, we're going to be losing money no matter what we do with this contract. So somebody came up and said, well, I think we should renew contracts and this and that. These are county rates that are set. We can't tweak them. They are what they are. The girl that got thrown out, Tracy, great example of we're going to go to another city. So in other words, we're going to take our cops to go investigate an accident from a car that's in another city rather than go across the street. So with this contract going out, we're actually going to lose over $20,000 regardless of who gets it. So we're going to lose money. So great job, guys. What else do we got? Happy birthday, America. 250 years old. There's going to be a parade. Everybody's welcome to join us. We're going to meet right here at 8.30. We're going to leave. We're going to go up to Margate Boulevard. We're going to hand out thousands of ice pops. We're going to have a great time. So hope you can make it. Happy birthday to my son, Michael. Turned 18 last Friday. Friday night, you know where he was? At the casino. Clocked hit 18. My man's playing poker. What a city. What a country. 18 years old, you can go play poker. He lost 50 bucks, but you know what? Memories, that's all it's about. That's all you got, guys, is memories. That's it. Remember that. Teresa Book, are you here? Nice hanging out with you this week at La Bamba. And I'm looking forward to our interview. I'm going to be interviewing Teresa. Great Margate person. Looking forward to the interview. You know what, guys? That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show.

Nice, man.

Well. We've already seen potential for two storms. We already saw one storm in the Gulf. We're looking at another storm starting off in the Atlantic. And we've already got an active hurricane season. And I'm going to continue saying to everybody that you need to prepare for hurricanes now. Buy extra food now. When you go to the grocery store, buy an extra can of food. Buy extra stuff now so that when there's a storm comes and you know it's going to happen, that you have stuff before the shelves end. one ever wants to go and find out that everything is gone the batteries are gone canned food is gone everything is gone get it now spend the extra money now a little bit a little bit a little bit before you go out and you spend a whole bunch of money at the last minute and other than other than that because everybody else touched on the fourth of july and all those are great things happening the fourth of july i want to once again uh touch on venezuela uh there are people some of us know actually all of us know up here who lost relatives in venezuela and life can change in a moment folks life can change in a moment and so try to enjoy every day try to celebrate the wins try and minimize the losses because you never know as some would say tomorrow is not promised So just enjoy, and it doesn't always have to be a fight. We can actually have a good time together. Our motto is together we make it great. We should probably try that once in a while. Antonio, go ahead.

Thank you, Vice Mayor. Good evening, everyone. I'm really excited for the weekend, America's 250th birthday, but it's also a great celebration here in Margate. We have an amazing city. I disagree with the first speaker tonight. Our parade is incredible. And there's thousands of people that show up every year. Thousands. And rain or shine. The last couple of years it rained and they're still there. So that's just a testament to the type of events that we put on here in the city. And I believe it's one of the longest running parades because during COVID, we did not shut down the parade, nor did we stop our fireworks. Along with the 4th of July, I'm on the other side of fireworks. I like them. I like to light fireworks. A lot of people do. It's one of those things, it's 50-50. You either like them or you don't. But what I will say is to be considerate, to not light them off at midnight, to clean up. I know that in my neighborhood, the neighbors, we all come out, we do it together, the kids watch. The next morning, we're up at 7, 7.30, cleaning the street, blowing off people's cars. We really take pride in cleaning up after our neighborhood. And I think that if you're going to do fireworks, be responsible and clean up and have a good time.

With that said, the city does do a great show.

Like most cities, and I believe the U.S. too, each city, each organization is doing the biggest show we've ever done.

This one probably is.

I know that we put extra money into this fireworks show this year. So it's going to be a really good finale for those that want to go and see the show here that the city puts on. Congratulations again to our police department for getting reaccredited or continuing our accreditation. And I believe we were one of the first departments in the state to be accredited.

May I say that I voted on that originally.

So congratulations on that. The roundabout, you know, I was getting nervous for a while with the paving not being completed in time for the parade and I know there's still some work that needs to be done, but the road seems to be coming together and put together to a considerably acceptable level. So thank whoever was involved in getting that. I know that we did do a change order for some of the things in the roundabout. They did go and clean out the weeds and replant some things, but there's still those really ugly plants there that were supposed to be swapped out. Do we know if that's still going to happen?

It's still happening.

Did we get a date on the sandbag?

Sandbag giveaway event is July 18th from 9 to 12 at Oriole Park.

OK. So I believe this is our second year doing this?

Yeah.

So about 2 and 1 half years ago, I had made the suggestion that, because every year, we tell people to prepare for storms. Even though they're not there, I think the last several category 5s were nothing 24 hours before that. So they can just flare up out of nowhere. And in times past, when a storm is coming, you're in the cone, you're out of the cone, you're in the cone. But everyone wants sandbags. Everyone's like freaking out and the lines are crowded and it's just sometimes it becomes too much to handle. Sometimes the cities don't have enough time to get the sandbags out because there was no storm and now there's a storm and it's a day away. What we have been doing is being proactive about storm preparation. And so on July 18 at Oriole Park, you can go and get sandbags ahead of time. And if you don't need them, I know people that they get them, they don't need them, they put them in their lawn or their garden or what have you. But it's an opportunity for you to get ahead of it, get your sandbags before a storm actually comes, and then it's too late to get them. Or you're fighting. While you could be in line to get gas or food, you have to decide, do I get sandbags, food, Whatever. So I think it's a good initiative that we're doing. And then even after that event, I believe if residents call, they can schedule to come and pick up bags. So we try to make it as accessible as possible. And with that said, I don't have anything else.

Can I ask a question about the sandbags? Go ahead. The sand that's used in them is not appropriate to put in your lawn, correct? It's not lawn sand. It's like construction sand, isn't it?

I've done it. It doesn't kill it, but technically it's not, you know, normally used in landscaping.

Okay. And is, can we, um, I don't know if it's possible, but there's a correct way of putting the sandbags down and an incorrect way. And if you put it down incorrectly, it's not going to do any good. So can we give an introduction?

Yeah, we did an instructional video on it a couple of years ago and we'll, we'll share that out.

okay great i think the two big concepts with that or the takeaway is that it needs to lay flat and overlap you know on on top of each other but also um kind of like bricks from what i'm hearing and not not to tie them to tuck them underneath not to tie them well we could ask geo to come up and tell us if i may what it is is you do not fill the bag full people think that you have to fill why don't we i understand that but i you don't fill the bag all the way. And that allows the bag to lay flat. People fill the bag up all the way thinking they're doing themselves a favor, and that's actually not how you do it. But if Gio wants to come up, sure, Gio, come on up and tell people how to do their sandbags. Because apparently none of us up here really know.

The sandbags, as long as you fill them no more than 2 thirds, you're going to be fine. Because it has to be able to rest, and each bag has to rest on each other. If they get too bloated, then they sort of like rock on each other and fall off. So as long as it's no more than two-thirds, you'll be fine when you stack them. Okay?

Unless there's... Are we pre-filling the bags now? In times past, the residents would fill the bags?

We have a combination.

In times past, I filled the bags for the residents. We have a combination.

We're going to have... We currently have about 700 bags that are filled, and we're going to have sand that we're going to place out there so the 700 bags go away. we'll be able to fill bags on site.

And we did get a machine, because we used to have cones that were cut in half, right?

We have a... Yes, we have a sand filling machine that allows three workers to fill the hopper, and it's three bags per, I think it's like three bags every minute.

Yeah. Thank you.

Tommy and I watched that the last time. Okay, city attorney, did you have anything?

And nothing other than to say it's always great to be here in the city of Margate and happy July 4th.

City Manager?

Yes, thank you, Mayor. I do want to congratulate Chief Palma and the entire Margate Police Department on their successful reaccreditation. It's a great feat to get that done, and it's a lot of collaboration in that department, so good job. um look forward to seeing everybody on the fourth of july wishing everybody a happy and safe fourth of july and uh let's go usa tonight okay city clerk nothing at this time all right let's go into the agenda consent agenda

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. These are the items on your consent agenda this evening. You have item 5A, which is the approval of the City Commission minutes from May 6, 2026, regular City Commission meeting at 7 p.m. You have item 5B, which is a resolution of the City of Margate, Florida, approving the assignment of an agreement for utility bill printing and mailing services with ENCO Utility Service to Cerita Investment Corp. DBA. AnswerNet, providing for an effective date. You have Item 5C, which is a resolution of the City of Margate, Florida, approving the revised City of Margate Title VI program, providing the required Federal Transit Authority triennial update, providing for an effective date. You have Item 5D, which is a resolution of the City of Margate, Florida, approving an interlocal agreement between Broward County and the City of Margate for cost share support. our water partnership conservation pays program providing for initial and renewal terms providing for continuation of agreements subject to appropriation and availability availability of funds providing for incentives and rebates providing for an effective date and you have a resolution of the city of murray florida approving the second amendment to the interlocal agreement for solid waste disposal and recycling materials processing authority of Broward County, Florida, authorizing the appropriate official to execute the second amendment to the interlocal agreement, authorizing the city clerk to provide a copy of this resolution in the executed second amendment to the interlocal agreement for solid waste disposal and recyclable materials, processing authority of Broward County, Florida, providing for conflicts, providing for severability, and providing for an effective date. These items are before you for your consideration as part of your consent agenda.

What is the wish of the commission?

So moved to approve.

Second.

Call the roll. Commissioner Schwartz? Yes. Commissioner Simone? Yes. Commissioner Rosano? Yes. Vice Mayor Caggiano? Yes.

Mayor Serrio? Yes. Resolution 6A.

Resolution 6A is a resolution of the city of Margate, Florida, designating a voting delegate and an alternate for the Florida League of Cities Annual Conference being held in Hollywood, Florida from August 13th to 15th, 2026, providing for an effective date.

What is the wish of the commission? Well, we've got to put a... We have to designate a voting delegate and an alternate.

Yeah, A. Arlen, you wanna be the voting delegate?

Every time I do that, I get to read 130 pages. When you do it, you get to read three.

So you wanna flip a coin? You wanna do it?

You wanna flip a coin?

Well, do you wanna do it?

I'm fine with it. Okay, and I don't mind being second.

Sure. I know for some of these, there's a third alternate. Is it just first and second for this? Yeah.

So you just need a motion to include Commissioner Schwartz is the voting delegate and the vice mayor as the alternate.

I'll make that motion that Arlene is the voting delegate and I'll be the alternative.

All right, I'll second that. Commissioner Rosano, your light is flashing.

It's just because I know it's going to come up. I know in the past that commissioners would go down to Hollywood and stay there in a room. Are we cutting back on that?

No.

No? Okay. Okay. I just heard we were cutting back on things and I thought this was one of them. Okay. Just checking.

All right. Can you clear the light?

Yeah.

Public. Please call the roll.

Commissioner Schwartz? Yes. Commissioner Simone? Yes. Commissioner Rosano?

Yes.

Vice Mayor Caggiano? Yes. Mayor Serrio? Yes. 6B.

Item 6B is a resolution of the City of Margate, Florida, approving a schedule of fees pursuant to Chapter 9, Buildings, Article 3, Fees, Section 9-21, providing for consistency with Florida statutes, providing for updated building permit inspection fees, providing for an effective date. This resolution is before your consideration this evening.

What is the wish of the Commission? Moved.

Second.

And as it's written in here, we're just basically updating our fees to reflect state statute.

Yeah, state law goes into effect actually today, and it affects some permit fees, and it provides that cities need to implement a discounted rate when a contractor uses a private provider for their own inspections and permit review so for now this resolution brings us into compliance with the new state law for the future we will be looking at doing a comprehensive fee study for the building department to make sure that our fees are at a full cost recovery type of

Seeing no lights lit up here in public, any comment? All right, please call the roll.

Commissioner Schwartz? Yes. Commissioner Simone? Yes. Commissioner Rosano? Yes. Vice Mayor Kajiyama? Yes.

Mayor Serrio? Yes.

7 a discussion of possible action item 7 is discussion possible actions authorized staff to negotiate an agreement with fort lauderdale football club llc doing business fort lauderdale united fc for the development operation management of a comprehensive youth soccer multi-sport community programming platform on city-owned recreational facilities and fields

Mayor, can I make a quick statement on this? So we received an unsolicited proposal for the operation of a soccer club in Margate. it would be appropriate for this board to provide direction to staff to entertain proposals as such. The way this agenda item is written, it appears that it states as seeking direction to negotiate an agreement with Fort Lauderdale United. However, per state statutes, if this board wants to entertain proposals for a service like this, we would have to go through a competitive solicitation. So it's really direction from the board to see if there's a desire to seek out a professional club or a soccer club to operate services like this. We would advertise and solicit proposals for that service, rank them, and then bring them back. Just wanted to make that clear for the record.

And the key, Cale, is that it comes back.

It would come back, yes.

Just for a point of clarity, though,

under under a traditional bid there's a ranking service on an unsolicited bid it still goes to public for a shorter period but it does go to public and then other entities have an opportunity to submit bids as well correct right well this this submittal was unsolicited proposals submitted pursuant to section 255.0654 to statutes which is a public-private partnership statute and there are certain procedural requirements that we would have to follow before you would ever be able to enter into any type of agreement. One of those includes notice and advertisement to allow for other entities that might be interested in providing service to submit similar proposals so that you as a city commission can compare and contrast.

Did you have something?

I just wanted to make sure that it was. The answer, the question was answered by Cale having said that no matter what, it's going to come back at us. We have to look at it and agree to any of the terms. So that's all. I just wanted to make sure that people out there knew that it was going to be looked at. It's not going to be something that they're going to decide in private, but it's going to come back.

And we're not making a decision tonight other than to look. do we want to just keep the status quo or do we want to look at opportunities and let people bid on what they think they can bring to the city we do have the presenter here or we do have the gentleman here that made the unsolicited offer and their representative their attorney I believe they have a presentation so we let them give a presentation and then if we have any questions and then we'll go from there cool mr. Scott would you like to come up

Thank you very much. My name is Matthew Scott. I'm at the law firm of Greenspoon Martyr. I'm here on behalf of Fort Lauderdale Football Club LLC. Just to piggyback off of what the city manager and the city attorney said, because we heard from some members of the community there was concern about this. What we did was under state statute, we submitted an unsolicited proposal. There are multiple ways for cities to do procurement. One way is the city says we want to obtain services or a contract for a certain kind of thing. and the city solicits it. The state of Florida wants to encourage public-private partnerships. It wants to encourage private industry to invest in cities. So it created this law to give companies like Fort Lauderdale Football Club LLC to make a proposal to a city. We did that pursuant to state law, which is to provide travel and competitive soccer services to the city and a flag football league and some other things. Per state law, If the City Commission decides to direct staff to continue with this, the City would have to publish this to the community and others would get the opportunity to make competing proposals. And then the City would decide whether they want to proceed. So this is not tonight asking for you to approve Fort Lauderdale Football Club LLC. This is simply for us to present this unsolicited proposal, the broad sketches of it, and see if you want to direct staff to move forward. And so I want to just give that background. With that being said, I want to introduce my client, Tommy Smith, who has a few slides to go through the proposal.

How you doing? I'm Tommy Smith, chairman of Fort Lauderdale Football Club, Fort Lauderdale United. As Matt said, we're just here to submit a proposal to potentially do business with the city of Margate, bring additional services. benefits to the city in a partnership. Um, we're a division one women's professional team. Uh, we have a men's professional team, um, starting in 2027 and we have about 3000 youth kids between, uh, soccer, volleyball, flag football, lacrosse, and basketball. Um, I think the, the, the biggest opportunity in this proposal is, is really the flag football piece because it's recognized as a, uh, college sport now, um, on the girl's side, uh, with, uh, abundance of scholarships, division one schools, so on and so forth. Um, this is our home beyond Bancard field. Um, we developed that the steel Miami dolphins training camp at Nova Southeastern university. I'm also the chairman of athletics at Nova Southeastern university. Um, so we have a great relationship there. Um, you know, we developed that from the, from the, when the state, when the dolphins left, they moved to Miami, we'd refinish the outside of the building, added 7,000 seats, uh, locker rooms, concessions, so on and so forth. Um, So as a part of the proposal, really, so it's guaranteeing the city $100,000 a year for the upkeep of fields, also to take over the maintenance and the facilities at Oriole Park, the grass. We manage about 15 fields. The main goal of this program is for the Margate residents. We're not bringing our teams here. We have, as I said, 15 fields, seven gymnasiums, a stadium, everything that we need. A part of our goal as a professional organization is to unite the community, ultimately to have people come to our games, support our programs, get children into Nova Southeastern University, whether it's the middle school, the high school, and the college, post-grad. We have 12 colleges, seven which are medical. We're an R1 research university. So the opportunity is real in Broward County, and I really feel NSU, Fort Lauderdale, is the best-kept secret in Broward County. But the program... The basis of the program is to make this a Margate-centric program. So for the Margate residents. So not to bring Fort Lauderdale United existing teams from Davie or wherever we might be, is to uplift the Margate residents. And to, again, upkeep the fields, provide it to the field fund, and a partnership with the USL and Gainbridge is to put a mini pitch in one of the parks at the city's designation. which is a value of about $500,000, and that's a partnership with actually the USL and the Gainbridge, the financial firm, because we are the Gainbridge Super League in the USL. Kind of summarizes a lot on the slides here, but really shared community partnership, dedicated to the residents. We have relationships also with Broward County Schools, Broward College, amongst other things. Ultimately, the goal is to work with the rec programs. Ultimately, the goal is not to take rec kids. Ultimately, the goal is to ultimately create a pipeline to, as I said before, come to our games, to our university, and to be partners in the community. To sum it up, we want to be a partner with Margate. Simply put, we don't come to take kids or anything like that, we want to make this a great, more great program. Again, flag football, you know, and then we added in this thing, you know, revenue share for anything that we collect, you know, a revenue share with the city on top of the field fund, on top of the mini pitch, and on top of the maintenance. I kind of summarized this with the scholarships, the share on the revenue, and the community impact. So again, super excited to have this opportunity to do this. Ultimately, we want to unite the community by doing this, and we hope to partner with you guys. I had a question.

Well, the only thing I want to add before we get to questions, sorry, Mayor, is just to clarify, what we're not proposing is to take over rec soccer. We're also not proposing to hog all the fields. The specific idea of this is that we would work with your parks and rec director to figure out field scheduling so that it would not impact any of the rec sports. The idea is simply we understand you have tried to have flag football, but you haven't been able to get off the ground. We have specific experience and expertise in this, and in many cities flag football is operated by private companies. We think that we can help get a flag football league off the ground that you don't have. Similarly, you have a few travel teams for soccer, but not in all age groups. With their expertise and resources, we can help take your travel teams to the next level. The other thing that we would provide that is promotional for the professional soccer team are doing clinics, free clinics for the community at your parks when season's not going on. And so the idea is to be a value add to your youth sports in your community that would also help create a fan base for the professional soccer team. And so I just wanted to clarify that because a lot of times when a proposal like this is made, there can be confusion about what we are proposing and what we're not proposing. Mayor, you had a question.

Yes, um, in addition to the revenue share and the 100,000 annually for field improvements, that's in addition to the full rental. You're not asking for discount on the field rentals.

Correct. Correct.

Yeah, I think that's important to point out because it's all in addition to the rental fee would be the 100,000. It's my understanding that there'll be scholarship opportunities as well.

Yes. I mean, ultimately, you know, we, we scholarship, um, in, in the hundreds of thousands now, I mean, no kid, no kid turned down basically.

Okay. Um, I'll circle back. I know I'm going to have a few more questions. Does anyone else have questions?

Uh, let's see who's, but again, just to be clear, this is, this is, the idea is just the city commission saying this is worth exploring.

Yes.

And that if others want to propose something and it's better than ours, so be it. But if the city decides after that process that they want to proceed, then we would negotiate an agreement that would have very specific terms for all of these things. That would be a written contract of a publicly available agreement that would govern the relationship. These are the broad strokes of the idea of what we're proposing to the city.

I knew it cost would your cost or fees. be similar, cheaper, more achievable than what we currently have? Or are costs going to go up?

It's going to be more expensive for someone to be... We aim to make them as more affordable as possible. Again, for us, the bigger picture is that we are a professional organization. We want families and residents to come to our games and support our programs and ultimately benefit the entire community. It's not just a soccer registration or a flag football registration.

And I know we're not getting into terms, but I'm just curious to open this. Would you guys be open to, if the city was going to make a switch, any Margate resident who's currently playing in the Travel League, would you absorb them for the first year at a reduced rate or a free cost?

Yeah, exactly. Would you take them on?

Exactly.

Okay. I'm going to stop on the terms because I know that's not the intent of this meeting, but I just had a couple questions I wanted to ask or clarify. Commissioner Simone, you're flashing, so you're up first.

yes please correct me if i'm wrong but uh mr scott you said that the purpose tonight was not to pick anybody but to ask the city if they wanted to open it up to other bids and um forgive me if i'm being a little disrespectful, but it almost seems like this league is making a pitch to us this evening to come here with this presentation. And in the backup, it says staff authorization to negotiate an agreement with this particular club. So I'm a little confused as to why this is being allowed to be pitched if We're only asking, does the city want to go out to other organizations to have them solicit us as well? I just don't think that this was appropriate to have this pitch tonight if that is not the intent of what we're trying to do here. I do have...

i did read all of the proposal i have several questions but if that's not the intent tonight i don't want to go into my list of concerns for this so so under the statute um you know there is an obligation if the city receives a unsolicited proposal for the governing body city commission to decide whether or not you want to go out and solicit other proposals So the only way for us to do that and the only way for us to be able to have that conversation with you as a team, as a commission, is to do it at a public meeting and have it on your agenda. So you don't necessarily have to discuss terms or conditions. It's whether or not there's something under the statute that you're interested in. And then under the public-private partnership statute, we would need to still publish a notice describing what the city's looking for, have that published, And then they'd all have to come back to the city with any proposals. And at that point in time, you as a city commission could consider any proposals that you would want to consider. And then you'd absolutely have to negotiate an agreement. So there are many steps still left. But the only way we can find out if this is something you want to do under the statute is to bring this before you tonight.

With a presentation by a certain company?

Well, they provided the unsolicited proposal, so that's all we have at this point in time.

Okay, but this says to negotiate an agreement.

Right, and I corrected that at the beginning, that the title is... could be better, right? And so it's, I don't want to say it's misleading. It could be better. So it is a seeking direction. Do you want to entertain proposals like this? We've received this unsolicited proposal. If we want to engage in negotiations with anybody for services such as this, we will have to go out and advertise. We will have to put a solicitation out there announcing we received a proposal and inviting any others to submit. competing proposals.

So everything that's in here where they submitted their letter on May 21st, and now it's coming before us, basically a month, a little over a month later, and then they want to begin by August 1st, so that's not correct.

That is the intent, but it is not possible for that to happen.

That's correct. And I will say, having done a few unsolicited proposals, this is how they go. They're a little bumpy and confusing in the beginning because we're asking the city if they want to do something and trying to say, here are the terms that will do it. Clearly, August 1st is not possible, right? But that was the premise when we were engaged in prior discussions. And so... And Commissioner Simone, you're not wrong to say you're here pitching us, but yet we're going to go out to get other feedback, see if others want to compete. The idea of that is a lot of times you do an unsolicited proposal and no one else submits a bid. It doesn't work for anyone else. There's something unique about it. So it is a unique process. I acknowledge that. But that being said, I think the city manager, city attorney, and I have, I think, clarified that the legal positioning where we are here is, yes, we're making a pitch. We think we will be the best in the market and great for the city. but there will be a long process and it won't be August 1st before a decision is made if direction is stated to move forward.

Thank you. Let me ask you another question. Are we having problems with our current league now that we're looking to, you know, switch?

I have concerns.

In terms of our, so this is a competitive travel club. Recreational soccer will not be turned over to an outside group. We will continue to operate that. And we're not looking to outsource that. We have a variety of travel clubs that rent our fields. We have a longstanding travel club in Margate that is here and rents our fields. We have no other,

relationship we have no formal agreement with them other than a a field rental agreement if i may commissioner that's that that's my concern and i'm actually happy that this proposal came in because it causes us to look at how we're operating as a city we have a long-standing relationship with several travel teams we have no agreement with them they pay the rent but there's no agreement Now you have a company putting a bid. Well, you know what? There's opportunity here. Scholarships, pathway to professional sports, investment in capital into facilities, redoing some of our fields, taking over the maintenance. These are things, I mean, listen, everyone's, oh, you're a commissioner. We can't think of everything. This is something I didn't think about. I didn't know that there were better opportunities. And if we're here to look out for the residents and the children and everyone involved, why wouldn't we entertain this concept? and see, you know, if the longstanding club is better, submit a proposal. If there's someone out there somewhere else that can do better, submit a proposal. It doesn't hurt for us to look on. I will tell you this, regardless of the outcome, whoever operates here in Margate, there should be an agreement. And there should be something for the city. We need to protect ourselves.

You know, everyone keeps referring to longstanding Margate.

It's my understanding, again, this is what I've heard, I don't wanna like slam, It's my understanding that they merged with another company. So they're not even Margate. What are they called?

Margate United? It was Margate United.

Right. It's not even Margate United anymore. Some bigger Florida league came down and swooped them in and merged them. And my understanding, there's tournaments and there's all kinds of things going on. It's like, are they subleasing our fields? Now, I'm just asking questions. But we have no clue what's going on. We have no working agreement. And what are we getting out of it? What we're getting is there's Margate kids trying to use those fields, and people are running them off saying that they're taken, and they're not even using them. So I'm not bashing any group. I think whoever the best person is is going to get it. But this woke me up to, you know, to sports. Right. Yeah. I mean, that's like when I found out the city didn't have a strategic plan. How do you have a $100 million budget and not have a strategic plan? How do you have longstanding partners, people using our fields and not have an agreement in place? I don't think that's good city business. So I am very open to exploring these options. Your light is still lit, Commissioner.

Yes, I'm not finished. So let me ask this question. So we're getting the scholarships and we're getting all this from this company to support Margate Children. What are you getting in return? What is the company getting?

We're developing a fan base in South Florida and giving back to the community. I mean, that's how I got started by getting kids into school and seeing kids go to college. You know, I've been in business for many years, but we support a lot of charities and stuff like that. So it's just not about a registration. I mean, yes, we are invested in a for-profit. We've invested probably $25 million in Broward County in the last three or four years. But no, we're giving back to the kids. And that's really, you know, again, the kids come to our games. You know, the tagline of our games is affordable family fun. You can come to a game for 10 bucks and affordable food, parking a parking garage, walk five feet, you're in the stadium. You don't have to pay a hundred dollars to park or a thousand dollars to park. I mean, it's just community, community engagement. And I know that's hard to believe, um, for, for some, um, but, but ultimately, um, that, that's, that's our initiative. And again, it takes time, you know, it wasn't built in a day, but, but, but, you know, being partners with cities is very important, but giving back to those, uh, the kids, but that, that's really what it is.

Okay. And, uh, Reading this, I have some concerns. I know you talk about you went under revenues by source and corporate sponsorships, Delta Airlines, Nova Southwest University, and then you talk about Margate-based local business partners. Who? Do you have those business partners right now?

No, not at this time, no.

Okay. So you're hoping to get them, but you don't know who in our business community is going to go with this.

Well, the best thing I want to partner on this. So my biggest goal in life and my other business is not to pay Google. So it's, uh, you know, local business and local community. Um, it's, it's, it's a sticky form of business, right? So you're, you're, whether you're a local plumber, your local air conditioning guy, local electrician, I mean, everyone's invested in their kids, right? So, and that's where businesses can really, you know, thrive. I mean, to be honest with you, we have, you know, at our base back in Davie, we have a small business network. So we do business luncheons, business networking events every month. So it is very community-based. Now, I'm not personally a Margate resident. You know, I've done business in Coral Springs for many years. I lived in Broward County my whole life. but ultimately the opportunity here is, is yes, Margate, you know, Margate businesses ultimately bared the benefit from the youth kids within the community. And that's a trusted partner, trusted vendor. So we, so again, we're involved in Margate. I don't see that being a problem of, of, of working with the local businesses and community.

That's not, that's not how I read this. Um, I read this as you were looking for Margate based local businesses. to be a partner in the scholarships. Oh, no. Because this is under corporate law scholarships.

Oh, no, no. I apologize if that's not correct. But no, the scholarships would come from us. And again, we have sponsors like from Fortune 500 companies and so on and so forth, the national brands. The scholarships come from the club. I mean, we're not relying upon businesses to sponsor the kids by any means.

And then I read on community fundraising for scholarships. There's community fundraising, and it would be for the scholarship fund and annual field fund. So what is that? all the field fund any scholarships they're all out of our pocket not out of any community fundraising pocket so that's a okay and I read that you want to use all the two turf fields Southeast Park and the sportsplex as well as Oreo Oriole field, but yet there's a thing in here talking about Oriole field where they're going to look at the field first, see whether it meets, I guess, certain standards. And then if it doesn't, then the city is going to, you're not responsible for making those improvements. The city would be responsible for making those improvements to get the field up to snuff for what the expectations are to play on it. Is that correct?

We plan on redoing Oriel Field.

That's not what it says at all in this backup.

Yeah, and then with the fields, we listed the fields that we would want to have access to, not monopolize. That's not at all the intent. It would be clear priority for the recreation programs. That's something that we discussed with the parks and recreation director. It's just we were listing the fields that we would want access to in collaboration with them from a scheduling perspective. With the recs department having the priority, of course, not us in any way getting in their way. But the idea of this is that we would shoulder the burden of improving Oriel.

Because that's not what it says in here. It says the field assessment for field conditions. You want to make repairs for pre-existing deficits and conditions documented in baseline assessment. That's what it says in the backup on page 14 when it talks about Oriole Park. Another question I have is they're talking about utilizing the fields Saturday and Sunday 8 to 8. Now is that taking up everything, Southeast Park, the Sportsplex, and Oreo Field on Saturdays and Sundays from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.?

No, no. It's just listing the days of potential use. The idea being that there would be, if we're going to grow a travel program for soccer, if there's going to be flag football, a lot of those games happen on weekends. But again, categorically something where the recreation department would have a priority. What we heard from your Parks and Rec department is they haven't been able to get a flag football league off the ground, but they want to. They want the city to have it. This is something we have expertise in, my clients have expertise in, that you can help with. In order to do that, you need to have fields in the city to use them. And our understanding from the city is your fields are not booked all of the time. There is availability in a lot of those times, and so we'd be able to work around that.

Brian read there's a certain I think was 14 days notice or something like that that they would have to give to the city and then the city has so many days to respond back whether our fields are being used from what I read in here I don't remember the exact number of days for either also in here talked about the only field maintenance was for Oreo field so what happens when the children come and they play on in our sports plex and

No, but ask about Southeast, because that's the one we actually did stock.

They're paying rental plus $100,000 a year. The current league's not paying us anything other than the rental, so what are they doing?

Well, I'm not interested in what they're doing. I'm talking to this company, wanting to know how this company is going to handle things. The only field maintenance, according to this, is for Oriel Field. It doesn't talk about Southeast Park field maintenance, and it doesn't talk about the sportsplex, the covered sportsplex.

It does. There is the maintenance of Oriel that would be our responsibility. then a hundred thousand dollars annually for general maintenance of the other fields plus the rental fee we'd be paying okay i i appreciate your questions i the and so i but it to be clear the goal was for this to be a value add for the city not to try to work a great deal on the city this this was to help elevate the youth sports experience in margate by providing a lot of things um and so those are all terms that if they were a concern for you If we were to move forward, we would be happy to work through to make them categorically positive for the city, not a bad deal for the city. It's just, when you do an unsolicited proposal, you're tasked with outlining the terms for it to move forward. The statute requires that, that we provide these things. In our initial discussions with the city manager and parks and rec staff, they made clear to us. We're not going to be okay with some of that stuff. We're going to if this moves forward, we're going to have to work out some of these details, which we understand and expect.

Commissioner, just to reiterate that you're asking and pointing out excellent questions in terms of the agreement and there, I want to say 99% very similar to what we've already identified and. I've said that, you know, should we get an opportunity to negotiate a comprehensive agreement, these are going to be areas that we focus in on.

Okay, my opinion, and I'll end with this, my opinion is this has all come up too short, too fast, and not enough time to really get into it.

Isn't that what the whole process that's going to move forward do? Public input, meetings, other entities are going to submit proposals. There's probably going to be back and forth with all the entities. Can you do this? Can you change this? Can you upgrade? This company said they're going to pay $200,000. That's where the process would play out. I'm not meaning this disrespectfully, but you're acting like we're making a decision tonight. All the city manager's asking is, does the city of Margate want to entertain offers to elevate our sports programs? Yes or no? And if the answer is yes, every company out there that is operating has an opportunity to submit a bid.

Right. I mean, the only way to do an unsolicited proposal is the way we're doing it. So to say it's too fast and too quick, it's the only way that unsolicited proposals proceed is we make an offer that has lots of details that need hashing out. If the city commission decides they want to proceed, others would have an opportunity to make competing proposals. You would get a chance to review all those. If whoever you picked, then an agreement would be negotiated and then you get to vote on that. So, even in that scenario, if we got to the agreement stage, and you didn't think the deal was good enough for the city, or the best thing for the city, you could vote against it. This is not a binding thing to any of the terms we've put in there at all. This was meant to be an idea of our vision for how to elevate the experience in Margate for youth sports. And so I understand. Well, let me just say, whenever you do an unsolicited proposal, this is how they go. They go this way, where someone's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what are you guys doing? That's the idea of them is private industry coming and saying, we want to do something in your city, work with us to do that. And then you work out the details along the way.

OK, when I say that it was too quick, too fast, I haven't heard. anybody talk about any problems that we were interested in any of this. I haven't heard from our parks director. I haven't heard from anybody that there was even, that it wasn't up to snuff and that we could get something better if we did this. So I would have liked to have a heads up on there is a problem, there isn't a problem and ways that we can make things better before this came up with one particular company. That's all I'm trying to say.

Yeah, and I don't know that I got the sense from speaking with Parks and Rec staff for the research we did that there's a problem. But Margate does not have the best travel soccer program in South Florida. It does not have all age groups. It doesn't have both sexes all the way. It doesn't have a development program. And it does not have a flag football program whatsoever for rec. And so I don't know if that gets elevated as a problem or something that a city manager says, I need to hone in on our travel soccer program among his list of things to do. It's something that we identified that could be better in market than it currently is.

It's an opportunity, right? That's the idea. There might not be a problem. There's an opportunity, but. You know, for for someone who proclaims to be, you know. Make a blink and cry and a good steward of the taxpayers and stuff. Don't you find it interesting? that we have a long quote, longstanding relationship with a soccer program that's changed names recently, but there's no agreement. They're just out there operating. I mean, doesn't that concern you? So whether this gentleman walks out the door or not, wouldn't you want to see what offers we can get from sports? Wouldn't you want to see whatever companies out there currently, if that's what you're happy with, shouldn't they have an agreement with us?

I'm not going to ask you. I'm not going to answer you because I find you being very Say it, that's fine, but you're... Elegent, very, you're trying to put me down. Commissioner Simone, I'm not. Okay, when you talked about, you know, oh, you're making Abe Lincoln cry and all this, you are, you are putting me down in that regard. I'm not. Okay, okay, you don't see it that way, I see it that way, and I don't appreciate it, so I'm not going to... Don't try to flip this that I'm attacking you.

You've made statements publicly on the record, you're a public official... critiqued us on all these things and now let's just find it odd that you have no concern that they're operating without a contract call it whatever you want belligerent i i think that's for people watching that's kind of laughable no no one's being belligerent up here everyone's being very respectable so i take offense to how you're acting and how you're trying to spin things commissioner schwartz so nice to follow all of this

So, I wrote some notes as I listened to Commissioner Simone. It is a pitch, but it's a pitch to make us aware that certain things could be better, is my assumption. I now realize that the city doesn't run the travel soccer, and the city has no oversight. And this is more about, to me, oversight than a lot of other things, because there are things listed here, which I assume is now part of the record, These slides before. What is now? Well, I'm sad. I assume it's now part of the record because I never got to see it and you were too fast on the clicker.

Sorry. Well, there's a USA soccer game going on right now, so we were trying to keep things moving in consideration of the crowd.

It's so nice to know that sports moves the city commission.

We were trying to be considerate.

The other side. So I get it's a pitch to tell us there are better things that could be done that we are unaware of. I don't have a problem with that. But to the city manager or maybe to Mr. Jones, I know, for example, North Lauderdale football plays on Oriel Field. Not anymore?

Not anymore.

OK. At least you know I remember that. I don't have a problem looking at some of these things. As far as it coming up too quickly, half the things we vote on come up because somebody's got an idea and it puts it out there and we look at it. I'm assuming that this is going on now because nobody's, soccer's not being played right now, except, of course, on TV.

Right? Right. CRA does it all the time.

Well, no, I mean, that's how things.

On solicitive proposals from Ace and all these other companies.

That's how things come up. Please tell me, since my son played soccer at one time, what is a mini pitch?

It's like a 7v7 or 9v9 smaller field than 11v11. It's like turf.

I had no idea. I thought somebody was going to throw something short at you.

I think you guys have one at one of the parks already, the turf. There's a small turf park. It's similar to where the car is.

I just had no clue what that meant.

Oh, and just for timing, just to be clear, if we were to move forward, the travel soccer wouldn't start until the spring.

It would be until the May of next year.

So there's lots of time for negotiation, regardless of anyone who chooses to do anything.

And so the idea is that we would introduce ourselves to the community by doing free clinics in the fall. That I take my kids to free clinics in our community, it's a great thing. You can raise concerns with stuff. We're trying to come to the community and do nice things here. The clinics would be a great thing in the fall. And there would be flag football and soccer. So there's a lot of time on this, is what I'm trying to say.

Flag football is for female? or flag football as a female? Both. Both, okay. And this is now becoming an Olympic sport, flag football? Yes.

It surprises me too, but it's growing. You can get a scholarship in college now.

It's running after people and pulling the flag. I don't know.

It doesn't even make sense to me, to be honest, but it's growing.

I think Margaret can really champion a flag football program. I mean, I think it would be really, you know, especially on the girls' side because of the scholarships and so on and so forth.

I would be thrilled.

Any other members of the Commission Is there gonna be public speaking on this The city attorney said that I do not have to but I will allow it Yeah, no I I'm saying that I am going to allow it because I do know that there are some people here The reason why it's technically because we're not actually deciding on something It's gonna come back, but I do know that there are people here for it. So I will allow the public to speak

And I want to thank you for that because there are a lot of people here that want to talk about it because they don't really know what's going on. And I honestly still don't know what's going on. I hear that you're renting the fields, that you want the fields, that you're going to charge Margate residents. Margate resident soccer is totally separate. But I understand that's all going to get worked out later. I get that, but I'm still totally confused about this. If you want to rent the fields, you can just rent the fields. Am I correct?

Yes.

They want to promote certain things.

But all these people out here, they also want to schedule, too. I mean, I think if everybody got together in a room, we had a workshop, we could probably make this work. Because it's something where we don't want to go against the community, and we don't want you guys coming in as well. I think it's something that's going to take a little bit of time and a little bit of reassurance with these people. I think you're right. Trust me, I've been in baseball almost 20 years in Marigate. Yep. And there was a day when I was a commissioner and my game got pushed to North Lauderdale. And when I come back, I see a travel team on the field I'm supposed to be on. And that was before the city took it over. So trust me, I've got a lot of questions about this, but that will come later. But to respect the people that are here, I don't know if you guys are here for it, against it. I don't know.

So that's why I just want to make sure that... Yeah, and just to be clear, to your comment, this is like the very first step.

And I think it's great.

The idea is that we would meet with and discuss... These matters with your, the local travel soccer team. That see how we can work together or compete next to them. You know, this, this, this is not meant to be to kick them out in any way. Uh, but rather to enter into a more formal partnership and agreement with the city. Um, so, because that we, we believe that's the way to make it the most successful as opposed to just like a, like a random and see, like, right.

Market United 2 or whatever no agreement Rosano. How do we know, like, how do we know that one of these groups operating with no agreement isn't, like, subleasing our fields out?

You have no oversight.

Honestly, I think that has happened, but not with soccer.

But it has happened. I know it's happened for soccer. It's happened for you at baseball. And so whoever... operates our sports programs, if it's a third party, there should be an agreement. Yes, you could just go rent the field, but I think they're looking to do better.

And as you know, probably better than any commissioner, travel sports is a bit of the wild, wild west. So one of the things that really stinks about travel sports that happens in a lot of cities is a team from another place, another city with kids from other cities will rent fields in your city and then use them, and as an example you gave, kick you off your fields. The idea is that this would eliminate a lot of that wild, wild west to travel sports that a lot of cities see.

That's where years ago we stepped back from that.

Let me touch on that for one second. So we have our own fields, right? We have, like I said, 15, probably 20 fields. this, we want to develop a Margate program, Margate, Margate resident program. We're not bringing kids from another brand. We're not bringing kids from Boca Raton or, or, or South beach or here or there Margate branded Margate residents, Margate only that that's what we aim to, to, to develop with the city of Margate.

And I think it's great. You guys said a couple of good things. I like the flag football. Yeah, I think that's great. I think, you know, I think it is an up and coming sport and, uh, You know, I got to blame our residents, our great residents that approved our bonds to fix up all our spills. Now everybody wants it.

And I think ultimately, you know.

That really is a testament to the board and the work that they've done up here.

I think ultimately also, as the mayor pointed out, whether we, you know, become a partner or not, you guys should look into it.

I'm going to definitely talk to a lot of people.

You guys should look into it, you know, again, with property tax, you know, legislation and everything else. You should look into, because it is an asset of what you have. I don't come to take the asset. I come to, you know. It's an opportunity. It's an opportunity, you know. That's us.

Thank you. And I'm going to talk to a lot of people about this, but I think if we're all on the same page, that's the only way it's going to move forward.

Agreed.

I'm done. Thank you.

And I do know, too, as with anything, there's a lot of misinformation out there. I know. People on Facebook were saying we're selling the sports complex. People messaged, like, you're getting rid of the sports complex? No, don't read everything you hear about on Facebook. We're not selling the sports complex.

Mayor, before you allow the public, because I don't want to be rude, I need a two-minute break.

Go ahead. Go ahead. Well, no, what I can do is I can go and let the public speak.

Yes.

Are you guys finished with the presentation? Okay, so as mentioned before, I know some people say that we're not open about public comment. I don't have to allow public comment for this, but I am.

Public comment is now open. Yeah, I'll talk. Rich Zucchini, Lakewood Circle. A couple of things. One thing is any kind of sports activity that the city can help support and organize is well worth it. keep our young focused, keep our young busy with athletics, especially if they, some of them, can rise above and show exceptional talent. I'm all in support of this. What I suggest is if there is any revenue, excuse me, if there's any revenue generation, that that generation should be used to create an athletic scholarship program that the city creates to put revenue aside in creating any athletes that show exceptional talent that can move on to higher levels. And the scholarship should be used for that. Joanne, God bless you. Listen, I was watching. I didn't see any antagonism talking down to you. The problem was you were a bit irrational. At first, you were blaming the speakers for preemptively doing a pitch. And then afterwards, then you want to go into detail and start negotiating the contract. That comes after. So no one was trying to be mean to you. And I'm really glad that they did come up and do the presentation. I think it was well presented and well thought out. And I think it's a benefit. And again, anything the city can do to bring in and sponsor more athletic activities, youth activities, Absolutely do it. Thank you.

Any other members?

Evening. I just want to thank you for all allowing us to come forward. Daryl Morrow, 2100 Northwest 62nd Avenue, since the summer of 1976. Okay. We provide a service already for the city of market. A lot of the things that you said that don't happen because we're not allowed. It's not permissible with through parks and rec. We have to submit a proposal for rent in the fields. A week in advance for the new month. Okay for for example. In 2026, so far for six months, I spent, well, EFU, East Florida United Margate, spent $9,732 to use those fields. So revenue is coming in. Now, I want to go back to a lot of the things were said because this same group put a proposal in for Coral Springs. If they have all this money, they should be buying their own land and building their own complex because if I had millions of dollars, that's what I would do. And then you can have your freedom to run the soccer programs as you wish. Also the flag football. May 2nd of this year, I was approved to be a vendor, a partner vendor with Margate Recreational. and do the free clinics and do the coaches clinics. So there's a lot of things I think, like I said, I think we need to get into a room and sit down with the people that are involved, especially Margate residents, especially Margate children. This young man right here came to me. Matter of fact, his family is from Venezuela. He came to me in 2022, 2023. And he wouldn't be able to afford these programs. My goal as a Margate resident, as someone that has a son that came through this program and a daughter, I played Margate Blue Devils at Oriole Park. I played baseball at Veterans, I mean at Vincent Park. And I played soccer at Southeast Park. This business has become corrupt, okay? It's Landon Donovan, who's my friend, actually said our soccer, youth soccer in this country is a disaster.

30 seconds.

Okay, 30 seconds. This young man, 5491 Southwest 6th Street, is a full-time inter-Miami player, Danny Curtis. Him, Danny, and four of his friends came to my program in the summer of that year. His three other friends went to Parkland.

Thank you.

Okay?

Thank you.

And I just request that when you do home meetings, because there's a lot of amnesia, that we all get invited to come into these. Okay?

That's all I appreciate. And you will. You will. You can submit a proposal, too. Without an agreement though, all right, why wouldn't you submit a proposal?

All right Marlon Polo, yes 20 years coaching director and Maria and For you information mayor without the respect this club Margie night is being almost 47 years But it's not he said East South Florida something emerged, correct?

Oh

Let me tell you, because I heard you talking about...

Without us knowing, right? No agreement.

Yeah, because we've been renting field, renting field, but it's just Market United. 47 years. I believe Mr. Mike Jones used to play there, too. He played, too. So I've been coaching for around 19 years, and I can prove you and everybody here that I haven't collected penny from the kids, from the parents of Market to my bank. Every money that comes, every money goes out. And I did the best I can with the hand tight, right? That was my goal for the community, from my heart, from my passion. I have my own company. I don't leave out of this. Different world, okay? So I know we all do respect. When you was a little discussing a little bit with Commissioner, It was focused on the $100,000 coming into the city. That was your main subject, your main topic. Development, yeah. I can take pictures of how many trophies. We represent the state, the city of Margate in the nationals. But we small team. We really small team. Five, 16. But all these kids enjoy their life. It's a family group. I don't build it for like a business. It was for family. And you can ask everybody. And you can tell them when the season is over, they cry. Because we separate for a month and a half to a month. They want to be over there. Parents, they join together, party, drinking, all stuff. That's what I did. Okay, so... 47 years. Market United. It used to be Market Mutiny. And it's still there. Market United raised it today. I just raised it a month and a half ago, and it's in Sunbeast. You can go in Sunbeast and look for that. So it's still there. You say, no, it's another call. They're taking over. Nobody take over. Because there was an agreement how we met Sir Mike Jones.

30 seconds.

I'm going to be responsible for the fields. So and I'm going to let Mr. Sean talk. Thank you very much. So thank you. Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Sean Fletcher. I'm a Margate resident. I've lived here for 12 years. My wife and I bought our first home in the city. This is where we grew up. This is where our family has grown up. Our children grew up here. My older son learned to play soccer at Southeast Park. He learned from Marlon and Mike. My younger son, he also learned when Margate United ran our rec program, and they did that for quite a long time. Both my kids have moved up to competitive soccer. I didn't just walk from the sidelines, I stepped on a field. Both my wife and I volunteered as coaches. When the program transitioned to the city, I stayed. For the past two years, I have coached for the city two teams every single season. I volunteered more than 300 hours with those kids. I miss my own kids' games, to be out there on a Saturday morning to coach other kids. I see firsthand what soccer does. It builds confidence, discipline, teamwork, respect. For many kids, recreational soccer is a gateway. For some, it leads to competitive. For some, it doesn't. That's fine. But we have to have an accessible path. On the surface, this proposal looks great. No direct cost to the city. but I urge you to look beyond the first impression. Consider what the long-term impact of the city is. Consider that this comes from an organization that has no direct roots with Margate, no track record with our families, nothing with our parks, nothing with our kids. Similar proposals were presented in other cities, Coral Springs, West Florida, Pompano. They were declined with this club in particular. That alone should give you pause. Step back and look. Scrutinize this. There are inaccuracies in the proposal. The cost is one inaccuracy. Margate United's cost, I know this because my wife collected the fees for the past three years, not even close to what they've quoted in here. Much lower than that. We've never turned kids away. We don't. Competitive soccer operates on a fixed schedule. We've already established this isn't going to happen in August. Totally cool with that. But a lot of Margate families, they've already gone to other clubs. They've paid all the fees for the year. They've paid for the uniforms. It's thousands of dollars. Baseball is more expensive than this for it. In reality, this sounds great. In a first year, for the next year at least, it wouldn't help our families in the market. We're already committed. For next year, possibly. So I urge the commission to do is take a long look at this. Do what Coral Springs did. Go out and bid the process out. Get a bunch of people to come in here. But if you're going to do that, we need Mike Jones Sport. We need Parks and Rec. We need people like me, coaches, and the coaches have banded together on this within the rec program. We've all talked about this, Parozal. Let us be involved. Let the parents be involved. Let the parents of competitive be involved. Make this a community decision. But don't let an organization we don't know about that has nothing to do with our community just walk in and take it. It's not about money. It's about the kids. That's the only reason I agreed to come up here. And I'm not afraid to public speak, but this makes you nervous. It's about our kids. So please make a good decision here.

I do appreciate you coming. I don't think I've ever met you in person, but you actually always seem pretty reasonable. So I appreciate being reasonable. But just for the record, so we know, and it's been mentioned several times, this will go out. So if the current, and there was three speakers tonight that talked about how great this program is. Submit a proposal. Please, I'm asking you. If we care about the kids and we care about what's going on in the city of Margate, then submit proposals and let's pick the best one. We will have those discussions. You will be able to look at all the proposals and ask questions. And you know what? If Margate Unite's the best one, then that's the one we're going to go with. But we're not here to pick a specific company tonight. They had a vision. They came to us. I realize there's potentially a lot of opportunities for the city and the youth, and I would like to entertain having companies come out. There were bids in other cities, but guess what? Those cities are bidding out, and that's what we should be doing. So I do agree with you on that. It should be bid out, and it will be bid out. But to operate status quo with no contract, no agreement, I don't think is smart for the city.

Go ahead, sir.

You ready, sir?

Yeah.

All right. Your name?

All right. Michael Polo, resident of Margate. Obviously, my father's Marlin. So I went through the program as a child, as a player. as a coach, recreational, even refereeing, through Daryl, who gave me the service for that as well. And eventually now, 13 years later from the last point that I was here, receiving an award from you guys for winning a state championship, I'm now here as a director of coaching for Margit, Margit United, okay? I agree with Arserio. Now, to, let's put it out for a bit. I think it's the cleanest way and we have to evolve as well. I don't think, I understand the fear of losing out money, maybe somebody who's subleasing, right? I get that. A lot of people do that right now. Random people from other cities are doing that and they set up their own tournaments. You see a random people on the field. I get it. So let's start up with the bids and a clean business and whoever has the best proposal gets it. I agree with it. But yeah, no, to think that We're here for the money. It's not I have to pay for the fields because the bill just came in right now. So out of my pocket, I'll be paying for those fields a couple thousand dollars because we don't demand and we don't point a gun to the head on these parents to pay. This is a service that we love. We love to do. I've coached at other clubs, director spots at other clubs, and I still come back here to coach for free. do it because I love this community and I've represented this city as I played and I felt the pride coming from the city to go out and out of state or in other places. It was beautiful to know And we would go out to Melbourne, to Tallahassee, to Pensacola, whatever. And I said, where are you from? We're from Margate. You guys play really well. And that sense of pride to come from here really instilled in me. Maybe I'm crazy about it, but that's what I want to drive my business, which eventually, hopefully, something big here can make Margate look good. I feel like a Margate resident, like I was born here. Obviously, a hospital in Coral Springs, but I'm from here and I want to represent this forever. I went overseas and I still came back. Played overseas and I still came back. So, and I coached at other places. 30 seconds. And I still come back at the end of the day. These kids are my everything. And it's like a school teacher. You develop relationships, you gotta let them go and you start a new cycle. But as long as we create a nice community, And it's nice to have Danny out here. Danny actually came out from Cupid's Cane to us first. And the following years, he went over there. And I'm proud of the steps. He didn't stay with Margie. He went next door. And I'm okay with that because look at where it's landed. And that's what it's about. So that would be it.

Thank you.

All right. Seeing no other speakers, public comment on this is up. You have one more? Go ahead. Come on up.

Lauren Baraka, Margate resident. So listening to everybody that came up, I wasn't going to say anything before, but hearing that there is involvement with other people that are Margate residents involved in different programs, it's like, I never heard of any of this before. And there was somebody, okay, so I'm not gonna look the other way. There's somebody that said that they have already put in a contract and that nothing happened. So why is it now all of a sudden that, the gentleman in the back, why is it that all of a sudden, We're having this big thing again with the same legal representation, always the same. And I don't understand that we have stuff going on here. And then we have the same person coming in and trying to sell Something else to the community. It's like they own Margate and Why why is this brought in so everybody else that came up to speak? Saying that they were part of a program they got three minutes but yet the presentation from The lawyer he got as long as he wanted to speak. I think it's very unfair, and I don't know if it has to do with campaign donations or whatever the case is, but that's what it looks like. And so I'm sorry, but I think you are a disrespected Commissioner Simone as well.

Any other members of the public wish to speak? Just state your name for the record.

Andrew Watson, Margate goalkeeper. Go ahead. Us Margate kids, the entire club, my coach, Marlon Polo. who has been with me for eight plus years, has not only shown me the right and wrong as a person, but as a player. And all the Margate kids can show you our hard work and dedication that we have represented the city of Margate in tournaments. Us, Margate, you 13, you 14, went to the President's Cup. We got eliminated in the round of 16, but we have made it from the group stages all the way to the round of 16. And us kids have worked really hard. And my team has gotten an award for going undefeated in a tournament in April 2022. And we got it signed from Tommy Rosano is one of the names I remember. And it is on my wall. And all the players have, well, me as a player, I have a wall full of medals and dedication in my progress throughout the years I've been playing. That is all.

Thank you. Thank you.

How old are you? I am turning 14 on July 24th.

And what school do you go to?

I am going to be a freshman at Crow Springs High.

We'll forgive you for that. That's where I graduated from.

Thank you. That's what she said too. Go Colts.

Go Colts. Any other comments? Okay, public discussions closed. Thank you for coming up, especially and parents that bring your children to these meetings. Thank you for getting them civically involved. It's not easy to speak in public as you've seen grownups say tonight. So especially for a teenager to come up and speak, I give you a lot of credit for that. And I think that no one's looking to take away anything. We want to make it better for the players, the city, and everybody that's involved. And we want a competitive process. We want people to submit their ideas, to submit their proposals, and whoever we feel is going to carry the program to the next level, assuming that's how it goes, that's what we're looking to do. I know sometimes we speak passionately up here. The Sunshine Law does not allow us to talk about this out of a city meeting. So a lot of times these are the first times we hear about it. I know sports can get emotional, complicated. I know Commissioner Rosano was involved with baseball for many years, still are to some extent. I know that the city took over some of the rec leagues for baseball. We were told it's going to be the worst thing ever and end up being the best thing we've ever done. But I know that there was, I don't want to say you took heat, but I know that people got upset about it. And you were probably in some So I'm just on the other side, on the soccer side with this, but it's complicated, but I don't want to take away from any of the coaches that came in here. We appreciate all the time you put in. However long the program's been going on for, we're not taking away from what was done in the past at all. We appreciate giving these kids an opportunity that they wouldn't have. So I do appreciate all the volunteer work, all the work that the the coaches do and we're not demeaning or taking away what's been done but a proposal like this makes us open our eyes to see that there is a lot of opportunity potential out there and some of that has to do with the investments that we've made into our parks because i guarantee you five years ago we wouldn't be see well we didn't see these offers and now we are so thank you to every everyone that's a coach or a volunteer that's come out to speak.

So now... Mr. Mayor, could we have Parks Director Mike Jones come up and give a little perspective from his side as well? Absolutely.

Even commissioners Michael Jones good evening public director of Parks and Recreation Yes, I did play soccer at Southeast fields when I was four years old a little stinger out there Played all the way through age 18 wasn't good enough for the high school team, but we don't need to delve into that Look where you are I went the baseball path and off the soccer path I So I just want to give some history. You know, we talk about there's no existing contract. There never was. There was never a need for one. We had a volunteer run organization. Rec and travel were one. Youth sports was created without travel. There was no travel. It was moms, dads volunteering their time, you know, getting together in a room, talking about the rules, how we're going to draft, how we're going to select teams. And that's how it went. Travel sports came in. a couple, maybe I'd say a little over 15, 20 years ago, slowly crept their way into pay-to-play. And now there's parents out there, kid's not good, but they're going to pay $2,000. And that kid's on that team, Team B, Team C. The teams are popping up everywhere. So Margate's always been a grassroots program, baseball, soccer. Basketball was the only city-run sport we ever did. We never had a need to. Recently, the city of Margate found, I would say, some bad behavior among parents in some of our sports. And it was pretty bad. So we said, let's run a city rec program. That's where we are today. Do we want to get into travel? The idea was no. Stay with rec. That's an essential service to our community. So rec sports run by the city of Margate is why we have youth sports as a city service. Travel sports, in my opinion, should not be a city service. That's why we didn't put it out for a bid to hire somebody. We don't hire in coaches and run it ourselves. We let the private sector run it. Free market, right? Best team, best coach, come on in. It's up to the parents. Do they want to stay with that coach or not? In baseball, in the world that I know, same team, five years, three different coaches. different 12 kids year after year. It's a different team. It's a different program, different business, different organization. So you have all your information moving forward. If you wanted to have a proposal or a contract, I highly recommend whoever it is, it's a partnership with our REC program to benefit our REC program kids in terms of skill development. We want them to get better. We want them to be too good for REC. And here we have a team for you. We don't want to say you have to go to Weston, you have to go to Sunrise, you have to go somewhere else. We want you to play in Margate. So it's either we run it in-house, we partner with another organization, They can help lower some of the costs because the cost is pretty large for, I would say, the average family for travel sports. And that way, it's a partnership, and it's not anything other than renting fields and it's money. It's all about the kids, player development, coach development. We want our coaches to be trained. A lot of these dads, they never played soccer before, but they're here. I'm willing to volunteer. My dad never played soccer, but he was my coach for 18 years. He picked up a book. He went to the library at the time. They didn't have videos. But now you've got coaches clinics. You get the right group in here, whoever that is. It needs to be a partnership with the city for the rec program for competitive soccer and making the cost lower but the quality high and That's where we're at. But just want to give a history lesson because not everybody may know how it all worked out. But it used to be run by the parents and run very well. They can do it better than us because city staff is at the time only this big. Volunteers was this big. And that time has changed where the volunteer time is this big and city staff now can spend their time focusing on it. So it's just been a flip on how we view youth sports and rec sports. But I just wanted to share that prior to any decisions being made, do we want to entertain it or not? If we do, I highly recommend we'll have a workshop. I will gladly host a workshop with the public, city commission, any proposers that are out there, and really go over. And we need, as the Parks Department, need to understand what you as the commission want to direct us to focus on. So when we're soliciting and when we're reviewing and when we're evaluating and providing a recommendation, that we meet your goals and expectations, because I don't want to If you want the highest dollar, I will make my recommendation. If you want the highest skill development, I will make my recommendation. They may not be the same. But I need to know what the board wants and direction from the city manager for me to provide that recommendation. So as of right now, I don't have a recommendation until we have the details on terms and everything else. But most importantly, city manager, myself, we need direction from the commission. What is our goal? What is our end goal for this? And that's all.

So as I hear, regardless of who we wind up choosing or if we choose anyone, some of the things that just came up in this presentation are not bad things to look at if it benefits some of our kids. For example, the free and reduced lunch part, because there are plenty of them on there. So the idea that it came up, regardless of who brought it, it's not a bad idea to look at some of these things because Frank Tallarico was my son's coach in soccer. And I can remember the coaches saying to the parents, if you're not nice and you keep screaming things that the kids were going to throw you out, because it was never the kids. It was the parents screaming, clean him, step on his face. And I would look at my little kid and say, run the other direction. It was horrifying.

Margit was very good back then, by the way.

And it was southeast field. We were.

We were very good.

Yeah. But so some of these things aren't a bad thing to look at anyhow because we should evolve at the same time. And if it helps the kids and subsidizes some of the things, because I know that for some people, not necessarily anybody here, but for some people who run these travel things, they make six figures, which blows my mind. because I had three college degrees and never saw six figures. So thank you for getting up and explaining.

There are benefits to the partnership, and it's more a matter of just finding the right one.

Right.

But not having to burden the cost for the general tax base to get a charter bus and go somewhere for a tournament or something, that's part of the benefit, you know. We are the city of Margate, and we are currently, you know, We're tax-driven, whereas private sector's not. So having a partnership with sponsors is not a bad thing because it ultimately lowers the cost to the player and their families. So that's where the city is really limited on that.

You know what? Because Margate is an unused treasure right now because we don't have these things. So I can understand why proposals are coming up, and it's something we now need to look at. Thank you.

Is there a motion to direct the city manager to issue a request for proposal for youth soccer and multi-sport community program?

I'll make a motion to have them request for proposals for youth soccer and multi-sport community programming. And I'll second it.

But with the idea that before you go and do that, maybe you have some, I don't know, when you sit down and do a workshop so you understand what it is you're looking for.

We're going to let the people submit their proposals and then we'll have our workshop and dive in. Okay. who had the best ideas, who should we counter with, circle back to?

Or the fact that some of the people will know things we haven't got a clue about.

But remember, someone else might submit a proposal that they didn't think about, right? Absolutely, okay. So I would think that you get the proposals and then we workshop if we need to.

I don't know, I think maybe I would have workshopped so we understand what should be in the proposals from the people who are actually doing the coaching in advance of. So maybe first we hear what the public or those people involved think are important before we put out anything so that anybody who bids knows that that's important enough to include. Would you not think that way?

No.

Okay.

It's like when the city does RFQ versus a design build. Let them do the design build. Let them offer what they want to offer, and then let's look at it. Right, yeah.

I would suggest that working with our parks and rec director, looking at what other cities have done on these proposals, we'll be able to put together a solid framework for some basic terms that the city wants to see. And then whatever other options and pitches that these clubs want to provide, they can do so to try to separate themselves from one another.

In education, we do it a little differently.

Commissioner Rosano.

I have to disagree with the men on this. We have to have a workshop first because there's no way you can have people solicit a bid for something at the residence we don't even know what they want. It makes no sense. Now we're going to have to explain to the residents, well, this is what was proposed, so this is what you're going to get. Let's see what they want. Have a workshop. Put in the RFP, whatever you want to call it. This is what we're looking for. Because some of us up here might say we want the most money we can get. Some of us up here might say, you know what, we want to see our kids transition and go to the next level. I've been involved with sports all my life. The problem in Margate right now is kids play ball. They play rec ball, and I love it. But after two years, mom and dad get that travel. They get that taste. And then you know what happens? Three years later, the kid's burnt out. He's tired of being a 12-year-old and being yelled at by his coach. So we need to find out what the community wants before we put a proposal out. That makes no sense to put a proposal out and then explain it to the families. Well, they're going to give us $100,000, so we're going to go with them.

That's not... That's not necessarily it. I'm not saying your idea is wrong, but why wouldn't you want to get all the information from the people that want to submit proposals and then sit down... It's not their city. Yeah, but they're making an offer to us. It's us, our city. We were elected up here by the residents. Let them submit the proposal. We sit down at the kitchen table. We haven't done a workshop in a while right there. We all sit around in a circle with all the proposals out with the public, and we discuss what people are willing to put in offer. I don't understand why that doesn't make sense.

Because if you get five people to submit a proposal, and it all comes down to the money or whatever it is, that's not what the residents want. I'm sure that the people that showed up tonight doesn't care if this guy's giving us $50,000, this guy's giving us $60,000. They want to know that in the long run, their kid has a future to stay in this city and play on a school.

The program can sustain itself, though, too. Can I interrupt you?

If you don't help me. Do you guys want a workshop?

I want a workshop. Thank you.

Don't you think that if you do it the other way, and then you have proposals, and then the public says we want this, that, and the other, then it has to go back out again for them to rewrite the proposal, and you waste a heck of a lot of time.

But at least we have a frame of reference. We have a frame of reference.

Which you can have a frame of reference by talking to people. We didn't even know that this other company was operating without a contract until this offer came up. Okay. So how can we up here decide, like, we know exactly what the sports programs are going to, want and need. Let the free market, and you talk about businesses. I own a business too. I own two of them. Let the businesses compete. Let the businesses who are way better than government come up with the ideas. And then I know we the people, look, we're going to discuss this. We're going to sit right here at this table right here and discuss it. I don't understand why this is so complicated.

It isn't, but I don't understand why we wouldn't do it the other way. We overcomplicate everything. That is...

Watch how that goes. It's going to take a lot longer. It's way over complicated.

I think it's the other way around. It's a lot longer. Because I think if people make- What if someone else submits a proposal?

Like, don't you want to see what...

But what does that have to do with having a workshop where people tell you, give you input?

Once they see all the information. Right now, people see something on Facebook and then they think that we're selling a sports complex. So instead of just having the public come in and spit out ideas that they hear this on Facebook or they hear that, let's actually see what's written down. Commissioner Simone can't even make a decision after something's here. She's going to make a decision there. Get the information first so that she has time to look it over.

You're going to get the information from people who take this in the nicest way I can say it, or self-serving. Then you're going to ask the public to see whether or not they think it's a good idea. When the public makes other suggestions, you're going to go back to the people who gave you the proposals to have to find out whether or not they're going to agree to it.

When the five, six, seven proposals come in, we're probably going to go back anyways and say, hey, look, this one offered this. Can you match that? We really like you. Can So we're going back anyways, so why not have this?

You're missing my point. It's not about what they're going to offer. It's about what they think they need who actually work with the kids. That's a different point of view.

They submit the proposals. You have a workshop. You look at the facts. You get the public's input. Then you go back to the top three and say, this is what the public want. This is what we want. Update, make changes. And you go back one time, not Do a thing for the residents. Then the proposals get submitted. Then it's another workshop to look it over. And then we've got to go back. Just do it one time. Have the public come in. Review all of the facts so everyone's looking at the same information, not what they saw on Facebook that we're selling the sports complex. I'm not talking about Facebook. I don't get it. But that's fine. I appreciate you guys wanting to at least do the workshop.

I've wanted to do hundreds of workshops. I can't tell you how many times we've had that since I've mentioned them, regardless of what the subject is. We just never do workshops anymore. We don't ask the public for their opinion.

Well, it took us five years to pick a color on a wall, so I get a little skeptical when we do workshops.

You're color blind, so I don't take that in all due respect. Poor example.

It took us five years to pick the style of brick on that same wall. Different circumstances. My very first meeting as elected official was that wall and after reelection we're still talking about that wall. Still talking about the downtown 20 something years later.

Why don't you amend that so that I can second that.

Can I just explain, under this process that you're under, Under 255.065. I just want to explain what the process is. Because if you go out and you want to issue a proposal, then you'll receive those proposals. Then you shall rank the proposals received in order of preference. In ranking the proposals, you may consider factors that include but are not limited to professional qualifications, general business terms, innovative techniques, and cost reduction items and financing plans. And then you can begin negotiations with the high-rank firm. If you don't want to proceed under this public-private partnership statute, then you can say you have no desire to consider the unsolicited proposal, and then you can direct staff to go out and just generate a regular request for proposals however you want to.

Okay, so if you want to do a workshop to generate that, you can.

It's up to you. I want to have one. I just want to be clear as far as what the process is. Right now, you've got an unsolicited proposal under the P3 statute 255.065.

I understand that. I think we all understood that an hour ago, but we're beyond that where we're going to look at proposals, but what kind of proposals are we going to look at? We need to put some description in there of what's going to be in there, not let them give it to us and say, well, you know what? This is the best of the worst. So this is what we're going to get.

It's like a design build. You always... 100% design build. Let them design.

However, that's coming from a contractor. I want to hear it from the people out there that are involved with it.

Submitting sports proposals. I don't care about them.

That's the private sector. I want to hear from my bosses. The residents of Margate. And I'm not pandering or whatever, but guys, you're trying to put a policy in place for them, the Margate residents, but you don't want their input until it's too late.

Tommy, you're making stuff up now. No one's saying that the public's not going to talk. No one's saying it's too late. We're saying to submit a proposal, and then we will workshop and review it and have public input. Please don't put words in my mouth. No one is saying that.

I didn't say that.

That's what it sounds like.

Oh, my gosh. You're picking on me? I'm only joking. I'm only joking. However, if we're going to put something out, we need to hear what the people want.

I agree. But let's see what the, just like contractor, let's see what the sports people can do, and then let's get the public input. And if it's something that, then we go back to them and say, you know what? The public was overwhelming. They want X, Y, and Z. Which one of you three are willing to do that? And let them fight over it.

That's not the way you negotiate in government. That's not how it works. not how it works when you get three people that come up here this guy saying this guy saying that you can't say well forget everything you're saying this is what we want and have them agree with it that's not how it works we can i mean that's not how it works you have to give them a scope of work and they're going to come back with it they're going to give them a scope of work that's what we're going to have this we're going to have the parks director would work with the city manager to give them a scope set by the people yeah no I'm for the workshop. I just need two other people.

I'm for a workshop too, but I don't want to do it backwards. I want to have what's being offered out there first, and then let's see what could be negotiated around. The public might want something that's not feasible at all. Correct.

And then we don't do anything.

Why don't you just poll us?

I have a motion. And then we have a second.

And I'll amend it so that we have the workshop prior to the solicitation.

And I'll second it. Now you have to take a vote.

Just for the record, this motion is to amend the original motion to add that there be a workshop prior to the issuance of an RFP.

Yes.

Not on this. Ministerial.

Commissioner Schwartz? Yes. Commissioner Simone? Yes. Commissioner Rosano? Yes. Vice Mayor Caggiano? No. Mayor Serrio?

I'm for a workshop, but not in this process, no.

So the amendment passes. So the amended motion is to have an RFP for youth soccer, multi-sport, and community programming with a workshop prior to the issuance of the RFP.

Which doesn't preclude what we've already got in front of us as an unsolicited proposal to be part of that, correct?

That's correct.

Thank you. And they would have an opportunity to resubmit based on public input? Of course.

Of course.

Correct.

Good discussion, guys. We're not going to agree on everything, but I'm glad that we're moving in this direction. I'm glad that we are trying to take our travel sports and make them better. I may not agree with the process, but I'm happy that we're going to at least look into it. Call the roll.

Commissioner Schwartz? Yes. Commissioner Simone? Yes. Commissioner Rosano? Yes. Vice Mayor Caggiano? No. Mayor Asario?

Yes. Okay. I believe that was it. That was it. This meeting is adjourned. Thank you, everybody.