Regular City Commission Meeting - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everyone. We're going to get started. If everyone can please take their seats. I'm going to call this regular city commission meeting to order. It's Wednesday, September 2nd, 2026. The time is 630. If everyone can please quiet down because the mics pick it up and it's hard for us to hear. Thank you very much. Please call the roll.

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

Here.

Vice Mayor Caggiano?

Here. here. All right, let's stand up for a moment of silence, followed by the pledge. Commissioner Rosano All right. You're gonna do both of them? Yeah. First up, we're gonna have the presentations. We got a couple of proclamations this evening. The first one is item A, National Service Dog Month. Vice Mayor Caggiano is gonna make the presentation this evening.

with National Service Dog Month. You know, it's, well, this says just about everything that needs to be said, just about. And I'm gonna ask to come up, please, Nicole Ortiz, Graduate and Volunteer Canine Companions of South Florida Chapter, and Jeannie Ortiz and Gage the Fourth. Canine Companion Service. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you. This is a night of really, really, really, really important proclamations. Whereas we believe in the joyful, transformative power of the human-canine bond and inclusivity of all citizens, and whereas in the United States more than 70 million adults and children have a disability, and yet only 16,000 service dogs are accredited training programs exist across the whole nation. The need is growing fast. Whereas Canyon Companions is a non-profit organization that enhances the lives of people with disabilities by providing expertly trained service dogs and ongoing support to ensure quality partnerships. And whereas canine companions and their service dogs empower people with disabilities to lead life with greater independence by providing best in class training, ongoing follow-up services, and a deeply committed community of support. And whereas National Service Dog Month aims to educate our community about the benefits of service dogs and the laws protecting them Whereas in the 250th year of our nation, the city of Margate continues to work towards becoming an inclusive community in which all citizens, all citizens, and their trained service dogs are embraced. Now, therefore, Antonio Acero, mayor of the city of Margate, does hereby proclaim September 2026 in the city of Margate and encourage all citizens, to celebrate service dogs, and to be respectful of the rights to safe access to our community afforded to adults, children, and veterans who lead more independent lives because of their assistance. In witness thereof, Mayor Asario has set his hand and caused the official seal of the City of Margate to be affixed to this Would you like to add anything?

Mayor, council, this is beautiful. We weren't expecting this. Normally, it's a lovely proclamation. This is above and beyond. We thank you. Over 50 years ago, John and Jean Schultz, the man who wrote Charlie Brown, saw a need and started Canine Companions in California out of Santa Rosa. All of our dogs come from there. They're bred and they travel around the country to different service areas. Ours is in Orlando, to be trained and to serve.

And normally we're the only ones that get to see this, but we thought you'd all appreciate. This is our newest puppy in the area. He's 11 weeks old and he's like a baby. And Terry, who has been doing this now for 26 years, he's her 17th puppy raised. We'll raise him until it's time for him to go to college. And then he will leave and go to his service center. And this is what we expect six months later, that a dog like Gage, who is now seven years old and been in service for five years, will take on the reins to help someone who desperately needs It's not only children and adults and the elderly, it's also veterans. Canine Companions is a great supporter of veterans and veteran needs. They also support the hearing. Dogs do hearing for people. It's amazing to watch a hearing dog let their person know that something is coming up behind them either on the left or the right. They have also just begun a new program. And I believe they graduated six dogs who will be medical alert dogs for diabetes. And every year, they add to the services that they can do. My daughter no longer is a person in a wheelchair. She's the person with the dog. And that's important for them because they have a lot to contribute. You just don't have to see them. as being disabled or handicapped. You have to see them as being useful parts of society. It's like the elderly. Once we get to a certain age, it's kind of like we fade into the sunset. Well, they fade into the sunset all the time. And these dogs bring them out. Nobody recognizes the disability. But everybody wants to pet the pretty dog and talk about the dog. And he's remarkable. And they all are. And so we give you thanks because without your help, without your letting people know who we are, we couldn't do this. Canine Companions could not do this. It's one of the few organizations that gives the dog to the recipient at no cost. And each dog, it calculated costs them $60,000 to train. And those dogs are given at no cost. So it's a gift. And recognition is a great gift. And if you want to know more about us, you go on canines.org and it'll tell you who our sponsors are and a little bit about the people who receive these wonderful dogs. And again, thank you for this lovely, lovely proclamation.

Vice Mayor has asked me to let you know that individuals can donate. In fact, those are our main donors. You go on canine.org and there's a spot to donate. And every little bit helps. And corporations also donate. The Christopher Reeve Foundation, the late Betty White was a donor and still is. And many organizations realize the need for these animals and how they're trained.

I know, I take a lot of pictures at home, but this is rewarding. Sit.

Sit.

Down. Good boy.

Okay, and next presentation we have is gonna be Hunger Action Month.

As I shared when I first got up here, hunger is too prevalent. And I'd like to have up here, excuse me, I have a little switch in the names. From Hunger Action Month, presented to Michael Wilson, agency coordinator for Feeding South Florida.

How you doing, sir?

All right. You know, it's always interesting when the person comes up here and says, thank you for doing this. And we should all be ecstatic, thrilled, honored, blessed by having someone who's doing what you're doing. So we're recognizing you for what you're doing. Whereas since 1981, Feeding South Florida has worked to address hunger and food insecurity in Margate by providing our community in need with immediate access to nutritious food. And whereas hunger does not discriminate, it knows no race, religion, or age. In South Florida, approximately 1 million individuals face hunger. Food should not be an impossible choice for the community of Margate or any other city. And whereas feeding South Florida leads hunger and poverty advocacy efforts in our community while transforming lives through innovative programming and education that provides economic growth and overall well-being. And whereas the city of Margate is therefore committed to supporting, feeding South Florida so that together, together we make it great, together we can put an end or at least limit hunger. And we're looking for the economic growth and overall well-being of all. And whereas we're just looking to achieve a hunger-free, a hungry Florida, a hunger-free Margate, Hunger-free world and now therefore Anthony Osorio, Mayor of the City of Margate does hereby proclaim September 2026 as Hunger Action Month. I digressed a bit on it, but this is so important. Absolutely. This is in the City of Margate and call upon all citizens to join us in supporting Feeding South Florida during this month of action. And whereas Mayor Osorio has set his hand and caused the official seal of the City of Margate to be fixed, On this 2nd day of September 2026 services. Please please say something.

Mr mayor, Mr vice mayor council, everyone gathered here. Feeding South Florida is part of the feeding American network. We're part of the feeding Florida network, but our area of concentration is from Jupiter up in Palm Beach all the way to key West in Monroe County. We cover 4 counties. Here in Margate, we have three partner agencies that together did nearly half a million pounds and served over 10,000 households just last year alone. So we thank you for your support. We encourage you to step out, come visit us at those distributions, or even better, come visit us at Feeding South Florida. We're down in Pembroke Park, Hallandale Boulevard. I also want to let everybody know If you're hungry, if you know somebody that's hungry, go to our website, put in your address. It will give you a pantry where you can access. You can limit it to a mile, five miles, 10 miles, whatever. And also we're really pleased to announce for the first time in partnership with the Miami Dolphins, we will actually be holding a Thanksgiving dinner at Hard Rock Stadium. And so I encourage you, if you know somebody who's hungry, you know somebody who's alone, or if you yourself wanna step out, go onto our website, Feeding South Florida, www.feedingsouthflorida.org. And I also encourage you to volunteer, right? People here before us, people that may come after us, there's a lot that we can and can't do, but you can volunteer. On Thanksgiving Day, we're looking for over 1,000 volunteers, right? Do we do need that? We cannot do what we do without the help of city officials, government officials, state officials. But most importantly, we can't do what we do without you. So, on behalf of feeding South Florida, Paco Villa, as our CEO, we truly do appreciate this. We appreciate the partnership and we look forward to continuing.

Okay next up we're going to have public discussion some new faces in here, I see this is for anything that's on the consent agenda. or not on the regular agenda, so the two I think probably most people are here to speak about would be the golf course and juneteenth. This is not the time for that that's going to be later on in the meeting you'll be able to talk about it, this is for stuff that's not on the agenda, no personal attacks. No screaming from the crowd. If you scream from the crowd, you may be asked to leave without additional warning. All right? Let's have a good night, everyone.

Mayor, can I ask a question? Go ahead. Sure. I see a bunch of empty seats here, and I see a bunch of Margate residents back there. Is it okay if we remove the reserve signs and let the people sit down? I think it's very inconsiderate to put these seats here, and if these people aren't going to show up, then let the residents sit in the seats.

I don't have any opposition.

I'll remove this.

Go ahead, public comment, go ahead.

Hi, good evening. Tracy Van Winkle, Margate resident. From the last meeting, there was something brought up by Commissioner Tommy Rosano about the CR, I'm sorry, PNZ. I think that meeting ended at midnight. I think I went home and watched those meetings because I wasn't attending. Totally agree with you. Those two gentlemen need to be removed from those boards. Rich zucchini and I don't know who the other guy's name was totally uncalled for what they did in those meetings. Absolutely disgusting. I don't know why we would even have residents. First of all, rich zucchini was removed before and I don't even know how he got back on. Thank you.

Good evening. My name's Sean Bob. I couldn't attend a meeting two weeks ago on behalf of ACF, Margate United Soccer Club. I was out of town on business, so I felt the need to come tonight. My membership pushed me to do this. My name was used several times and misinformation given. No offence taken, these things happen, but I wanted to come and clear my name. Accusations of me making... through the soccer club and through Margate, $275,000, I think several times over, which came to $825,000. If my wife hears this, I will be divorced because I don't make $825,000. Also, there was comment that I have a private jet. If a Mazda counts as a private jet, then that's my private jet. I don't. I drive a Mazda. And also, just to set the record straight, I haven't been paid. I've been here five months to build a new youth soccer club where we have a lot of kids in Margate, as you heard two weeks ago, that we're trying to help. I've fallen in love with Margate. I'm a coal miners kid. I'm very blue collar, what I come from. My family, everyone I grew up with, And when I came out here, came out to the fields, kids coming on their bikes, kids walking to the fields, that's what I did. My family didn't have a car. We didn't have anything like that. So if my parents were here, they'd be proud to hear that I've got a private jet. I don't. I have a Mazda CX-90. And again, I just want the record straight. I don't take offense to it. but I haven't been paid in five months. And the reason why we want to put the money we have within the club back into the community, back into the kids. And in Margate so far, we're very close to about $200,000. We've invested in this programme, in scholarships, discounts and staffing to give these kids an opportunity that they might never have had and support the great people that are here in Mikey, in Marlon and Daryl guys like that who've been here a long, long time. So I just wanted to come up and say that. I did message some of the commission, and I understand fully it would be inappropriate for me to meet with you. So my membership pushed me to come. I wasn't going to come. I was just going to let it go. But they felt a need that I needed to. So thank you for having me. And I will go on record to let you know the two charities that were just here, two groups, fantastic. We as a soccer club will now support both groups. We will have people at the food drive and we will help the foundation with the dogs. I've done this in the past with other clubs I've been involved in. So thank you for your time and all the work you put in to making this place run and do so well. Thank you.

Hi, Mindy W. Lee. I just want to address one thing that was brought up at the last meeting.

Please state your address for the record, please.

3274 West Buena Vista Drive, Margate, Florida 33063. At the last meeting, the discussion came up on the agenda about the cost of living allowance given to all the City of Margate employees. And I know there was a discussion about the commissioners shouldn't be a part of that and they should be removed from that, and that's a discussion for another time. It didn't, and I know a lot of people feel the same way I feel. The fact, Arcerio, that you voted no to give the city, all the city employees, not a cost of living allowance doesn't sit right. I mean, I know none of the other commissioners said anything. Everybody voted in favor of it. But the fact that you sat up there with a grin on your face and you said no, that you basically were telling all the city employees, the ones that you're the mayor of, that you don't think that they either deserve or earn a cost of living allowance because you voted no. I don't know if you understand the message that you're sending out to the employees by voting against their cost of living allowance. So that's all I want to say.

Good evening, Jonathan Kraljic, Margaret resident. I'm going to read verbatim out of the land development code 40.706B definitions. Number 82, snipe sign. A sign which is tacked, nailed, posted, pasted, glued, or otherwise attached to trees, poles, wire, wood stakes, or fences, or other objects with a message appearing thereon. Q, prohibited signs. The following signs are those which shall not be installed or displayed within the city. Number 10, snipe signs. We've seen an influx of these sort of signs appear in the past few weeks, especially in residential areas. Has there been a moratorium issued for snipe signs, or is it just being overlooked by our code officers? Same for temporary signs on commercial properties. They're appearing more than 60 days before an election. Was that code ever amended or repealed? I just want to know whether everyone can put up signs as they wish. Next, you might be aware that the FDOT recently issued a memo to all law enforcement agencies advising that permits for ALPR, better known as flock cameras, will be revoked and all ARPL or flock cameras must be removed from state roads within 30 days. The memo cited the reason of misuse, data privacy concerns, and surveillance schemes to merit the immediate action to preserve Floridian sovereignty and quality of life, all of which each of you should be concerned about for Margate residents. yet you proved to put these warrantless passive mass surveillance devices up nor ever considered taking them down not only did you take an oath to support protect and defend the u.s constitution's fourth amendment the right for the people to be secure in their persons houses papers and effects against unreasonable searches without a warrant or probable cause but also the florida constitution in article 1 section 23 which says every natural person has the right to be let alone and free from governmental intrusion into their personal life I've come up here on several occasions telling you that these devices are violations of our rights, yet we have one commission in particular who wants to add more. Cities are being put on notice with tort claims for allowing unauthorized data sharing from flock cameras. You can look up the $100,000 lawsuit of Brian McKellar against Idaho Falls, and there's bound to be more coming. Lastly... You may want to look into how one user of Margate's flock system was able to conduct nearly 9,000 searches, while Coral Springs' top person did only half as many at 4,000 and Miami only 3,000, according to the website haveibeenflocked.com. I urge you to do what almost half of Florida's 67 counties and dozens of cities have already done. Remove flock cameras entirely, not just from the state roads. Thank you.

Richard Zucchini, Lakewood on the Green. First, I want to thank my fan club for showing up. As usual, they show up and they think that they have information, but they don't. Yes, I and another board member tried to speak at the recent Planning and Zoning Board. And we spoke at the appropriate time. And what we wanted to bring up was the fact that we want the commission, we want the city, and we want the residents to be aware to look into the Aztec community. community which is supposed to be an RV resort, a community where the resolution that was created for Aztec to create the community said that they were not supposed to have houses built on the plots, simply lean-tos and so on. But yet, we have two-story, million-dollar homes being built, in that community. And they're not paying property tax. So yes, Mayor Cooper, that is my big sin. That is what I did that was out of the ordinary. And I will continue to do it. I've done an audit through the community. I've taken pictures of their houses. You're going to be you're gonna be just totally surprised at the types of houses that are there that are not paying property tax. And how do they do it? Well, first off, they ask for a building permit, which should never be issued because by resolution, creating the community should not allow houses to be built on those plots. But let's put that aside. They build those houses and they go for their permits. but they never get their CO. Well, guess what happens when they don't get their CO? It doesn't go to the county. The county doesn't get a chance to reappraise it, which then means they're not paying their property tax correctly. And I know at least one commissioner here is very concerned about paying taxes. He speaks about it all the time, except for his own sales tax on his bar. But yes, this is an important issue. And you're spearheading the issue where you would like to see me not on the board. But I am bringing up issues that are very important to this city. And even that previous speaker, if she knew what she was talking about, she probably would agree and say, you know what? Yes, I want everyone to be paying their fair share of taxes. And we're going to look into it. I have pictures. I'll do an audit. And you know what? If I can't say it on the board, I'll just write an article and I'll let the entire city know about it. Thanks so much.

Members of the public wish to speak. Seeing none, public discussion is now closed. Commission comments. Commissioner Schwartz.

I so enjoy always being the first to follow all of that. Anyway, good stuff. Don't forget Labor Day is September 7th. Enjoy the day off. Spend time with family. We also invite you to the 25th observance. of 9-11, which I assume will still be at Firefighters Park at 9 o'clock on 9-11. And just about the flock cameras, just so you're aware, there are only six of them on the major roadways. The police chief has already told us they're disabling them and taking them down. However, it helped find Nancy Mater's husband who killed her. It helps find kids who wander away from home and older adults who have also wandered away from home. It helps find people who hit and run. So perhaps if we don't break the law, we don't have to worry about them. My cell phone follows me around and has more information on it than any camera ever will. I hit an ad on my computer and every ad from every place on the same thing shows up. My credit card will tell the vendors around me where I buy things. 1984 is here. Big Brother has been watching you for an awful long time. So unless you're gonna give up all the conveniences, some of the stuff we have to live with. It doesn't bother me if we find an endangered adult wandering away from hope. on a camera. It doesn't bother me if we find someone who's hit a car and run away on a camera. It should bother you if you wind up to be that victim and we have no way to save somebody that you love or you. That's my own personal opinion. I've lived here a really long time. Margate has never had a problem. And I doubt very much that we ever will with those cameras. But perhaps if we don't break the law, we won't have a problem complaining about that. They're there to protect you. And so that you're aware, the six cameras are no longer going to be in use. And I guarantee you it won't make a bit of difference because the good things that the rest of them will do hopefully will continue. That's my only opinion. Thank you. And I rarely give my opinion about things like that. But I've lived here long enough that we can twist anything any way we want. If you're a victim, you want some way for something to be done. If you're trying to run away from something and you're a perpetrator, I get the fact the cameras bug you.

That's all for me. Just a moment. Commissioner Caggiano had his light lit.

It's not only just for that, Arlene. For domestic abuse situations. For everything. When people have restraining orders against them, and they're not supposed to be with the next amount of feet from people. These things let you know that that's happening also. There are people, yes, there are people who don't want their whereabouts known for good or ill. Fine. But, or should I say, no, not but, and, and, it saves lives. saves lives.

You know, this is a republic. We take certain laws. We are granted certain laws and responsibilities, and we either like them or we don't like them, but we live with them. There are plenty of things that other organizations who have more strength and a power than we do have enforced upon us, and there's not much I can do about it. I've got to learn to live with it. This is also something that I don't see a real problem with.

Excuse me, but we asked in the beginning to please not yell out. If you yell out again, you'll be asked to leave.

There are many things that are constitutional violations, and we all either learn to live with it, or we do whatever we need to do about it. I'm just giving you my opinion. Don't break the law, you won't have a problem.

Under the rules of conduct of the meeting, if you yell out, the mayor does have the right to ask you to stop speaking. Same with phones. If you don't, then the mayor will ask you to leave. So we appreciate everybody's cooperation with that. Thank you.

Commissioner Simone.

Thank you. Don't forget on put on your calendars for September 19th. The city is holding the household hazardous waste and electronics disposal event. Also paper shredding. So come out and participate in that. If you have cans of paint at your house, you have documents that you need to be shredded. It's all free to our residents at Oriole Park starting from nine o'clock to two o'clock. When you came in today, you may have seen a box in the corner. of the lobby to collect sneakers. So if you don't know what to do with your sneakers, please donate them into that box. It helps a dog rescue good karma, um, and helping take care of the dogs and the cats. So it's, uh, any kind of sneaker, uh, used good condition. Just make sure that it has laces. Even even, uh, athletic cleats are allowed. So if you don't know what to do with your used sneakers, please donate them to that box so we can help the dogs and cats. And the last thing, a speaker came up and spoke about the snipe signs. So is that something that we will be addressing? Because it is against our code, so how do we take care of this? From what I'm hearing, and I don't know whether it's true or not, that code has been told not to bother with the political signs that are up. So if that is true, then it's definitely a concern. I know that the signs that are up should only be six square feet. I understand that the signs that are up are much larger than that, almost twice the size. So, you know, what's good for one is good for everybody. If you can't put up a sign that says house for rents, then you shouldn't, you know, we always say that you can't do signs based on content, but apparently these signs are being allowed because of the content.

So, Commissioner, first, code has not been told to not review signs or look at them. And as complaints come in, code goes out and reviews those, compares those against our code, and compares them against the current legal guidance we have with regard to the constitutional orders that have been put out regarding our sign code and what conflicts with it. With regards to signs that are currently out there or that we are aware of, we have reviewed those and determined that they are not prohibited as they are.

How can they not be when they're on a fence and a snipe sign is considered to be on a fence?

So there's a definition for snipe signs. There's a definition for banners. I'm assuming you're referring to banners that are on these fences.

So it's it David told the city attorney. So it's difficult to sit here and speak about any one sign without putting it in context because we have different regulations with respect to signs that are commercial in nature and that are non commercial in nature. Political signs are non commercial speech. which have been afforded a very high protection by the United States Supreme Court. We have to treat them differently than commercial signs. So we have spoken with code enforcement, chief building official, and we have told them that if a complaint comes in through the code enforcement process, you should investigate it. As far as questions that come in, we're not supposed to provide legal opinions to individual residents. That's not our role as city employees or even myself as a city attorney. I provide legal opinions to city staff, city commission. But certainly if somebody has a complaint regarding a sign, they can file a code enforcement complaint and city staff will look into it. Whether or not the sign is there properly or not. And if it's not, proper then they will go through the code enforcement process but absent a complaint being filed city staff isn't going to necessarily do anything about it so those individuals who want to complain about a sign need to file a complaint so if we have temporary signs up that are against our code but nobody complains they're being allowed I don't know. And the issue with non-commercial signs such as political signs is we can't place a time limit on how long those signs can be there. A sign that says I'm for the war against Iran is considered a political sign. A sign that says vote for whoever is a political sign. So we can't put a time frame on those. What about the signs? About the what?

The size. Because I'm here in our code, temporary signs and election sign. Area maximum is six square allowed election signs.

So there's different. Excuse me.

No. For six square feet for single family.

So different regulations with respect to signs and banners. And previously in 2022, I had issued a memo to city manager. I'm happy to provide you with another copy. which explains the deficiencies of our sign code and my legal recommendations in light of the Supreme Court opinions as far as what the city can enforce, what the city can't enforce. And I've reviewed that memo with city staff so that we're all on the same page and we're treating everybody similarly. The ultimate remedy to these questions and these issues is re-looking at the sign code to see what can or should be changed. And that's in the Commission's hands.

And that has been asked for I don't know how many times, and it still hasn't come to fruition. So when is that going to be approved so that we can sit down and we can discuss these issues without bringing this up every election time? And that's all I have this evening. Thank you.

If I can add something, considering the commissioners brought that up time and time again, we have asked to sit down. It would be a good idea to do this now, not pinpointing whether it's election or anything else, but it was always my understanding that a snipe sign was a small thing stuck in the ground that simply said 10% off for window washing. What I've read now is a snipe sign is something that is attached to a fence. And I think that's the, point that was being made at the time and that it could only be six square feet which is a three by two as opposed to a three feet by six feet which is 300 times the size so one way or the other regardless and it has nothing as far as i'm concerned i don't care whether it's election time or not but if there is a rule or if our code is deficient then we absolutely need to do something about it because it's probably 50 years old So I would second what Commissioner Simone has asked for that we sit down and have a workshop one way or the other, so that everyone understands that it's on the same page. And I do know that you can leave a sign in your lawn for 364 days, regardless of content, pick it up, move it one quarter of an inch. put it back down for another 364 days. So doing anything with that, you can't because that's permitted. But we should sit down and have a conversation, regardless of whether it's a car wash sign or any other kind of sign, to finally have something that everyone understands, including code. Thank you.

Commissioner Rosano.

I wasn't even going to go here with the signs, but I just want to say this. Commissioner Schwartz, you were mayor last year. The prior election, there was a major controversy with the signs. Huge. Everybody bitching about the signs. Nothing was done. Nothing was done. There was no meeting that you presented to have a workshop on. I know people mentioned it, but nothing was done.

And so to answer you, the city manager will tell you that any time I talked about a workshop, it never got any traction from anybody else.

Well, that's one of the good things about being the mayor. If he wants to put it on there, we need to address the sign code. You can do that. You don't need to ask the city manager.

I asked for a workshop. I'm going to assume that some of you got a phone call asking about that. It went nowhere.

You don't have to ask.

I have asked for more workshops on code and anything else. True, Kel? Have I not brought that up many, many times? It goes nowhere. Code is asked to sit down with us so that they understand which way is up on which day of the week. Nothing ever gets done. The two times we tried it, nothing ever got done. At some point, if you have no problem with having a workshop, agree with the two of us and we'll have a workshop if it takes three votes. But one way or the other, this is an issue that has to stop coming up every year, regardless of who gets insulted, who doesn't like what they see. There needs to be a ruling one way or the other that everyone understands, good, bad, or indifferent.

I don't disagree. If there's an issue with it, then do it. But doing it two months before an election?

I'm not telling you to do it two months before an election. I'm simply saying we need to do something.

Well, we should have done something two years ago.

We probably should have done something 40 years ago.

But what I'm saying is when you're the mayor and you set the agenda, if you have a problem with the sign code, you call a workshop. If they don't show up, they don't show up.

I have such a problem with signs on windows of stores. I have talked about it ad nauseum. We have changed the rules. They have never been enforced. We have sat there. Commissioner Pierman was sitting up here. We looked at pictures. We looked at trucks. We looked at what you can park in a residential neighborhood. You know what? We made a ruling, never been enforced, never been done. So we should not go there because everyone knows how good my memory is. We let cars, trucks park in neighborhoods that have no reason or right to be there, and we do nothing about it. We let people double park where it says one side of the street, and unless somebody complains to me, nothing gets done about it. We have code people, and I have said 100 times, every single day, a police officer or a code officer should drive every street in this city, because there's not that many of them, and come at different times a day to see the things that bother people when they come home. Because everyone knows that a 6 o'clock code is over. So at 6.01, it's not a problem to commit a code violation. This is nothing new. You've heard me say it enough times that you're tired of hearing it. But one voice in the wind doesn't work anymore.

Can I continue? All right. Just to make us aware, we're code makers, not code enforcers. So if you have a problem with the code, either change it. If you have a problem with the way it's being enforced, address it. That's just for the sign codes. So right now, there's no signs that are being violated. They're all OK. Whether you like them, whether you don't like them, there's no problem with them. If you want something different, Ask the commissioner to put it on the meeting to change the code. That's it. But right now, there's none of them that are illegal. I just want to clarify that.

I beg to differ with that.

Well, that's why we have an attorney.

And that's why I said each sign, you know, sitting up here without context, it's difficult to say absolutely what is legal, what isn't illegal with respect to any sign that's out there.

All right, we have a trunk or tree coming up. I think that's October 29th here at City Hall. Make sure you don't miss that. Starts at 5 p.m. Rich, I'm going to talk about you for a minute. So I saw you guys clapping when Rich was speaking. You know, I don't know if you know him, but Rich was when Arlene was president known as the most hated guy in Margate. And if you go back and watch the videos of him at his planning and zoning meeting, he acts like a little kid who doesn't get his candy. I asked the commission watch the videos. I don't know if you guys did, did you? Did anybody get a chance to watch the videos? The reason why I ask is if you watch the videos, you're going to see a guy representing the city of Margate basically attacking the city attorney and just being whoever the hell he wants to be. This is his platform. This is what he wants to do. They had to change the whole agenda because of this gentleman. So they changed it. There are five people on the board. Each one of us gets to pick a board member. That's how they get there. Two of the board members that I know of don't want you there. They can't remove him. The only way he can be removed is by the commission. I asked the commission last meeting to watch the meeting and watch what he does. I was there at the one meeting. Second meeting, I heard about it. But if this is what you guys want representing the city of Margate, It's not good. I asked you guys to watch the meeting and I'm going to ask that we put it on the agenda for next meeting just to talk about it. We'll show the video. And if you think he should be there, leave him there. But he's not a good representation. I'll leave it at that. Next. Tonight's item seven, A, B and C there have to do with the golf course. B and C. I hope people vote no for the B and C items. Let me tell you something. The golf course, it's technically not coming up specifically on this. Eight years ago, every commissioner up here did not want the developer to develop on the golf course. They fought. It was 13th floor. They fought it. They bailed. They left. Several years later, there was an election. People got nominated, were turned out, can't come back. The talks of the golf course came back, developing on the golf course. How the hell does that happen? Then a developer's agreement comes to us about a year ago about developing on the golf course. I voted no on it, and I think one other commissioner up here voted no on it. But you know what the problem is now, guys? state has put legislation in place that basically says that if a golf course is vacant for one year, it's contaminated and it will do the city justice by building on it. They can build on it. So the developers agreement that was approved by three of the commissioners up here Should never have been. Eight years ago, we should have put the hammer down like we did the 13th floor and say, we're done with 13th floor and we're done with you. That didn't happen. That golf course owner had several people go up to him saying, I'll buy it. I'll make it a golf course. He said no. And the only reason he said no is probably because he felt that there was a commission there that he could sell this to. And you know what he did? And I apologize to every one of you for coming here tonight. because you're basically screwed. There's nothing we can do. We could vote no to these things tonight, which I hope the commission does, just to send a little hint to the developer that we're not going to play with you. Once the developer's agreement was signed, I talked to the city manager and I said, hey, is there anything we can do? Can we possibly get McDivitts? Is that a possibility? We have nothing. We're getting out of it. So the negotiation was they wanted to put apartments in townhomes. The city commission felt like they won the negotiation because now they're only putting townhomes. Now, I don't know what they could put. They could probably put apartments there. And it's sad to say for eight years you guys have been sitting there while this commission should have said, you know what, this is what's going to happen. We're going to do this. We're going to put restrictions into place. But you know what? The state came down and hammered us, tied our hands now. They don't even have to come to us for an approval from what I'm being told. So they can go and develop what they want to develop there, and the city commission will only have certain things to go after. I can tell you right now they're not playing nice with our city. Once this passed by the state, they don't care no more. Look at the respect they had. They don't even show up tonight. I don't even know where they are if they're coming. But it just goes to show you what kind of a developer we're getting into with. Not that we want to, but we have to. So I hope that the commission votes no on these items tonight just to send a precedence that you know what? We're not happy what you're doing. They won't even negotiate. They won't give us nothing from what I heard. So that's my take on the golf course. So I hope you guys really look at these items tonight and do what's right. Youth sports is starting up in Margate. Congratulations to all the kids that will be out there. May, if you don't mind, I'd like to pull item five 5B. Just to answer a couple questions on it. Yeah. And guys, I'm going to tell you right now, the flock cameras, it's a big item. It's a big item. It's going to go back and forth. You're going to hear this. You're going to hear that. But SunPass is the same exact thing as a flock camera. You're going to see what's going to happen with that. I'm sure things are going to happen after the election where flock cameras are going to be a little bit different. Watch. One thing to keep an eye out on is the AI data centers, whatever you want to call them. They're trying to get into a lot of cities. There's a lot of red tape that is going to have to be cut after the election. Watch how easy it's going to be to try to get these data centers into the city. You know, they pull a strain on the grid and they cause a lot of serious problems in the city. So just want this commission to be aware that we should probably put some rules in play. If data, data, whatever you want to call them, centers come in, they're going to have to pay a fee. some sort of an impact fee, a park fee, but just right now start putting items together because once the state gets ahold of it and legislation and money starts going around to legislators, watch how quick these things are going to be developed in our city. You might see even the golf course become a data center. You don't know. So just be careful and we need to be proactive and start setting some rules in place prior. Did I say happy birthday to my daughter? Happy birthday to my daughter, Sophia and Arlene. She got her permit today. Oh my gosh. All right. What else do I got? I don't really have anything else, guys. Thank you for coming here tonight. I hope that things go well tonight, but I'm gonna tell you right now with this developer and the new laws that passed in Tallahassee, our hands are kind of tied, but maybe we could pull one out here and something will happen. That's it, guys. Thank you.

Vice Mayor.

Antonia, you and I Joanne, Arlene have been telling the residents of the city for over a year what was coming down the pike. We told, we talked and talked about having to make deals with people because we knew what the governor's intentions was. We knew that he was taking our rights away from us as a city to decide what we want. We talked about it over and over and over. And it didn't happen. And now the deals that we did make want to put a weight on it the law changed and now they're going to do it how they want we've talked about this forever but over a year and a half probably about this we are we're on committees we're in committees eight years i'm sorry i apologize do you have any more clown act to do no okay okay yeah um We talked about this, and we talked about this, and we talked about it. We weren't believed, and it happened. And that's all I'm going to say about that. But I wanted to say what I usually say. It's hurricane season. Please prepare yourself just in case a hurricane does come. Make sure you buy some extra food every week so that if a storm does come, you don't run to a store and find empty shelves. As we would say in scouting, Proper prior planning prevents a pitifully poor performance, so please prepare for a storm now. Mayor, it's all yours.

Good evening, everyone. couple of things just to touch on the flock you know we can't talk about things not in the public so this is the first time we're all up here talking about it when I was made aware of the the f-dot letter I spoke with the city manager naturally you know we're going to comply with that I believe as Commissioner Schwartz said there are six on that right away I see value in them, I see the concerns. Do I think that they're gonna go away? No. I think AI and data centers and all these things, they're gonna find a way into our lives. What we need to do now is make sure that our city and our police department and whoever has access, that there's proper policies in place. And also I think that, and it's not just Flock, it's any automated license plate reader, that there's mechanisms in place so that they aren't abused. But make no mistake, they are also a valuable tool. And it's funny, we had someone come up here and speak tonight about the flock, cameras, and yet they are all about the First Amendment. And I support the First Amendment, and I know there's First Amendment auditors that he wishes he was. And they go around cities and they film things And they want to go upstairs and film employees and make them feel uncomfortable. And that's their First Amendment right. And they're allowed to do that. And I'm not going to stop them. But you're in a public place. So it's OK for you to record everything. But it's not OK for something to record you in a public place. So you can't pick and choose when you want to apply the Constitution. So just keep that in mind. So going back to the order. You know, obviously we're going to follow that order. I've also suggested to the city manager that the ones that we take out, we don't put them somewhere else and we just pause on adding any new. I'm not going to say to pull them, the ones that we have existing that are in compliance because they are a tool. But I think that we should definitely pause on expanding them until this gets ironed out. I'm sure the upcoming legislature is going to address these. And then in the meantime, I think that if we haven't already that we work on appropriate policies for anyone that has access to them. As far as Aztec, I have heard those concerns. I have asked the city manager to look into it. He has provided a list of some of the units that had open COs. I believe those are being looked into. were a number of them that were still in the process but i'm going to be following up with city manager to see how those are coming along i know in years past i have worked with marty care and his fraud department and they have audited that neighborhood in the past and and i'll continue to stay on on top of it i also know the city um had some litigation against them a few years ago and we won they owed us a bunch of money for not not adhering to a certain agreement So for those of you that are concerned about Aztec, we have taken steps, and I will continue to take steps to look into it. You know, it's funny, as the year gets on, the hostility and the nastiness is just going to get worse and worse. There's a lot of mistruths out there, so just be careful about where you get all your sources from. I know there was some fake blogger that was in here last meeting with the sloths, and they either used AI or kept the camera on me until I blinked. but they tried to say I fell asleep during a commission meeting. Anyone knows me knows I can't sit still. So the fact that I fell asleep at a commission meeting is just laughable, but it's also disgusting that people are willing to twist the truth to win so bad or try to win so bad that they have to follow you with a camera until your eyes blink and then accuse you of sleeping. It's just absolutely ridiculous. As far as the cost of living, staff knows I'm one of the biggest supporters of staff. hear talking from the room I'm gonna ask you one last time to please stop I voted no because the Commission raises were tied into that and I voted no on it the year before that as well so yes did I vote no on it I did vote no on it but it's because I didn't believe the Commission should get a 4% increase not here to debate it not here it's done it's done but I wasn't just voting no or staff raises okay so make sure The people that come up here and speak on that get all of the facts straight The last thing is for the MPO. So I've sat on the MPO board for probably four or five years now I know Commissioner Simone sat on that previously It's an interesting board quite honestly, it's rubber-stamped And it seems like they only focus on the big cities. We've seen very minimal from the MPO over the years and A couple things that they did propose was a bridge to basically bypass Margate on Atlantic. And then the other one was to, they called it the loop, but it was really to finish projects in Coral Springs. But with that being said, I think that with all boards, that the person that's chairing it or representing it shouldn't be on there for eternity. So I'm going to put on the agenda for the next meeting to appoint the new person to serve on the MPO board. And then maybe they can City Council Chambers. City Council Chambers. City Council Chambers. City Council Chambers. City Council Chambers. City Council Chambers.

Yes, for the record, because you mentioned it and I just never remember to bring up the things that I do. The city, the city manager, the assistant city manager and I two weeks ago drove through Aztec. We took a look at the houses. We looked at the permits. We looked at the people paying $14,000 in taxes, which will not be affected by Amendment 3 because they are not homesteaded. They live here only six months a year. So that is being addressed. I heard what Mr. Zucchini said about Aztec, and we've been saying that for years. So that absolutely is being looked into, and quite frankly, it is quite an amazing-looking community that has been built there. For people who only stay six months out of the year, there are million-dollar homes there, but they are being taxed on them because we looked up every address as we went by. And I know Mr. Nixon is quite aware of all of that and has been going after them constantly. So the open COs and all of that are definitely being addressed. Because if nothing else, they should pay more than their fair share for sitting there, considering they were never supposed to build actual homes on those pads. So I just wanted to give you an update.

Commissioner Simone.

Thank you just to clarify the record that when the 4% for the employees came up I asked for consensus to not have the commissioners be a part of that and there was not one second for that.

City attorney.

David Tillis, City Attorney. I have nothing other than it's great to be here, and it's always great to be in the City of Margate. Thank you very much.

City Manager's Report.

Good evening. Nothing further to add.

Thanks.

City Clerk, anything? Nothing at this time.

Okay. Consent Agenda. I know that, I believe you said, was it Item 5B? So do we do that first, or do we do the consent first?

We do a motion to approve 5A, C, and D.

Sure, so we'll do that first. Is there a motion on the consent agenda excluding item 5? So moved. We have a motion. Do we have a second? Yeah, his item is pulled, but we're going to do the other items on the consent now. Okay, so I have a second by Casiano.

Oh, absolutely, yeah, I'm doing a second.

Okay, please call the roll.

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

Yes.

Vice Mayor Casciano? Yes. Mayor Serrio?

Yes. Okay, 5B.

So, item 5B is a resolution of the City of Margate, Florida, approving an agreement between Broward County and the City of Margate for funding and administration of $114,421 in home program funds for homebuyer purchase assistance for fiscal year 2025-26, providing for an effective date. This resolution is before you for your consideration this evening.

What is the wish of the commission? Yes. So moved.

Second. Commissioner Rosano.

Yes. I just want to let everybody know that this is a program where we receive federal funds, and basically we can allocate it the way we want. Years ago, it used to be a waiting list where there was, I think, hundreds of people on there, and the city got overwhelmed and couldn't run it, so we give it to the county now. The county now runs it. We pay them an admin fee, I think, what, 20%, Arlene, I think it is, or something like that. Um, but I just want to ask that this program it's used for, um, up to, I think $40,000 for home purchases.

Yes.

This one's 50,000, 50,000. And then you can also do home improvements, home improvements inside the house and stuff like that.

But the question I wanted to ask, this one is specific to purchase assistance, purchase assistance.

Okay. The question I want to ask is I know that there's a list of people and When this comes out, it's only a handful of people that could select it. And then I think the list carries over to the next year. Am I correct in that or no?

So the way it's processed is it's on a first come, first qualified, first serve basis. So you apply, you have to meet all the qualifications, you have to have everything kind of line up, a house ready to buy, closing documents, your classes taken, and all of that.

The reason why I ask is years ago, there used to be a list, like I said, and the city would waste time because they would have to weed out the list because there were people that weren't even in margaret anymore and the list i said was it was long it was almost 100 people and the city would have to go through that so would it be a better thought that if we cleared the list every year and we started with a fresh list i mean because you think about if it's for first time purchase for forty thousand fifty thousand dollars to perhaps somebody on a waiting list for

years i mean if somebody wants to buy a home they should be able to buy that home right then and there i would think so maybe something the board should look at and putting a clear out the list every year and we started fresh i thought when we handed it to the county they got rid of probably 80 of those people for exactly that reason but my question would be are aren't we allowed to hold the funds for them for one year or it has to be or is that only the home improvement one

Again, it is a first come, first qualified.

I know, but once someone qualifies, is there a time period that you'll hold the money so that they can go through whatever they have to go through?

I don't know off the top of my head. I believe we've got the county's grant administrator on Zoom if you want to.

I'd love it. I'm sure he'd like an answer too, so that we know if people who have to take longer to do it, but got qualified, have a certain amount of time by which to do it, because I know the home improvement one, they give a year to actually get it done. So I'm sure that the commissioner would be curious to know how long we give these people to actually get all of it.

I don't want to muddy anything up here. I just want to make sure that it's a streamlined process that we have rather than people saying, you know what, I'm still on the list from four years ago. I already purchased a house and, I want to make sure it's a successful thing we're doing.

Hi, Yvette. Can you hear us okay?

Yes, I can. Hi.

How are you doing?

I'm okay. Sorry about my voice. I'm a little under the weather.

That's okay. Did we hear Commissioner Lozano's question?

Yes, and there is no waiting list per se because it is based on a first qualified serve. However, when they come to the county, the requirements are that they have a property already under contract, that they have first lender approval and an offer, you know, depending upon our grants on the table. So we get them in and out quickly. So when they come, we serve them. They're not waiting forever anymore. You know, like the list used to be handled differently. They're not waiting anymore forever.

Then if they already have approval. Right.

They have first mortgage approval. They have identified a property. They have gone through the courses for first-time homebuyers courses. And they have also already put an offer in dependent upon the funding. So all those things in place gets them in and closed very quickly.

But how can you get mortgage approval first? depending upon someone eventually giving you the money that you can't apply for until the grant program is opened?

The first mortgage is based on what you can afford. We fill in the gap, obviously. So the property, the first mortgage isn't going to give you more or less. What you do is this is what I qualify for. I found this property. This is the gap I need. So the first mortgage is still going to be the first mortgage. They're not going to qualify you based on us. They're going to qualify you based on what you can afford. Right. And that's when we come in. Remember, these funds are supposed to be a gap. You're not supposed to say, oh, I qualify for 250. I'm getting 50. Let me go look for something that's 300,000. You're supposed to look for something that more or less you qualify for. And then we assist with the rest, you know, down payment that you can't afford. Maybe you can only afford 3%, 4% and closing costs, which is usually where the heavy burden comes in.

How you doing? My question, I guess, is, so is there ever a point in time where people will call up and you say the program is closed? It's empty for this year?

Yes. Yes. When we run out of funds, we do say that the waiting list is closed. We won't let them sit there forever. If we have available funds from the county, which I think he'll have some reports on, there's been a few times where the county has chipped in, you know, to complete a purchase or a sale. And when the county has other programs, we also, because you're part of the urban county, we also will assist constituents from your city.

Okay, so now as far as the city of Marigate, if I was to tell somebody to call, and if you say that they ran out of money, if they call when we approve this, because we're obviously approving the budget, so would tomorrow be the best day to call? You know what I'm saying?

Yeah. The effective date is October 1. That's when the HUD, the fiscal year starts. So they would call after October 1.

And is there a waiting list? Like right now, is there a list? And then October 1, it gets cleared out or no?

No, no, there's no waiting list. Like I said, because the program runs the way it runs when we're out of money, we're out, but there's nobody sitting there waiting because, you know, chances are nobody's going to sign a contract and keep extending it and extending it and extending it for you or hold a household house for you.

Okay, so it's safe to say that if somebody wants to buy a house in market, I could tell them apply for the grant and it should be available.

It should be available after October 1, which is the federal fiscal year when it starts. And in addition to that, our website will also notify and tell the clients who has money and if it's open or closed because we're out of funds. So the website is kept updated as well.

Okay. All right. Thank you.

Thank you, Yvette.

You're welcome.

OK. Any other comments from the commission? City attorney said it's up to me, but I'll let the public speak. If the public has any comment on this? OK. Seeing none, public comment closed. Please call the roll.

Mr. Schwartz, yes. Mr. Simone, yes. Mr. Rosano, yes. Vice Mayor Caggiano, yes. Mayor Serio, yes.

Okay, six, item six, resolutions.

This is a resolution of the City of Margate, Florida, approving standard grant agreement LO496 with the State of Florida Department of Environmental Protection for the City of Margate Stormwater Infrastructure Assessment and Rehabilitation Public Works Department project. in the amount of $350,000, providing for an effective date. This resolution is before you for your consideration this evening.

What is the wish of the Commission? So moved.

Second.

Any members of the public? Please call the roll.

Yes. Commissioner Simone? Yes. Commissioner Rosano? Yes. Vice Mayor Caggiano? Yes. Mayor Serrio?

Yes. Item 6B.

is a resolution of the city of margate florida proving the addition of juneteenth day as a recognized holiday for all non bargained for personnel and authorizing city manager to negotiate with the bargain for units providing for authority providing for an effective date this resolution is before you for your consideration this evening motion to approve

Second, I'm excited this is on the agenda. This is something that I've been talking about for a few years now. I know when the holiday was first initiated several years ago, four or five years ago, it was a new federal holiday. There were some transition periods, but it becomes a point where it's time. And so I've been asking for that. It's on here tonight, and I'm looking forward to passing this. Commissioner Rosano.

Yeah, this is Juneteenth, right? Correct, yep. All right. I'm just going to give you a little bit of my take on it. So I come from the private sector, okay? I work almost every day, Saturdays, Sundays. And in my field, I never heard anybody say, well, Tommy, I can't make it tomorrow. It's Juneteenth. And I get that, and I respect that. Government is totally different. It's a national holiday.

Am I correct in saying that?

Yes, it is a federal holiday.

Okay, it's a federal holiday. But, hey, let me ask you, does this mean the day is off? Because what if there are some people? Is it an off paid holiday?

It would be a paid holiday, yes. Paid holiday, city hall, administrative offices are closed. We do have shift workers, police, fire.

The only reason I asked that, because I didn't know if maybe there would be a skeleton crew that wanted to wear it. I didn't know it. that wanted to work and they would get paid. So we're closing the whole city.

No, no, no, no. The people who have to work water department, they have to work, they have to get paid time and a half because it's, you can't let nothing. They're working.

Yeah. So the people that are working, they're going to get time and a half.

It all depends on how their collective bargaining agreements are scheduled.

Shift workers.

Some of them get a, an extra floating holiday. that they can use at a later date. I don't mind that.

I have no problem with that. I just want to make sure that the employees are happy. And I understand it's a national holiday, but in the private sector, if I talk to one of my subcontractors and said something, they're probably going to be at work that day. But government's different, and I respect everybody's day off. Enjoy it, and congratulations. I hope this passes.

I know, too, just for the record, this is just for the non-bargaining employees. I want it for all employees. But by law, it must be bargained for. So this is going to direct the city manager to go back to the unions to bargain for it. I imagine that's going to pass with flying colors. But if people are wondering why it's just for non-bargaining, it's because we have to follow the law. Any members of the public?

I'm sure I don't have to give my address.

No, but we didn't catch your name. So please speak into the mic. Thank you.

Mindy W. Lee. So when I brought this up at the last meeting and called out the commission and pointed out how we were the only city out of all these cities that didn't put on an event, I wasn't necessarily asking for it to be a recognized national holiday in closing the city. I'm glad that you are. But I was looking more to bringing an event into Margate so that we didn't have to travel to any other city in order to have the event. So I am glad that it is on the agenda tonight. It's unfortunate that it took me coming up here last month to bring this out to have you guys put it on the agenda but I just want to say something about how that comment went from Mayor Arcerio. When somebody comes up to the podium like I did and I address the dais, which I do, and I point to you, meaning you're the mayor, it doesn't mean that you're personally responsible for things that happen in the city. Everybody understands that it's a three-person decision. However, you were so quick, which I was shocked, that you turned to your fellow commissioners and basically put the blame 100% on all of them. Like you literally turned to them and said, it's their fault. They're the ones that didn't want it. They are the ones. I wanted it. I wanted it. You threw them under the bus. Now, as a leader, and you are the leader, they appointed you as mayor. You're in control of the dais up there. So when somebody comes to the podium and addresses it to you, it doesn't mean that you have to take a personal attack or you should be turning to your commissioners to throw them under the bus. A good leader, a good mayor doesn't do that. They take ownership and say, you know what? We haven't brought it before this commission. thank you for raising the concerns we are going to address it and move on but the fact that you immediately pointed to them and said it's their fault blame them that's not what a good mayor does in the city so I'm hoping in the future that when people come up to this podium and they address things to you as our mayor and because you control the dais that you as a mayor take ownership of that and don't be so quick to point the blame to somebody else thank you

Nina Culver. And yes, I too am grateful that this has finally come to the place that it's at and it's being recognized as a city because yes, it is a federal holiday. And, you know, I wasn't going to say anything because you all know how I feel like about it. You guys have known for years. We spoke about this four years ago. We spoke about this five years ago. I wrote a blog about it. It's not a new subject. The fact that somebody uses this podium to campaign to go against specific opponents and only them has become ridiculous. When I ran against you, never went after you. Ran against it, never went after him up here. It is not the place for it, and it's got to stop. Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor and Commissioners. Percy Johnson, 7956 Exeter Boulevard, Tamarack, Florida. I'm thankful that the Commission and Mayor and Vice Mayor and Commissioners are bringing this forward. This is a very diverse city. This is one of the fastest growing cities in Northwest Broward. I'm very glad that you're bringing this forward. After all, this is a national holiday signed by President Biden. And I just want to say again to you, again, this will again be looked upon as something that the city of Margate did on the behalf of our country. Thank you very much.

Hi, good evening. That's a good call out there. Cory Sher, president of Broward Black Caucus, as well as past president of Georgetown University Alumni Club of Fort Lauderdale, and indeed a son of Broward. I'm going all the way back to Leo Hendo from Margate so I go way back. I'm old, grandfather now. But listen, I want to compliment you all. You know, Commissioner Arlene Schwartz, Joanne Simone, I've known you for a long time. Tommy, I've gotten to see you operate, see the way that you wear it on your sleeve and the things that you do. You know, Vice Mayor Caggiano and Mayor Arcerio, I just wanted to let you know that what we know, at least off the internet, is Juneteenth officially, Juneteenth National Independence Day, is a federal holiday in the United States. It is celebrated annually on June 19th, and thus that's where the name is a combination of June and June 19th to reference back to June 19th, 1865, the day when Major General Gordon Granger ordered the final enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Galveston, Texas at the end of the American Civil War. Indeed, some people didn't even know that they were free or that their slaves, that some of them who had already freed them, they were indeed free. And what we know as a collective community is this. The motto of Margate Florida is together we make it great. I think that's a great motto. You all tend to live up to that regardless of some disagreements here and there. And this move by Margate Florida to celebrate Juneteenth helps to bring our stories together and make us greater together. The Broward Chronicles, which I brought here just to highlight, which is written by Emmanuel George of the Old Diller Museum. And I would encourage you to get a copy. Again, it says the Broward Chronicles. It doesn't say the Black Broward Chronicles. But yes, it highlights a lot of black Americans as well as white Americans and others as well. And that's what really makes us, you know, this is a story. It's a Broward story. It's an all-American story. Juneteenth is an American story as well. It's also a Broward story and a Margate story. So I thank you for the commission for considering this item. In particular, I'd like to commend Mayor Antonio Arcero and my family friend, Vice Mayor Anthony Caggiano, for consistently pushing us forward. But we hear the passion and the understanding that all of you have represented for all members of Margate. We know you care deeply for all members. So please unanimously pass Resolution 2026-234. Thank you.

I'm Jonathan Krawczyk, market resident. I'm glad to see that this is finally coming to fruition. Two years after I brought this topic up on Juneteenth 2024 at a city commission meeting, there was a city commission meeting held on Juneteenth in 2024. I was shocked to find out that the city was open when I had the day off myself and I called the city clerk's office and was surprised that they picked up. So I'm glad to see it come to fruition. I hope it passes and just know that even though This holiday, federal holiday, might not have importance to some people. It does have importance to a lot of people. That's why we should recognize it. Thank you.

Rich Zucchini, again. Yes, I'm fully in support of this. I hope we get an anonymous vote, all five. to go back into memory when I served on the Planning and Zoning Board as chairman. Actually, Commissioner Rosano complimented me and said that I was brilliant in my performance at the Planning and Zoning, and it's on video. But you know what? This is what happens when you disagree with Tommy Rosano.

Anybody else?

Before we vote on it, I just wanted to make a comment, not on the public comments. Thank you for all of you that did speak. Despite what someone said, we've been bringing this up. I know I personally bring this up for several years now. I'm mayor. I get to set the agenda. I put it on the agenda. I wasn't mayor in 2024. I've also advocated to have a multicultural board, which we have. And I advocated for the International Day Festival. So my record has a proven record over years of time. And I think some of the speakers tonight spoke of that. would like to see and i know this isn't part of this item but just for consensus that we do look into some sort of festivity or celebration for juneteenth um i know that we do have to be careful with some of the laws passed by the state legislature for DEI, but I do know that cities do have celebrations. I'm not asking for answers tonight because it's slightly off topic here, but I would like you to come back with suggestions, whether we're allowed to do our own separate talk to other cities, how they do that, or as a suggestion, maybe during the month of June, all of our festivals that we host at our covered sports field, like Sounds of Sundown or what have you, are maybe geared towards Juneteenth, have appropriate bands and vendors and those sorts of things. I don't know if that's a way to get around some of the handcuffs that Tallahassee puts on us, but I just wanted to bring that out on the record as well. Any other comments on this item? Commissioner Schwartz, go ahead.

Just as a reminder, several years ago for Martin Luther King's birthday, several of us went over to the senior center and planted a garden. That's something that wouldn't be a DEI problem. It's also something where you would not have to necessarily bring city staff in because if you're going to do something on the covered sports field, you're going to have a stage, which means you're going to have people from the city working. So maybe something smaller, going to the park, going to... an organization, whichever one that might be, doing something that are religious, whether it's a church or, you know, something that just needs to be done that commemorates service, as opposed to necessarily spending money to do a big deal that someone will forget five minutes later, something that actually will last, just as a suggestion. Okay.

All right.

I'm just going to say a long time in coming. Yep. A long time in coming. Let's call the roll.

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

The time has come, yes.

Mayor Osorio?

Yes. Ordinances, second reading, 7A.

Item 7A is an ordinance of the City of Margate, Florida, amending City of Margate Code of Ordinances, Chapter 34, Stormwater Management Utility by creating new Article 1 entitled, In General, for existing sections 34-1 through 34-7, and adding a new Article 2 entitled Elicit Discharges and Connections, providing for definitions, providing for prohibitions, inspection and monitoring authority, and enforcement and penalties related to the municipal separate storm sewer system, MS4, providing for conflicts, providing for severability, providing for codification, providing for an effective date. This ordinance before you for second reading and a public hearing has been scheduled at this time.

What is the wish of the Commission? So moved to approve. Second. Okay. Any comment? Public? Call the roll.

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

Yes.

Vice Mayor Caggiano? Yes. Mayor Serrio?

Yes. And I know that the next two items might take a while. So we're going to do a, we're going to go for a 10 minute recess. We'll do a 10 minute recess. So those that were here for presentations, I would have you, if you want to go, that's fine. And then we'll start back up at 8.05. If we can all please take our seats. I don't know. Commissioner Rosano if you can hear us, we're getting ready to start. I think Officer Schwartz is, yeah. I would normally start, but I believe the city attorney has to ask each of us a question, so we really can't move forward. I got a little spiel. And he's got a spiel, yep.

Do you want me to start?

Wait.

Probably wait.

Okay.

Okay, go ahead, city attorney.

Thank You mr. Mayor so you have on your agenda you have item 7a and 7b the first item is the or sorry 7b and 7c right the first item is the land use plan amendment for the Carolina redevelopment and 7c is the rezoning ordinance what I'd like to do is since it's a quasi judicial matter you just consider the land use plan amendment and the rezoning together just have one presentation And then I'll read in the land use plan amendment ordinance. And then you'll have all your testimony and evidence presented. You'll vote on that. And then we'll do the rezoning right after that. OK? All right.

So this is about judging something on the evidence and not on opinion.

Yeah, I'm going to read my little spiel here. for the benefit of the members of the public and the commission. Once again, David Tulsa, city attorney. This is a quasi-judicial hearing. The hearing will be conducted by the city commission, which will hear testimony from the applicant and then the city and consider the applicant's analysis and presentation and then the city's witnesses and presentation. The applicant will be able to testify and call any witnesses. And then after the applicant and city staff have testified, the hearing will be open to members of the public to speak in support or against the application. The city commission may set reasonable time limits if they want for members of the public to speak at this time. We will swear in all persons who wishing to speak on this matter. If you're even thinking that there's a possibility that you're going to speak on this matter, I would appreciate it. As with the commission, it moves a lot smoothly. If you would stand, raise your right hand to be sworn in at this time. And I would also ask that when you come up to the podium, you state whether or not you've been sworn in so we know. Do you swear or affirm that the testimony you give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the true self you got? All right, thank you. At the appropriate time, each person who approaches the podium to speak should state their name and address for the record. Any party, whether it's city staff, the applicant, or any individual may be cross-examined. The material in the City Commission's agenda package for both of these items will be considered as part of the record. After the public speaks, the applicant and the city staff will present rebuttal testimony and evidence. The hearing will then be closed and the matter will be decided by the City Commission. If any commissioner is at any ex parte contacts that are not part of the record, there should be a verbal disclosure of such contacts on the record. Ex parte communication shall include any discussions in person, email, or social media such as Facebook with interested parties, including the petitioner, applicants, and city staff. So at this point in time, I'll go down the row of city commissioners for any disclosures. Commissioner Schwartz, any disclosures?

I have nothing to disclose.

Commissioner Simone, any disclosures?

In the past, I've spoken with Mr. Scott and city staff, but not for what's on the agenda specifically for tonight. I haven't spoken to anybody.

You're asking about specifically for tonight, correct? Correct.

Okay. Commissioner Rosano, any disclosures? Everybody, I'm not sure. I don't know. Vice Mayor Caggiano.

I'm going to say if it's about this particular item, I'm going to say I don't know.

And Mayor Arcerio.

I mean, this item is, in general, has been around for quite some time. Correct. So to play it safe, I'm going to say that I've talked to all stakeholders, whether that's members of the community, HOA presidents, the attorney, the developer themselves, and any other person that's had concerns or suggestions or comments.

Thank you. Now, at this time, I just also have to ask each of the commissioners if you can be fair and impartial and make your decision based on the testimony and evidence presented before you this evening. Commissioner Schwartz.

Yes.

Commissioner Simone. Yes. Commissioner Rosano. Yes. Vice Mayor Caggiano.

Yes.

And Mayor Arcero.

Yes.

And finally, let me direct the commission individually and as a whole that your decision at the conclusion of the hearing must be based on competent, substantial evidence related to the city's code and not generalized support or opposition that is not fact-based. So this time I'll turn it back to the mayor for presentations, and I believe the applicant will make the presentation first.

Yeah, just one moment for the applicant. Commissioner Rosano, you're recognized.

I just want to ask the city attorney something. David, I know this isn't the developer's agreement we're discussing, but is there something in the developer's agreement that we want to have added in there? When would be the appropriate time to ask that? So the developer's agreement was withdrawn.

We have had discussions with the applicant regarding the draft declaration of restrictive covenants, which is included in your agenda package. And you can certainly ask the applicant at any time with respect to any issue or any matter related to the development and have that conversation with them on the record.

Okay. Now, just to clarify, even if this does get voted down, they can still move ahead with the project, correct? Correct.

Under the Florida Infill Redevelopment Act, properties that are qualifying properties in Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach counties are entitled to proceed for redevelopment of golf courses that are contaminated, you know, subject to certain restrictions under our land development code. But generally, the answer is yes.

Okay. The reason why I'm saying that is because we could save a lot of time and money here if we just sit there and try to negotiate. I mean, obviously, they're going to do what they want to do. This is a horse and pony show, to be honest with you. So I'm ready to negotiate if we can. Because regardless of what these two items, the outcome of them, they could still move ahead without our approval.

What I would ask is that you allow the applicant to make their presentation. I mean, you can certainly ask questions of the applicant as they're making their presentation to address matters that you have concern about related to this development.

Since my light is still on, Matt, is there any negotiation wiggle room here? Basically, what I'm going to ask for is that we try for your client to give us the McDivitt's building and the property? That's all I'm asking for.

We're in the waiting room. You said you're voting against the project no matter what.

What's that?

You said you're voting against this no matter what.

Well, I'm voting on substantial evidence, Matt. I'm negotiating with someone. Let me tell you something. This project is definitely going to cause a lot of traffic, which I don't want. So there's my evidence right there. Have I been against the project? It's no secret, Matt. So what I'm doing here is trying to do a last-ditch effort to try to work together with you guys. And if you guys say, you know what? We'll give you the building. We'll give it to you. Let's move on. Let's be merry. I might be able to swallow it. These residents might be able to swallow it. But just to come in here and do this horse and pony show where we know it doesn't matter what's going to happen. They can do what they want. Yeah, I think it would be fair, Matt. That's all I'm trying to do. I'm candid.

Totally agree. And I respect that. And I am very aware of your feelings on the project. I think it would be helpful if we run through the presentation, though, so you understand the positioning. This isn't a horse and pony show. It's actually something more important than that. There are dynamics in play here with our application and this new law that I think would really benefit the people that have decided to come, that they understand that and that we get that on the record.

OK, my last question. This act, it does give the ability for the owners to purchase property behind their property, correct?

No.

No? No. It doesn't give them the ability to work with the developer to purchase property?

No, it only applies. Listen, the law shocked me as much as you guys. The way the law is written is that option only applies if the parcel is surrounded by single-family homes on all sides.

And so, if I could finish.

Go ahead. As everyone knows, Carolina is surrounded by a mix of housing types, condos, townhomes, single-family homes, apartments. And so that part of the act doesn't apply here. There is not a right of first refusal that we are obligated to provide to the community.

Okay. Would your – maybe I'll ask it later, but I'll ask it now. Would your developer be able to work with the residents out there to purchase property so there's a buffer behind their house?

I can't comment on that. That's a very complicated question. Okay. I don't even know if there's zero lot homes, there's lakes. That's too complicated for me to say on the fly right now whether we would work with people to sell them pieces of the property. But I will tell you that the Florida Inflow Redevelopment Act does have buffer requirements, and we also are intending fully to provide substantial buffers. Your code requires buffers anyway. So with that being said, I think it's better if I go through my presentation. I know, Ms. Commissioner Rosano, how you feel about it and a lot of your thoughts, but I want to go through how we got here. So just to state it again, my name is Matthew Scott, zoning attorney at Greensboro-Martyr with an address of 200 East Broward Boulevard, here on behalf of the applicant, Rosemarie. So Lakes of Carolina is what we've called the project. And so just going back to the timeline, you see in green all the steps we've gone through. So we've gotten approval from every other government entity that we are required to go to for a land use plan amendment and a rezoning. Excuse me, just a land use plan amendment. The city only weighs in on the rezoning piece. And so we had our first hearing at the city that was approved, and then we went to the county and the state. It was approved there as well. And so we're back tonight for this last step of the land use and rezoning process, which is the second reading. I've spoken to the neighbors a lot. I've seen pretty much everything that Mr. Copelman has had to say about his concerns about the environmental components. And so I wanted to just clarify that piece because putting myself in the shoes of the residents, that would concern me too. In addition to it being upsetting, of course, that you lived on a golf course, it's no longer going to be there. I can respect that being a bitter pill to swallow. I get the environmental concerns. And so what we have on the screen is an email from the county the head of the county that handles environmental permitting, where he explains that the environmental permitting process simply does not happen during the land use amendment process. The reason for this is the land use amendment process, if this is approved tonight, we will be entitled to build nothing. We will not be permitted to move any dirt whatsoever. We still have to go through a site planning process with your city to get that approved. We also have to go through an environmental perming process where we have to prove that we will safely deal with any contamination on the property. So the email that you see on the screen, because I respect Mr. Kopelman's concerns, he's worked really hard on this, there's an order of operations confusion. It's just not how the process works. Golf courses or contaminated sites are not remediated prior to development. They don't sit there and someone spends millions of dollars remediating them if nothing is approved to be built there. And so I wanted to get out in front of that because from my perspective with the Florida Infill Redevelopment Act, the biggest concern from the community I think is environmental concerns. And so we are absolutely gonna do that. We're not hiding from that. There's no cloak and dagger element to this. It's just that process happens later in the overall permitting timeline. And so then I wanna explain this Florida Infill Redevelopment Act that Commissioner Rosano mentioned during his public comments. Earlier this year, so we were here a year ago on a landing spend amount or rezoning development agreement asking the city to approve these changes to land that is not permitted for development other than a golf course. Subsequent to that, because the housing crisis in Florida has only gotten worse, because we just can't build enough homes to accommodate all the people, because young people can't afford anywhere to live, the legislature decided to pass a law called the Florida Infraredevelopment Act. And what it allows is that any contaminated property over five acres, which pretty much all golf courses are in Broward, Palm Beach, and Dade, they are permitted as of right for residential development at the average density of all of the surrounding properties. So the governor signed this law. This was a big surprise to us as well because what it does, being very direct with everyone, is it takes away the city's right to dictate whether there can be development on golf courses. We now have an as of right option that would allow us to develop a much higher density than anything we had discussed. So we get this, say oh my gosh, should we just withdraw our applications and just do this? And my client spent a lot of time, I was there as well, meeting with A few of you that are here, candidly, I'm surprised more people weren't here, but I think it's a testament to how hard we've worked on spending time with you all. And we made commitments to you that we wouldn't build apartments. That was in my, if I'm being fair, that was the biggest concern. You didn't want apartments, you didn't want too much commercial, and we had made a commitment to do town homes. And so my client who is local to this area, is not an out of town developer said, The lady here said she looked him up and he had a great reputation.

My client said, well, that's important.

It's already a raw deal. If we're being fair, right, they live on a golf course. This stinks that it didn't work out. But because we're here, we wanted to honor that commitment. So in light of the Florida Infraredevelopment Act, we decided to withdraw the development agreement, which had us committing to extraordinary things, things that were above and beyond a typical development process. But we offered up a restrictive covenant that still limits us to townhomes and single-family homes and a small amount of commercial only. So I'll get into that in a moment. But that's why we're here. This isn't a horse and pony show. We felt like all the time we spent with this community, red faces screaming and yelling at each other, phone calls, emails, you're a jerk, what are you guys going to do? We reached a consensus with them to not do apartments, and we wanted to honor that. And so what you see on the screen is all that time we spent, countless hours. We know each other well. We've spent time together. I have a lot of cell phones talking about this. And so my client wanted to honor that. So that's why we're back tonight. Commissioner Rosano is correct. If we're denied, still absolutely have the right to develop all kinds of housing out there. So a no vote does not kill this project. In fact, it increases the amount of jeopardy for the community about what's going to be developed there. And so here again is just the letters we got from the stakeholders, the Carolina Maintenance Association and the Fairway Estates, voicing their support if we agreed to not do apartments. You saw this before, but I just wanted to show this again, that we did work with them. I'm hopeful a few will get up and say they want you to approve what we did. I'd be shocked if they say otherwise based on our latest meetings. And so then here is just as a reminder, here are the commitments we made. So this is the overall POD plan. It shows 24,000 approximately square feet of commercial, drastically reduced. We did that largely to reduce the traffic impact, because that was a big concern. And also because the community said they really didn't want commercial there. And so after meeting with your staff, meeting with the county on this, there's an option on Pot A to do commercial or a small number of residential units, like a few single family homes or townhomes. And then overall for the project, we would have no more than 540 units total. which were going to be now a mix of townhomes and single-family homes. I heard from some of the commissioners they wanted single-family homes. I heard from some of the residents that they would prefer single-family homes. And so what we're working on for Pod C, the middle area of the screen, we're proposing planning to do single-family homes. And then, consistent with our commitment, which we would not have to do under the Florida Infraredevelopment Act, is that we have 65 acres of open space. So that entire bottom half and the middle part on the right there would remain lakes and walking trails. And so again, just to reiterate, we believe there are substantial community benefits for you voting for this tonight. It removes uncertainty for this community. It locks us into a process where we aren't going to build any more than what we've committed to. We have to improve the infrastructure as required by the city code, no matter what. And then the area gets these amenities. So right now, the golf course is private property. Here's coyotes on it. Who would want to walk on it? Everyone complains about how it's not taken care of. In its place, they would be getting usable amenities. public parks, walking trails that would be maintained by the developer or future owners of the homes that are built. And so here's the restrictive covenant. Here is why you should vote for this tonight. This restrictive covenant... If the project, the land use plan amendment and the rezoning are approved tonight, this would be required to be recorded in the public records against the land prior to the land use plan amendment and the rezoning being certified, being fully done. And so this restrictive covenant commits the property to no more than the units and the type of housing that we've committed to these folks that are here. It also commits to the total amount of open space. This is the reason why you should vote in favor of this. Because if you vote no, if you do some sort of, I don't know, principled vote against the project, this goes away and my client would have all rights under the Florida Redevelopment Act. There would not be another city commission meeting where we get to hear what everyone thinks and take their input. It would be an administrative process where we go through the site planning. So from, yes. Sure. This is the reason to vote yes at this point. Is it from the city's perspective, would they have preferred the development agreement? Yes, we understand that. But in light of this law, the dynamics here changed. And so with the cost of construction going up every day, with the challenging economic environment, my client made the business decision to say we don't need to provide extraordinary things if the law would otherwise allow us to do much more than we're doing. And so that was the logic of offering this restrictive covenant, was to give this community the certainty that voting yes tonight, they get this assurance that this is all that would be developed there and no more, in perpetuity. Sure.

Let's just say something happens, the restrictions filed, that stays with the property. So if for some reason the developer decides that they don't want to do the property, I'm just... Don't think they're going to back out, but let's just say they did. Whoever came in would have to follow that same deed restriction, correct?

That's correct, Mayor. The only way to change the deed restriction is if the city commission approves the change. It's the only way. And we're providing one to the county as well. So if the deed restriction is recorded, it locks the land into what you see on the screen in perpetuity unless the city commission decides they want to allow to change it. And so that's a huge level of security. That is back to Commissioner Rosano's sort of questions in the beginning. This is the hugely valuable component of what we're presenting tonight. That if the goal is to protect this community in light of this challenging situation with the golf course being closed and it not coming back, this is the best way among the available options under the current law. And so I want to get ahead of what I'm expecting Mr. Pinney to say about LUPA criteria because we were surprised to see city staff recommending denial based on the legal situation. We do meet all criteria for concurrency, meaning there is capacity for all of the things that we are proposing. But more importantly, I was surprised by the staff report saying there's no path to concurrency, there's no path to ensure that we meet code requirements for things like water, sewer, and drainage. Because staff knows, and this commission knows, we must go through a site planning process. And your code says in it, we must meet concurrency with the site planning process. In fact, we've already started speaking with the city engineer as an example about the studies we have to do of the water and sewer system out there and how we're going to meet that. south water water management district will not let us disturb the lakes out there or the drainage without showing that we can meet concurrency and not create any negative impacts relative to drainage for any of the neighbors so that's a fact that's that's not like in dispute that's not something you need a development agreement to assure happens it's the law so there's no hiding from it so to say that we're not meeting concurrency was somewhat surprising we understand we withdrew the development agreement but The concurrency must be met. There's no option. There's no play there for us to get around those things. And so just to delve into some of that detail, here are the key concurrency items. Concurrency is this funky term of art that means concurrent with development of something new, the city will have enough of the service to serve what's there and what's new. So with concurrency, potable water, the question is, does the city have enough water in its plant? So as you see there, you use about 6.5 million gallons a day. You have over three million gallons of surplus. Not a math major, but you got 60, 70,000 people in the city. That means the city can accommodate 45,000 more people and have enough water. We're proposing clearly not 45,000 people, we're proposing 504 units. So we meet concurrency on water. Sewer, it's really the same math. Tons of surplus in your sewer capacity. With regard to traffic, the county and the MPO, they look at traffic as well as part of the county land use process. They said we meet concurrency for traffic. In fact, they suggested we reduce the size of the commercial to decrease the traffic impacts. And so the county commission unanimously approved our land use plan amendment. in large part because we met concurrency for traffic, meaning our project, if constructed, will not lead to a degradation of level of service on the roads. Now, I'm not saying there won't be more traffic. That would be disingenuous. I wouldn't say that. But based on the standards for a land use plan amendment and rezoning, the impact will not degrade the current level of service. And then lastly, with regard to fire, we went through this crazy process that I've candidly only worked on one other time in my career where we did a fire study. Where it works is this. If a project is going to generate more than 1% of additional new population, fire marshal, the fire department has the right to require a fire study. The way that works is city picks a consultant, we pay for the consultant, and the consultant gets data from the city of their current calls for service for all of their fire departments and determines whether our project, if you were to add into it, would cause a degradation of level of service. Meaning if their call response times are three minutes, Our projects would take them to four and a half minutes and the industry levels, the industry's best practice is four minutes or less. That's a sort of a simplistic example. And so the fire study, they looked at that. They spent months getting data from the city back and forth on the data and We were delighted to find out that the fire chief signed off on that fire study because what it showed is that there will not be a degradation to level of service for your fire department. That the fire department has sufficient capacity to accommodate what they're doing now, plus this additional development. And so these are the main concurrency items. I don't need to go into the rest because they're sort of already, they're obvious, right? They're closing schools left and right. We know schools aren't overcrowded. That's not really in dispute. And so I think it's important because we're presenting evidence tonight that we do meet concurrency and that we are going to have to go through a site plan process where any of the questions about locations of pipes or whether a lift station is needed or where driveways will be, the city is absolutely going to require that we show it meets your code, that we show it complies with code. It's impossible otherwise. And so then here is a quick summary timeline of where we go from here. So tonight is the second reading of the land use payment and the rezoning. And then we, as I said, have these other processes we must go through. There is no way around these other processes. And so if there's any concern about concurrency-related items, we have to go through the site planning process where the city staff will review all those things. They have to. They're required. For the environmental piece, we must go through the environmental permitting process and show that we will keep the area safe and have sufficient protections in place to ensure that there's not anything harmful for any of the surrounding neighbors. And so with that being said, I'd be happy to answer questions, We would respectfully request your approval tonight as this is the best way for this project to move forward in a way that is consistent with the promises we made to this community and the best way to address what candidly has been a real problem for this area, this golf course sitting closed for so long. Thank you.

Commissioner Schwartz. I'm confused. So I have two lawyers here to explain something to me. It is my understanding that your applicant withdrew your application. because of the Infill Redevelopment Act, but I'm hearing you tell me that you're offering to continue to do what they withdrew from... No, no, we didn't... So explain that to me.

We just withdrew the development agreement. We did not withdraw the land use plan amendment application or the rezoning application.

But on the next presentation, there are pictures of the same property where there's red down where there used to be green. I looked at it. I know the difference.

So the development agreement was being proposed by the applicant in conjunction with the city pursuant to the statutory development agreement provisions that are contained in Florida law, which provides certain procedures and requirements if the city and the developer were to enter into a development agreement. You had the first reading last year. Development agreement requires two readings. So rather than go through the second reading, the applicant withdrew that. in lieu of the develop, that they didn't withdraw their land use plan amendment or their rezoning application. They withdrew the development agreement. In lieu of the development agreement, they proposed this declaration of restrictive covenants, which is included in your agenda package, which includes, as Mr. Scott explained, many of the provisions that were in the development agreement, except for some provisions which were more of a, you know, wish list of the city for lack of a better term so the declaration restricts their ability to use the property in a manner consistent with what they're proposing tonight and would tie their hands once recorded as well as any future owner or developer of the property but it's not the development agreement it just makes no sense to me to approve something where the next part says but we're not going to do it because that's not what the plans look like and again Well, I don't know what, yeah, you'd have to ask him about what plan you're looking at, but that's where we are today.

He doesn't know what plan I'm looking at. But in the next thing that we're putting together, in the rezoning, there's a picture there of the same land, but all the green space is gone.

I'm not sure what image you're looking at.

I wish I, well, if she wouldn't click on it, be my guest. And I tried to pull it up, unfortunately, on my iPad, but it now wants a new password.

I don't know. I mean, what I've said is what we're applying for, which is a land use plan amendment and a rezoning to permit us to move forward with site plans to develop 540 homes.

That's not what the other one looks like, though.

What other one? I'm sorry, Commissioner, what I asked.

Would you go to the second, whatever B is?

Are you looking at the conceptual master plan as part of the rezoning?

I can't open mine up, so I can't show it to him. But I would love you to do that for me.

Excuse me, excuse me.

Is this the second time I think we've formed that division?

Yeah, I want B, thank you.

So that's what's being proposed. Can you pull up from the other agenda item?

Here we go. I'm going to find it for you so you know what I'm talking about.

The conceptual master plan is the same as what's on the screen now.

Bring up C for me. All right, so while she's doing that, because I can't get into my iPad, then I'm going to ask you a couple questions. You're saying that my fire department has the ability, and I think my fire department right now is pretty strained because there's a good chance that that homestead passes. We may have to look at the number of people we have in each station, and we already know that we call for help from surrounding stations at times when we're in different locations. So since we came up, let's see, thank you. Since it came up, with land and McDivitts, I'm far more interested in your donating land for a future fire department for that section, because quite frankly, considering where our fire stations are, even though there's one on Rock Island, there's an awful lot of condos right around there. I live around there that they take care of, and I don't know that it's necessarily true that we could be in two places at one time from that station. The next station is east of 441. The third station is right out here. So I would think that for me, it would be more important to see land donated as a good natured kind of thing. And you have to realize that while you're saying my water department can take care of this, we have just gone for $120 million bond to redo a water and wastewater plant that is 70 years old. So I don't know what straw will finally break the camel's back, but I think we're pretty close to that, regardless of whether anybody builds more or not, simply because it's 70 years old. Now I'm going to find what I wanted to show you.

Right, so typically that wouldn't be something that comes up in a land use permit amendment.

I don't know, but we're putting it together, right?

Is whether your current plan is going to break...

I'm sorry. I'm just trying to find the picture for you, Matt. I looked at it today, so I know it's here. When I find it, I'll interrupt you. But I'm going to look for it. Because I saw it, and I was kind of surprised when I did, and I wish I could open my thing up.

So on the land, a couple things on giving the city an acre of land. But the fire study showed is that there's capacity in the fire department to service this project without a lowering a degradation to the level of service.

But isn't age a part of it?

Isn't age?

Well, sure, because let's assume that you have in some of your townhouses or some of your homes an older group of people, because I'm going to guess these houses are going to go for plenty. I've never had to call for fire rescue, but the condos around me certainly have. So we have, I don't know, 13,000 residential units that are probably condos and townhomes. I just think age makes a difference in my mind. In other words, a call for service, not necessarily for fire, but for EMS.

Sure. No, no, I'm not saying there aren't calls for service or that... There are elderly people that make calls for service, I'm just.

Here it is.

Okay, I don't know.

I'm lending you her thing. You see all that red? It used to be green.

I don't.

It's on the concept something or other, I think I opened it.

Okay, yeah, I can explain that, sorry. Thank you. That's easy to explain. reason why the map you're showing only shows areas circled on the northern part so if you look on the screen here pod c and above is because the entire southern half where we are doing lakes and parks do not need to be rezoned they do not need to be rezoned the zoning allows for lakes and parks so we didn't include them it went red so i i assumed that meant you were going to build homes on there no it's just there's a difference between the language plan amendment that is all of the parcels And then the rezoning because the zoning that's in place for the entire property allows us to build parks and lakes. So we said, why do a rezoning application that includes something that we don't need to change?

That's why it wasn't real clear on there. Yeah, no, no.

Fair enough. It's a, it's a really quirky zoning thing. That's why. So that addresses that there's no disconnect between what we're proposing. It's just, there's no need to rezone the entire Southern half.

And probably my comments are better for the second part, but we're all talking about it, so why wait? I understand you're basically saying what we can give you now is certainly far better than what we can do without your permission. But it so sounds like a threat. And for the people sitting here, I recognize the fact that now there's a gun against people's heads because there's a law that says you never have to come back and ask. I would hope that all of what was considered and agreed to before it would be continued because I would hope that the developer, regardless of whether they develop it or give it to someone else or something would like a good working relationship with the people who live there.

Of course, that's why we're here. That's why we didn't withdraw everything. And so, and so it's not a threat. It's just the law has changed. And so in light of that, we're trying to honor our commitments as commissioners of the city to Voting no here is hurting what we've negotiated with these folks.

Well, I understand it's counterproductive to what you've negotiated. Right, right. I clearly understand. It's going to be hard for people to realize, though, that they have lost the opportunity to make a difference anymore. Unless you guys agree to do it.

and there's no public notice about site plan meetings and stuff with your staff, and we just showed up with heavy equipment, that would be a jarring thing. More jarring than what's already, the whole change out there. We thought this was the right thing to do, even if it means, you know, people expressing their unhappiness with it or, you know, you guys being, you know, having concerns, we thought this was the right way to approach this.

But then why withdraw the developers agreement if we're really looking at the same thing? Why withdraw it? I don't understand, so I'm honestly asking.

No, sure. So the development agreement had a lot of commitments we were making that, as I said, were extraordinary.

Right.

They were above and beyond what would normally be required for an entitled site. So the big thing about the, whenever people ask me to explain this Florida Infield Redevelopment Act, what I explain to them is it makes properties that otherwise weren't entitled for development entitled. They're entitled. So in light of that, the things we were committing to were very expensive. They were a lot of money. And my client says, hey, look, it's making our project difficult to do difficult for it to pencil and make economic sense. So in light of that, we should keep our commitment, which the main concern was apartments. Why not keep that commitment, but not give things away that make this project really hard to achieve. That was the idea.

Don't you think that keeping the commitment of the things that were hard to achieve and were good for the community would be a good thing to do right now?

Well, there's, There is business side of these things other than just sort of, you know.

There's the business side and there's the human interest side. And there needs to be, I know they say if you walk away from a meeting and no one's happy, that's a good negotiation. But in this case, there are people, and I clearly understand because of how long I'm living here, which was before there was ever a Carolina anything. but there are people who clearly thought that for their entire life, their view was going to be their view.

And I'm respectful of how challenging that is, yes.

I live on the C-14 for one reason now.

Sure.

Nobody can build behind me.

Right.

And I mow the grass for the South Florida Water Management District for 40 years because I consider it to be my backyard. So I clearly understand when you live on a golf course and you've been there for 30 years what your expectation is. And I clearly understand that not voting for this means that the developer never has to come back. It shocks me that golf courses, even though I'm sure you're going to go through the EPA, that this would specifically be for golf courses where we all know they're contaminated and maybe nothing will ever happen. Maybe there'll be another Erin Brockovich kind of thing. No one has a clue. But it's so disconcerting that of all the places they chose to say, do what you want to do, it would be a golf course.

Well, yeah, so I think the only thing I want to say, so just going back to the fire piece to answer your question. The other challenging piece on the fire was, what we heard from many residents was, hell no, we don't want a fire station in our community. We said, well, what about this location? They said, no, no, no, definitely not there. Definitely don't put it here. I said, OK, well, what about here? Definitely not here. We definitely don't want a fire station. So there is a bit of a disconnect between the other thing I think I heard from commissioners was uncertainty about how you were going to pay for a new fire station. And so putting that all together and this new law, we said, OK, and the fire study saying it's not required led us to that decision. It wasn't just pulling the rug out in some way. There were a lot of factors, including President of CMA saying there's not a need for a fire station. They don't want that in their community. So that's that piece.

Well, there is no fire station in this city that is not located in a residential community.

No, I know. I'm just saying. We were in this trying to make everybody happy, trying to do everything everybody wants. And so we got feedback that was inconsistent sometimes with certain things that people from city staff or commissioners said that was important. so the other thing i will share is i don't i wasn't involved i'm too busy in margate hanging out with all of you to be up in tallahassee i wasn't involved in how the law was passed i think the reason why there was comfort with passing this for contaminated land was two reasons one there is obviously no available raw land in south florida anymore but there is a need for homes and there is a clear permitting process to remediate contaminated land There is a clear, established, safe way to clean these sites up and protect the community. And so I think the logic was why not get more developers cleaning these contaminated golf courses up and putting them to good use as homes for people instead of just sitting there contaminated. So the Erin Brockovich thing gets thrown around a lot with the golf course redevelopment. But there would not be this clear legal process to get a permit if it were as dangerous as the Erin Brockovich sort of commentary suggests.

Well, for the people who lived on those things and get cancer, it's considered dangerous. I'm not saying that's going to happen. Don't misunderstand. It's just a concern. It's certainly a concern for the rest of them. Of course. And it's, what, 20, 30 years worth of arsenic being put on property. But thank you for answering. I'm sure I'll have other questions for you.

Thanks. Can you clear your light, please, Commissioner? I did. Okay. Commissioner Rosano.

Now, you talked about a restricted covenant. Oh, by the way, Arlene, your answers are, your questions are great. Outstanding. You talked about the restricted covenant that would be in place, right? Well, when all these people that are here who bought property out there, they were basically promised because Margate had a comprehensive plan that those homes built out there were dense and the green space would make up for it. So that just got thrown to the side. So you talk about a restricted covenant, there was almost basically a restricted covenant that these people had that were tossing or Tallahassee's tossing out the window. And I understand what you're saying about Tallahassee passing this. I'm gonna give you my theory on passing it because Tallahassee will not do favors for Broward. They don't care about Broward. They did this for more of the upper areas that have golf courses where they want to build homes quickly and basically give them a ticket to go build. And we're just getting the brunt of it because we happen to have a golf course that's contaminated and we fall under this.

Well, it's only for Palm Beach, Broward and Dade, though. The law only applies to those three counties.

No, they targeted us. Okay. This isn't just some whim for the other 64 counties. This is an attack on three.

Yeah. Okay. The developer's agreement, it was pulled. Like I said, if you guys want to start doing a good relationship with us, why would you guys pull something that would possibly benefit us a little bit? So you got to understand you guys pulled something on us where you're basically. Saying. We're not going to give it to you. So going into a relationship, a good starting point, it wasn't really a good move. I got a couple things here. You had mentioned that if this is a no vote, the increase, it will increase the amount of development. So basically what you're saying is if we vote no, you guys are definitely gonna increase the development.

No, no, we just would have the right to. We would have the right to.

But what was said was of no vote will cause to increase the amount of development. Just saying what I heard, what was said.

I guess we'll have to go look at the tape. What I'm trying to convey is that voting no tonight because of some sort of, you know, just going to vote no on principle opens up the property to a higher level of development, a higher intensity.

It could, potentially.

Yes.

It could.

Of course, yes.

Okay. And then you said this is the best option we're going to get. So this is the best option from your company. Is that a

you're referring to what you said the best option yeah sure so so we have the property contract we're not the owners with the property contract so you don't own the property yes we have a contractual right to purchase it meaning no one else can and so with that level of control under the contract of the options available under the law this is the best option so you're not willing to negotiate anything No, no, I'm not prepared to give the clubhouse. I think that doesn't make sense, and I think that that's not something we're just going to give to the city's six acres. But if there are reasonable things that are important to this commission to get your support, because we want it to be – part of the reason why we didn't just pull the applications all together, which we could, was we wanted – we were hopeful that showing our commitment to these folks to commit to this lower level of development in the single-family homes and the townhomes that were so important to them – that there would continue to be some level of goodwill. If there are things that are critical and reasonably related to the project, not sort of just give us a bunch of money or something that has nothing to do with the project, I'm sure my client would consider it. And during the site planning process, we can talk with the city commission about that. But just giving six acres, that's like a primary entry point. where there's no clear understanding of this commission, whether you guys want to get in the business of operating a... You want me to answer?

I'll answer it.

No, no, no. But in fairness, Commissioner, you're one vote.

I know. I know. Unfortunately, I'm only one vote. Right. But getting back to that building, there's a lot of people that have memories. I know you can't sell memories. They're worth whatever. But there is no place in Margate. It's unique, that place. That building is unique. I've heard you even say it in the past. I agree. You're right. And to preserve it and keep it would be a nice gesture on behalf of your... partners or whatever you want. You're the people you're my client. Okay, so that's where I was going with that. Um, obviously that's gonna not gonna happen. So we look for other concessions. You talk about building homes out there. Why not just do single family homes out there? Then I think that would be a great concession because nowhere in Broward except please nowhere in Broward except for Margate. Do we take the nicest area in our city? And at first you guys wanted to put apartments, which was a joke. And now you want to put town homes. So we're taking prime property, prime homes in our city that are probably worth anywhere from six, seven, 800,000, maybe more. And now we're going to put in town homes, which to me, if you want your property to go up, you put nicer homes around it. But we're going to surround it with town homes that are probably going to be worth less than these homes. So it doesn't make sense to me. So I'll make Can you guys do all residential homes?

Well, we think that from a marketability perspective, doing only single-family homes would be challenging out there based on what – there are townhomes, by the way, in this community. There are lots of townhomes.

Oh, I know that.

Okay, so what you're suggesting that these townhomes that are brand new would lower the value of those townhomes?

Yeah, I'm saying that the nicest section of marketing – I think we could all agree, it's no big secret, it's one of the biggest, nicest, well-kept areas – We're going to put homes that aren't even equal to or above what is there now, meaning the residential homes.

No, no. There's going to be a mix of single-family homes and townhomes. I think we can't deviate from that business plan. I don't think that at this stage we'd be able to commit to all single-family homes.

I don't know. How many single-family homes are there in this plan?

So there'll be somewhere in the range of... 225 to 250 single-family homes.

Single-family homes? Are they going to have zero lot lines or will they be?

I'm not sure. We've been sort of wrestling with your code because your code has some real quirks with townhomes and single-family homes. So I'm not sure if there's zero lot line or not, or a mix. I can't say yet. That's going to come out of the site planning process.

Okay. Well, if we're approving this, then we're going to approve a site plan later. It would be nice to see the site plan because if there were half-acre lots out there, It'd be a lot easier to swallow for these residents than to approve something and then say, well, this is what you're going to get, but we don't know how big the lots are going to be. We don't know anything. You know, years ago we talked about making that property. I think we came up with a code, E1, I don't even know what it was called, but they have to be half acre lots. So if we're going to do anything, I would suggest that this board look into it, that any kind of residential homes, single family homes, there are at least one third of an acre lot and they're not zero lot lines because the reason why that golf course, I'll say it again, is there. is because of the dense building out there. It made up for the golf course for the zero lot lines. So approving this, I'm not gonna vote for it, I'm not gonna tell you why. Staff doesn't approve it. I've heard it's gonna increase traffic, which we know it's gonna, and there's really nothing set in stone that we can look at and say, you know what, that's really good for our city. And then you pull away the developer's agreement, which was, I guess, a bonus to us, and you pull that away. Not a good working relationship from the beginning. It's just the way I feel.

And I, Commissioner, expected you would say that. It's just surprising, logically, that you would take that position when you are unequivocally getting something better than the law would permit on the land. The law would permit all apartments, all apartments. High stories, I think 7 to 10 units to the acre.

Seven units. Seven units.

So double, let's call it double, roughly. And so you voting no is inconsistent with what these folks here are hoping they'll get out there. And so it doesn't make logical sense. It's cutting off your nose to spite your face, literally. I mean, you are voting no to make some principled point and not even making it. They're not stopping us at all, so why not work with us on this commitment we've made?

I just asked to present a site plan, and it would be easier for these people to see it And approve it. But just to say you're going to put up X amount of homes, zero lot lines. I don't know. You know, it's just it's tough to swallow to just three highlighted areas there and say this is what we're proposing.

Yeah. Well, what I'll tell you is extremely hard.

I mean, these people live on the golf course. They thought that they were going to have an open view. Yeah, that is it.

Yeah.

But at least let's come up with a buffer. You can't build within 100 feet. And we'll work with staff but to approve this right now and then say this is the best you're going to get it's tough to swallow right so that I'm not going to so I'll be honest with you.

Buffers agree is a is a. The housing type and the buffers a good thing to talk about in response to your question the residents said. Fairway states that if we remove the apartments into townhomes they would give us a letter of support. Not single-family homes. Townhomes. So they said. And there was discussions we had with them about how townhomes are really in demand because of how the cost of living is so high. And so there's a lot of families that want to buy townhomes as their first home. And so they said, if you do townhomes, we'll give you letter of support.

Who signed the letter?

Oh, Pete Martino.

Pete, you're OK with that? Townhomes?

He's got to get it. We can't let him talk.

But just let me finish. As part of that as well, we agreed to buffers in the letters that we have with them. So going back to your point. The agreement we have with them is contingent on you approving this. If you deny us, then there's no agreement. And so for you to say that you don't like that we're handling it, you know, this is unfortunately for the city's position on this development agreement, the state of the law. And so why not go with the best option? Why not go with the best option if the concern is protecting this community?

Matt, it's the best option for your client. It's the best option for the residents.

What other option is there?

If I can add another option is going to be is after everybody's done here, I'm going to ask that we table this and we work with staff. And if we got to implement something to come to a happy meeting, we do that. But to just rush this and get this done when we don't know how big the lots are. We don't know. We don't really know much what's going on there. We're looking at the shaded picture. And it's really not fair to the residents. And I understand you did your homework. I understand that. We wanted you to do outreaches. You did it. 12 people showed up. There's thousands of people out there, man.

Where are they if they're against the project? Where are they? This monumental thing. You know. You regularly talk about show up and the room was packed. I listen to the residents.

Matt, you know why? Because they're beat up, man. It's been eight years. They're beat up.

That's the reason?

I tell you what, I've worked on other golf courses. It is the reason, Matt.

I talked to one of the golf courses. And when we're working out with the neighbors, the room is packed out the room.

Matt, I'm going to tell you, if you're the person you have a contract with, that owner out there, if he would have met with the several golf course developers that wanted to buy that golf course, we wouldn't be going through this right now. He knew that possibly he would have the votes. And you know what? We're paying for it. Because that $4 million property, probably worth $40 million now, and it's coming at the expense of these people. And you know what? You're telling them that you're going to get what we're going to give you, and that's it? It's not good enough for me. I don't mind fighting this, and I don't mind tabling this. I have no problem. But I'm not going to say yes to it when I don't even know what the hell is going on.

Can I add a different perspective? Because if the infill act is enacted, there is zero public input. All the stuff you're talking about doesn't happen. Hold on. Let me finish. Let me finish. different perspective as a real estate broker, okay? He mentioned they're under contract. There's value to that. Now, this developer has clearly made every effort to try to work with this community. And it may sound like a threat that if this doesn't happen, then that. They don't necessarily have to develop it. The reality is they're sitting on a contract that's probably tripled in value because of this law. Now, I don't think Rose-Murgy will do the infill act. But they're going to sign it to somebody else like the next day. And you'll have a developer that's going to come in here, say, F the city of Margate. We're going to do what we want. See, Rosemargie has a reputation of working with cities. There are developers that are just waiting on the sidelines to develop every golf course in South Florida. So if we think that Rosemargie is just going to go away and the golf course is going to sit empty for three, four, five more years, that ship sailed a long time ago. It's going to be under contract the next day, the next week. It's going to be under contract with a developer that doesn't care at all. I'm the only one that lives in the Carolinas. I don't want to roll the dice with this. I've been warning residents about this. I've talked to the associations, the master association, for two, three years about trying to make a compromise and make some sort of deal. I'm not a huge fan of it either. But at the end of the day, I saw what was happening with the state legislature. And it's really nonpartisan. There were Democrats that voted for this, Republicans. It was pretty bipartisan. They've basically tied our hands. And this is the last ditch effort by this developer to build something that people could be somewhat OK with. telling you the alternative and I don't think they'll do it I think they walk away but someone else is gonna buy that contract and develop the property immediately it's my understanding palm lakes is already under contract by another developer and guess what they're not coming to the city for our input they're going right infill act administrative review and there's we will not have any conversation about palm lakes in this not because we don't want to and I'll be willing to have town halls and let people talk as much as they want about it But we can't do anything about that. And I don't want what's going to happen there to happen here. And that's my concern. So I don't take it as a threat, as Matt or Rosemarie threatening. I think they're just telling you the reality is that there are sharks circling around just waiting to buy up these golf courses and develop them with all apartments.

We were warned about this by our lobbyists who came and spoke. By experts, we were warned about it. People wanted to only hear what they wanted to hear. We were trying to tell them what was going on.

I had a question on the, you did mention that the green spaces would be maintained by the new ownership. And this is more. I guess the question I'm asking too, just out of curiosity, I know it doesn't necessarily directly affect the city, but will the new units join the master association? Is that agreement? Because I know you have agreements with the master association as well. Was that ever discussed?

With regard to the maintenance, so yeah, the future associations, that would be an obligation of the future associations. So it wouldn't be a city obligation. As far as joining the master, I believe we did talk about this. And it was something that we were going to work with them to see if it could be done. I don't know that we reached a final determination, but it was something that we discussed. I just can't remember right now where we left it. It was something we discussed that they said they would want to do. And we said we were open to it. We needed to figure out the mechanics of it.

Okay. And just to clarify again, I said it earlier, but I just want people to understand. If you file the deed restriction... that stays with the property at least 30 years, I believe?

No, no, it's perpetuity.

This one's in perpetuity? Yeah. Okay, even better. So even if this developer goes out of business, sells the contract, you know, there's World War III and the economy totally tanks and you guys can't produce or can't develop that property, the next developer that gets it and will do the infill act would be bound to this deed restriction that's correct not be able to come in and build apartments all over right that's correct the the land use plan amendment uh ordinance provides for the declaration being recorded right and no and i understand that i just want the residents to understand that this will stick it's not with the developer this this binds the property in perpetuity yes so no matter who takes over this if something was to happen They can't come back and say well different developer. We're just going to do the into lack of whatever you want.

That's correct there.

Commissioner Rosano you're still flashing right there.

I was on before everybody spoke. So that my question is you don't have any idea how big these lots are on a single family home lots.

No, I don't know the size right now we're still been site planning it okay.

right because to me that that's a big deal i mean we don't really have much to work with here and i understand the whole i don't really understand the whole thing but the land infill act i get it and this is the best that you're going to rep you're going to present i don't like to hear that i honestly don't and i know years ago we put in parameters when 13th floor came we put in extra wide um streets i think we passed all new codes and stuff like that i think you were the one that said you know your parking is a little restricted, one bedroom per apartment and stuff like that. So David, let me ask you, the rules that we put in years ago, do they no longer apply with this?

So the city's current land development code would govern the development that would be placed on the property.

Okay, so the current land development, because I hear guys up here saying, oh, I warned you guys, I warned you guys. Well, if you guys would have knew about this, why not put more restrictions in? You know, it's like, I've been warning you for a year, warning you for a year. We just heard about this developer's agreement a year ago.

And then... You can't just go on proper property and change the rules.

We didn't do that. Arlene was here, and I think Anthony and Joanne were here when we changed the zoning out in the Carolinas to basically... We changed the widths of the streets and some parking requirements and things like that. I understand, but it's almost like that this Landfill Act passed, and it's like, wow, now they can do whatever they want. I know it is. You haven't been warning. This developer's deal came up. Matt, when was this developer's agreement deal written?

We drafted it. It was presented to you along with the original first reading back in November of last year.

Okay.

But I hear for years we've been telling this. We've been going to classes talking about it.

So your crystal ball is there and it's telling you guys exactly what to do.

Because it's saying that we were full of crap, but we weren't.

you guys would have acted like we did with 13th floor eight years ago did this four years ago and we would have been stern we wouldn't be in this mess we are right now though it's private property they came to us now they didn't come to i get that now and hold on and even if someone came and bought it as a golf course the value of the property quadrupled you don't think that that golf course developer who's probably getting calls every single day from someone offering them money

Honestly, Antonio, you're just missing my point here.

I'm not missing the point.

Eight years ago, basically the same project, similar, was going through. The commission stood as one. The residents stood.

And you know what?

They left. Right after that, what happened? An election came. People were turned out. And then it was like, oh, you know what? It's okay to build on a golf course. How the hell does that happen? Same project.

It's not the same.

It's similar, very similar with the project.

No, they were going to do town homes on the entire property.

But that was four years ago. But now you look at the crystal ball and it's like, oh, I've been telling you guys for last year. No, no, no. At least four years ago, we could have bound together and said, you know what? We're going to fight just like we did 13th floor. Now you guys are like, you know what? We're screwed. I told you.

I feel like you're making this up. What are we going to stop? Antonio. Hold on. 13th floor left. Yes. You talk about, oh, the property and Mr. Private Property Rights. Well, you can't just like this person over there picks and chooses when he wants to apply the First Amendment. That's not what I'm saying. You can't just pick and choose when you want. That's not what I'm saying. You can't tell private property owners what to do.

That's not what I'm saying.

And buying it as a golf course wouldn't protect what we're getting in the situation now.

For some reason, 13th Floor left.

They left because they didn't have Live Local. They didn't have SB 180. They didn't have Live Local either.

Correct.

They just got it. And what happened when they got it? They threw away the developer's agreement. Hold on a second. When we talked about that, okay? Live Local had text to have golf courses in it. We warned about it. Your quote exactly, well, that ship sailed. Guess what? It didn't sail. They just created another law that specifically. You're right.

You're right. I agree with you. But that's out of our control. But that was just last year. Right. Last year.

But that changed the law for the tri-county area.

I understand that. But there's something that could have been done years ago. Because the same way we got rid of 13th floor, we could have got rid of the next developer unless we got what we wanted. Wow. you know that this is a tough pill to swallow but you have to swallow it you know that i'm not happy about it but but you could have done something right what have we done tell us what we could have i was mayor and i could have done something have you guys seen the meeting where i would stood up and say i'm not going to allow the development the residents don't want the development up there so we all said that was three of you two more do you okay say you know what tommy you're right but you know what you guys did you hid behind the microphone and said i can't say nothing this is going to come up for a vote i can't say nothing okay great let's play this out

So we all say, no, we're not doing it. The law passes. Now they come and do it. Exactly. So your point is mute.

What's the argument you're making? Because four years ago, something should have been done.

Do what? You know what?

Do what? I'm going to tell you what you could have done. One of the things you could have done is hammer the hell out of them with code compliance.

We have. You have.

How much do they pay in code compliance?

I know you like challenges. I love this. So all the records requesters, do a records request and see which commissioner has filed the most complaints on the Carolina golf course. And I guarantee you, no, because you're saying that we should have coded them. I've coded them. I brought it up to meetings. Kale has gotten... Dozens and dozens and dozens of taxes about it. So how much were paid in fines? We raised the fines. We did the maximum we could do by law. But that's not on us.

That's not on us. But yet somebody down the street with a blade of grass out of order, they're going to get a fine. But you're saying we could have done something about it. Antonio, I get it. I'm not happy with it. I'm done with it. Let the people talk. Let them see what they say. I'm done.

Commissioner Simone.

No comments from the audience, please.

Wow. So this is reality. We know what's in front of us. I'm disappointed that the developer's agreement was withdrawn. You know, I appreciate your restricted covenant and you committing to the 540 townhomes. You know, I was one that did not want the apartments and had stated that I would not vote for the project if there were apartments. So I appreciate that. I appreciate the... year and a half, two years, I don't know how long this has even been going on to be honest with you anymore. You working with us and you working with the residents to come to a happy medium. And this infill redevelopment just threw a monkey wrench into everything. What I would like to do is, and this is a first that I'm hearing that the residents don't want the fire station. So I'd like to hear more. about that because I think the city was looking for that was happy that that was in the developers agreement. What I would like to do is come back to the table with some of the things that were in the developers agreement if the residents don't want the fire station then you know what I'm OK with that you know and hopefully there won't be a need for it You know, what I would like to see that was in the developers agreement is the $150,000 contribution to Firefighters Park for improved parking. I'd hate to see that go. I think that if it was put in the developers agreement before then it wouldn't be a problem to say, okay, we're still going to work with you. You've done a good job working with us. It's a good faith gesture not to take everything out of the developer's agreement from us, knowing that the ball is in your court and you're in complete control. So I would like to see that put back, come back to the table, put that back in, and also put back the 100,000 toward the street improvement study. So I would like to see those two things put back that were at least those two things. I'd like to hear more about the acre for the fire department before I really push hard on getting that. But those two things I think would show good faith and you have shown good faith in the past. from working all these years with us, listening to us and making compromises with the residents and they're comfortable now with what's being presented. So those are my asks that I think would.

Under the infill act, aren't there double impact fees and park fees? So I don't think that her request maybe is unreasonable.

No, not for this type of property. That's for single family homes as well. But we have to pay impact fees. We have to pay all those fees.

That's if they develop property that includes recreational facilities or areas reserved for recreational use. and it's adjacent to single-family homes on all sides, then they have to pay double the park or recreation impact fee.

But, yeah, something that I would want to talk with my client about. Obviously, I'm standing here, you know, so it's not my decision to make. But that's reasonable, something that, you know, we can talk about. Something else I wanted to mention is in the development agreement, the city asked us to accept some land that the city owns that connects to a lake. And so the city said, Why do we have this, it's between two homes, it's gonna be part of your lakes. It was in the development agreement. That's something that I've emailed with the city manager that Mike, we would still honor that we would still accept that land and take it off the city's hands. So we're not removing everything. A lot of the stuff in there, we're gonna have to do anyway. You know, not disturbing irrigation in the area. Making sure that the drainage water sewer, that's all, you know, so yeah, right. So so that so some of it was superfluous in the in the development agreement. But certainly take some of those things into consideration that you discussed, Commissioner Swinn.

I would greatly appreciate that. To me, it would just show that you're still committed to us and you still want to work with us, and I think it would go a long way to smooth some of these waters.

Sorry to interrupt you. We still have staff's presentation and then the community, so that's something that we can huddle up on.

I do understand that you know you feel that the developers agreement went above and beyond and you know I understand that you know I also understand that you know we don't vote for this that the density could be up to a thousand and they're the type of units could be all apartments so I do understand that I just I'm hopeful that we can come to the table and work something out with those two possibly three things in the developer's agreement.

Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Schwartz.

Because I heard Commissioner Rosano ask you a question as to how many single-family homes. Repeat that number for me because I've forgotten.

Yes, I believe it's intended for Pod C, perhaps Pod A, we haven't decided yet, but it would be somewhere in the range of 200 to 250 or 220 to 250. All right, then that would be in addition.

instead of or as part of the 540 or yes it's part of the 540. all right because that didn't come clear to me and i'm sitting here dividing and trying to figure out how small a house would be in order to be able sure yeah yeah that's not it would be a mix so it would be a mix to reach the total of 540. okay so given the fact that these houses and i don't know what's going to happen with amendment 3 will fall off the tax rolls at some point, regardless of how much you sell them for, are we then not assuming, and I'm not telling you to build apartments, but given what we're going to have, The revenue to the city will eventually fall off because I think what they say, by 10 years, they don't want anybody to be paying homestead taxes or property taxes at all. That, of course, should be a great concern to the city because 74% of our budget right now goes to union contracts and things. And the idea of building something that maybe for a year or two may pay property taxes and then leaving that is interesting also. Would I rather see the single family homes? I'm sure all of them would. I'm going to go back to what Commissioner Simone said. If it was doable to have offered the original agreement, it's doable to live up to the original agreement. And I would still like the idea of that one acre. I didn't say you should build a fire department. But you should give it to us for the possibility that in 20 years they might need to build a fire department there and there would be no place to put it, or fire station rather.

One acre of land is going to make a difference one way or the other, maybe four houses, I have no clue.

You still doing the commercial? Because I thought that was taken out at one point.

Yeah. So the, one of the things about a land use plan amendment and a rezoning is it's, it's impossible to change midstream once you're in process. You know, I just had that slide of all the places we've gone for approval. So we looked at removing it altogether and we couldn't do that.

Have I pulled on someone's heartstrings?

So we, um, We couldn't change the commercial request midstream. We couldn't change without restarting everything.

But it says or. That's why I don't know.

And so what we did was we said, hey, county, city, we talked to your staff about it a bunch. I don't think the community wants a commercial there. Is there a way for us to do residential? This is before the Florida Infraredevelopment Act was approved. County got with the city and said, hey, as it turns out, this community, Carolina, is in a dashed line area where there's a total number of units. Um, and only three quarters of them were built, something like that. There's like a thousand more units that can be built that were contemplated when you approve this originally. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding.

You know, you know better than that.

I'm just kidding. Whenever it was approved, they approved for a lot more units. They didn't get built. Who knows why? So the county said you can allocate those units to this. There's a process to do that. Just continue with the commercial. So we are sharing that this might be a small commercial or it might be single. It might be a small amount of homes. And then the Florida Redevelopment Act got passed in that eliminated a lot of this. So we're here tonight just completing the process we started.

I would guess, and I'm just speaking for me on their behalf, but I would guess that if this were to pass, they would prefer to see residential homes rather than have a school across there that gives enough problems to the wah-wah on the other side of it.

Yes, we heard that ad nauseum, yeah.

And besides which, Sample Road doesn't need any more commercial sitting there. You know, strip malls, for lack of a better way of putting it. So that's just my two cents. We should have probably let you sit down at some point and let staff speak.

So based on your feedback and because we are committed to this project and the goal of removing the development agreement was not to pull the rug out, we can commit to an acre of land for municipal purposes. How can you not? You just negotiate this, you're going to vote against it?

Come on.

So we can commit to that. And I think the best way to do it, Mr. Tulsa, is as a condition of approval with the rezoning. I don't think it goes into a restrictive covenant. But we can figure that out, I guess. I just think that's the way to do it.

Let me think about how to craft that as part of the... Staff has a presentation. Approvals.

Yeah, I'm sure you would like to sit down by now.

Thank you. We'll go ahead and call up staff now.

You can't throw in the... Firefighters Park?

Let's take one step at a time.

Good evening. Andrew Penny, Senior Planner. Matt, you always keep me on my toes. So again, tonight we're talking about the Carolina Club Land Use Plan Amendment and rezoning. This is our second reading of these ordinances. I'm going to try to breeze through some of the information we went through on first reading and try to really nail down and focus what's happened since first reading. Is this better? Did I change the angle of the microphone? Is that better? All right, so I have subject property on the screen up there, highlighted in red. Subject property all in is 143 and a half acres of net, 148 gross, and it consists of two parcels So I've got the overall flow chart here for a land use process. It started at DRC, which is a staff review. There was actually two DRC meetings in May and August of 2025. The Planning and Zoning Board heard this item in October of 2025. City Commission, that was November 5th, 2025. It's gone through the state and concurrent county processes. And here we are at City Commission for a second reading. If it passes tonight, we still have to transmit the adopted package to the state and begin our recertification process with Broward County Planning Council. I'm only bringing this up because it was mentioned in one of the commission comments. If the commission does table it, there is a time limit on when we can transmit that package back to the state. Right now, we have to deliver it no later than December 7th in order for this amendment to be finalized. So we'd be looking at December 2nd as like the last ditch meeting to get the approval if we're talking about tabling it. So I've got the city's future land use map with a big arrow pointing at subject property. And just to go over, currently it's 148 acres of commercial recreation and they want to shift over to 7.6 acres of commercial. 74 acres of R10 and 67 acres of park. Here is the area zoomed in. We've got the dashed line area with the current land uses and densities. As Matt mentioned, there are over 1,000 dwelling units available in this dashed line area. And if proposed, if the proposed is approved tonight, there'd be still an extra 530 units available. This is what the map would look like. Of course, we're flipping the bottom half green to preserve it as park and open space. The top side kind of blends colors as well with the 10 units per acre. The last time you saw this, these are the intensities, similar. I've got the 30,000 square foot highlighted because now, since the county review, it's dropped down to 24,800 square feet. And it's important to realize these are absolute maximums for your consideration. It is possible for the developer, if approved, to come in and build less than what they've been approved for. And as we talked about, there is language in the draft covenant to possibly go a residential route with Pod A. So this is the concept plan that we looked at in first reading. And it's kind of hard to see from this distance, but on the left, that's a legend that shows all the symbols and colors on there. And I want to kind of draw attention to a few things. There were two possible locations picked out for a fire station. There was a dog park in there. There's proposed crosswalks. There's the whole network of the trail. It even talks about how the trail is eight feet wide and asphalt. And when we move on to the current concept plan that was provided prior to hearing, A lot of that's been removed. We're basically looking at the pods, a proposed roadway, and vehicular access points. The restrictive covenant mentions the recreation trail, but since it's been removed from the concept plan, staff has no idea to what extent the trail will be provided, where it is, the size of it, all kinds of things. The dog park's gone. The fire station is off the concept plan, but again, right before I got up here, it sounded like they were agreeable to the acre. So I've got another timeline here, again, bringing us from first reading to tonight. November 5th, 2025 is when we have the transmittal hearing. And at that time, second reading was scheduled for June 17th of the three applications. We got to work, transmitted the application. State had no issues. The applicant began a concurrent application with Broward. There's a few items highlighted in red that really kind of changed the trajectory of this project. When the governor signed off on Senate Bill 1434, that's the Infill and Redevelopment Act, that of course changed the whole power dynamic, so to speak, of negotiation on this. Governor signed it May 21st. By June 1st, the applicant requested a continuance of that June 17th hearing. In July, the applicant submitted a Senate Bill 1434 confirmation where they said, hey, look at our property and here's the bill. They've supplied a whole lot of exhibits and evidence to support what they were looking for. And the response from Development Services was we looked at it and Again, subject property is two parcels. It looks like the large parcel is a qualifying parcel. It meets the criteria, but the second parcel, where the clubhouse is, we couldn't make that finding. We'll get into a little more information later. And then, of course, August 6th, the applicant formally withdrew the development agreement. Withdrawing is an option. Editing is an option. They could have taken off some of the superfluous things as there was described earlier, but they withdrew the application. So under the Senate Bill 1434, Infill Redevelopment Act, again, we talked about this. It's a preemption that applies in counties over 1.475 million population with at least 15 cities. That's Broward County. And it applies to environmentally impacted land over five acres adjacent to residential development. That's this property. So with that confirmation letter, again, the two parcels, the clubhouse sits on a parcel that's roughly six acres. It's been platted. It's got its own folio number. It's a separate parcel. The evidence they turned in was the declaration of restrictive covenants that the Broward County Environmental Protection Department recorded on the property, which identified contamination only around the maintenance building on the property. I say only, but that's the parcel that's 137 acres. That restrictive covenant did not find or identify anything on the six-acre parcel where McDivitt sits.

I have a question on that, though.

Yes, sir.

That's just what the county has a deed restriction on. But in theory, if a study was done and they found contaminants, so that's not like this will never qualify. It could still qualify. They just haven't found the evidence yet.

You're 100% correct. Based on what was submitted, that's what we could confirm, that only the 137 acres qualify as we don't know about the six acres. So the entitlements granted by the preemption are for residential uses. The density they get is the lesser of 25 units to the acre or the average density of the zoning around them. This is a dashed line area with a stated average density of seven, so that's what we agreed to in the letter. It's been mentioned before. The entitlement gives them administrative processes. There's no need to bring this back to commission for anything else beyond that. The property does need to be platted. That's an administrative process now. And depending on what product they want to build, there would be site plan approval for multifamily, which could be apartments, could be townhouses, or zero lot line single family homes. It's important to note that whether they are approved tonight or approved through the preemption, It doesn't alleviate their concurrency requirement or a staff review. Staff's still gonna be looking at this, enforcing the city code. There are some allowances in the preemption. Your subdivision regulations can't limit density, and if you have architectural code requirements, those cannot limit density.

You said zero lot line?

Zero lot line neighborhood would have to come for a site plan. If it was the traditional older neighborhood, like the R1 style where there's setbacks on all sides of the property, that you just plat and go right into building permit. But anything zero lot line or multifamily comes in for a site plan.

Would we approve that site plan or that's administratively approved under the infill?

Administrative.

Correct.

No, it would not come back unless they were seeking some type of relief from code through variance or waiver process or something. That's the only reason it would come to public hearing. Other than that, it's fully administrative. So we talked a lot about the agreement tonight, and I've got three slides kind of bullet pointing everything that was taken out. And you can see it on the screen. I don't need to read them one by one. But the big issue was every time we had a DRC comment, they had a section in the development agreement that showed how and when they would get to concurrency, what study they would do, what process they would do, all that. As was mentioned, there were some extras in there. But again, so I'll kind of skim through this one. Because the agreement was withdrawn, and when it was withdrawn and we got the new master plan and the new narrative to explain their side of things, what happened between first reading and second reading, I sent it back out to the DRC and said, hey, guys, does this change any of your comments? Are any of them resolved, unresolved? Well, let me know. FIRE reactivated their comments. They were resolved because the development agreement talked about land for the fire station They changed them back to unresolved, and they're asking for land for the fire station now. Again, all the comments raised by engineering about concurrency, those remain unresolved with no specific path to how they're going to address that. So my hands are kind of tied because the applications we're looking at tonight are development order, We have comprehensive plan policies that say we don't approve a development order unless we find concurrency. This application went through DRC twice. Both times, staff was asking for more information, studies, detailed plans, things like that to demonstrate concurrency. The applicant opted to move forward with those outstanding DRC comments to public hearing. So again, without the agreement, I don't really have a choice as to what I'm recommending.

But would you agree that they still would have to meet concurrency moving forward in the process?

Yes, fully.

Thank you for clarifying.

So were things I had marked on first reading with like a red question mark? That means like it was an outstanding comment, but there was an issue to resolve. the development agreement development agreements off the table so we have a number of issues like 3.1 talks about the availability of sanitary sewer service yes the plant has capacity and and the D's letter that affirmed capacity there was also a footnote in there that says this does not guarantee that there's infrastructure out there for potable water distribution or wastewater collection so again it's a service question related to concurrency 3.2, again, talking about public services, that's the basis for engineering's comments. And then under 3.4, we talked specifically about land use plan amendments that convert golf courses, the loss of open space on surrounding residential areas. They are proposing roughly 67 gross acres of open space. A large majority of that is lakes. That's because drainage is a huge issue on this project. Whether you build apartments or houses, drainage is going to be the elephant in the room. It accepts drainage from all the surrounding properties. It's going to have to continue to do that and pass down the system. Management of stormwater retention. Again, Dees was asking for a drainage analysis. They weren't satisfied with what was provided in the application. Integration with the proposed neighborhood again with the new master plan they totally pulled out all the trail locations Crosswalks things like that so they say there's a trail. I don't know the extent of it that kind of thing so It's unclear if they satisfy any of these So now kind of shifting over to the rezoning It's currently all s2 open space They want to bring some of that over to community business B2 on Pod A and multi-dwelling R3A on Pods B and C. The remainder where the lakes are proposed are going to remain S2. And here's like a close-up shot of our zoning map to show the current layout. Again, it's all green. It's all S2.

That was the picture I was looking for.

With the proposed, you'd see all the new red on the north side with a little bit of blue for B2. So in the city's land development code, section 40.303, it says that a change in zoning shall be permitted after a determination has been made by the city commission that services are available to serve the development permitted in the zoning district, which is being petitioned. A determination that services are available shall be made when the city commission approves a report submitted by the development review committee, which indicates the conditions contained in division five concurrency management system of this code have been met. This is again why I cannot give a favorable recommendation tonight. The applicant last year decided to move forward with the unresolved DRC comments and then this summer decided to pull the development agreement that again had a path to concurrency to resolve those comments.

Can I ask you something quick? Are they aware of all of this since they walked out? Yes. Okay. I just wanted to know because it would be lovely if they actually heard the issues since I'm assuming they're caucusing outside.

I certainly hope so. Matt was at both of the DRC meetings.

I guess Matt heard me. I mean, you know, I just wanted to make sure that they understood why you had voted no.

Mayor, sir. Yes, go ahead. Vice Mayor. Okay. Just wanted to bring one thing to light. We did. State your name for the record, please. Oh, yes. Liz Teschro, Development Services Director. We did speak with Dee's director, Kurt Kaiser. He's aware of this. We met with him and Richard, the building director, to review all of this. He did make a point to us that regardless of where we are right now in the DRC process, that the comments have not been resolved. They will have to be resolved. And he really pointed out that regardless of this, in order to get permitted They would have to meet all of these reports, concurrences. All of that would have to be proven before they get a permit. So the project itself would not be able to move forward, both for these and for building. So regardless, nothing can move forward until they meet the concurrences, provide the studies, and show all of the reports that need to be reviewed, technically reviewed by them. So that's, I just wanted to point that out because they are aware of the unresolved DRC comments and are expecting when this moves forward that they get resolved and if there's more requirements by them that they will be met. So just wanted to point that out. Thank you.

So again, going back to the concurrency comments, I've got the departments involved in the DRC, the Development Review Committee, and kind of a brief summary of the nature of the unresolved comments. Green check marks are good. They've found concurrency. Red Xs are not good. There's outstanding unresolved comments on there. So again, as has been discussed a few times, While staff didn't have the information with these applications to find concurrency, there's no exception to the rule prior to permitting, it's gonna happen. We've got a number of issues. Water distribution, wastewater collection, traffic, drainage. So anyway, in conclusion, The application was reviewed twice at DRC. Both times, DRC could not recommend approval. There were unresolved comments. DRC was asking for more information. Applicant decided to proceed to public hearing. There was a favorable recommendation of the P&Z on a two to one vote. But again, tonight, under the current circumstances, staff is recommending denial. And I'm available for questions if you've got any. Commissioner Schwartz.

I guess my question is more for Mr. Scott. Why in the world would you not resubmit and do these things? If you're going to have to do them anyway, why would you not want them to approve it to us? Because quite frankly, we're the layman, with the exception of Rosano, and they are the people who do this for a living. You put us in a really bad situation when things like wastewater, are a problem and the rest of it. You would normally have done that if this weren't an issue in a golf course, if this were any one of the millions of other opportunities you have in this city. Why not do that?

Yeah, so we're going to do that.

It's going to happen. I know you're going to.

As Andrew knows, it has to happen. So we're not shirking that responsibility. We're just saying that we're not Based on what we submitted to the city and the county, we believe we disagree with staff, we do meet concurrency. These are all things we meet concurrency, we meet Article 5 of your code. The site planning process will suss out the details of where pipes will go, easements, whether we have to install a new lift station, things of that nature. And so it's going to happen. It's just staff was saying, even though the county doesn't require that level of detail now, even though most cities don't require it, we're requiring it now. And we're saying we'll do it during the site plan. That's all.

But I'm looking at the dates. This was May 13, 2025 they asked for that. I mean, we're talking a year and several months, four months. I don't understand why, and that's before the Info Redevelopment Act actually got shoved down anybody's throat. Why not just have done that then?

Right. So the typically, the typical development process, that all gets done during site planning because it's the most expensive part. And so...

So it's a matter of whether it was worth... And it takes the longest. ...reinvesting at that particular moment as to doing...

Right. So typically what you want to know is whether the city has enough water, sewer... and whether you can solve for drainage. We know those answers are yes. The city is saying...

He says there's a problem with that.

The city engineer is saying the specific engineering details for the project they don't know the answers to yet. And so they're taking the position, which we disagree with, that they can't say we meet concurrency. Respectfully, I think they're wrong. I think that's not true. I think we meet concurrency because the city has more than enough capacity for these things. And in order to get permits, we will have to show the items that the engineer is looking for.

So that's where the argument comes when you have to prove that.

Right. And the city commission gets to weigh in on that, who they agree with. The fact that we all agree we're going to have to do it, there's no question. So the reason why I took issue with the presentation where staff said there was no path to concurrency, that's not true. There's a path to concurrency. It's just not as it hasn't occurred to staff's liking yet. But it is a path. It has to be a path. It's the only way. This is not no path. It's the only path.

But Matt, it's not to staff's liking. Right. Staff works for the city. The city makes decisions for the residents. Other than giving you both boxing gloves, how does that wind up working out for us?

Or for them? We don't do pillow fights in this city?

I'd be more than happy to do that for you. And my money's on him.

I'm quick, though. Like, I'm quicker than I look. You know what I mean? Like, I'm shifty.

My money's still on Liz, too. But no, seriously, how does that get ironed out? If staff says no, and this is staff with engineers, I mean, I'm sure you can always find someone who will agree with you. But it's a hard thing to swallow when they're saying, these are our problems. And there are so many X's, as opposed to, the ones that are, you know, and in all due respect to the PNZ board, they are people without the background that staff has as well.

Yeah, I think the easiest solution is just knowing that approving this means we will have to get site plans approved and have to prove all these things. There is no risk to the city whatsoever that we will not meet concurrency.

Cross-examination.

Am I correct that we're going to go through that?

I'm going to ask him. Yeah. Is that true? He's not smiling.

Correct. Before any building permit is issued, they do have to meet the concurrency. They will have the detailed engineered plans that Dees is asking for now. Dees didn't have them, so they couldn't say conclusively, yes, you meet concurrency.

And I understand there's an expense. I get it.

They were asking for very detailed analyses during the DRC, which, again, they're putting their name on it whether or not it meets concurrency. So that's why they wanted those reports, those detailed drawings, everything. the commission does have an option to do a conditional approval with what was offered and conditioned on providing concurrency. But again, it's just staff didn't have that ability to say yes.

Yes, absolutely. Yeah, I'll say just it's, you know, when a land use plan amendment comes forward, It's a developer's choice of whether or not to do a site plan, and that site plan would then result in the concurrency analysis being done at the same time as a land use plan amendment.

And if they didn't do a site plan?

And they've chosen, for one reason or another, maybe expense to not spend the money to do it all now, but they certainly will have, as Andrew has said, have the legal obligation to meet all those requirements prior to getting any type of building permit. And we still have the right to vote on those things that's not part of what we've no longer been able that not those are strictly administrative as Mister penny said the only thing that would necessarily come back to you would be any applications for variances or waivers associated with the site plan. They would submit that for administrative approval engineering building fire police. Public works would review all those elements to make sure that they meet concurrency.

Commissioner Rosano.

Yeah, Andrew, thank you for the presentation. I know it's difficult for you to state the facts when you have a commission here that it looks like it's going to pass. And I get that. It's tough. But I honestly think that we should hold back on this, guys, a little bit, wait until everything is passed. And I know they don't have to. They can just go right through us. I get it. But going back to showing a good partnership and a good relationship, I mean, if you guys are up against a clock, then just say it. I mean, I guess that's what it is. You guys want to get this done as soon as possible. I understand. But it's just hard to sell it to the community when staff doesn't approve it. There's a lot of questions that need to be answered, and we don't have the answers to them. So, Andrew, again, I thank you for your presentation. And when you say it's going to be handled administratively, is that, Kel, is that you? It is.

It's DRC. Ultimately, you know, I oversee every department that's a part of that. But when it gets into site planning and meeting those concurrency requirements, that level of detail, that is done at the department level, staff level, correct?

Because you talked about zero lot lines, so you're talking about if they wanted to go to bigger property, it had to be approved by administratively?

So I was talking about the remainder of the process, whether it's approved tonight or they go through the preemption. Property has to be platted. The 137 acre parcel is not platted. It's never been platted. The clubhouse is platted, but I imagine they'll platt everything together. And then the next step is depending on the housing type. If they're building multifamily, whether it's apartments or townhouses, that's a site plan. If they're building single family, there's a split. If it's zero lot line, like PRC, which is kind of most of the Carolinas right now, or PUD, that's a site plan as well. If it's single family that's, detached on all sides, like the older neighborhoods in Margate, it's straight to building permits.

And how about the lot sizes?

That's dictated by the zoning category and, of course, the type. So if they were going zero lot line, like PRC has minimum lot sizes in there. And if they are going the traditional R1A, R1B, there's also lot sizes in there. The biggest lot size that we have for single family right now is the R1A district, which is, I want to say it's a 10,000 square foot lot. But again, the rezoning they're going for is R3A. So it's,

Wow.

R3A is multifamily. I'm sorry. It's multifamily with like the highest state of density, like more than 16 per acre or something like that.

So, David, let me ask a question, honestly. Whether this passes or fails or not, is it possible that in a year from now they could start building apartments on there? I mean, I don't have a crystal ball and I'm not a developer. No, no, no. But does it give them the ability? I mean, we're talking a lot. They're going to build townhomes. They're going to build residential. Right. Is this all talk, like I said in the beginning, or is it possible that five years from now there could be apartments sitting on that property?

If this is approved tonight and the declaration of restrictive covenants is recorded, you will not see apartments on those properties.

Okay. Although no. Support staff.

Commissioner, Vice Mayor.

I just have one single question for you. I believe that you said before they can take you please take your for your life. Before they can move forward. They have to meet concurrency. You're saying no, that they didn't give you all the paperwork because they couldn't prove they meet concurrency, so you had to vote no.

Correct.

But before they go forward, much more forward, they have to, by law, meet concurrency.

Correct.

Thank you. Thank you.

Okay. I don't see any further questions from staff. Is there a rebuttal for the...

At this point in time, it would be appropriate for you to ask for public comment. Following public comment, the applicant would then be able to provide any rebuttal testimony, and then the commission can discuss. I have to read in the ordinance as well. At this point in time, public comment would be appropriate.

Okay, let's go ahead to public comment.

And just for the record, please state your name and address. Please state if you've been sworn in or not, and you have three minutes. And please respect everybody's opportunity to speak by not shouting out or clapping or applauding. Thank you very much.

Yes, I was sworn in. My name is Alan Kopelman. I'm a resident in Carolina Club, Fairway Estates, 2870 Northwest 74th Avenue. Okay, you guys should vote for this tonight. Put that covenant in place so that whether or not they can come to concurrence or not, that's locked in. Okay, that's what I have to say about that. But I gave a letter to the clerk earlier to put into the record. There needs to be, my concern is before any grading, clearing, excavating, moving soil, otherwise disturbing the property, The environmental protections need to be in place, not after construction started like over on executive. The Broward County Environmental Permitting Division has already documented elevated arsenic in soil, arsenic in groundwater, existing arsenic-related restrictive covenant and unresolved petroleum contamination issue at the golf course. We're not talking about hypothetical concern. What I'm asking for is that there's airborne dust monitoring going on and other monitoring going on so that the residents in the area feel safe when they're digging everything up and if they're removing the dirt, there's a right way to do it and there's the fast way to do it. The right way to do it is in covered trucks. There's air monitoring devices out on the golf course so if it's super windy, you know, and they also have to wet the ground and all these different things and that's what I'm asking and I put I gave a letter that has detailed information in it about what the laws are in Broward County and we don't want the laws enforced later after they start construction and all of a sudden dust is flying and everybody's complaining and calling the police and calling up the city manager and calling the code enforcement and calling all the commissioners And every one of you know I can be a pain in the butt and get on Facebook Live and go crazy. And the lawyers for the developer all know me. And they know who I am, and I even had an article in Margate Talk talking about this. You guys had eight years to put that golf course owner into bankruptcy. That was chosen not to do. You could have fined him $1,000 a day for not mowing the lawn, and that place could have went bankrupt and forced into another sale, but now we're at a crossroads. Now's the time you put that covenant in place. They can build no more than what's in there. And if these guys can't complete the project, somebody can't come behind them. build a whole giant apartment complex in there so that needs to be stopped i know tommy's going to vote no he wants the clubhouse whatever we need the three votes lock that in so that we don't get screwed later but this environmental thing has to be taken care of that i am imploring the city commission to get that done to protect the president.

We also all know your dog Rocky. I said we know your dog Rocky as well.

I love Rocky. Can we get the plot back up? Can we get the plot back up? Before you start my time, can you get the plot back up? Please, the picture that we're talking about.

This is the one that shows the pods. This one that shows the pods.

The one that they brought up. The one that they brought. No, not Margate's. The applicants.

Name and address.

Richard Eddins, 3043 Northwest, 72nd Avenue, Margate. I live in Greens 1. That will be my westerly view, all of that down that Pod C. I think the best thing I heard from the city was that only Pod C falls under this infill rule, right? And I would like for him to document that a little bit clearer because he clearly said if this is like, environmentally contaminated, that's only C. That's not the clubhouse and it's not the area on sample. So y'all should have the city make that clear in that presentation. That may not have been what was asked of him, but he's offering you that this infill requirement is only for contaminated property. That's number one. I would like to mention that there are, Zillow doesn't carry all the homes, okay, but Zillow is showing already 500, over 500 single family homes For sale today. Okay? If you add the leases, that number goes to over 750 properties that are currently available. Legacy at Margate, which was not, now it's up there. Okay? That's another 220 dwelling units that are currently available. So there's 1,000 properties right now available in the city of Margate. So there's really just not a need for another 250 houses. And I want to point out that the sign shows that FPL easement and all the way over to the IHOP as part of this density thing, right? So you're getting this seven units because we have the FPL easement included in that. 600 and something acres is included in this density thing. when we're only talking about 143 acres. So it's disingenuous. And the wording in the resolution is dishonest at best. So there's no other reason to not vote for this. It's because the wording here is very misleading. There's not 163 acres. or there's not 638 acres in question here. It's just that little strip there, Pod C. Let's talk about that. This guy told you they were going to put single-family homes 250. P.S. Greens 1 is 88 homes. Greens 1 is 88 homes. I got you. I got you. Zero hotlines, 88 homes. You can't take Greens 1 and lay it into Pod C. Okay, so you know that's going to end up to be much higher density. Just like they said, it's going to be over 240 units. You try to get 240 people out on Rock Island in the morning when I'm trying to go to work, that traffic backs up both ways. Both ways. Okay?

Thank you, Richard.

Cave and Sucrum sworn in, 2930 NW 69th Avenue. My concern is traffic is already heavy on Rock Island. where I live. I live directly across from Matt David, which is a very good building. I've had many, many occasions there. It's vital to the Carolina community. Also, you said it's a six acres not declared contaminated. Can we have that reserved? I also agree with the fire department because we have few in the city and it will be overwhelmed if there's an emergency. The other concern I have is Sorry. With all the increased traffic, are we going to put traffic control signals there, especially on Northwest 23rd? Because as this previous gentleman said, it's a nightmare in the morning when you're traveling during rush hour, morning and afternoon. And if this community is being developed, that's going to increase traffic flow. And we more likely would also need an increase in law enforcement too. There are other factors that want to come into play. Are those are going to be addressed? I agree we need to lock in the deed right now. I'm watching the time so that we don't have a future contractor if this one falls out. Because my understanding of that whole area, we have had many deeds come up and fall apart by the wayside. So we can lock it in with conditions to protect the city, the residents. I understand there's a business side to it. The state is undermining us. We have no loophole around it, but we can put conditions to protect us. And that's all I have to say. Thank you.

Hello, John Jones, sworn in, 7381 Royal Palm Boulevard. I've learned a lot tonight from both sides. I love the passion. I was married at the Carolina Club. I also bike ride a lot, and I don't think that place is salvageable. There's probably going to be too much mold remediation. It's going to have to go down. I still have a 26-year marriage that I can be proud of. So got married there. It's still going on. What I am concerned about is the first person mentioned toxins. And our own safety staff said that there were toxins around there that was already known. Now, this wonderful FIRA that's come up that was signed into law, Well, that's great, but it is an absolute presumption beyond a shadow of a doubt that there are toxins there, and these people need to protect our neighborhood. They have to protect our waters. We have a huge aquifer. We have, as mentioned earlier, we're dumping a lot of money into the maintenance and expansion of our waters. Could you contribute to that? Fire Department, really the only good place for that is going to be on Sample Road. I know the area. But maybe if you could reserve some space over there. Protect us from the toxins. One other question is the parking space or the park space that they're going to add. Is that going to be open to all residents of Margate or just those people in that community? All people? Okay. And that does it for me. I thank you very much.

Hello, I'm sworn in. My name is CJ Watson. I live on 3295 Pinewalk Drive, right there, right next to Pod F. I would be the most beneficial person for this because I get lakefront property now. However, I have a wonderful living oak that I have right where they're going to make a lake. That living oak has a lot of wildlife in it, a lot. We have osprey, we have button-nosed, not button-nosed bad, Button bats or something. Bonnet bats. Everything from ducks. Everything. I've watched the osprey specifically raise five chicks five years like clockwork. She's going to be gone now. That tree's going to go down and I'm going to lose everything that I've watched for the last five years. I'm a 14th generation American. Third generation pilot. I fly over here all the time just because it's beautiful and it's green. That's going to go away and it's going to be like that giant concrete monstrosity in Coral Springs. I use this for dead reckoning, which is a way to fly without using anything except for land. It's really hard to watch these spaces go away. I grew up in Hawaii, so I've watched this. This is my eighth development that I've watched take away land. It's really hard every time. Once it's gone, it's gone. You can't get it back. So the only thing I have to say to you tonight is that there are things that cannot speak for themselves that are on that golf course that are gonna be gone. And those are gonna be direct things that we can't change. Once it's gone, it's gone. That's all I have to say.

My name's Kat Stevens. I live at 3295 Pinewalk Drive North. Same place, Pod F is my backyard. So my concern is more for like pot A and pot B because of where I live. My husband and I moved here six years ago and we live in pot F. So we choose our area because it was green space. You know, we came from Chicago, you know, everything was flat, everything's boring. And then to come to a place that was beautiful and just made you feel like home. The apartment The apartments are surrounded by a large Creek some With larger pond openings and I've seen and I've documented what it looks like in a drought I've seen a documented what it looks like with flooding conditions and They're gonna fill all of that all the way up to the apartments except for one little area and that whole Pod C is Going to be more at flooding risk because where's it going to go? You can't like water's going to go wherever it wants to go. If you put drainage in certain places and you think it's going to work, it might not. And then of course we already talked about like kind of the commercial area, uh, cause it is frivolous. We have plenty of empty buildings all along sample. We don't need another gas station because we have like three and a mile. And the kids need a place to go because some don't have anywhere to go, nowhere safe. And I see them doing their homework in those green spaces and staying away from the craziness that's at Wawa. So you can displace the wildlife, you can displace them from their homes, you can displace the teens who need the safe spaces, and you can displace those who enjoy the wildlife, but you can't displace water that you're filling or negate the toxins that are beneath that golf course.