City Council - Regular Meeting

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Good evening and welcome to a regular meeting of the Boca Raton City Council. It is Tuesday, February 24, 2026. The time is 605. Our first item of business is the invocation. And I'll ask Deputy Mayor Nacklas to deliver it, please.

Thank you, Mayor Singer. Good evening. This evening, let us give thanks for all who have gathered here and those joining us online. I'm personally grateful for the opportunity to serve this city, a community defined not only by its beauty, but by its residents who care deeply and show up to participate in the process. Grant us the wisdom to govern amid the conflicting interests and complex issues before us tonight, recommitting ourselves to working together to build a better future for all. May we always keep at the forefront the welfare and genuine needs of our residents and have confidence in what is good and true. May all of us speak out when it's time to speak out and listen patiently and receptively when it's time to listen. Bless us with the ability to work together in harmony even when there is honest disagreement. May we be guided by the principles of compassion, understanding, and respect, remembering that differing opinions are part of a healthy and engaged community. We're thankful for all who protect our city, our state, and our nation. for our first responders here in Boca Raton, for our hardworking city staff who serve with professionalism and dedication, and for the residents who speak up to protect what we love about our city while thoughtfully helping us to move it forward. Thank you.

Thank you. Now, will everyone please rise and join in the pledge of allegiance? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Miss Sitt, will you please call the role? Mayor Singer here. Deputy Mayor Nas here. Council member Ducker here. Council member Thompson, thankful to be here. Council member Wter here. All present. Thank you. Uh let's turn to amendments. the agenda. We had some conversation yesterday and are there other things for discussion? Mr. Sweeney first.

Yeah, I just want to confirm as of yesterday we wanted to make an amendment for items 12, C, D, E, and F, and those are ordinances 5771, 5774, 5775, and 5776. Uh, and that was to move those to the next council meeting on March 24th. All right. Mayor, also I'd like to move to uh postpone item 12B 5767 until the next meeting as well.

Okay. Um and I actually was going to bring that up too. Uh we can talk about that now, but I'm in favor of that. I would say we should have some discussion on I'll I'll talk about why um on that one we discussed yesterday the reasons for C through F given that um we'll have some um we can still do this in March certainly. Um, anyone else with amendments or changes before we talk about B? I'll just jump into B. I appreciate staff's work on this. I think a little more conversation uh among us too would help and we can certainly discuss that um under member comments as well and have public input. Uh in part because there were some still some differences that we did not ask staff to address between planning and zoning's recommendations and staff's initial recommendations relating to placement of uh access points. and I'd want a little more thoughtful consideration of that and I'm not sure I have all of that today. So, I'm with you there, Mr. Worer.

I have the same exact thoughts. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Mr. Thompson. I feel the same way. I think this requires a little bit more discussion before it's fully baked and ready to be voted upon. So, whether it's in March or after that, I do think a a postponing it off of tonight's agenda makes sense. Okay. Um then um Mayor Singer,

please. Since I brought this amendment up and since I was looking forward to conversation tonight, I'm fine with pushing it off. But I think we asked staff to look into this a year and a half ago and then we gave more um direction over this last year and a half. So I don't think I don't want to push it off too long. I would like to discuss it at the next meeting if we're not going to do it today. And I will still be making member comments today. Okay. About it.

That's fine. And I mean we can we can we can open up the public hearing on it um and have some discussion. I just wanted to like alert maybe that is most most prudent because even last meeting we didn't have public comment. So we can we can just open up the public comment on it have some discussion and maybe that will yield more thoughts. Okay. There was a lot there was actually a lot of public comment on it last right but we we had it we didn't have it as as an agenda item. We had it after we moved. So maybe this time we we flip it and at least people can have the public hearing there. Sure. All right. Thank you. So, we'll leave that there. Then we'll entertain a motion to to Am I going to Oh, please. I'm so sorry. Excuse me. You were silent will be till November. I And I'm very glad that you're here, Miss Rucker. Thank you. I'm sorry.

Say um I agree with Deputy Mayor Nois. We've been talking about this for over 18 months as to why we should include the lurp. Why should we include certain areas that make sense? Um excuse me. And um and we did hear public comment. I have no opposition of of of moving it to the immediate near meeting. And I'm also having a little bit of a kind of a moment if I guess because we were just we were here yesterday and this didn't come up. So I haven't been privy to anything in the last 24 hours that would change us for moving this but maybe is because we're having talking to staff and maybe staff came up with other things. So again, I'm immunable to move the meeting. Uh I would like for Mr. Sohaney to bring me up to speed as to why staff felt 24 hours into this item that we need to move this item. So, I'm not privy to that. So, in case anybody wants transparency, this is really transparency. Um, because I've just been made aware of this right now. Uh, I would like to hear public comment. I've received public comment and we did receive a lot of public comment before and normally we don't have people come up and keep continuing to move things forward. We would have done that yesterday. Um, so again, let's have some conversation. Thank you,

M. Rucker. Those are fair points. I don't believe staff made the request. Mr. Wigger and I independently thought about things. I didn't talk to Mr. Wiggner either, but as I was coming for this meeting, there were some questions um still unanswered, but we'll how about this? We're going to have the public hearing at 12B. People can comment on it. Maybe we'll have a discussion today. Maybe we won't, but you know, maybe we'll get all those questions answered. I had some relating to access points that I had not asked. Um and I don't believe were covered by the the last report. So, and that's not that's not staff's fault. Mr. Ducker,

definitely. Thank you, Mayor Singer. Definitely we're going to have some discussion today so that what we can address staff and say this is what we need and we don't keep coming back and forth and putting agenda items or removing agenda items and really causing confusion with the residents that we're not being transparent as to what we're trying to accomplish. And what I'm trying to accomplish is that we have the most access to what we need for freestanding rooms that are going to benefit the community. So, I kind of want us to figure it out today so we could give proper direction and then we could calendar it correctly. We could notice it correctly and people could still have input from now to that point. Uh but it's something that is needed. We've already discussed that and I'll keep my comments uh for when we have discussion and I would like to hear from the public as well.

Very well. All right. So I think at this point it'd be appropriate to entertain a motion to postpone items to remove items 12 C, D, E, and F uh relating to downtown land development regulations, campus future land use map, comprehensive plan, and DDRI text based on our discussion yesterday that we should have those after um uh we should have them at the second meeting in March to remove them from the agenda and postpone them so that they're heard at the March 24 meeting. Do I have a motion to that effect? So moved. Second. Any further discussion? All those in favor of amending the agenda that way, please say I.

I. And it is amended. All right. Any other amendments to the agenda? Seeing none, we'll proceed to the review of the minutes under item five, the workshop meeting of February 9th, 2026 and the regular meeting of February 10th, 2026 are the minutes that we have for review. Are there any corrections or additions? Seeing none, will entertain a motion to approve both sets of minutes. Do I hear one? So moved. Thank you. Second. Thank you. Any further discussion? All those in favor of the minutes approval, please say I. I.

I. Very good. And we're now pleased to have a proclamation to recognize Florida Bicycle Month. We actually council members just took a photo outside with the proclamation in front of our bike stand, which is shaped like a uh bike. And I'll invite public works and engineering director Zach Beer and Holly Sutton, chair of the citizens pedestrian and bikeway advisory board, to come to the lectern to accept the proclamation while Miss Sins reads it. Whereas Oh, actually, are they here?

I think maybe we did. Maybe the photo did it, but we'll read the proclamation anyway. We did the photo. So, whereas bicycling is a clean, efficient, healthy, economical, and accessible means of transportation and recreation with a variety of associated benefits for individuals and society at large. And whereas bicycling has the potential to play a significant transportation role in Boca Raton and the surrounding environs to reduce the number and impact of motor vehicle trips and to improve the quality of life in our city. And whereas the city of Boca Raton has a commitment to maintain and improve conditions for bicyclists who ride to work and school to accomplish errands and for recreation and fitness. And whereas through these efforts, Boca Raton now has over 84 miles of bicycle lanes as well as shared use paths and trails. The city's bicycle network has been enhanced by unique and highly successful projects. And whereas the state of Florida officially recognizes March as bicycle month. Now therefore, I, Scott Singer, mayor of the city of Boca Raton, do hereby proclaim March 2026 as bicycle month in Boca Raton. And in so doing, encourage all our residents to participate in bicycle related activities.

Well, thank you. Uh we uh this council has taken a particular strong interest given our uh interest in multi modes of transportation and bicycling. Um and we've done a number of things to enhance our bikeways, our safety adopting vision zero. And this is another effort consistent with that. And Miss Ducker, let me call on you first this time. My apologies before.

Thank you, Mayor Sinker. Yes. Thank you first of all for putting the proclamation. Last year we we did it late in the month. So the month it starts in March. As I said yesterday in member comments, we're going to have a bike ride. I know the MO uh is going to be in sometime in March. I think March 13th, Friday the 13th. And then ours is on Saturday, March 21st. So if anybody's interested, you could sign up. And we do the Al Trail. It's a beautiful 5.3 5.3 mile trail that's really lovely. Um, so if you want details on that, but yes, we've done a lot of infrastructure planning in the last five and a half years from when we all when we passed vision zero and then we also passed complete street policy and we're top 10 in the nation with our complete streets policy. So very proud of uh the work the council has done to keep people moving not only efficiently but safely on our roads. And I also got this data uh recently uh last week from the NO meeting that we have the largest award of safe streets for all. So out of the 13.3 million dollars awarded to the state and federal grants, the city of Boca Raton is responsible for 7.3 and that's all because of staff and because this council believe in the policy of keeping folks safe. So thank you.

Right. Thank you. Any further comments, Miss Nicholas? Thank you, Mayor Singer. Yes. I'd like to thank staff and this council for really pushing the vision even further forward about uh safe streets for bicyclists and pedestrians. And we still have more work to do. We have work to do on um safe routes to school and improving our bicycle lanes even more to make them even safer for people to get around and not have to be in their cars all the time. So, I want to thank you for this proclamation as well. Very well. Any further comments? All right, that concludes our proclamations and presentations. We have no board appointments and I don't believe we had any workshop information requests yesterday. Is that correct? That's correct, Mr.

Thank you. We'll now move to the consent agenda. Would any member of the public wish to speak or excuse me, would any council member wish to remove any consent agenda item? Would any member of the public wish to comment on the consent agenda only? Seeing no one come forward, we'll entertain a motion to adopt the consent agenda as presented. Do I hear a motion? So moved. Second. Thank you. Any further discussion on the consent agenda? Seeing none, Miss Sittens, please. Nacklas, yes. Ducker, yes. Thompson, yes. Wter, yes. Singer, yes. Motion passes, five votes to zero.

Thank you. We have no items under resolutions or other business. So, we'll turn to item 11, quasi judicial and related public hearings. We will take up the items A and B together because these items are interrelated and a separate vote will be taken on each item because items A and B are quasi judicial in nature. The city's quasi judicial procedures will be applied to the combined discussion. If item A is not approved, no vote will be taken on item B. Miss, would you please read the titles of item A, resolution number 12-2026 and item B, resolution 13-2026. Resolution 12, 2022, a resolution of the city of Boca Raton considering for an approximately 1.33 acre portion of the approximately 140.8 8 acre the Boca Raton, formerly known as the Boca Raton Resort and Club property, generally located at 501 East Camino Rial. Conditional use approval pursuant to section 28-1198 code of ordinances to authorize a three-story approximately 52 foot tall, approximately 31,695 foot fitness center in the recreational zoning district providing for appealer providing an effective date. Resolution 132026, a resolution of the city of Boca Raton considering for an approximately 1.33 acre portion of the approximately 140.8 8 acre the Boca Raton, formerly known as the Boca Raton Resort and Club property, generally located at 501 East Camino Royale site plan approval to authorize construction of a three-story approximately 52 foot tall, approximately 31,695T fitness center and related site improvements, providing for appealer, providing an effective date.

Thank you. He'll ask the city attorney to review the quasi judicial proceedings that procedures that will govern tonight's public hearing.

Thank you, mayor, members of the council. um made this statement before. uh uh as provided for in the city's code of ordinance under section uh 2-27, each applicant that is requesting approval, relief, or other action from the city council this evening is required to disclose at the commencement or if there's a continuence of the public hearing any consideration, which generally means payment provided or committed directly or on its behalf for an agreement to support or withhold objection to the requested relief or action tonight. Um, the summary of the quasi judicial procedures that govern this proceeding is attached to the agenda and a copy can be obtained from the city clerk.

Thank you. At this point, we'll ask council members if they have any exparte communications they wish to disclose. Mr. Thompson, I received a voicemail yesterday from council for the applicant, Bonnie Mscoll, relating to the appearance of her team at the some members of her team on at this public hearing. I did not speak with Miss MSL about it. I don't believe I spoke with anyone else about this particular application and I believe that concludes my exparte disclosures. Thank you, Deputy Mayor Nicholas. Thank you, Mayor Singer. I had a meeting in person several months ago at city hall with Bonnie MSL, Daniel Hostettler, and George Garcia. And then I had a brief phone call today with Miss Mscoll.

Thank you, Council Member Darker. Yes, I had a meeting with Bonnie Msco, George Garcia, and there was someone else in the in that meeting which I escapes my name, but it'll be in my appointment. So, it's in the file, and I had no other further discussion or any uh and we received some resident emails uh on this um on this matter that are also part of the file. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Wagner. Yes, I've had a meeting with uh Miss Mscoll and uh Daniel Houseettler several months ago very generally about this topic and nothing further that I could recall.

Mayor, yes, it was Dan Houseetler. I just pictured the meeting. It was on my right. So, if you can if you can adjust my exparte. The meeting was with uh George Garcia Stroberg, Bonnie Mscoll, Don Dan Hastedler at city hall. So, it's on the record.

Thank you. And uh over the last few months I've had I think two conversations with Bonnie Mskell of uh who is council for the applicant. I believe I also spoke with Daniel Hosteller who's president of the Boca Raton some time ago. Um and I've been to the site a number of times as have we all. Um that concludes our exparte communication disclosures. So we'll ask anyone who wishes to speak on this item to please stand now so the clerk can administer the oath. This is on item 11 A and B. Please raise your right hand. Do you swear or affirm that any testimony you may give before this public hearing will be truthful and accurate? Thank you, Mr. Soy.

Thanks, Mr. Mayor. Development services senior planner, Mr. Develin, will make the presentation.

Thank you. Good evening, mayor and council members. My name is Owen Develin. I'm a senior planner with development services here at the city of Boeron. I'm here to present an application for the property located at 501 East Camino Rail requesting site plan and conditional use approval. Just for reference, the proposed location of the improvements is shown on the screen next to the blue arrow, which can also be seen from my um laser. The applicant is requesting a conditional use approval for a three-story 52 foot tall at its tallest point fitness center in the wreck zoning district exceeding the maximum height of 25 ft. A site plan application is also requested for the construction of the three 31,695T fitness center. The new fitness center will be located internal to the property in the southern section next to the existing golf clubhouse and across the street from the current fitness center. The application includes improvements to the site such as additional landscaping and reconfiguring pedestrian and golf cart pathways. The development services department have determined that the site plan approval meets all relevant criteria. The fitness center application will not increase on-site activities, nor will it result in additional trips or changes to the required parking. The application was presented to the community appearance board on October 1st, 2025. After discussing the building's design and its relationship to the existing golf clubhouse, the item was postponed to allow the applicant to update the elevations to better align with the golf clubhouse and other buildings on the site. The revised elevations were presented on December 2nd, 2025, and CAB recommended approval of the application at that meeting. Uh on screen are some renderings of the proposed fitness center. Staff findings and justifications. Staff recommends approval of the application for the following reasons. The

application is essentially relocating an existing use on the property. The application will not lead to increase in on-site activities, nor will it result in any additional vehicle trips or changes to the required parking. The application is also consistent with the comprehensive plan and complies with all applicable code requirements. As mentioned on the previous slides, development services and CAB recommend approval of both the conditional use and site plan application um subject to the conditions outlined in the accommodating resolution. The application went before the planning and zoning board on February 5th, 2026 and the board voted 6 to recommend approval of the application. There was minimal board discussion with one board member inquiring whether the fitness center was open to the public, which the applicant responded that it's only accessible to members and hotels uh and guests of the hotel. A follow-up question was then asked regarding the proposed use of the existing fitness building if approved, to which the applicant replied that it would be repurposed for hotel use. There was no public comment as part of that application. That ends my presentation. and I'd like to thank you for your attention and if you have any questions I'd be happy to answer.

Thank you council members. Any questions? We'll open up the public hearing. Anyone wishing to speak at this matter first obviously the applicant can come forward. Good evening Mr. Mayor, members of the council. Bonnie Mscoll here on behalf of the applicant. We do have a presentation. Although Mr. Develin um did a full and complete um summary of the proposed application, we are happy to answer any questions that you may have. I'm joined by our team um should they be specific to architecture or landscaping. Thank you. Council members, any questions? Mer have a question,

please. Miss Msco, do you have another rendering of the actual facade of the building? Because when we met a few months ago, I had asked for some changes. I think they're there, but if you have a better rendering, I'm going to show We have a few, so I can jump right to that if that's okay.

Okay. So, this is I'll show you the various elevations. This is the east elevation. This is what you would be looking at as you're coming from the Closter building heading west towards the golf course. And the materials that they've used, they're traditional Mediterranean misner type materials, stone natural material, dark um uh bronze um metals, and also terracotta material here, which I think were some of the comments that we received also from the CAB, which we've now incorporated into the drawings. This is a south elevation. So this would be looking at the building from ultimately Camino or the driving range. As you can see, the same materials consistent with what you would see slightly um more modern than the uh cloysters, but very consistent with the materials that are used in the main building. Also, the paint materials are identical. It's the same white color. And then this is the west elevation looking at the the building from the golf course side. Um, also we were very sensitive to the fact that there is a single family community uh south south of this site. So this building is actually stepped back at the third level. So that there is really only two levels from the golf course side and the third level is stepped further away from the single family homes which this is reflective of. And then this is the northwest elevation which is actually the elevation that faces the existing clubhouse and just a a sight section for you looking at the building from the um southern side of the site. And I think that's it for the most part. We do have some others if you'd like me to

continue. No. Okay. Just thank you so much for um to the applicant for making those changes. When I first saw this project, it looked really modern and I didn't think it fit the miseresque of what the Boca Raton is obviously and this obviously fits a lot better even though it's a little bit more modern. Um, you took into account so I appreciate that. Thank you for showing me that. Any further questions of the applicant? Yes, please. Mr. Wer, thank you. Uh, can you talk briefly, Miss Mscoll, about uh any traffic changes, traffic improvements? Uh, obviously, as we know, we attend many events there. traffic can sometimes get uh severely backed up and whatnot. Has there been any change in that based on this application?

Um there would be no impact from a traffic perspective. This use and this facility is limited to members of the club and guests of the hotel. So there is not one new person. It is not open to the public. Someone could not come here simply to use this particular fitness facility. And has there been any discussion on what the old facility is going to be used for?

You know, their focus, much like many other resort of this caliber, is really health and wellness. So, it'll be something in the nature of health and wellness, whether it's classes or, you know, other type fitness and health uses, something of that nature. Thank you. And by the way, you can see a portion of the existing facility on the left side of the screen. Um, and the buildings are very much consistent and compatible from an architectural perspective. Thank you. Further questions? All right. Thank you. Thank you very much.

All right. Anyone else wishing to speak on the public hearing on these matters, please come forward now. Last call. Certainly. I don't believe you were sworn in. So you can come to the lecture and I think the clerk will swear you in. By the way, anyone else wishing to speak, please rise now so we can say, right? This is public comment. No, this is not public. Well, this is public comment on this particular item, not on things generally. Right. This on this item. Okay. Please raise your right hand. Do you swear affirm that any testimony you may give before this public hearing will be truthful and accurate? Yes. Thank you.

Thank you. Would you please give your name and address and you have up to three minutes? Sure. Uh my name is Stephanie Rosenwig, excuse me, and I live at 200 Southeast Meisner Boulevard, uh the first of the Alina residence buildings. I am here to address the potential use of not not the actual fitness center, but that the potential use of the current service entrance of the Boca Raton on Southeast Meisner Boulevard at to potentially becoming the construction entrance for this fint fitness center project and the potential resident tower as well as even the golf course project with the uh new maintenance facility. I know that these are not fully uh approved yet, but I believe the entrance using it in this way would be contrary to the defined purpose of the entrance as well as undermining the complete streets policy and vision zero commitment that the city council has already adopted. I would propose that the Camino Royale members entrance be used instead. Per the master plan and amendments, um the language regarding the service entrance was originally set forth as a condition number two of city council resolution number 192-90. And I quote, "The access drive connecting to Meisner Boulevard shall be exclusively by shall be used exclusively by hotel employees and service vehicles in perpetuity. Guests and patrons shall not gain access to hotel facilities from this entrance under any circumstances. I believe this portion of the 192-90 is restated in the current resolution stating that it shall remain effect in effect. I believe this was originally established really to avoid having commercial vehicles enter the main um primary entrance of the hotel. Understandably, um, while the city of Bokeh Ratan Code is silent on definitions of, uh, service

vehicles, Palm Beach County Unified Land Development Code, Article 6 is explicit. It defines service and delivery vehicles as those making routine deliveries by tradesmen or the use of trucks and making service calls. However, it creates a separate legal category for construction vehicles defining them as mechanical implements principally used in construction activity such as concrete mixers, dump trucks, and cranes. Crucially, the conte the county mandates that these vehicles are only permitted on site when construction is underway for which a current and valid building permit has been issued and is displayed on the premises. This confirms that once a building permit exists, these vehicles are legally construction equipment, not routine service traffic. This is enforced by Florida statute 316.003. Under state law, a utility vehicle is limited to general maintenance, security, and landscaping purposes. In contrast, the heavy machinery required for the projects in resolution 12-26, specifically mixers and earth moving equipment, is classified as special mobile equipment.

Thank you, Miss Rosen. Am I up on three minutes? It is. Yes, you have. Your time's over. Thank you. Oh, okay. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else wishing to speak on this matter? Are you wishing to speak on this matter? Yes. All right. Then you'll need to be sworn in. Sure. Please raise your right hand. Do you swear affirm that any testimony you may give before this public hearing will be truthful and accurate? I do. Thank you. Please give your name and address. You have up to three minutes.

Joseph Powellski 17309 Boa Point Way. There is a 99-year agreement between the Boca Rone Hotel and my community recorded under book 5843, page 895 in the public records. The Boca Raton Hotel's maintenance obligations are defined in section 15 of said agreement. Responding to commu community concerns, Commissioner Thompson said the layout of the development will prevent the public from accessing residential areas. This is not true. Within the past week, someone trespassed and stole from my property by way of the golf course. Mr. Melki, one moment, please. First, the clock didn't start, but second, we're speaking about um the Boca Raton Hotel,

correct? We're speaking about this particular application, not um matters there. So, can you confine your remarks to that, please?

Sure. The community deserves clarity on fitness and tennis facilities as it relates to the Boca Raton Hotel and what they're proposing. Former Senator Ron Klein made you aware that it is not equitable for the facilities dealt with under the 99-year agreement with the Boca Raton Hotel to be stripped. And this deprivation of property rights, which Commissioner Thompson talked about yesterday, needs to be adequately dealt with first before any vote is held regarding a three-story fitness center above the 25 ft that is allowed per law. Nothing more. Boca Raton Hotel andor the city commission need to answer the following tonight. Was the 99-year agreement assigned or is the Boca Raton Hotel still a party to the agreement? If it hasn't been assigned, why haven't they upheld their obligations under the 99-year agreement? If it has been assigned, why isn't the assignment document part of the city's public records? Anyone else wishing to speak on items A or B? All right. Anyone who's testified wishing to offer uh wishing to cross-examine anyone else who testified. Then we'll give the applicant a chance for summation. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Um I'd just like to respond to one point as it relates to the use of the Meisner Boulevard access. We are not proposing to make any changes. We did not request to change that condition. We will continue to follow that condition as my client has for years and we're happy to answer any other questions that you may have.

Right. Thank you, council members. Any questions? Right. Thank you. That concludes the public hearing. We will now close the public hearing. We'll entertain a motion to adopt resolution 12-2026. I move that we adopt resolution number 012-2026. Thank you. Second. Thank you. Any further discussion? Um, just a question from staff. Um, I I think Miss MSL said it all in terms of the ingress egress. You were staff aware of any proposed changes? There are no proposed changes.

Great. Thank you. Right. And then just to clarify for Mr. Vjolski, um, that's not the subject. the the agreement concerning the former golf course that's now the Bokeas Boca Raton City Golf Course adjacent to Boka Country Club is not the subject of this uh particular application. Correct. I'm not familiar with the agreement that he's speaking of. I'm assuming it's a private agreement and the city does not enforce private agreements. Right. But we're we're talking also about this is not located at that site. Correct. All right. Thank you. Any further questions of staff or discussion? Then Miss please call the role for resolution 12 2026. Ducker, yes. Thompson, yes. Waker, yes. Singer, yes. Necklace, yes.

Motion passes five votes to zero. Very well. We'll now take up a motion to adopt resolution 13-2026. Do I hear a motion to adopt? So moved. Thank you. Second. Thank you. Any further discussion on this? Then Miss Sittens, please. Thompson, yes. Wter, yes. Singer, yes. Nice. Yes. Ducker. Yes. Motion passes. Five votes to zero.

Thank you. That concludes item 11. We'll turn to item 12, regular public hearings. The first item is item A. And Miss Cens, would you please read the title of ordinance 5757? Ordinance number 5757, an ordinance of the city of Bocaraton amending chapter 2 administration article 2 city council section 2-27 rules of procedure of the city code of ordinances updating and modernizing city council meeting procedures providing for severability providing for appealer providing for codification providing an effective date. Thank you. Um I think I'll turn to Mr. Kaylor for on this one or Mr. Zane. Uh me. Mr. Zane.

Thank you Mr. Mayor. Um, I'll start off and then uh our city attorney can add some color. Uh, the proposed amendments to the city council rules of procedure are not a rewrite of how the city governs itself. Instead, they modernize outdated language, clarify existing practices, and organize procedures that were previously scattered, implicit, or informal. Uh, basically, they make the rules easier to understand, more consistent, and they're better aligned with how the city council meetings already function. uh while improving clarity and flexibility and preserving the city's one governance structure. And I'll turn it over to the city attorney. Thank you, Mr. Kaylor.

Sure, Mayor. Uh the changes to the rules of the procedure based upon my research, uh there was a really h hasn't been significant changes since well any any rewrite or look at the language and the verbiage of these ordinances since at least 1966. There was a a change about exparte communications in 1995. Um a change in 2000 about disclosures, but really um as the manager described uh these are uh the rules that predate 1966. Um and generally they're designed to make them easier to follow and as the manager mentioned to uh reflect um you know how the how the council operates today. Uh in addition, there are um a few cleanups to uh conform to existing law in terms of how public meetings are handled. And there are uh some bringing in of we have some rules that are spread out by resolution, some that are in uh the clerk's agenda, and so it's sort of consolidating them, putting them into one place so that everybody knows what the rules are in one spot.

Right. Thank you. Mr. Kaylor, I'll just can you give some examples? For example, we have man and he used throughout chairman. Um I think in 1966 we had no female members of the city council and these rules seem to be a throwback to that era. Correct. The gender uh applicability to to all is and and gender neutrality that is is part of it. and and again just really taking uh you know language that you have to scratch your head and and think twice about and and writing it in a way that is plain and simple to understand.

Another example, we had a reference to Robert's rules, a version that's at least 35 years old and as out of print. So now we're uh changing this to the most current version of Robert's rules of order. The most current Robert's rules as may be further amended by Robert's rules. All right. Thank you. And then finally, um, there was language here that was that I found particularly interesting. Although we don't want to see slanderous comments here that would allow discretion for vague terms, you've now updated this to be more constitutionally sound to allow members of the public to speak um on issues.

That's correct. We've researched the uh the the various opinions out of the case the judges and the courts from this circuit and and Florida and uh made sure that these rules are clear behavior-based standards, not um sort of vague open-ended standards for uh maintaining an orderly meeting. Right. Great. Thank you, council members. Any questions?

All right. I'll just say that this is something that uh a prior city attorney had suggested years ago and we're getting around to it and I think this is something that I want to compliment Mr. Kaylor and his staff because there was considerable thought just to how to you clean up rules every now and then. It's a good thing to look at those. Um and uh I think uh I think these are beneficial changes. So with that, we'll open up the public hearing. Anyone wishing to speak? Miss Pashki? Yes, you I did get your card. I didn't get sworn in. Do I need to? You do not have to. We're done with Please tell the truth, but you don't have to be sworn. It's under the quasi judicial procedures that require that.

Okay. Pam Pashki, 341 Southwest Second Street. Mostly I just have some questions. So on rule 1.2 on pages six and seven, it says since my question is there since three members constitutes a quorum quorum, where in this whole thing does it spell out how many yes votes are necessary to pass a resolution or ordinance? I hope somewhere it says a majority but no fewer than three. It's my observation. On rule 1.15 on page 8, line 15, it says um persons can be prohibited from speaking before the council. I'd like to see some clarification that the prohibition is only for that day and not forever. Um on rule 1.2, two, it says that disclosure of exparte should provide enough information for an a person to refute or respond to the disclosures. And I'm not sure that's what really happens. So that's just my curiosity. On rule 1.21 21 7D page 14 line one. It says indicates every speaker is to provide name, address and any relationship with the subject matter which has not been the case um in the past that I have heard that people who have a relationship with the subject matter have not always disclosed that 7 I page 14 line 16 um it refers to lawyers. I think it should also refer to lobbyists because most lawyers who come up and speak before the city council are acting as lobbyists, which is when they're promoting something for voting, which is in the Palm Beach County um ordinance on um public lobbyist registration. Those are the ones I wanted to make sure I got out. Then I had a couple at the beginning. So, um rule 102-1, should this say Mondays excluding federal holidays, or is that not important? Um, and rule 104, page 3, line 26, refers to regular business hours, but it

doesn't say what business. I mean, we can assume that it's the city hall open hours, but maybe you could refer to where people can find the hours that are considered regular business hours. Gosh, I think that was it. And I don't think I have to use up all my time. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Pashki. And just to Miss Rosenwag, too, thank you for your comments. I'll suggest to everyone as I do, you're welcome to come here if uh we're doing this on the fly. Some of those are good changes. Some of those we have I think they're in there already, but we encourage people to email ahead of time if you can uh because we can try to better respond to some of these comments. Anyone else on this public hearing matter? Mr. Warner, please come forward. You're fine. You can come forward. Richard Warner 1322 Southwest 9th Terrace. I I obviously there is a compendium of all this available. I haven't seen it and I'm not a lawyer so I don't understand what she's talking about 50% of it. But where is that available? And does any of this what is significant about this uh in terms of what you would say curtailing transparency or curtailing public input? I don't know. So I'm just asking. Thank you.

Thank you. Before our next speaker, I will say there's one thing that Mr. Kaylor didn't cover. It's in the cover memo. This would limit cross-examination to uh to either the questions of the applicant or city staff. Um in the past, we've had some peculiar instances where residents were cross-examining other residents. I saw this first 14 years ago on a taxi taxi matter before I was on the council. It was awkward then. We had some awkwardness a few months ago. So, that is one small thing. But I think the number of cross- examinations I've seen of residents by residents over the last 12 years is probably fewer than five. So, um, it's really a distinction with little difference. Miss, uh, Miss Marorrow, did you want to speak on this item?

Oh, you were turning in a card. Sorry, Mr. Valkski. I'd like to talk a little bit about the rules because I don't believe they're being followed, but please give us your name and address.

Joseph Fowski 17309 Belbo point way. I asked three simple questions. They weren't answered. Um I I guess the answer was that if it's a private document, it hasn't been assigned to the city because then it would be a public document. I thought that the purpose of city council when these matters come forward is to encourage discussion and conversation between neighbors so that these topics can be dealt with when these items uh arise rather than giving the opport the applicant an opportunity to answer the three questions would have been you know the way that I would have moved in that situation. On the same topic of rules in in 999-year agreements and property rights, I gave you all an opportunity to respond to the facts pertaining to the CRA consent to assignment of Meisner Park ground lease yesterday. While singlepurpose entities are indeed customary in institutional transactions, so are guarantees. It's clear by the response of Mr. Kohler and Commissioner Wner that they are pulling the wool over the public's eyes. The proposed asenees aren't single-purpose entities that submitted financials. They are fictitious entities that haven't been formed without any credit at all. Commissioner Wiger's response as chair only referring to the lease being collateralized by the property was completely negligent given he's a real estate veteran who knows that the value of the real estate which the proposed asenee will have a right to purchase at fair market value under section 31.1 of the lease is determined by the credit of the tenant under the lease. As a result of this negligence, the CRA will be forced to sell the public's property to these fictitious entities who have far weaker credit than the existing tenant for millions and millions of dollars less. You may think that the people don't care, but they do.

Anyone else wishing to speak on this item concerning our changes, the rules? All right. Is this the government? This is not No, this is about the rules of procedure. Yes.

And and and we'll get to that in a moment. We'll close the public hearing on this one. Um, and I may want to u we might need a brief recess. Um, uh, I let me just respond to the first things first. By the way, I do encourage people to email Mr. Beolki just from yesterday. You mentioned your February dated email. I looked yesterday and I forgot to mention I did not see that one. If you'd like to send it again, I you've now heard the comment and it maybe after the fact, but um, I I do try to respond. I But the last email I saw from you was September, not that one. Um in terms of the um Miss Pashki's points, I think um there were a couple that we can answer offhand. I think um holidays are defined um the rules of majority are defined elsewhere. Um and business hours, they may not be defined by 8 to 4, 9 to5, but I think they're customary enough. And plus, um I don't know what timeline there is relating to business hours. Could you just respond to those three? We can knock those out easily.

Yes. Um certainly Monday workshop meetings that we have a code provision regard acknowledging certain federal holidays and and so it would be implied that uh there would not be a Monday workshop when there was a federal holiday. Uh Miss Pashi's comment uh doesn't detract. Uh but I think it would be a reasonable reading of this board to read it that way. Um, as to the regular business hours, uh, generally my understanding is it's 8 to 5 as a as a practical matter. Um, but that generally has to governs the internal operations of the city manager department and the city clerk and how staff is is processing an agenda and making sure it's getting to the clerk on time. So, um, I defer to the council on all these suggestions. are all um valid suggestions. Um the what was the third one I had the removal of speakers. Um the law would I I think generally support if a speaker ever had to be removed it would be for that that particular conduct in that meeting. I don't think there's any um basis that you can permanently bar somebody. Um there might be extraordinary circumstances but generally it would be to maintain the order of that meeting. Um the I I not sure I quite understood the reference to the lawyers and and lobbyists

and I I think I can feel that one because it says lawyer or other representative. I think that encompasses lobbyist. So I don't I think we have that covered. Okay. Um those and just by the way I'm speaking in shorthand for those who missed it. It was, you know, it says an applicant or a person may be represented by a lawyer or other representative. I think that includes that. But I don't know if that answered your question. Those were just my notes from

um I think it did. Um council members, other questions. Yeah. Um business hours. I mean, I I'm comfortable with that. What that is also if daylight savings shifts, we might have a shift of business hours. There is considerable conversation about that. Um permanent daylight savings hours. So, we might see 9 to5, maybe 10 to 6 or 8 to 4 in the near future. We don't know. Um, all right. Any other questions of staff? All right. Then we'll entertain a motion to adopt ordinance 5757. Do I hear a motion? I'll make it. I move. Second. All right. Any further discussion? All right, then. Miss Sins, please. Wter, yes. Singer, yes. Nas, yes.

Ducker, yes. Thompson, yes. Motion passes five votes to zero. All right. Thank you. Um we'll turn now to item B, freestanding emergency facility ordinance 5767. This item was postponed from February se 10th. It is the second of two public hearings and as was discussed earlier, we may yet have another uh we'll have a discussion and we'll see where we land. With that, Miss Sins, would you please call the role? Ordinance number 5767. We're not going to do the role, right? We're going to open the public hearing, get comment, and then we were going to postpone this until Oh, yes. I'm sorry. Yes. Excuse me. Yes. That's I meant right. I'm still here for taking the role. No, no, no.

I said read the title. Excuse me. Sorry.

Call the Call the title then. Thank you. Ordinance number 5767, an ordinance of the city of Boca Raton amending chapter 28 zoning code of ordinances, amending article 1, division 1, section 28-2 definitions to create a definition of freestanding emergency facility and amending the definition of outpatient surgery center to exclude emergency room procedures from said definition. amending article 11 business and commercial districts to provide that freestanding emergency facilities shall be conditional uses in the B4 MC city CG and city CHO zoning districts amending article 12 industrial districts to provide that freestanding emergency facilities shall be conditional uses in the LIRP zoning district and amending article 15 supplementary district regulations division 1 to create a new section 28-1320 code of ordinances to set forth eligibility criteria for properties to include a freestanding emergency facility providing for severability providing for appealer providing for codification providing an effective date.

Thank you. And before I recognize the city manager, I just want to say for some people walk in after and are looking to speak on items 12 CD and F relating to downtown land regulations. We have removed that from tonight's agenda. That will be taken up in March. So that is not coming up now in case anyone was waiting to speak. I know we had one member of the public who wished to do so. Mr. Sohaney. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Development services director, Mr. Shad will make the presentation.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. Brandon Chad, development services director. Um, this is the postponed second of two public hearings on the freestanding emergency facilities ordinance. So, I just want to say at the outset that we gave a presentation on January 6th at the first public hearing um at the council's direction at the workshop meeting on February 9th. Um the ordinance has been amended in ways that I will explain. But what I'm going to present now is the ordinance as it has been amended. I just want to make that clear at the outset. So, this is a city initiated uh code amendment sponsored by Deputy Mayor Knas to chapter 28 zoning uh to allow freestanding emergency facilities as conditional uses in the following zoning districts. The medical center, the city commercial general, the city commercial high office, the B4, and the LP. The LP is the change that has been made um since the first public hearing uh to add that district to the ordinance. So this is a map um that based on the criteria that is set forth in the ordinance are basically or are the areas that would be eligible for uh freestanding emergency uh facilities. So what has changed is you will see in green those are the areas that are zoned LP and would otherwise be eligible. So, a summary of what this amendment does. It creates a definition of freestanding emergency facilities. It allows them, as I mentioned, as conditional uses in the in the zoning districts that I um just listed. And it has some supplemental standards that are summarized as um first, the parcel must have vehicular access point that is um on an arterial

road and not within a school zone. It also cannot abut single family either existing single family single family residential either existing or zoned for such use and there must be at least one dedicated ambulance loading and unloading area that does not interfere with site circulation. The ordinance also reformats some parking provisions to maintain the same required parking that would be required today. Just to be um exceedingly clear, this ordinance does not propose to change the parking requirement for these facilities. Um by way of background, the freestanding emergency facilities, we currently have none located in the city. Um there was one proposed. The planning and zoning board resolution 2025001 approved a site plan for such a facility at 101 East Telecom Drive. um an appeal was filed by an adjacent property owner and the city council reversed that decision and denied that application. That application has been appealed to circuit court and is currently a pending um case. Subsequent, I'm sorry, actually it was before that. Um ordinance number 5698 was adopted in August 2024. Um the bigger background of that ordinance was that it reduced the um parking requirements generally for medical offices. um at the public hearing where that ordinance was adopted, the city council did um make changes to that ordinance that uh specifically excluded certain facilities from that reduction in requirements and among those facilities were freestanding emergency rooms and other types of emergency rooms. Um the planning and zoning board did review the ordinance on January 8th and that was prior to um the city council's direction to add the LP zoning district to the ordinance. The board recommended

by a vote of six to nothing um that the ordinance be approved with the following modifications to add the LP zoning district which has been done. Um and while keeping the arterial frontage requirement that the a parcel front an arterial road that um access would be allowed nevertheless from a non-arterial road. The board proposed to remove the restriction on access within school zones and to require a onem separation between freestanding emergency facilities. So the map that you see on the screen there is the same map that we were presenting earlier, but it's an illustration of what a onem distance separation uh would look like. Um so we can't do that for every parcel. So we picked random parcels to show what uh essentially what kind of a distance that is. Um so in the case of see if my pointer will work here. This is the mall. This is basically the old Sears parcel that we've chosen and drew one mileer on that. Um, in this case here in LURP, we've picked the site that we're sitting on right now. Um, drew one mileer on that and I don't know exactly what parcel here on Federal Highway, but it's about there. Um, so since February 9th, staff has conducted some additional research by way of reviewing what some other dis uh jurisdictions have done recently. Pompo Beach adopted an ordinance as recently as or actually on January 27th of this year that allows freestanding emergency facilities in certain commercial and industrial zoning districts. It's similar to the districts that we are proposing or have been proposed. Now, there is a minimum lot size requirement of 1 and a half acres. Um, this ordinance requires that emergency vehicle access occur only from an arterial or collector street.

And there are um additional access and buffering requirements when the site is within 500 ft of single family or two family residential um uses. To remind you um the ordinance that is under consideration here um prohibits such a facility of budding single family. So, we don't need um wouldn't this type of requirement wouldn't apply in in this case. Palm Beach County is considering adoption of an ordinance. Um it's scheduled for consideration on Thursday, um two days from now. Um, among the requirements of that ordinance is that the site must have frontage on what is called in the county code a major street, which means an arterial or collector or an expressway and requires that emergency uh vehicle drop off locations must be completely screened from residential uses um by way of an opaque fence, a wall or landscaping. So, as you can see, these are substantially similar uh requirements in many ways to what we are proposing. Um our additional research has also showed a common theme um which is that these facilities as they are fairly new concepts have initially been treated by many jurisdictions as a medical office initially and then later there have been many jurisdictions that have passed ordinances specifically regulating them. Um among the jurisdictions by way of example that have treated them as medical offices are Palm Beach County, um PMPO Beach, Palm Beach Gardens, um and West Palm Beach still currently treats them as medical offices. Um, and another common theme that we've seen is at least for the time being, it's common for emergency services to not transport the most serious cases to these facilities unless it's

specifically requested. That is from what we can uh glean a policy that is among those emergency services providers, the the the cities or counties that are um making that decision uh for their emergency services, for their ambulance services. So that may change in the future, but that appears to be what is mostly occurring right now. Um, in conclusion, staff finds that the uh ordinance would establish regulations for freestanding emergency facilities and would implement a straightforward and common sense approach for the initial programming of this new use. I want to emphasize um that this can always change. We can always expand um where they're allowed, adjust the requirements um as we perhaps in the future learn more about these facilities and their potential impacts. Development services does recommend approval of this proposed uh ordinance as presented and I would be happy to respond to any questions.

Council members, any questions? Miss Nicholas, I don't have questions, but I have quite a few comments. So, I can we can go through the questions first and get public comment and come back. Sure. How about that? Questions? Mr. Wer.

Thank you, Mr. Shad. Thank you. Um, I was not at the January 6th meeting, so uh, like I said, I been studying up on it afterwards, and so I thank you for the presentation. Um can you explain the difference between arterial streets, collector streets a little bit more just uh for my own edification it would be helpful. Um sure I can try. So um there are other than expressways there are essentially three classifications. Um local streets which the primary purpose of is to provide um direct access to the uses that are along them. that typically these would include um you know your typical residential streets, smaller streets basically. Um collectors are those that the if you think of it like a a system of streams and rivers, the local streets feed into the collectors which then feed into the arterials. The arterials are the largest largest roads you're talking Glades Road, Yumato Road, those types of size of um streets are arterials. Thank you. And I guess the the question of access points um is not really is not really mentioned too much here. There was one uh I think was it Pompo Beach or a different city had a uh a specific rule about where access points are um or if it requires a deceleration lane or anything like that. Um has has that been looked into at all? I'm not sure if I understand what the question is. Have we I mean Pompo Beach, I think as we said a moment ago, requires that access to the site be from an arterial or a collector. The deceleration lane um we have require well a deceleration lane is what would commonly be referred to as a right turn

lane into a site as opposed to a right turn lane at an intersection. Um, so that's a deceleration lane. We have specific thresholds in the code for projected um turning movements that would make that uh turning movement that would then require a deceleration lane.

Thank you. And and in terms of uh buffering requirements, that was one of the things I was thinking of that obviously in the previous examples that you gave, the comparative examples you talked about uh single family, but uh obviously depending on where this goes in the city, uh it could be something where we could require buffering requirements. Could that be part of a conditional use or would that be required to be in the actual code?

Uh yes. So the conditional use process and the criteria for approval of a conditional use I is such that if that you know the city council can essentially find that there is a need for additional buffering and impose that requirement absent a an express code provision. So yes you can do that. Thank you. And does uh you talked briefly about the fact that uh public service um ambulance is right now not going to freestanding emergency rooms. Is that a specific uh internal policy guideline that the city needs to take or how is that effectuated?

I'm sorry. Can you say that one more time? Didn't catch all. You you said in one of your previous slides that uh public ambulance is not is right now recommended not to go to a freestanding emergency room in the case of an emergency room. So I guess it means that they would go to the major hospital in the in the sector in the in the in the city. Uh is that's right. Does does our city need to take any specific policy initiatives in relation to potentially adopting this ordinance? Um not in connection with this ordinance. if there were such a facility um the fire rescue services department would make that decision of what the what the department's policy would be. Thank you. Nothing further at this time.

And Mr. Wner, just for clarification, our current uh operating uh profile uh for our fire department is to not uh you know have our rescue uh go to a freestanding emergency facility. We will go to a emergency room facility. Thank you. Other questions of staff? Oh, I actually do have two questions. Um, Mr. Wagner brought up. Is there a minimum distance between deceleration lanes like a thresh minimum threshold? There is no express threshold in the code. Um, that is something that and I don't want to speak too far outside of my expertise, but that, you know, a traffic engineer would review a traffic study and and make those kind of assessments

um on kind of case by case basis. Okay. And currently, are there any current applications for a freestanding emergency room, freestanding emergency facility, freestanding emergency department in the city right now? Um, other than the case that is pending in court, there is not. Thank you. Further questions? I have one. Mr. Shad, do you know what other cities have done with regard to um the city of PMPO Beach, the county with pending ordinance? Are they looking at allowing this as a by by right within those areas or are they also imposing a conditional use requirement upon them?

Um, in the case of PMPO Beach and Palm Beach County, they would be permitted uses by right.

Great. Thank you. All right. Further questions. All right. We'll open up the public hearing on this. I have a few cards on this. When called, please come forward. Give your name and address. You have up to three minutes. John Donaldson, Evan Goldstein, and Josh Brody. Uh, good evening, John Donaldelson, 800 Crestwood, Royal Palm Beach. I had sent everyone on the council a memo, letter, whatever you want to call it, last January. I just wanted to kind of just stick with parking because that's probably the closest thing to me that I want to talk about. We did or I did a parking study of six or seven South Florida emergency rooms. Uh also one of those happened to be out in the the one off Glades Road. And what we found out was in looking at all those the max parking rate was a little over two per thousand square feet. It is 1.88. So, you know, looking at those that previous telecom drive er room would have met those criteria, but staff has now gone to the surgical center parking rate for this, which is 1.75. Now, surgical centers are different than emergency rooms. Uh they're both medical facilities, but they operate differently. For example, uh surgical center has a check-in, then you go to preop, you go to operation, recovery, and it may be a discharge. Uh for an ER, you're talking about admission, go back to the room, discharge. Now, the reason I bring this up is the surgical center does require more parking because you have to allow for each of those five steps. So, you can't just come in, go out. You've got to it's almost like a I

shouldn't say it's an assembly line, but it's like a medical assembly line where you have from A to B to C to D to E and you have to provide parking for all that. You have scheduled times. Emergency room is, you know, like when I went, I did not get to have an appointment for my kidney stone. So, you kind of have to go when you go. And so, so my real thing here is I would like to see why we're not going with empirical data instead of just a generic 1.75. And if Brandon had found out is Pompo or Palm Beach County having a different parking rate for the freestanding emergency room than they are for surgical centers or medical office. And that's it. Thank you. Thank you. Y Dr. Goldstein, Mr. Mayor, City Council, my name is Evan Goldstein. I live at 2517 Seminal Circle. I've been in a practicing emergency medicine physician and head of the admission uh physician group at Boca Hospital now for over 30 years. I'm the immediate past president of the medical staff. I've experienced both in running a freestanding emergency department uh that the hospital uh has opened for about 15 months and a main emergency department. You can say that I don't have to watch the pit, I live the pit. So what I'm coming to do today is just to give some um numerical information uh for you guys to consider when you are making the uh calculations parking and and noise. Um the freestanding emergency department in West Bokeh has been open for 15 months and during our busy season there are days that we're seeing more than 90 patients. We're getting two to

three ambulances in a day and in some of our busy days we can have more than 10 ambulances out. Anybody who's admitted to a hospital gets transported by ambulance. Our busiest times are 9:00 am to 900 pm. We have on average 15 staff members there at all time taking into account uh clerical um cleaning, maintenance, physicians, nurses. So, um, if you become a successful freestanding emergency department, you can expect to have a lot of traffic, uh, a lot of noise, a lot of commotion, and the need for clear, um, access, uh, for not only the patients and their families, but also for the ambulances. Um, one other, uh, piece of information for everybody to consider is that every freestanding emergency department has to be run under the license of a hospital. And whatever hospital tends to have the license with that freestanding is where you end up. So if for instance uh Baptist has a freestanding emergency department and you get admitted, you get admitted to a Baptist related facility. If HCA has one, you end up in an HCA facility. So it's just for everybody to keep in mind. You may end up going to a freestanding emergency department in one area expecting to go to your local hospital and end up elsewhere. And if you have any questions, I'd be very happy to answer them. Otherwise, thank you very much for your time.

Can I ask a question about Thank you, Dr. Goldstein, for coming. And this time, you didn't have to wait till 1 in the morning to speak. So, I appreciate you being here. Can you tell us um the kind of um things that you see in a freestanding ER? What kind of um injuries or what you treat basically and what you don't? We run the whole gambit um from sore throats to um broken legs, cardiac arrests, uh unfortunately we've had out there uh strokes, pneumonia. Um we anticipated uh when we opened this in West Bokeh where there was a younger population that we would have a lower acuity um of of visits and to some degree is it it is a little bit but not what we expected. So, we do see some very sick people there.

Further questions, Mr. Wter. Mr. Whoop, sorry, Mr. Goldstein, thank you very much for your testimony. Um, along the lines of Miss Knox's questions, can you just explain a little bit? Uh my understanding is that Boca Raton Regional Hospital is not a trauma uh certified facility that those cases typically go to Delray Medical Center. Is that your understanding as well? Yes, my understanding is that there's a state trauma system in which uh areas have designated trauma centers. So in Palm Beach County, uh South County is Del Rey, North County is St. marries

and and and just so the most common trauma that we end up seeing in our hospital um that has to be transferred is a head injury with bleeding and it turns out that it's actually the same neurosurgeons who are working in both hospitals but it's a state requirement uh and we follow it. Thank you. So along the lines of what Miss Knucklas is saying in a freestanding emergency room, what happens to all those patients that cannot be served uh cannot be served there? Is is there any uh degradation of care, you know, in that uh that you can't you can't do everything at this freestanding emergency room?

You can do almost everything that's required to stabilize somebody. Uh but if they need to be admitted to a hospital, uh they need to be admitted. There's no time uh or space to observe people. Um we don't do definitive care like emergency surgery. Uh like all ERS, you can be uh treated, discharged, admitted, stabilized, and if you get admitted, if you go to a hospital, you go right upstairs. If you get admitted from any freestanding, you get a ride in an ambulance and you go upstairs.

Thank Thank you. Unfortunately, last month I was in the emergency room at Boka Regional. Um and uh and I noticed it was quite full so I could understand the need. Um there was uh a lot of patients there that needed care. Um there was various people getting wheeled in by different ambulances, not just Bokeh. It was Palm Beach County was also coming in. There was people from Broward County. I just noticed various different fire department uniforms as I was sitting there. And uh I I guess the question is you know in a situation where an emergency room is so busy they were uh various nurses and assistants and doctors you know were coming to to help uh you know the most critically uh you know in need of care. But in a freestanding emergency room, when when uh you know, if you're out in an island, um what's the typical protocol if the freestanding emergency room gets overloaded with patients? What do you do?

You work harder and you work faster. They're really, you know, it's the doors are open 7:24. Um people expect to get care um as quickly and as safely as they can. The challenges we have at the hospital now is that oftent times we'll have 30 or more patients who are admitted and we have no beds. We're looking forward to our two new bed towers opening in the summer giving us uh additional beds and that should alleviate that. But as more and more people are moving down, people are staying longer, people are getting older, uh people are losing their health care insurance, uh emergency department visits are going to go up and it's uh it's going to be important for uh any freestanding emergency departments, whether it be in Boca Raton or Palm Beach County, uh to be properly located uh and properly resourced uh with the right access uh in and out. And in your experience, what's the percentage of patients that can be uh treated in a freestanding emergency room uh as opposed to the percentage of patients which must be transferred to a traditional hospital? I know it's anecdotal, but what's been your experience?

It's actually not anecdotal. I can give you the number. Uh for for ours, it's 11%. It's 11% from freestanding. It's almost 50% admission rate from the main hospital. Wow. So, so meaning that more of the serious cases do go directly to the hospital and but that most of the cases in a freestanding emergency room can be taken care of in the freestanding emergency room 10%. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. Just have a question for Mr. Sahaney. So I think I know the answer but our fire if we don't have it. The SOP is if there's a trauma, uh, it goes directly to Delray Medical.

Yeah, that's correct. And then just to further kind of explain, you know, our units, we're going to transport patients to hospital-based emergency rooms for trauma, as you mentioned, for stroke, heart attack, things like that. That's where they're going. Um, and then, you know, for full hospital, we've got all the resources available. That's why we do that. ICU, surgery, specialist, imaging, and then also we've got the ability to admit patients directly if needed. So that's our protocol and that's what uh we're going to do without any further direction.

I have one more question. Mayor Singer, thank you Dr. Goldstein. One more question. Can you tell us about at your particular Free State emergency room, the ambulance parking situation? Yes, there's a separate covered entrance uh with separate uh egress ingress in the back of the building that then opens up uh with double doors immediately into the back area where we have the resuscitation and trauma rooms. So, if it's raining, uh patients coming in and coming out don't get wet. Um and there's no blocking of traffic. And is there also separate parking for if there's more than one ambulance there? There is an area in the back. Yes.

Thank you. All right. Any other questions of M. All right. Thank you, Dr. Goldstein. Dr. Goldie. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Uh, next speaker is Josh Brody. Then after that, Jeff Barker. And I think that's all my cards on this particular item. Are we able to bring up the uh the slide, the presentation, the f first slide before I speak? Yeah. Thank you. Awesome. The first That's not the first one. Yeah.

Yeah. Thank you. My name is Josh. Josh Brody, 7897 Palasio, Delmare Drive, Bocerone, Florida.

Good evening, mayor and council members. You know, as the discussion began tonight, I think there were questions of why is this still going on? and it seems like it's months or longer. And I think maybe sometimes it just things begin to change and the conversation all of a sudden changes. Maybe with the first two words of this first slide, city initiated. And I hope that maybe we're going to begin to hear tonight, not just from me, but maybe even from others, that there's a question of what that means, city initiated. Why? because an application as we all know for a freestanding emergency room was submitted and you've heard this over and over but maybe for those watching and I've been watching on online others just need to be reminded because an application was submitted it was reviewed by staff went through traffic analysis it moved through planning and zoning and it was approved that is how the process is is supposed to work and I want to say clearly staff did their job they followed the framework they applied the standards This council has adopted. They worked within the system exactly as it exists. And then as was just mentioned, an appeal was filed and a decision was overturned. But as we all know, appeals are part of the process. That alone is not the concern. But I think what we're going to try and explain in just the next few moments is the concern is what we learned right afterwards. And the concern is perhaps what just came to light right now. Through a public records request, emails have now surfaced. Real emails, not speculation, not commentary, but communications that suggest conversations are taking place about how code language could be adjusted. Discussions about whether certain uses could be added, drafting direction being

explored. And that's where many of us now pause because when the laws are being written, laws that affect every one of our neighborhoods, every family, every business in the city, who is instructing whom? Because if there are emails, which you're going to see, emails like this exist in this situation. If direction may be may have been directed by interested parties, maybe if an ordinance may have been written in conversation with interested parties, then how are residents supposed to feel confident about the next ordinance that's being written as well or the next zoning change or maybe the next building proposal? If this is what's happening and just been uncovered here, are there other communications on similar projects?

Uh Jeff Barker, would you um mind pulling up that map for me? Thanks. If we can, please.

Good evening, council members. Jeffrey Barker, 1905 Northwest Corporate Boulevard. Um I am here representing the um owner of the parcel for the prior application for the emergency room, freestanding emergency room that is the one that's pending. Um, so the one thing I wanted to just bring up on this map for sort of my own clarification as well as for the public is the um, is there a way that we could find out these parcels that are being shown? Are they actually the parcels that are meet the criteria for the ordinance? And so this is an accurate reflection of all of the parcels that are eligible. And the reason I say that is because um like for for example there right in the middle across from the entrance to FAU is the one tiny little MC medical center parcel and it's showing up as an eligible parcel. Well that parcel doesn't have access to Glades Road. The access is off 15th Avenue. Um similarly the the parcel of 10001 telecom is showing up in green as an eligible parcel and its access is via easement over the brick property as well as all the rest of the properties in brick. Um none of them have direct access to Yamato Road. So I want to get some clarification as to um as well as properties over by the mall. There's there's properties that are not directly access to Glades Road. So, um, just would love some clarification on that as terms of what what's being presented to the public as which sites are the actual eligible sites. And then to piggyback on the um previous um conversation about parking, um the emergency room that was just being discussed for the 10 minutes that

we had there um the one in West Bokeh, it's a it's a facility that's about 18,000 square ft and at the Bokeh parking rate that we are proposing, which is not um matching any of the IT standards, as Mr. Donaldson just said that facility would require over 100 parking spaces just for the freestanding emergency room at our at our Bokea return rate. They don't have anywhere near that and none not that many was provided and even per the testimony that was given he said they see about 90 patients for the whole day on a busy day. So we have more parking than they see over the entire 12hour period of that. So, um, we got some good information about Pompo and, um, West Palm Beach for how our ordinance is similar to those, but nothing um, about how those parking rates are actually half of what's being required by this ordinance. So, I'd like that to be uh, looked at as well. Thank you very much,

Mr. Parker. Could you stay there for a moment, please, since you just do you can you tell us those figures from Pompo and West Palm if you have them? Um they're in the they're they're in your staff report. Okay. Uh I don't have I didn't bring it up with me. I'll look in the staff report. Thank you. They're they're in there. And um the one comment that was made in the staff report said that almost all the entire parking lot was empty during the u the visit that they did the study that was done as part of your um the information pulled from the the staff city staff report. Thank you. Thank you.

Any other questions, Mr. Parker? All right. Thank you. Um, I have a question for staff. Mr. Shag, could you Well, all right. Anyone else wishing to speak on this matter? Yes, please come forward.

Gila Brand, 980 North Federal Highway. Good evening. I'm here tonight because many of us are trying to understand something that should be simple. How did a freestanding emergency room project that was approved suddenly become disapproved? Staff reviewed it. Staff supported it. Planning and zoning approved it. The process was followed. Before I go further though, I want to thank city staff because they did their jobs. They reviewed the application, analyzed the traffic studies, evaluated the parking reduction, and recommended approval through the proper channels. They followed process and procedure. They worked within the framework of that the council has established. They based their professional recommendations on data and analysis. Then an appeal was filed by brick and city council overturned that approval by ignoring the data and analysis. That alone raises questions. But now this ordinance is being considered without justification to change the city's zoning rules that are currently in place. Again, ignoring data and analysis. The fact that this ordinance appeared out of thin air with requirements that lack justification explanation is certainly concerning. But what's more concerning are the documents obtained through a public records request. We received pages of emails and those emails show conversations that deserve public explanation. In July, a draft of this new ordinance was prepared by Bonnie Mskell for Deputy Mayor Knas. In response, city staff raised numerous questions that were never answered. Then before the revised ordinance was introduced, another email from Bonnie Mscoll's office to the director of planning asked, "Will this be permitted as a conditional use and lurp?" The response from the planning director was clear. Not as currently drafted. I'm working from the draft prepared by Bonnie based on conversations with a council member. The reply, "Yikes, can we add it?" So, this ordinance was drafted to first exclude the site where the FSER had been approved and then tweaked again to accommodate another site for another property owner. That's not a study. That's not staff analysis. That's not a public workshop. To be clear, Bonnie Mscoll represents brick and land use matters. She's doing her job as an advocate for her client. But when the same private party that later

files that appeal is also preparing draft language and asking whether uses can be added to the code, picking and choosing where the use can be located with parking standards and other requirements that are not supported by data and analysis and not in line with how other places regulate the use, it creates the appearance of a problem. So again, residents are left asking who's drafting our ordinances, who's instructing whom, and who's leading the charge. In a September email, that statement appears. Fran is leading the charge on this. Leading the charge on what? A code change requested by a private party to favor one business over another. This was not driven by new studies, traffic studies. It was not driven by new public safety data. Staff had supported the project that was approved. Planning and zoning approved it. Yet during the appeal, much of that vetted data was dismissed. When outcomes shift in this way, and when the paper trail shows private drafting and direct conversations, it diminishes confidence in the integrity of the process. and maybe there's context that we haven't seen. If so, transparency will only strengthen public trust because this is not just about one. It's about whether the ordinances are shaped through open planning principles or through informal influence. Thank you.

Anyone else wishing to speak? Oh, please.

Jonathan in 6501 Congress Avenue. Uh so, so I'm quite an advocate for the LERP zoning district. Uh it needed to be in LRP. However, I'm now an advocate for Silver Properties because of what I'm about to show you. So, here's the email from Bonnie MSL to Fran. Here are the proposed code changes. A private land use attorney dictating to the city council member how it should be. Here's the email from Brandon Shad to Bonnie Mscoll. George asked me to review the proposed code amendments that you drafted with respect to the freestanding emergency rooms. I would like to understand the rationale for the zoning districts chosen in which FSCRS would be a permitted use. The MC district is fairly obvious, but the others are not, at least to me. So, who is our development services director? Bonnie MSL to Brandon Shad at the bottom. This is why I'm an advocate for Silver Properties. As a footnote, the former IBM campus is not involved in this. This relates to another property which may receive better favorable. What is that? Bonnie Mscoll represents Brick, the hospital, is now the city's development services director, and her partner represents another property across the street that this ordinance is going to lock them out of this use. So, she's he's working off of Bonnie's prepared draft. The data, here's the data. All those cities on the left there require 1.55

parking spaces per 1,00 square feet. Boca Raton 5.7. Why are we overparking this 300%. Here's the data. If you want to on the highlighted portion, if you want to read five up, here it is. Staff also conducted site visits to FSEDs throughout the county and observed that the majority of the designated parking spaces were unoccupied. This is at one per 300 square ft. And here it is the code for you for Palm Beach County. It says FED shall be located on a site that has frontage on a main road. frontage is not arterial access. It's facing. So why are we especially when the hospital and by the way parked at one per 300 they one per 200 for medical one per 300 for this use. So why are we when our own hospital isn't on a main arterial road are we doing this for such a use? And by the way the point that Mr. Uh Barker made if I can get 10 seconds. The reality is is these are overparked and we listen to a doctor who represents Bokeh Regional Hospital.

Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else wishing to speak? Mr. Warner.

Sure. Richard Warner 1322 Southwest 9. I'm I'm a lay person. A lot of this seems like voodoo to me. I personally don't understand why any of this bureaucratic jumble should stop an emergency medical facility from coming into existence. It doesn't seem to me like a city council is who should be really worried about this. What you really want to know is are the people staffing it competent? Are you guys uh competent to judge that? I doubt it. You want to hassle about parking spaces? I understand. But yesterday you had no problem giving a variance to people destroying Royal Palm to tighten their parking spaces. Boom. No problem. But how long has this been going on over this emergency medical thing? It seems you guys love to wallow in bureaucracy. And before I go, I just wanted to comment going back to the question of 1966 and uh having to change everything because that was so long ago. It's not that long ago for me. But I would like to point out that there were a couple of

documents written around 250 years ago that still seem to have some solidity in this country. Why we have to change anything from 66 confuses me. Thank you.

I I'll state the obvious. We didn't change documents because they were old. We It was time for a refresh of things that were not consistent with our procedures. I think that's pretty apparent. Uh, anyone else wishing to speak on this matter, right, we'll close the public hearing. I've got a few questions and then we can have some discussion and see where we go. Um, Mr. Chad, could you just could we pull back up that map? Uh, Mr. Barker raised the questions on those parcels. Um, am I right in interp tell me maybe just ask the question. Do all those part were those parcels selected because they back up to an arterial or other applicable roadway regardless of where their driveway currently sits?

Yeah. So that is a fair question. So the the parcels were chosen based on one the zoning district, two that they were part of a site that has um frontage on an arterial and three that they do not abut single family. So when it comes to access points, that's absolutely that may be true. We did not look at every one of them to see if they had existing today access on the arterial, but that is a a thing that changes, right? So if a new development proposal comes in, they may say, well, we now want to propose an access on the arterial. So that that is not something that went into the map. So I to the extent I could have been more clear about that, I wish I would have been. You're clear now. That that's fair.

You're clear now. That's fine. Thank you. All right, questions. You want to have a discussion? Miss Necklace, I know you wanted some points. We Do you want to We We don't have to do a motion to adopt since we've indicated we're probably going to uh we're inclined to postpone, but why don't we let's discuss it now and then we can go from there.

Sure. Um so I'm going to start out thanking you Mr. Shad for for all this and I want to thank staff for putting the time and effort into this text amendment. This is a step towards clarity and empowerment for this use. This is not to try to not have this use. And I think we made that clear last time. Um, luckily in Bokeh, we're not in a medical desert. We have a hospital, two hospitals with emergency rooms four miles from where we sit today. So, we're very lucky that we do not um live in that medical desert. And freestanding emergency rooms absolutely have a role. um especially in rural and underserved areas where hospitals are further away in in Bokeh. Like I said, we're we're fortunate to have our excellent hospital access. Having said that, I also wanted to add um that I've learned over the last year and a half that um one that there's no current applications for this project and right now hospital-based off-campus emergency departments, freestanding emergency rooms, freestanding emergency departments, freestanding emergency facilities are established and defined by state law um chapter 395 Florida statutes and they are a separate and distinct use from medical office and urgent care centers. And Mr. Shad, please correct me if I'm wrong, and maybe I am. Are they currently an established use in our code? Is that okay, Mr.

Singer? Um, not in terms of permitted uses, but they are mentioned in terms of parking.

Parking, right? So, let's go to that parking since we since we just brought that up. um a year and a half ago on August 27th of 2024 2024 um that's when we had that discussion about parking for medical uses including medical office surgery centers and urgent care clinics and that's the first time that I and I think everyone up here heard the term freestanding emergency rooms at that meeting we asked um staff to research freestanding emergency rooms. I think Mr. Shad even said it's a use we don't know a lot about and um we should get more information on that. So So we asked um staff to do that for us. Um, I went back to a Suns Sentinel article from January of 2025 with a few notable quotes about freestanding emergency rooms. And um, it says that freestanding uh, emergency room bills can often be 10 times higher, the cost of an urgent care center. Um, they're trying to compete with urgent care centers in a lot of ways that makes them um, not great for patients that don't know the difference. So, I think it's important that patients do know the difference. Um, but anyway, I'm going to keep going on in our in our timeline. In on January 2nd of 2025 at the PNZ meeting, the application was heard, discussed, and approved by PNZ and it was um stated that um this was a freestanding emergency room that would be accepting ambulances that would have patients with all the different uses that uh with all the different symptoms that Dr. Goldstein had had said and that would serve a community need. I agree they can they serve a community need and

I think that we do need them but we don't have an established um code for them right now. So the approved decision was subsequently appealed by the owner of a neighboring property. And on March 18th of 2025, um, city council addressed the appeal, um, including the lack of parking, which was greater than 30% underparked based on the August 2024 parking rates that this this council had set. And on April 8th of um, 2025, the appeal was granted. It was granted by a vote of five to zero by this council. Um and issues discussed were the technical deviation for parking uh uh road access and the ability for ambulance turnarounds. So at that meeting there was significant public comment about the need for more emergency services in the community and it was decided again to study this further. This summer I did reach out to many people including Bonnie Mskell who is someone who I have known for over 25 years and she is a land use attorney that I am that I am comfortable going to. I also spoke to Mr. Unen. I also spoke to let's see I spoke to Dr. Goldstein. I spoke to um Mr. Kenneth Jones, who's the CEO of HCA Northwest. And I spoke to city staff, I spoke to our fire chief, and I spoke to former um city manager George Brown. And why was I speaking to them? Because we had asked staff to look into this. We had said, you know what, this is a need. We need to have something um we need to have more clarification going forwards. I thought that this would be a good thing moving forward with a text amendment so

that we could have some clarity for this going forward. And I knew that we that Mr. Brown was going to be leaving. I wanted to work on it with Mr. Shad and Mr. Brown. I gave my input, but ultimately staff drafted it and then it went to PNZ and then it was coming to us. Um, there was a comment made about it being rushed and I and I made this comment at our last meeting and now it's even further. It's been a year and a half. Is that really being rushed? I don't think so. I think I think a year and a half has been enough time. However, if we decide we need more time, if staff needs more time, then I'm fine with taking more time. But in the in the meantime, we don't have clarity for this use. So that's what I'm trying to bring is clarity for this use so that we can get them in this city and know where they make sense to go. When I spoke to um HCA Northwest CEO Kenneth Jones, he also said he disagreed with planning and zoning. They should not be in school zones. They should be on arterial roads and they should not be next to residential communities and also that there was a um onem distance thing put in by by planning and zoning. He said that didn't make any sense. He would not put them more than two miles apart. He also on a side note apologized for the um for the harassment and bullying that that I don't some certain parties may have thought that that would have uh been a good way to get some things done but that's not how we do that do things in Boca Raton people standing on the sidewalks with yellow signs really isn't an effective way to get things done here in Bokeh. So he he had apologized for that and said that they had no um input into that. So again, this is just about

where are these uses appropriate. Mr. Shad had said at planning and zoning that we should start with with a smaller area. I agreed. And that instead of starting big and doing what this city is often accused of, which is shoot ready, aim, that we do it in the correct order, we start smaller and then we can add on to that rather than opening the floodgates and trying to rein it in. But again, I am open for discussion. I was fine adding lurp and I'm, you know, open to this, but I think that we should have some clarity and we should move forward with something and that's where I am today. Thank you. Further discussion, Miss Ducker.

Yeah. So, I I'll go in there. So, yes, so we've had a lot of conversations around the freestanding emergency rooms. I myself met with Kenneth Jones almost a year ago. We had a lot of discussion. Uh I sat with him here and in Boca Rutona we discussed the project because I know that uh you all think we do things for one reason or the other but when the project was denied I felt because I wanted that type of business in our city. I thought I should meet with the stakeholder and I went right to the source. I met with Kenneth Jones. I called him the next day. Sorry that that project didn't go through and it didn't go through because of the parking requirement. And if I recall Mr. Coler and I don't know cuz we're under appeal and that's for you to tell me what I can and cannot say right now. By the way, anything we have it'll be released after. Um, it didn't have a porticochet. It didn't have the right access for the ambulance turnaround and I sit up here as a transit nerd, transit champion, whatever you want to call me. And it's really important to be able to get in and out, especially when you're trying to save lives. There are many HCAs down in Miami. You guys know I grew up in Miami. my family's all down south and I seen them. I drove by them. They did the presentation and the reason the one that was in telecom, if I can say the reason of that particular hearing wasn't approved, it was because of that had nothing to do with what everybody's saying here. And I agree with Miss Knas. The bullying and being in front of people's homes is really in poor taste. None of you called me directly or emailed me for a meeting. So you could come here and dish out to us which is fine. I chose this job but you can also give us a courtesy and I will meet with with whoever it is. I actually had one conversation with Mr. Dantis and he was very polite and very apologetic. Okay. Second thing amendments by the way there's no evil here doing. Many times projects come before us and people request text amendments from council

members. They've requested them for Mr. Thompson for a car wash if I'm wrong with the car wash. I thought it was a car wash. Mr. Wigger has brought text amendments. I brought one for a baseball facility in Lur. Sometimes they come to us and you do work with whoever is representing that applicant. So there's no evil doing. There was evil doing. There wouldn't be any records. That's why we have the public records rule so that you could come up here, ask for public records, and you could read them. So just letting you know a little bit of governance and how the city council works. We work on this all the time to make things better. I agree. We've been discussing this for 18 months. I have no issues postponing. We already did. We already we already tabled the issue. If there's more feedback from the public or from stakeholders, definitely we want to hear about it. I had a conversation with some of the hospital um members where they're sometimes at capacity like Mr. Wigger said and then there is a need. When there's a need, there has to be a methodical way of handling the need. And that's why we wanted to a put it in place through an ordinance. So it's very specific and also for an area to make sure that we have access and I agree it shouldn't be in a school zone. It should be a mile or even a mile and a half from the next center. Should definitely be in an arterial road for access especially if you have to create a deceleration lane. You have to understand how that impacts everyday folks. So again, I don't think that we're doing this is being done by the council or by anyone on the council, you know, to to take away your right to access to medical care. That is not a correct statement and I think it's actually in really poor taste because we sit up here to make policy to keep people safe. So um I'm okay with whatever you decide. I think we was it was all of us decided to postpone till the next meeting.

Great. Further comments, Mr. Victor

again keeping this to a policy discussion I think is the the critical thing here. So you know trying to parse out the politics and you know the personal sentiments from the actual policy discussions is really what I've been trying to do here today. So starting at the 30,000 foot level, I think what we've what we've started to see over the course of the last 18 months is that uh there's a more recent uh prevalent use of freestanding emergency rooms as uh as as a medical facility, right? So obviously uh there are urgent care facilities all over the place in our city as well and and now freestanding emergency rooms are are being looked at not just in Boca Raton but in other cities and so what has happened and I'm very thankful for Mr. Shad's explanation, you know, of his comparative analysis because what's happening in our city, of course, is happening in other cities that are similarly situated, which is like Pompo Beach or unincorporated county where they're encountering the same thing that the freestanding emergency room doesn't quite fit into the standard medical office code. So, what and and that and that would start naturally in a policy discussion. you don't have it's not possible to write you know a usage policy for every single thing uh especially when it's a newer type of use and I think what's happening in other similar jurisdictions is what's happening here which is PMPO Beach or the county is looking at this thing well it's not really like a metal it's really different it has different needs there's lots of ambulances coming in that's not really like a um you know like a uh urgent care or something like that. It really should be, you know, more specifically crafted. And so obviously Pompo Beach did it, the county's doing

it, and now we're doing it. So again, I see bless you. So I see I see that as a right step of analysis and specification as new uses uh as new uses start to come uh to come out. Um, so I think that's the that's the right thing to do is to analyze these things and as new uses come about is to create codes for them and we do see a need here. As I said, I personally experienced this. I I appreciate the need here um to make sure it fits into those locations. Mr. Barker made up some good points about access and easements and eligible sites and things like that. Um, we don't want to have a code that's drafted that cannot be used. We we do want it to be used but it is a specialized use. As we said it is very technical and so I think the sight specific requirements are important to consider and uh like I said I wasn't at the January 6 meeting so I've you know been you know learning up on this in the past. um you know I I am okay giving a little forgiveness on parking rates uh if if that's what the data shows but in terms of access points on arterial roads um I had concerns then and I still have concerns to make sure that there's adequate access points whether it's del lanes whether it's turns whether it's distance between access points um to make sure that uh you know that properties are easily accessible that it doesn't cause unnecessary U-turns or uh you know wayfinding issues or things like that to make sure again if these people are in emergent care in emergent need uh it should be easy to get there. It shouldn't be wayfinding around internal sites to to to get there that seems you know more complex. Likewise yeah the onem distance between certainly we don't want confusion between those two things. school zones. Again, the disparity

between school zones, school zones, you're supposed to be going slow. You're supposed to be going super slow. There's children there, right? And so, obviously, ambulances is meant to get there fast. You want these people to get to the hospital as soon as possible. So, uh I see that as a conflicting use adjacent to school zones. Um and and so certainly I see that as an issue. And then, uh and then several people talked about this tonight as well. and the other cities also had something similar in single family districts to the buffering requirements. I think buffering requirements could be um more required in Boca Raton. Um again, we don't have to be just like everyone else. A lot of people say that a lot of the time. I think we might need more buffering requirements, not just as a conditional use, but potentially as part of the code. So, uh, you know, again, I I still have some thought on this and some questions for staff and, um, you know, and some some thoughts to go through this and to do some of my own investigation. So, you know, I'd be good with postponing this for another, uh, you know, till the next meeting.

Thank you.

Further comments or questions, Mr. Thompson? considering uh well, I was going to say that I will continue to consider the merits of the revised text amendment. Given what we've heard tonight, I think it's all the more appropriate that we postpone it to the next meeting. That's really all I have. All right. Thank you. Uh could we put up the map again, the color-coded map with the different zones? All right. Let me We're postponing. Let me lay out some things that I'd like staff to opine on and maybe we can all consider because I I'm I still have some discomfort. We added in lur in response to specific areas, but I'm not I'm not sure that the better standard two big things. Where do they go are three categories where do they go conditional use or not and other factors that I'll lump together. Where do they go? I'm not sure that um there are other arterial roads and collector roads that this may make sense on. Um, and so it's hard just looking at this plot of different eligible parcels in these zones, understanding why these are better than necessarily others. And and that's that's agnostic to any one location, but I I I I don't know. Um, you know, the locations on federal highway close to Glades, are those significantly different than further out on Glades based on zoning category? because our zoning category was done years years if not decades before this use came into be. I don't know if that's the right rubric. Second, conditional use. I asked the question about what other jurisdictions were doing because on some level I have unease with conditional use if we're going to do something new. Conditional use creates another level of uncertainty. So people are looking at something but then they have to go all the way through the process and then they don't know. In a more perfect world, we would I and it's hard with a newer use when we have

an experience, but in a perfect world, I think we try to find understand what we're solving for and understand the locations. That may not be easy here. And I don't know if we're going to get a quick answer on that, but that's something I'd love staff to look into, conditional or not. Um the third, then there were, you know, I'll lump in all those other issues that came in. And again to reiterate when I voted and I think when we all voted um on the particular site and application it was based on the technical deviations and the specific site plan. It wasn't meant to preclude this use in the entirety of the city and it's being spun that way. There were issues. I know the former applicant has tried to resubmit although our code does not allow a resubmitt within a certain time and if that litigation is pending that remains but I know they tried to address some of those concerns. Uh one of the questions is do you have to be access point on an arterial or not? And I'd love a little more consideration of that because that also brings deceleration lanes, turn lanes and maybe that is more sight specific. Maybe that's where conditional use comes in. I don't have a ready answer for that tonight. And so I'm a little com a little uncomfortable saying this is fully baked yet because we're yes on one hand we're creating new uses but on the other hand we're limiting them in in certain ways and there's a disharmony there. Uh finally the point was the buffer on two more buffer on the residences that may make some sense and again I think we've already done that in ways that other cities haven't. And finally, the question did come up last time and it was stated again. Uh there was a question of the number of ambulances coming to the site, but there's also a number of ambulances going out of the site. And I think that was what at least for me the realist the realistic proposition that you might have multiple ambulances stacking on that particular site plan out into the out into the roadway created again some hesitancy. I'd love to figure out if and have someone opine if the IT guidelines

really factor in ingress and egress of ambulances how that relates to peak times and you know maybe the parking number is it is a wide variance between what we are trying to do and saw for medical use and what the it provides but our medical standards have typically been more rigorous than the med than the IT and going back to 2024 we were trying to anticipate this we made some edits on the fly so we haven't had that full ranging discussion So for all those reasons, I think more studies needed. If staff can get those in 30 or 28 days now because it's a short month, um that may be one thing. I'm not sure. So it I'll now having stated some questions, I'll turn to Mr. Shad if you've got any opinion. So, if we're going to look at all those things and we were going to gather all that information and come back to the council, um, we would be guessing as to what the council wants as a policy. So, I don't think it's realistic if we're going to seriously evaluate these factors to adopt an ordinance next month.

Okay. If there is more specific direction, then it may be possible. All right. Council members, do we want to I don't know how we narrow down. I mean, I throw out three big buckets. So, and the last bucket of four or five things and and maybe it comes back at a workshop perhaps. I'm not sure. But I I I get your conundrum there. I don't have an answer right now as I sit here on whether conditional use is good because it's it's it's it's the secondary part of the question on the location. Mayor Sanger, please.

I guess it goes back to what you always say. we have something. I guess you can always entertain it for next month. Do whatever additional research we can do. We can always defer or we can adopt something so that we could get things moving. We know that there's not an active application except for the appeal and um there might there might be other things out there coming and this is just further delaying it. So I just don't please when you guys speak in the audience then I can't think cuz I like I'm thinking as we're we're moving here we're talking.

So maybe just come back with some of these items. What mayor Singer wants those buckets might be really hard to come up with just because they'll have to study every single like arterial you know in and out. So maybe for this point it might be just be these areas with those conditional uses just to get us to the point unless this council decides that we want another study for three more months or six more months which is not what I want. So again I think that we need to have that discussion as to what we want to have and this might not be the most perfect ordinance and we can always tweak and we can always adjust. Uh if not we're just not going to have anything in place. That's kind of what I'm thinking out loud, but I can think about it and send a note to Mr. Sohaney with more information.

Mr. Zane, you're you're Oh, you were nodding. So, oh, Miss Acklas or

Thank you, Mayor Singer. You know, I agree. We You brought up some good points tonight. This ordinance was introduced in December. We could have had discussion about this at workshops if you had um knowing this was coming forward. We could have had discussion prior to tonight about this and I'm disappointed that we didn't. We really should have. I think this is a de a delay tactic. Um, I will say that initially LERP was left out because how many months did we spend doing the CIMD ordinance and we did the CIMD ordinance to make most of that area more walkable and more pedestrian friendly and is an ambulance, you know, or is that what you want in a in a more walkable pedestrian area? Personally, I didn't think that it was, but and again, we're four miles in either direction from from here to a to emergency rooms. Um, I think we should have had more discussion before. Again, I'm fine postponing it, but I don't think Mr. Shad is going to be able to come back at our next meeting with all this. So, we're just delaying it again. And I just am not in favor of that. I think we've we've get had a lot of time and we had asked as a council for it to come back. I'm a 38-year registered nurse. I'm the last person up here that wants to delay health care. So, I don't know how many of you know that, but I am an advocate for health care. I want health care. I want this to happen, which is why I brought this text amendment forward. So, Mr. Singer, if uh everyone thinks that we should delay it, that's fine. We can delay it, but I think that we should move ahead with some sort of clarity on it.

Well, I'm happy to try to get that clarity. Um, does anyone have any thoughts on again, Mr. Shad, maybe I I threw a bunch of questions at you and Mcklas, fair point. Could have discussed this yesterday in re-evaluating, you know, as I was coming up here. I still didn't feel um still didn't settled on that and I didn't have a clear answer on conditional use or not because they they are inextricably linked. What um what thoughts do you have Mr. Shad on location and can you help us get to some clarity here or maybe that's more a task of the five of us?

I'm not sure what you're asking me. So I then I'll then I'll ask it better. Okay, I'll try. Um, can you just refresh everyone's recollection? We chose these zoning categories. Can I just throw out a few others? Like for example, gl we we chose more based on zoning category rather than access on an arterial road. Just pompo, West Palm, Pompo, West Palm, Palm Beach County. Do they also look at it that way or were they more focused on roadway first? Because for example, we've got other parts of Yumato, Glades, Palmetto that don't have any of this.

Um, PMPO had a specific list of zoning districts and they had the um arterial or collector um access requirement. uh Palm Beach County. I believe they also had zoning districts and frontage requirements on major streets. Mayor Sanger, please. I have a question for Mr. Shad.

Is there any way So these the areas that we're looking at for PMPO and for Palm Beach hasn't even passed. they don't they haven't they're in the same situation that we are and I understand using those as um collect those as examples because we're trying to draft our own ordinance but can we look at prior ordinances have been drafted and contact those cities and see how these are affecting or not how the parking is working in some of these other areas like there like I said Miami date and Broward has to have more than what we're looking at I know that where we're looking at Palm Beach County and PMPO because they're drafting new ordinances and they're similarly but there are other cities that are similar ly to us have had this in place and I'm sure have this ordinance in place and how it's playing out. That would be a really good indicator prior to our next meeting for this council to look at how it's how they handling. They could be like we are overparked, we are underparked, we have four ambulance sometimes coming in. We love that we have this area to park in the back or that we have the porticochet. I think going backwards as to what people are doing already will also be beneficial for us to have accurate data. That's what I would like to see. That's my request.

Okay. So, if I can clarify, are you are you asking us to talk to other city staffs on what is your experience with these facilities or or to review the actual facilities themselves? Ask the staff what what what that ordinance passed and then we'll know. I'm sure one of those is going to be an HCA or maybe another poker regional. They have Baptist down south in the Kendall area. Uh so I'm sure that there are other established practices that are already have ordinances in place and they've been and the facilities have data that they're going to be able to make available with us or available to us.

So I'm not sure that these cities are really going to have specific data to share with us in terms of Sorry, maybe I misunderstood. Go ahead. They're going to have the ordinances that they passed to allow this type of facility. Maybe they don't. Maybe these cities don't have the ordinance. I don't know. But I'm sure that we could definitely fight ordinances that are not just passed a month ago and are going to be possibly passed in two days from today's date. Once we know those cities, then we could figure out through our community partners if they have facilities there and they'll be able to produce that data to us. So you want a larger sample size of correct cities that have I would like of established ordinances that they've been operating these centers

already. Understood. It's good data for us to see. You could see how many cars are parking, how many trips are they having ex you could see where they're located. Do they have deceleration lanes? Do they have, you know, U-turns? Do they have stacking? I mean, I think that's that's a better indicator to me. Well, gathering ordinances from various cities is is not the same thing as looking at it facilities and saying, "Do they have turn lanes? Do they have U-turns?" That that's a completely different scope. I'm just trying to get clarity on what what we're looking for.

The clarity is there should be other cities that have ordinances that have already been passed that are not brand new that not like for what we're trying to accomplish. So, that's the first step. Once we've identified that, then we can identify with our business partners, community partners if they have facilities there. And then we'll be able to request, I guess I can request data from those facilities and then I'll be able to even see easily find a site plan to say, okay, look at how they built this thing and look how it's working in actuality. Okay, that gives me a better idea with Okay, thank you. Thanks. further uh attempts to clarify Miss A.

So I just have a question. So say this ordinance takes another year to collect all this information and another application separate than one that was already that had already come in. Some other tenant brings a freestanding emergency room in. How do they have clarity on where they can be and like how do how do they have any clarity if this at all because we don't have that right now anyone

Mr. Chad, I agree there's a lack of clarity without addressing it specifically in the code, which is one of the reasons that we are recommending for this ordinance because there would be such clarity. So, I agree with that point. Right. Otherwise, we're we're kind of back to where we were with the the the parking ratios that exist now and what was developed in 2024.

Yes. Okay. All right. Um, Mr. Mr. Shadowy, do you need any work? It um we did not there's a there's a distinction between the IT rates and what's under our code based on what we discussed in 2024. Um I don't know. I I think that's just a fact. That's not an ambiguity. It's it's just that's where we are. Uh we have people advocating for changes to an IT standard, but we're not there yet. or at least the council hasn't given that direction. Is that accurate?

Yes. Um so when it comes to parking, um I would not advocate just opening the IT manual and going with whatever it says. I would think that the better approach is to gather local data, but that is going to take time. It's not going to happen in a month.

Okay. All right. Um and then do you see obviously it's it's hard to know. So the more we ex I I'm I was talking about two different cross purposes. If you get more areas in or even consider altruial roads, take away conditional use, then you've now doubly expanded the areas in which these can go. So if if we're doing a smaller measure first, then should be one or the other. I have a little hesitancy with both. Um and I'm but I don't sitting here right now. I don't know what the right answer is because I'd have to go, you know, I think you'd have to go back through and we'd have to have more of a discussion of that. So, I I guess that's we haven't landed on that. I don't know how if we land on that tonight or at least to give you more guidance. And I don't know if anyone else shares my concern about conditional use.

I mean, the only thing I could think of is that we don't know how they work in actuality. So that's why I thought by getting some of his data we might be able to see how these facilities are working and then we'll have we can discuss further. Maybe it has to come to workshop first and not be an agenda so we could have this kind of discussion and then put it on you know and then bring it back to to to a meeting. I mean I guess that's depending how we find this out or how quickly we can find this information out. All right, council members thoughts, please. Miss Nicholas,

thought we needed a starting point. We're right back where we were 18 months ago. And we could have asked for we could have been more clear. We could have asked for um a lot of this over the last 18 months and we didn't. And you know, Mr. Chad has has really, you know, gotten us to a a great starting point here. Again, I I'm disappointed that we didn't have more discussion about this, but we didn't. And uh I I think there needs to be clarity for this use because they are coming. Freestanding emergency rooms are a money maker for hospitals. It's a way to funnel patients to them. There's been over 30 that are opened or in line to open. According to the Suns Sentinel article in January in Broward, Palm Beach, Miami date counties, about 30 standalone emergency rooms have opened or under construction or planned. I mean, they're here and they're coming. So, they're going to be here in Boca Raton and we're not going to be prepared and I'm just asking to be prepared for it and to um have a place to start. I think Mr. Shad did great job with this, but again, I'm uh you know, willing to hear what everybody has to say.

All right. Any reading for me? Yeah, I think it should be workshopped. I think uh um Mr. Chad has some uh some more research to do and I'd like to do my own research. I'll be at the League of Cities tomorrow. And that's what I was thinking was obviously talking to my colleagues at the League of Cities um you know there's 39 other cities in the county and um or 39 total cities in the county and um you know uh talking to my colleagues there about um you know have how have their experiences been with this type of use in their cities andor talking to the Florida League of Cities obviously trying to get the data from a policy perspective. So, you know, I I think I have to do my homework, too, and I apologize for not doing it sooner.

All right, further comments. We can So, we can do two things. We can just land on what we're going to do right now. We could also take five since we're past 8:00, and I would have suggested a recess, mull it over, and come back or um just, you know, if or just say we're going to put this on the next workshop or the next meeting. So, workshop. I see Mr. Wer nodding, shaking. Yes. For workshop, Mr. trucker. I say well it depends how we get how quick we get this information. I just the problem is we don't have

Mayor Singer I just have to be honest. I just don't understand what else why the conditional use is such an issue for you now. That's really why I'm trying to trying to put my hands around it and maybe I do need five minutes to recoup.

Okay. Um I'll answer that question and we can go around and we can take five. Certainly. conditional use doesn't really we we the council expressed some hesitancy with this new use based on the parking calculations and the drive-thru and the technical deviations the last time we're still not I'm not hearing the five of us speak with clarity so a conditional use still requires a sight specific inquiry that forces someone to go through the process and then still come up with some uncertainty that may not that may be in a sense punting in a greater way than the issue we have right now. I'd like to ideally I'd like to figure out you know what do we think straight up does where it's not a conditional use even if that's a more refined area. So that's that's that second layer that's creating a little disharmony for me.

For me when the other applicant came before us the reason that I voted the way that I did was because I wanted the porticochet that accessibility was really important. the parking we can review, we can land on if whatever whoever's using for the parking, but there were certain things that I that I have already put on record that is non-negotiable because those facilities when you drive around town, not in Boca Raton, but if you go to other areas and you see them, they all have kind of the same they look the same. It's it's a building with a drive-thru which is covered and you you see people coming in and out. It's on an exterior road. It's accessible. So that's what I was envisioning. So I'm not negotiable on on that. So for me that's that's part of this this ordinance already. And um I guess the only thing that we might want to look at again is the parking requirements. But everything else that we had discussed previously was is in this ordinance which is why I continue to struggle with the delay tactics.

That's all. All right, Mr. Thompson. We all had agreed well most of us agreed to put this on the next meeting agenda. Okay. So, let's just start with that premise. I think we've we've talked this enough tonight. We've provided as much direction as we're going to get tonight. I think we can move on. That's my suggestion. So why don't we take the fiveminute recess, we come back, we can direct staff to have this on maybe the next workshop agenda and then maybe have it on the agenda the next night and if it's not ready by the workshop then he can pull it off. My hope is that we can have it heard then. But I think we've we've done enough tonight to address this.

Mas. Well, I think we've waited a year and a half to talk about it and I think it deserves being talked about and um I if there's more to say tonight and more direction to give Mr. Shad then I think we take a fivem minute recess and we come back and we talk some more about it if it needs to be.

We've got consensus for a short recess. So why don't we take five everyone? We'll think about it. We'll collect our thoughts. We'll come back. We'll we're adjourning for five minutes or recessing. down. Hey Heat. Hey, Heat. Hey, down.

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All right, we are resuming the city council meeting before our discussion. We were giving some thought to whether we wanted it at the next workshop, whether we wanted it at the next regular meeting, whether we wanted it at both. Um and or open up the discussion tonight. So, um those are our options. Council members, what's our pleasure? Miss Nichols, I'd like to um bring it back at the next workshop. Okay, Mr. Thompson. Fine with me. we could add it to the next agenda on the Tuesday meeting and if it's not ready and ready to vote on by the workshop, we can remove it. So at least that way it gets noticed and we'll know by the workshop whether it's fully baked or not. Okay, fine. Right. Sounds reasonable. I agree.

All right. So then there we are. So all right. Um Mr. Kaylor, do we need a motion? Uh, I think then we need a motion to postpone to the motion to direct staff to play place this on the next workshop meeting and to agenda this item for the next regular meeting. I think that's a fine motion. And as a practical matter, staff is going to renotice the matter. All right. Very good. All right. Anyone want to make that motion? Just to round it out. I will make that motion. Thank you. Second. Second. Any further discussion? All those in favor? I. Please say I. I. I.

All right. Thank you. All right. Thank you everyone and thank you for those who came today to speak on this. Um we're we're trying to get to yes and deal with a number of issues. And by the way, we may not all land all five in the same place. So I appreciate the discussion. Uh we'll now turn to item G as in golf. And Miss Siddens, would you please read the title of ordinance 5773? Ordinance number 5773, an ordinance of the city of Boca Raton amending chapter 28 zoning article 15 division 15 affordable and workforce housing in commercial and industrial zoning districts code of ordinances clarifying requirements for on-site retail sales or services in commercial industrial multif family developments CIMDs by amending section 28-1642 to create a definition of retail sales or services that specifically ally excludes gyms or fitness centers and tutoring establishments or uses similar to either of those and by amending section 28-1644 to set forth minimum requirements for such retail sales or services uses in CIMDs including that such businesses be independent operations that provide for public accessibility including by separate groundf flooror pedestrian entrance from outdoors with exterior business identification that such businesses publicly advertise size and market and that any change of use be reviewed by the city to ensure any requirement for on-site retail sales or services uses continues to be satisfied providing for severability providing for appealer providing for codification providing an effective date

Mr. Manager. Thank you Mr. Mayor development services director Mr. Shad will make the presentation Mr. Shad.

Good evening again mayor and council Brandon Shad development services director. Um this is an ordinance to clarify uh retail sales and services uses in commercial industrial multif family developments. Um a little bit of history. In February 2024, regulations for commercial industry multif family developments were established. This is the city's uh local workforce housing ordinance requiring that um 10% of um multifamily units developed under this program be affordable. 5% um maybe workforce as a density bonus. On October 28th of last year, we passed an ordinance number 5753 to ensure that non-residential requirements can be met by a combination of on-site and off-site uses. And those code provisions are um are here as they have been amended again last year. So essentially what this requires is that in a CIMD that you either have on site or be in proximity to certain non-residential uses um office, restaurant and or retail sales or services. Um and that a a portion of those um be retail sales or services and those requirements are highlighted here. Um in the case of um on-site um the minimum that you might see is 2,000 square feet of restaurant and or retail sales or services. So what's proposed here is a clarification of what exactly that means as our experience with the this ordinance and this program has shown us that um we need to be more clear of what counts and what doesn't. So um the definition here is the sale of goods or merchandise directly to the ultimate consumer or a use that meets the definition of personal service shop as set forth in the code. Now um the term expressly excludes a fitness center or

gym or substantially sim similar uses um or tutoring or similar educational and instructional services and I'll get into to why in a moment. Um so in order to ensure that that such uses are uh bonafide uh distinct retail sales or services operations uh we have um some specific requirements that we're proposing. One, that they be an independent operation independent of the say multifamily um uh apartment complex. That they be uh publicly accessible. That they have groundf flooror exterior pedestrian access. That they have exterior identification. Essentially that means signage. That they um reasonably engage in public visibility and marketing as you would expect from a bonafide business. and that when such uses change that they are expressly approved by the city to ensure that this requirement continues to be met. Um the planning and zoning board did review this ordinance in January and had some questions. Um they questioned the need for a separate pedestrian entrance um to the exterior. Um they questioned whether uh well let me go back to that. So the the answer is that we're trying to make these areas where CIMDs are allowed more walkable. These areas uh these types of developments are currently allowed on in the parts of the city that have a planned mobility future land use designation. Those areas are specifically um by comprehensive plan policy um supposed to become more walkable, promote multimodal um development. So why do we want a separate pedestrian entrance for these retail sales sales or services outdoors? Well, because we want people to happen upon these things to be walking by and use them to have interaction between the

street and um these uses. um that that purpose is defeated when you have access say from an interior lobby or something like that where it's internally focused and does not contribute to the walkability um and multimodal nature of the um of the street that we're trying to accomplish. Um there was some question about whether the minimum of 2,000 ft was too large for some tenants and we explained that the minimum doesn't have to be met by one tenant. It's an it's an aggregate minimum, so they could be smaller tenants that add up to 2,000 square feet. Um, there were questions about whether the requirements only apply to on-site uses of a CIMD. So, in other words, if off-site uses are being used to u meet the requirement, does do these requirements then apply to those off-site uses? And the answer is is no. We could not practically do that. So the the requirements that are here apply to when those uses are on site of the CIMD um and used to meet those requirements then they must um comply with these new requirements. Um there was a land use attorney that uh did request some changes by the board. Um so the ordinance included a um a minimum uh business hours that the uh business has to be open weekly from um they requested that be reduced from 60 to 30 as I'll explain in a moment. We we landed in the middle on that one. Um that they allow pedestrian access from a shared indoor entrance like a lobby. Um we explained as I mentioned a moment ago that why we oppose that. um that the public visibility and marketing require marketing requirement be eliminated. Again, we oppose that. They requested a special appeal route for any administrative determinations on compliance with these requirements. We

also oppose that in part because this would be uh completely unique. It would be you know again a special appeal route just for that when there are many administrative determinations that have to be made every day. So, we opposed that and they opposed or sorry, proposed eliminating the exterior signage requirement if not permitted by the code. Um, again, we opposed that one because um all commercial and industrial sites are allowed a certain amount of signage. Um and like whether there's whatever the uses on site are and many many have multiple uses um the owners have to make a judgment as to how to allocate allowed signage area and that is no different with this use than with any other use. Um the board did vote uh 6 to zero to recommend approval of this ordinance uh with a modification to reduce the required weekly operating hours of these businesses from 60 to 45. Again, the uh the attorney I mentioned um did did want to bring it down to 30. Um we landed the board felt that 45 was reasonable. Staff agrees with that recommendation and has made the requested change. Um staff finds that approval of this ordinance will continue to facilitate the development of affordable workforce housing in the city. Proposed ordinance will further the city's goals with respect to mobility and the reduction of vehicle miles traveled. and the ordinance is consistent with the comprehensive plan and as such the development services department recommends approval of this code amendment and I would be happy to answer any questions.

Thank you council members. Any questions?

Mr. Wagner what is the thought process between an enforcement mechanism on a marketing requirement uh for something like this? Um it was one of the concerns that I had was you know trying to a lot of businesses are by referral. Um a lot of businesses take pride that they um you know that they they do so well they go by referral. Um so when when I look at a requirement of quote visibility and marketing the you know again h how how much mark you know there there's this question this threshold how much marketing h you know maybe you could explain a little bit on what what what our basis for enforcement would be there.

Sure. The the planning zoning board had a similar question and what we basically explained was that we're it doesn't take much. All we're looking for is to know that the business is real, that it's not a a fictitious thing to try to satisfy the code and not actually comply. So, it could be as simple as uh putting flyers on cars. It could be as simple as running a Facebook ad. It could be as simple as, you know, um handing out cards at a at a an event. um just anything that that that shows that it's a a bonafide business that is making itself available to the public and is not uh simply for example a residential amenity. Got it.

Okay. Can Oh, sorry. Mayor, I just I don't want to miss the joke. Please don't encourage people to put flowers on cars. Miss Ducker. Thank you, Mayor Singer. I'm sorry, Mr. Shad. Why why the time? Why why did you why did the applicant or want the 30? Why do we want 60? Is that because of an average of what's what we see in that area in the CMD or and how did you land on 45?

Um the 45 I'll just answer that part first is a compromise uh between what we proposed in the ordinance and uh what the um the the gentleman that showed up was asking for. Um so again it's just a measure of this is a real business, right? So when you get below being open 30 30 hours a week, get down to 25 20. Is this a real business or is this just something that that we're using to try to satisfy the code requirement?

Further questions? All right, we'll open up the public hearing. Anyone? Oh, please. I'm sorry. Oh, I have a follow. Oh, Mr. Regular and then M. Okay. Yeah. No, I just my my only thought process was why 45? 45 indicates more than a full work week. So, which means that there's it's an overtime situation or requires two two shifts. So, I'd be okay reducing it to 40. That that would be at least it's business hours 9 to5. That's fine, Mr. Rucker. Yeah. So, so my thought process is I agree with you. Is this attached to any particular application?

It is not. Uh but I will say that our uh drafting this ordinance has been informed by our experience in implementing the CIMD ordinance and some of the things that have been proposed. So it is not connected to any specific proposal, any specific application or anything that we know of, but it is informed by our experience so far in the last two years.

Okay. What I want to tell the land use attorneys out there is we're going to follow the code and we're not going to have variances and we're not going to put policy in place to circumvent discussions that we might have had potentially with applications. So I think that would do a disjustice to the 28 months or plus that we spent on the CIMD ornament. So please don't come to me at least uh for any of that type of um exception because it won't be granted. The whole point that we decided on the CIMD the way we did it and I agree with staff is to have more pedestrian accessibility for people to come and walk up to businesses and I'm don't remember exactly which application it was but I believe there was an application that there was a gym that was to the lobby and then they were going to make it to the exterior. So please don't try to circumvent the system because the reason we approved that or we I think it was possibly approved or coming before us in those discussions was because that's the way that we we intended for that usage to be. So that's just a little FYI for those of you listening to this and those of for you in the audience. Um I don't disagree with Mr. Wigdor. That's why I questioned what was a 30 to 60 to 45. A work week is 40 hours. I and I still don't I still have questions around the time. Is that 40 hours at the the actual establishment has to that retail has to be open?

Yes. Of this particular establishment. Yes. Uh so it's again it's retail or restaurant basically. So we want to make sure so if we want pedestrians to be there if we wanted to serve the residents, the employees, the visitors to the area, that can only happen effectively if they're open. Correct. A reasonable amount of time. Well, so then I'll go higher because 40 means they'll be open for 5 days if you put them eight hours depending if they split it through seven or six days if you want people there on the weekends. So I guess is that the rationale on the 60 hours was to have I don't have a better answer other than it's a judgment.

Okay. I'm having a hard time with the numbers just because I don't really maybe the when I mean I just I really am having it a business should be open whatever it's open and we shouldn't be restricting it you know in terms of the times but I understand what you're trying to do so that they are open and that it is open to the public. So I I don't um I don't I would not like to get to go lower.

Uh further comments or questions? I'll just I'll weigh in. I'm all right with 40. I'm thinking, you know, if you go 7 to 2, let's say it's a breakfast place, you go 7 to 2, that's 35 hours during the week, you're open on Saturday, another 7 to2 or 7 to three, close one day a week. Yeah, I think that's okay. You know, I I in reality, they're going to be open more, but I don't want to the point of this is to get bonafide. I think you're at 40, you're bonafideed in my opinion, but I I get that we can have different views. Um, Mr. Shadow, I do have one question. Uh, you said an attorney weighed in. Can you elaborate more on that? In terms of what? Who was the attorney? Was it a particular site that we're talking about? Is there something pending?

It was uh David Millage from MCL Bachman. Okay. Um I assume that there is an application or or a potential application that he has in mind or had in mind, but I don't know any more specifics beyond that.

Got it. Thank you. Um All right. Thank you. Any other questions? And we'll open up the public hearing. Anyone wishing to speak? Last call for public. Oh, please. Mr. Donaldson, come on up. Thank you. John Donaldson, 800 Crestwood. I have a I don't know if it's a request or a question. When we're looking at the CIMDS, the first 5,000 square feet of retail and restaurant are not parked. Um, then you have a 5% discount on anything else, the residential, whatever that is. And then we're paying $12.80 for a shuttle fee for every trip in and out of that project. Is there a reason why we should be doing traffic for like the first 2,000 square feet of retail when we're trying to get people to walk and we're already not parking it? Is there a reason why we're generating the traffic that we're really not even putting on the roads? So that was just my my thought on that. Thank you.

I'm sorry, Mr. Donaldson, can you just elaborate on your concern about the traffic? Which which provision here in the ordinance is your concern?

Well, you you you have a up to 5,000 ft. You're not parking it. And then we're paying $12.80 a trip to try and encourage multimotal use, walking, biking, but we don't proportionately reduce the traffic for that retail use. Now, I know a recent project, the atrium didn't do that, but prior to that, all the projects, at least the ones I've been involved with, we've done the traffic generation for even the small 2,000. I don't And I think 2,000 is probably a good limit for a use on a site that's serving the office, the retail, the restaurant, and the and the residential. All right. All right. Thank you.

I don't think there's anything in in the ordinance now that that's what I was getting at. We did that in the PMD. We had a 5% overall reduction, but we have not done anything in the CIMD. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Thank you for clarifying. It's not this ordinance, just general concern. Anyone else wishing to speak? All right. Um, we will close the public hearing. Um, we'll entertain a motion to adopt ordinance 5773. I would say whoever wants to move, if you want to propose a number of units, because I notice a typo right now. Oh, we've got the word 60 and then the parenthetical 45. So, we got to clear that up one way or another. Mr. Thompson,

I think you mean number of hours. Is it number of units? I'm sorry. Excuse me. Number of hours. Yes. Uh, an hour is a unit of time, but true enough. True enough. And I on that front, I don't think we need to get too bogged down in the specific number for the premise of this is to make sure it's a bonafideed establishment. Both of these numbers do that. Um, I'm fine either way. Let's vote. All right. So, we need someone to move. I move to adopt the ordinance and amend the 60 to 40 hours. Right. Is there a second?

I'll second. Um, and then just to clarify, we're amending on page five, line two, where it's it'll say 40 and then parenthetical 40 numerically written. Um, any further discussion on this? I think we should keep it as written at 45. Staff recommended 60. PNZ brought it down to 45. I think I should leave it at 45. Okay. Uh, we should keep it at 45. If not, I'm going to vote against it. Okay. Mr. Thompson, any thoughts? I I'll reiterate. I'm not sure the five hours is going to matter one way or the other. I I really shouldn't we shouldn't be spending any more time on that. All right. Certainly not over five hours of, you know, establishment time per week. Miss Rucker,

Mayor Singer, there's a reason why staff recommended 60. You might not be able to articulate that point. It's been a long night already. But I I have a little bit of an inclination. So at 45, I'll take it. At 40, I won't because what'll happen is they won't open on the weekends or they'll just open a few hours a day and it defeats the purpose of what we want in that area. So at 45, I wanted higher. So I mean, I kind of wanted 50. I kind of wanted more hours. So, it's either going to be that or you're not going to get a unanimous vote from me tonight on that one. So, I would stick to the 45 as was recommended by PNZ and staff and we already went under what staff recommended.

All right. In the efforts to find consensus, I can live with 45. I don't know if we I don't we'll get there either way. So, Mr. Wter, you have a comment. Is is that a breaking point, too? Then we'll just have a 41 vote either way. would say, "Can you live with 45 if we want to if we want to try to all uh fine?" Okay, then um I'll move we amend to make it 45 hours. Fine. Is there a second? Second. All those in favor, please say I. I. I. All right. Any further discussion on the motion as amended with 45 hours on line two of page five. Any further discussion? Miss Sitt, please. Necklace. Yes. Ducker, yes. Thompson, yes. Wter, yes. Singer, yes.

Motion passes five votes to zero.

And thank you all. We got a yes on something. So, um, that's good. Um, now we'll take up item H as in hotel ordinance 5777. Would you please read the title? Ordinance number 5777, an ordinance of the city of Boca Raton amending chapter 6 elections section 6-16 proof of residency and elector status code of ordinances to increase the number of required documents supporting a candidates's residency affidavit for the offices of mayor and city council member from two to three. to add to the list of acceptable documents and to require submission of a current voter information card confirming elector status at the time of qualifying and to provide for the use of voting history as evidence of nine residency providing for severability providing for appealer providing for codification providing an effective date.

Thank you Mr. Swainy. Thank you Mr. Mayor. Uh the this proposed ordinance further enhances the uh documentation used to verify both residency uh with the city and elector status and it's consistent with the city charter. Uh these amendments strengthen the documentation standards used during candidate qualifying thereby increasing transparency and public confidence in the candidate qualification process. and then I'll turn it over to the city attorney for further uh details. Mr. Kaylor.

Sure. Mayor, council members, our city charter already requires candidates to live here for one full year and it already requires candidates to be registered voters of the city. So, this ordinance doesn't change that rule. It just clarifies how it's verified. And um as the manager mentioned uh it it does increase the number of documents from two to two to three as stated in the recital. It's commensurate with what's required to get a library card. Um there is some expansion to include a declaration of doicile and some information to show that utility bills are more current. Um and then again on the charter requirement that you be a registered voter. This uh ordinance simply requires that you submit proof that you're a registered voter which can be obtained from the supervisor of elections office online uh with a code of it's called a voter information card. I guess that's what they call a voter registration card now. Um so there's no new rule. It it just strengthening the existing requirements.

All right. Thank you. And I I'll just give a little history here. We've uh looked at this code over the uh over a number of years and added some I think beneficial changes strengthening and clarifying from time to time. Originally the the rare residency requirement for residents was 30 days. The residents by an overwhelming margin uh adopted a charter amendment back in 2018 or 2018 or 2020. Um making that a year which is still a modest requirement. Actually, it might have been earlier than that, but some point in the last 10 years. And we increased the number of proofs of residency from one to two. We also previously clarified that if someone had a homestead outside of the city, which you have to claim as your permanent residence uh in order to get a homestead, that it was a de facto indication that you were not a resident during that time. Um I think this is a similar change. If you're voting outside of the city within one year, you're declaring that to be your permanent residence. So there's an inherent conflict here. And finally, when people submit proofs, we've gotten a whole variety of things from photos of people in a home which didn't provide an address to a whole mess a bunch of utility bills from different utilities over a different time. Shouldn't be that hard to provide this. Um I think when I mentioned when we increased from 1 to two, it was before 2022 when I was myself a candidate. We had six types of proof available. Now, we have more, but it took me less than 10 minutes to assemble five of them. Uh, so this is not, as was stated in the cover memo, this is not much more rigorous than what you'd get for a library card. I think it's an important change and that's why I think it deserves our consideration. So, that will open up the public hearing and Pam Pashki as the first card and the only card on this item so anyone else can speak after.

Pam Pashki 340. No, no, not this. No, this is for later. Thank you. Sorry, Pam Pashky, 341 Southwest 2nd Street. Um, I really just have one question. When you're adding the third document, what if there's a person who's lived here a long time, they rent and they pay the utilities to their landlord and they don't have a utility bill, can they still qualify? It's just a question. I got confused. I didn't see where they would find the third necessarily find the third document. That's it. Thank you. Any other further public comments? Yes, Mr. Warner.

Richard Warner, 1322 Southwest 9th Terrace. I'm curious about the voting requirement and whether let's say someone is voting absentee, that doesn't mean they don't live here, does it? I I'm just I I think there's maybe not enough specificity in this ordinance to to nail it down and and utility bills don't always say that you live there either. I I'm trying to think of what I I agree with the idea that someone running should live here. To me, a year residence probably isn't enough to know the city you're living in. But that's neither that's me. But I think there's holes in this ordinance. That's all I'm saying. I I don't know. I don't have the answers. That's for you guys to figure out. But

any further comments? I can answer those. But no, please come out. Mr. Majes, Joe Majes, 254 Northeast Northeast Fifth Street. Um, I think it's great. I think it's great that we're enforcing the requirements of the city charter to make sure that people do live here in this city. And I would honestly say that why don't we increase the requirement from 1 to two years because I think people should have an established uh history in the city and they should be involved for a lot longer than the bare minimum. I think we should be looking to exceed and going for an even more rigorous standard to ensure that people do in fact uh live here and have roots in this community. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else?

All right, we'll close the public hearing in reverse order. First, I'll just um Mr. Magis, I personally agree with you. Um that would require a charter change. Um I didn't envision when we had this discussion nine years ago, I don't think we envisioned multiple candidates who would register within one year or less than one year of running for city council um or, you know, purporting to state things about what they know of the city when they've only recently registered to vote here. Um people will have to make up their own determination in coming elections to whom that applies. Um second, Mr. Warner, um there are nine different proofs of residency that are available and same thing for Miss Pashki. Um there are nine of them and if you're a renter, you still can have a state license, ID card, a lease, um a recorded declaration of do doicile, um and utility bills. Um, I'm really not concerned that we're going to have the hypothetical where someone has only the three they lease and they can't figure out how to get all those things. Plus, the voter ID card itself is a proof, which is a good thing that we should ask. So, you know, if you're going to, it's harder for us to check. We'd have to actually now ask the supervisor of elections to confirm someone's residency despite their affidavit. And sometimes people, unfortunately, we've seen throughout America, people lie about where they live and and vote. So this is just clear on clear as day of what the supervisor actually has. So for those reasons, I'm going to move adoption of 5777.

Second. Thank you. Any further discussion? Then Miss Siddens, please. Trucker, yes. Thompson, yes. Wter, yes. Singer, yes. Natlas, yes. Motion passes five votes to zero. Very well. Thank you. That concludes item 12. We have no regular public hearings or settlements. So, we'll open the floor to public requests. I do have several cards. When I call your name, please come forward. You'll have up to three minutes. Give your name and address. And then after the cards, anyone else who wishes to speak may. Brianna HQquist. Uh, she left. Sher Croyle. Oh,

no. No. Brianna Hayquist is here. The second person left, but she just walked in. Michelle Grow and Sher Croyle. Okay, good evening everybody. My name is Briana Hanquist. I live at 5710A Coach Circle. And not to disappoint anybody, Thaddius came along to visit. He wanted to say hi. He brought his new friend Ted along too to say hello. Um, we're here to uh represent our wonderful and unique urban forest, our endangered gopher tortoises and all of our wildlife in Sugar Sand Park and all of the parks in our city. Our wildlife doesn't have a voice. They don't have attorneys to represent them. They don't have money for campaign contributions and they don't vote. So, they have to rely on their human friends to speak for them. residents want more parks and recreation facilities, especially downtown. That and I remain advocates for our parks and our wildlife, even though Thaad receives hate mail, and someone even had the nerve to call him a turtle. Just a reminder, Bokeh is Tree City. It's also re referred to as a city within a park. And we can't forget that our urban forest in Sugar Sand is very unique in our city. At the last meeting, I questioned why there was a 5 to one 5 to zero vote to destroy three 100-year-old banyan trees at 400 South Dixie just to make a way for another high-rise condo. There should have been a way to incorporate these beautiful trees into the design. Uh, I was informed that they were diseased. I've also heard that they were invasive. These trees were 100year-old.

The new Honda was what's invasive. Uh, I would like to make a public records request for the arborist report on these trees and if they were diseased and why they were taken down. I'm proud to say that I signed our new petition to help me to help collect signatures and I also helped collect signatures. Met many wonderful people who are very concerned and opposed to this downtown development project. I was also one of the group that delivered the petitions to our city clerk. We were politely informed that she could not in accept them. But if I remember American government correctly, um, citizens have the right to petition. I feel our rights were violated. And just to again a reminder, the citizens of Boca Raton are our real partners, not the developers. We live here and we care about our city. We don't want overdevelopment. Anybody not have a problem getting here tonight? you see about our roads. Um, this building and and construction and variances are out of control. March 10th is fast approaching. The citizens will be heard and they will prevail. Then Frisbee can fly away. Thank you.

Michelle Grow.

Michelle Growl. 4550 Northwest 23rd Terrace. Um, I'm here to talk about some of the One Bokeh flyers and the developer who has been repeatingly claiming that they are contributing 127 million in upfront funding. And some of you that are running for election are even repeating this narrative. So, I want to be very clear. This is not cash on hand. Canvasers that one Bokeh hired have been telling residents otherwise, presenting this as 127 million as a guaranteed upfront payment to the city. This is incorrect and misleading. In reality, the 127 million is best understood as an estimate of potential borrowing capacity based on projected future revenues from the project. That distinction is critical. Borrowing capacity depends on assumptions about rent payments, market performance, and financial risks. If revenues arrive later than expected or if conditions change, the actual value could be materially different, potentially much less than what has been advertised. Under the master partnership agreement, the city's public facility, city hall, community center, and park upgrades are funded entirely by the taxpayers at roughly 200 million. 201 million. These improvements are discretionary. The private developer is not responsible for them. The agreement allows the city to delay, scale back, or even decline these projects if they exceed the caps. Yet, the private development can move forward regardless. That creates a dangerous imbalance. The developer can build private buildings where our civic facilities may be delayed, reduced, or never built. Some residents have also been told that if the project fails, the city can

simply take back the property and be made whole. But default scenarios are rarely simple. Reclaiming control of a partially completed or financially distressed project can involve legal costs, operational destru disruptions, market uncertainty, and significant delays. The city may regain possession, but it does not mean it will recover all the anticipated financial benefits. One Bokeh's involvement in this project is not appreciated. We do not need a developer to dictate what this happens in our city. I've heard from countless residents. They want this decision made by the citizens, not by the developer or city leaders acting on their behalf. You have already taken your hand at this project. You've done enough damage. Countless glossy renderings have left residents fatigued and confused, likely by design. When you add up all those costs to the city, the taxpayers, it's staggering. Likely in the millions. Those dollars have could have easily funded real tangible community facilities.

Thank you. Your time is expired. Sherry Croy.

My name is Sheri Croyle. I'm at 1224 Southwest 14th Street in Bokeh in Bokeh Square. Uh Mr. Mayor, Deputy Mayor, and members of city council, I'd like to talk to you very briefly about R1D, and I'm going to go to your ordinance 1828, section 28333, low density planning directive. The city councelor hereby declares that it adopts as a planning directive the conceptual goal that the city develop predominantly as a low density residential community and that familyowner occupied residential units be encouraged, fostered and perpetuated as the major implementation tool to achieve such a goal. I live in Boca. It's a single family residential neighborhood. We're all fully aware that we have number of universities in our community. I'm referring to a 14-year-old article from Bokeh magazine. The very first paragraph says, "Last March, a Boca Raton resident emailed Mayor Susan Haney to complain about neighbors violating city code by renting to more than three college students. This article goes on to say that private student housing is very big business. The article also refers to increasing the number of code officers. The absentee homeowners, some with multiple properties, turned residences into businesses. I'm attending special magistrate hearings. Unfortunately, I'm on a firstname basis with Mr. Spelman, Mr. Sheidi, and Mr. Newman. I sent an email to all of you in August and unfortunately I only heard from one person. I did hear back from someone's assistant. There is a professor and I know there's

more than one who owes 20 residences. His business plan is not teaching classes. It's making 65 to $70,000 a month renting individual bedrooms to students. These homes in Bokeh Square, Palm Beach Farms, Carriage Hill, East Bokeh are legacy communities that are nonha. They're renting these rooms to students between 900 and $1,250 a month. We have three semesters at these universities. They're already in violation of Bokeh's short-term rental ordinance that we spent all this money on in the appeal courts. If you go to the ehub on our very own website, you will see the number of violations. There is a house on Southwest 12th Avenue that has been reported and visited 41 times. The first time was in September 20 in 23. A woman was taking her daughter to school and turned it in as more than three unrelated individuals renting. That house is still being inhabited by college students.

That is your time, Miss Croy. My husband will continue. Thank you. Margie Alloy, while she's coming up, can we ask a question to of the city manager? Could we I believe we've passed on the addresses outlined by Miss Croyle to staff. Could we follow up and investigate there? Yeah, absolutely. Okay. And and further, by the way, I know we've further on the point, I know staff has been investigating, so you'll it's not like that we haven't done it yet. You'll continue to advise and report back to us and to the the concerned residents. Thank you, Margie Alloy.

Yes. Uh could you please put up the slide? Oh, there it is. Uh, good evening. My name is Margie Alloy, 210 Southeast Meisner Boulevard, and I'm here tonight to make a minor request that I believe will improve the Boca Raton's proposal to build a new condo tower. I have carefully reviewed the zoning plan. As outlined in the materials I submitted to staff, the developer is relocating their road as part of constructing the new building. The new proposed road alignment runs directly through a significant number of existing mature trees unnecessarily, and there appears no compelling reason to cut down these trees, especially given that there is already a paved maintenance entrance and a large paved parking lot immediately next to the proposed road location. There's ample room to accommodate the same size project if the proposed road were shifted just 10 to 12 yards to align with the existing paved maintenance entrance and parking area. The materials I submitted clearly demonstrate that the building can still fit comfortably with this minor adjustment without eliminating such a substantial treated area. I recognize that this comment comes late in the process and after the prior planning meeting. However, this is a slight modification that can easily be implemented during upcoming engineer engineering submitts. I encourage the council to require the developer to save the large section of the trees by using the existing pave maintenance entrance and parking lot for the newly proposed road. Uh the developer might suggest it's too late or not feasible. Uh they may say that they can't shift the building due to the golf holes. However, the diagrams clearly show that this small modification works. While it might slightly adjust the open space around the building or the size of the rear park, it would preserve a large area of mature trees.

This minor revision can easily be executed. Uh my husband, who's traveling for work and unable to attend tonight, has worked on hundreds of engineering and planning projects nationwide. and based on his professional experience, this is a straightforward and pretty simple adjustment. I respectfully request that you add a condition to align the new road with the existing paved maintenance entrance and parking lot in order to preserve the substantial number of mature trees currently on the site. It's a simple, reasonable improvement that balances responsible development with protecting the character and natural beauty that makes Boca Raton special. Thanks for your time and consideration. Thank you, Phil Croyle. Phil Croyle, 1224 Southwest 14th Street, Booker Town. Um, picking up where Sher left off, I've stayed in the background of her investigation into the R1D issue that she's investigating. I know she has enormous quantities of of what lawyers would call evidence, but I serve in our household as the gatekeeper of relevance and materiality. So, We have these incredible discussions about how to get the city off dead center in enforcing the single family density requirements that are found in 28 hyphen 2 under the definition of family. So, it's kind of buried in an un unmarked almost a grave with this long paragraph about family where people unrelated individuals in excess

of three with one kitchen are not permitted in this city in R1D neighborhoods. That violation when code enforcement investigates that requires them to pierce the walls of a residence to see the truth of what bed is in which room and whose head is laying on a pillow. That's different. That's hard. And I appreciate that. I think I have an elegant solution which which is either a really good idea or will reveal me as not being a specialist in government. Um section 9.60 of our ordinances has additional supplemental procedures for code enforcement. There is a laundry list of specific sections of the code that number 33 presently. My ask of council is to add a 34th and that is to put the enforcement of single family density requirements as a specific item that triggers what I feel and what I interpret to be a lower lower burden of proof for the initial notification of the violator because that provision provides for the initial notice to be issued when the code enforcement an officer has a reasonable cause to believe that there's a violation. The normal provisions that apply to non designated beyond the 34 is two 2 something in the early section of the ordinances and it says when code when the code enforcement officer finds that there's a violation he issues the

the first notice. That's a higher burden of proof in my view. So, I'd like council to consider adopting a very short modification to provide for the lower standard. Thank you. We will discuss that. Uh I know I think our city attorney is pulling up the code. Richard Warner.

Richard Warner 1322 Southwest 9 Terrace. As long as we're on that topic, there's additionally in the same vein, correct me if I'm wrong, I think Verbos and uh Airbnbs are not within Bokeh's code as well. And yet they're everywhere and nobody cares. The college kids are somewhat innocent victims. They need a place to live. They're going to school. Uh I know, you know, a few blocks from my house, there was a fraternity house, let alone I mean, there must have been 14 kids living there. But the Airbnbs and the Verbos are just as completely wrong. At any rate, moving on. Uh, I have to say something about the relentless advertising which I I'm hesitant to say that four of you are culpable for by allowing this outrageous lie to continue. It's part and parcel with the lies in the ballot question which certainly you guys are culpable for for you. Uh is there nothing you know if if these people one bokeh were advertising a product the federal government would come down on them for all these lies. And yet with the future of our city at stake, nobody seems to care.

You guys are our our protectors, so to speak. Where's the protection? Somebody should be speaking up and saying all this relentless advert. I got three in one day. Three mailers in one day. I sit there watching CNBC. Every hour on the hour is 60 seconds of lying. Is there no way you guys can be convinced to say stop this? It's in your power. Thank you. Two quick points, Mr. Sohaney. First, we don't um short-term rentals are not prohibit are prohibited in our city. We've enforced that as well as we can for a long time. I know our code enfor Mr. Soy can talk about what our code enforcement staff does, including looking online. I'll turn it to you, please, sir.

Yeah. Um you know, the short version is yeah, we do enforce it. Um and you know, I'll take another look at it. Obviously, I I haven't been here that long and we'll double down and and get back to you both on the college student issue as well as uh we'll revisit the Airbnb VRBO issue and I'll uh I'll get back to uh city council on that. Thank you. And on the second point, um mayor, no, please go ahead,

Mayor Singer. on the VRBO and the short-term rental, but just keep monitoring because every legislative session there is preeemption from the Florida legislature for cities for us not to be able to track VBOs and to enforce for us to allow VBOS's and short-term rentals. This year, the angle they're using, which has had a lot of traction, is the accessory dwelling units that they it's gone, I think, through both chambers. I believe I'll be back in Tallahassee later in the week and I'll get another update and maybe Mr. Wter has an update because he sits on that committee. But Tallahassee is trying to preempt cities from monitoring VBOS's short-term rentals and now taking it to the next level which is the AUDS which is really having a lot of traction right now. So I would encourage you to reach out to both our senators and our house of representatives. This is week six and now we are in go time when it comes to preeemption in our cities and in local government and again just like live local we can't do anything about it. So

and thank by the way uh our predecessors um had pretty protective planning for the city in this area because the certain date 2010 I believe um 2011

2011 close um we had our regulations in place beforehand. So, as that issue perks per percolates up every single year, we're in a betterstead than most of our peer cities, and it's something we will continue to enforce. On the advertising, the prior speaker, not Mr. Warner, but referred to some statement about $127 million upfront payment that door-to-door canvasers were saying. I've not heard that statement. I agree that that is not an accur that is not an accurate statement. There are a number of things, but um there is not a $127 million payment coming from um directly from that. But again, I don't know if that was in the context of a bond equivalent or the rest. But yes, I agree that's not accurate in terms of other characterizations. I've not seen um I I some people are characterizing them a certain way. I've not seen a fact that state fact is out there. That's not accurate. But others um maybe a matter of opinion. Elizabeth Decker, then Martha Parker, and then Judy Morrow. Elizabeth Decker, 498 Northwest 7th Avenue, Boca Raton, Florida. Obviously, sorry. Um, good evening. I know we're all tired of discussing the downtown campus project, but with the referendum only two weeks away, residents deserve clear information before they vote. That is why I'm speaking tonight. In January of 2025, I joined a small group of residents who came here to raise legitimate concerns about this project. I even offered to help based on decades of experience leading complex technology projects. That offer wasn't taken seriously. But the lessons I've learned over and over is simple. If you ignore the needs of the people who will ultimately use what you are building,

the project is at risk from the start. If the city had paused and listened to that small group a year ago, much of the conflict that followed could have been avoided. Instead, the project kept advancing until residents had no choice but to organize through Save Bokeh just to be heard. And even then, meaning meaningful public input faced obstacles at every step. You may point to design changes as evidence that ev that residents were heard, but the core issues remain. Le le leasing public land for private commercial use for 99 years and removing walkable recreational space from people who live downtown are still central to this proposal. These concerns were raised early and never addressed. So why speak now so close to the vote? Because voters need to understand that this project was not designed with them in mind. The pattern of dismissing resident input makes it unrealistic to believe our concerns will suddenly matter after the referendum. If anyone is voting yes in the hope that their voice will shape the final outcome, history shows this is unlikely. I also want residents to have clear access to residents to have access to real facts before they cast their ballot. I'm here on behalf of myself and a small group of residents who created Bokeh Downtownrealfacts.org to give the community verifiable information about the project. I have opposed this project for more than a year, but the research we gathered has shifted me from concerned to alarmed. Significant risks are being minimized and ignored. While the promises being made are overly optimistic, especially regarding revenue, this is the wrong way to begin a project of this scale. Before any more money is spent, the risk must be evaluated honestly. Residents deserve transparency, and the city deserves a plan grounded in reality, not wishful thinking. Thank you.

Martha Parker, 64 Northwest 7th Street. The amount of discussion you guys had tonight over the freestanding er versus the discussion you guys have had over the public land downtown is very telling. I really hope that it's a new page in our city on on transparency and and providing clarity to residents on topics that matter. There are many open questions relating to referendum question number two. I urge my fellow residents to continue having open and honest discussions with your neighbors. Watch prior council meetings um to help you make your decision. Question the many shiny mailings coming to your mailbox from one bokeh. Compare these mailers to the plan itself and ask yourself what images are missing from the brochure. There is not a pedestrian bridge in the plan, nor is it specifically identified in the master plan agreement. Even if elected officials are telling you this, happy Valentine's Day. Read the ballot language on question two and know that our council, with the exception of one, voted for misleading language. Remember that a no vote accomplishes preserving Memorial Park. It gives us the ability to expand green space with the recent purchase of the $17 million new governmental offices here in in uh Congress and the relocation of our police station um out of the downtown. We have space to expand our green space by voting no. We can have our new community center and city hall and police substation in downtown. Again, all of these are accomplished by voting no. A no vote gives us as a community time to study our needs, wants, and desires together and create a space that binds us together. It preserves and protects our public land. If you're looking for factualbased, data-driven, resident focused information about the project, visit bokehtownrealfacts.org.

That's bokehtownrealfacts.org. As this is the last last council meeting before an important election, I just want to say to my neighbors throughout the city, we're at a crossroads and have a real opportunity to d address resident concerns with impacts from past, present, present, and future development and redevelopment. Evaluate whether candidates listen and have shown capacity to work with others, including those they disagree with, maybe especially so. evaluate their ability to bring everyone, developers, residents, visitors, other interested parties, other governments to the table and plan for our city's future. Look to candidates that are calm, centered, and firmly rooted in this community. Reject those that are abrasive and divisive. It's time to come together as a community. Vote no on question two. Preserve our future. Vote for candidates who will guide us forward. We have many issues in this city that we need to tackle together. Make sure you vote on March 10th. Thank you,

Judy Morrow. Okay. Good evening. My name is Judy Marorrow, 1305 Northeast Fifth Avenue. Wanting transparency is not anti-development. So, I didn't bring the flyer that says on the front of it $127 million upfront, which is not true. Um, but I did bring a lot of flyers and none of them none of them have pictures of the seven condos, I mean, the seven highrises that are going to be on the 7.7 acres. Just to give you an example. Okay, look what a bunch of highrises look like. This is what they look like. A bunch of highrises that pollute our sky and everything. But that's not from the developer. That's from a real estate brochure. Um, the ones that we get in the mail have trees. They have high trees. They have people walking. They have bicycles. They have children walking. They have um people sitting on chairs.

They have large trees. They have all this kind of stuff that is is not telling the truth. And and you really need to question it. You really do. Um, I would really, really, really, really like an answer to how are they doubling our recreation space? They're not doubling it. You unless they're giving us more land, but they're not doubling it. And this flyer, there's one flyer here. They're really, really I didn't even get it yet, but my friends got it. All my tennis friends are very upset. This says 10 new tennis courts. Oh, now we're going to have 20. We're going to have 10 on the east side, 10 on the west side. This project of PP3 is going to give us 99 years of traffic traffic parking lot traffic. So please please vote no March 10th. Please vote for our save bokeh candidates. And John Pearlman really saved our park. Um, Michelle Growl is excellent accountant, works hard. Stacy Sipple is a fourthg generation Boca Raton resident. That is your

Please vote for them. Thank you. Meredith Madson,

sorry.

No worry, Judy. Great. I love you anyway. Okay. Okay. Um, this is what you guys created. Uh, Meredith Madson, 1193 Southwest 19th Street, and I have three minutes. So, I'd like to say that this is the last city council meeting before the election. And while I don't agree with your candidates, all of them, I do love Judy Marorrow because she is really what started Save Bokeh and everybody else followed behind her because she could not get the tennis courts fixed and that's what created all of this and you created all of this because you wouldn't stop. And today was the first time I actually saw you stop. And I was like shocked that this was the day on a freestanding uh emergency room that I was like, "Okay, finally we're going to have that pause, but we can't pause on this project." But I think we are going to pause on this project because I think this is going to get voted down. And I want to talk about halftruths and reality because I spent a lot of time focusing on something that I thought was toxic that I had a town that almost turned into a cult and I had lived here for a long time and thought this isn't us. But this isn't us either. This isn't us either because this I'm holding about $20,000 here in flyers because they come into my mail every day and they're paid for by Terara Frisbee or Blue Pack or somebody that pays for this to tell me that you stopped increasing taxes. Bokeh's tax rate has been stable for years because property values have soared and residents still pay more, sometimes significantly more due to our rising assessments. So you holding the militaryrate while our revenues climb is not a tax cut. It's a political talking point. Okay. Second of all, you did not

preserve Bokeh's way of life by giving us a vote. We gave ourselves a vote. I had to show up here August and scream because I didn't want to be here because we couldn't get a vote. Now we have a vote and we have a rogue guy who doesn't do interviews, doesn't need to. He'll buy you an ice cream for your vote. Okay, that's what you created with this city council. So, what I am saying is everybody vote no on both of them and we get a doover with everybody having a clear slate and saying we are going to come together and have this kind of discussion again. We're going to have we're going to have I'm sorry that you guys didn't do this in workshop for the year, but we're going to do it next time. Okay? And next time we're going to have a a very clear discussion about whether we can have I appreciate that Mark Wiger can repeat everything Vet Trucker said but slower. I appreciate that you repeat every single good point she made but slower. That doesn't bring us forward. Okay. So I am saying that developers are being forced to pay for infrastructure. No, they're not. We are we are paying for this infrastructure. That is not true. So vote no and vote for a candidate who will defend you and will not inflame the city further. Okay. Thank you. Have a nice day.

Anyone else wishing to speak under Oh, Martin Bell. Mr. Bell somehow. I saw your card, but it got moved to the stack. Miss Stringer. Sorry.

It got moved to this 12 B stack. My apologies. Yes, please go ahead.

Hi, I'm Kathy Stranger, 210 Southeast Meisner. Uh, I respectfully request the council deny the proposed zoning change that would allow the Boo Ron Golf Course land to be used as a residential building. The golf course was originally approved and represented to the community as a recreational space. That designation matters. It creates expectations for homeowners and preserves open space in our city. Allowing this amendment would fundamentally change that understanding. Approving this request sets a sets a dangerous precedent. Once recreational land could be reclassified for residential development, where does it stop? A small section taken today, another piece removed tomorrow, and before long, the very character of the golf course and the open space it provides could be permanently altered. This decision extends beyond a single parcel. It could have widespread implications for the golf course land throughout Boca Raton. If this amendment is granted here, it signals that other recreational properties may also be vulnerable to incremental encroachment. This project was represented to the community as this this the Boeraton resort was represented to the community as recreational space. Approving this request sets a dangerous precedent. Once recreational land, okay, is is reclassified residential development, it could have widespread implications for golf course land throughout Boca Raton. If this if this amendment is granted, it signals that other recreational properties may also be vulnerable to incremental encroachment. I urge you to protect the integrity of the zoning code, preserve development,

preserve designated recreational land, and deny this zoning change. Thank you for con your consideration, and as a relatively new resident, it seems like there's so much development going on in downtown Bokeh and it seems like this committee never says no to a developer. Thank you.

Uh, no, Martin Bell had a request for us. Oh, and I'm sorry, Miss Pashky, because yes, you had actually I don't I I saw two cards for you. I didn't see one for public request, but please, I filled out three cards. Okay, I see two. For whatever reason, I don't see one from the woman in the second row as well. So, please, anyone else?

There we go. Pam Pashki, 341 Southwest 2nd Street. On Friday, the Suns Sentinel published an op-ed piece on the Boca Raton ballot question. They did their research and while a couple of details are a little off, they concluded the One Bokeh project is not the best use of public land and say residents should be skeptical of the lofty promises and vote no. They also questioned the rhetoric being used by the city's mayor and developer Terra Terra Frisbee aka one bokeh calling it stridident. Specifically, they questioned the statements that the area is quote almost blighted and claims that walkable spaces will limit quote unsafe or unsavory behavior currently found in underused areas. As to the ballot wording, I quote, "In the city council's tortured words smithing, it is about preserving Memorial Park, but the park won't disappear if people vote no. Question two is also about honoring veterans as though a no vote were unpatriotic." It reads like a slanted sales pitch," unquote. What isn't mentioned is the city's planned $125 million bond to pay for the improvements to city buildings in Memorial Park. Apparently, the 99-year lease revenue doesn't really kick in until about year 30. So, the city has to finance the improvements itself one way or another. So, how is one bokeh disguised as build a better better bokeh communicating with our residents? Are they telling us their part of the project is to build a hotel, hundreds of apartments, an office building, and a parking garage with little p public walk with a little public walkway in the middle that's flanked by 12story buildings on both sides. When they talk about a shaded walkway, that's what they're talking about. Instead, we are inundated with

drawings of our park filled with mature trees, maybe 20 or 30 years old. Why? because that's what sells. 12story buildings don't convince the public we are getting something. And one bokeh is taking credit for saving the park, but we the people did that, not the developer. They are taking credit for honoring the veterans. No, we the people convinced the city council that it is called Memorial Park for a reason. If you didn't see those meetings with people testifying about the history of the park, it's an eye openener. Is this a new Meisner park? Not remotely. We are getting 12story buildings filling a 7.8 acres of our public land. Why so tall? So the developer can make millions and millions of dollars over 99 years. Yesterday the mayor said it's the city that will be honoring the vet veterans, not one bokeh. So why hasn't the city asked the developer to stop the propaganda? You tell me. The city says this is a partnership. So, does the city approve the actions of their partner? I am not against developing this area, but our park needs sunshine all day. It won't get it in the shadows of 12story buildings. We can do better. Please vote no.

Mr. Bell,

see Is that full screen, please? I guess it is. Um, Martin Bell, 761 Southwest 3rd Street. Uh, first of all, it is correct that they are spreading the propaganda about the 127 million. Um, and I've got it in a couple of emails. In the first email, they talk about uh immediate funding of 127 million. I'm not going to read the whole thing and waste time. Uh, in one email, they footnote it and they link it to a PFM report and then later on they remove that. And to answer the question about how are they going to double the the space, they're going to they want to eliminate, they want to propose eliminating convenient surface parking altogether and force us to use a $30 million garage paid for by the city. Um anyway, what's become apparent is that with all these nice new developments, I agree that's private property that that can be developed. Uh the variances I'm against, but there's a need for improved traffic management. I'll give you an example. Palmetto Park Road, we talked about Mr. Wner, you talked about East Palmetto Park Road leading to the ocean. Before that, there's a long stretch southwest 9th Avenue to Southwest 4th Avenue almost a mile. Nothing breaking it up. We need a push button pedestrian crossing there at St. Paul Lutheran School and Church similar to what we have at Bokeh Christian. Um, and then we can cross the park and and use nice amenities like uh Palmetto Dunes Park, a nice pocket park. Mr. Wner, you talked about pocket parks. Um, and I think that we have a perfect candidate for that and that's Memorial Garden. We can use the base building for that. And what that does is that checks three boxes. We honor our veterans. We get a pocket park. We don't have to pay a private party for it. We have it right there and it it it cools down the density. I believe we have a a veteran sitting in the back who might be

interested in that. We want to add on the veterans and that Yep. There you go. Um and then so what we can do is we can lower the density. We keep our surf surface parking. We keep uh number two uh six or I'm sorry six and six and seven can wait till later. Uh we can decide what we can do. We can sell it for cash 80 million perhaps. uh we can get more cash out of that than the present value that comes from the project which is about 59 to 73 million. Um and we can take our time. That's like a land bank. We don't have to be in a rush. Uh what you're showing on your website does not sync up with what the developer is showing. You are not in sync with your partner.

It makes no sense. And you are not disclosing a very material fact that there's a $30 million garage that you're paying for. Uh you say you're serious about parks, we'll do something about it. You know, let's uh you know uh police the interlopers, uh reverse the sugar sand park softball complex at $20 million. Uh there's some potential debate sites for discount rate if you want. There's the heat map right there. It shows that they're focusing on Memorial Park. They're doing nothing for Memorial Park. They're showing the prominade. Um bunch of junk. Here's their address right there in Boca Raton. It's the same address as this gentleman. Rescue Bokeh. Okay. And finally, two minutes.

That is your time. Five seconds. Art imitating life. Life imitating art. Thank you, Israel. Okay. You temporary insanity. You are otherwise decent people, but bad. Watch the movie. All right, Mr. Bell, please. Thank you. Next speaker. I'm sorry to to the resident in the second row. Um, uh, you're looking to your right. Yes, you. Uh, right there in the, uh, you said you submitted a card. I don't seem to have one for you. So, if you'd like to come up or you want to She Oh, yes. And Oh, yes, sir. Please come forward.

And M. Pashky. Yes, you did. You put the ordinance numbers on the bottom of the third. I understand. So, that that I put them in the stack then. Good. Yeah.

Uh, John Shrive 4686 Northwest Second Court. Um, thanks for teeing it up for me. I'm sure that's what you meant to do. Um, I don't have any slides. I didn't know we could do that last time. I didn't know I could write a speech like everyone else. This is uh off the cuff. I've been approached. Obviously, this gentleman probably saw me on his CNBC. I suggest you getting lied to a lot more on CNBC than just the minute that the video is being um ran. But nobody paid me to make this video for one bokeh. I think I need to put that on the record because I have been face to face with different numerous people from state bokeh that have made those uh you know um they they basically intimated that I had been paid and I had not. Um this is completely on my own doing. I have yet to see Save Bokeh come and give me a rendering of what the park is going to look like for Veterans Park. I also lived here 44 years or called Bokeh home 44 years. Eight of those I was in the Marine Corps. Um so I wasn't actually in Bokeh and uh did not know it was a Memorial Park. Didn't hear anyone really make any mention of it. Nobody really wanted to save the park until this happened. Uh I love that we live in America where you can vote yes or no. My vote is yes. Why? because people have approached me and showed me renderings and I'm going to hold their feet to the fire when the when when the time comes. Um the I I think I feel like we're living in like some people are living in a fantasy world where of course if someone's trying to promote their building, they're going to put nice pictures. Why would they put pictures of not nice stuff? It's just this whole kind of charade is is is relatively uh I I don't understand it. What I do know is that I have seen renderings of the Memorial Park, what it will look like. I have seen where the money is going to come from and it is going to come from the city. I don't care if it comes from the city one way or another. If say

Bokeh wins, they say they're going to create the park. Where's the money going to come from then? That's my question. Nobody has approached me with that. John Prman uh when I move when I when I bought my house in Bokeh, I put a save Bokeh sign in the yard. He told me they're trying to take the park. Well, the park got saved. What happened then? The goal pole moves. the goalpost moved. I saw him at the beach. He asked me he he didn't know who I was. I said, "I'm the guy you were texting with two weeks ago prior to uh prior to uh Charlie Kirk getting shot. He asked me to go speak for them that day. It got cancelled. I never heard from him again." He says, "Oh, you're the guy that with the awards. What awards did you get again?" I said, "John, you're running for city council, not me." So, the idea that I'm being used and manipulated by by the developers is is disrespectful to me, as I've said in on Facebook and everything else. And it's disrespectful to veterans to insinuate that we're dumb enough when I mention suicide and the deaths of ones guys that I love and to say that that I'm being manipulated and dumb enough to use them for some developer. It's it's it's again, it's just disrespectful. and and I had to come up here and just stand for that alone. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Shai. And thank you for your service. Anyone else wishing to speak?

Joe Mages, 254 Northeast Fifth Street. First of all, thank you for your service. Um, you used a word I was going to use, so nice. You guys know I don't pull any punches, so I'm not going to do that tonight. I know some people might accuse me now of being a shill for the council. So, let me just put that assurance to bed. I'm I'm not. Um, the whole ER charade, that was ridiculous. That's why everybody's here and why everybody's mad, but it led to what I would describe as a healthy discussion and a positive, measured outcome. And it's one that I think needed to be had. That discussion needed to be had and there is an election on March 10th and I think people should ask themselves who on the ballot is willing to have a discussion. Who on the ballot is willing to meet with people that they disagree with? I know the answer to that question and I think the residents should be informed. So, can the city take a hard line or is it just going to fester in chaos and litigation when it comes to all development? I by no means am a fan of every project that goes on in this city. I've spoken since May of last year with my opposition to this project and I quite frankly have other projects that I don't like or I don't agree with that I don't necessarily speak on. But the answer is no. As Miss Strucker correctly stated with Live Local, they're going to do whatever they want. We are preempted at the state level. Private property owners have rights. And I don't care if you get up here and you say, "Oh, I'm not going to grant a variance anymore." Well, it doesn't matter with live local. So, there's a rumor going around that I'm telling everybody to vote yes on this ballot question, too. I'm not. I'm

voting no. But I also want to note for those watching that the reason there's a vote on this project I mean yes save Bokeh did force the hand and it was uh you know there was public outrage but this council initiated that led by Mr. Thompson but they got us an up or down vote on this project. So come March 10th, I would encourage the public to choose truth over lies, to choose integrity over hypocrisy, to choose open debate over censorship, and choose experience and qualifications over inflammatory rhetoric and posturing. So this is the last meeting. Um, I won't be here at the next one. So I just wanted to thank the council even though we've all disagreed. I want to thank you for your professionalism and your service and um I hope the residents and I would encourage the residents to continue being involved and always stand up for what's right. So, thank you.

Good evening, council. Eric Blanchett, 102 Northeast Second Street, Boerton, Florida. that's for you. All Book Raton voters have an important decision to make on March 10th at the election. I strongly urge everyone to take the time to fully understand the facts before casting their vote. In my view, supporting SE Bokeh candidates would be a catastrophic mistake for our city's future. This is not about personalities. It's about conduct, transparency, and respect for the rule of law. The public deserves to know that there is now an active investigation by the appropriate authorities into the campaign finance and election law violations by Save Bokeh. In regards to these violations in Save Bokeh's solicitation of the electorate during their petition drive, we should all agree that the petition process must be lawful, transparent, and honest. No organization or candidate should be above the law and deceive the electorate. The voters should be cautious about supporting any movement, specifically SEO Bokeh, that appears willing to violate the law and push the boundaries of legal and ethical standards to achieve their agenda. As a result of their petition drive, Saboka attempted to place their unlawful measures past the city of Bokeh and onto the ballot, but were struck down by the judge as being unconstitutional under the Florida Constitution. But Save Bokea didn't stop there. They continue to try and advance these unlawful measures despite the judge's ruling. Are these the type of elected officials that we want representing our city? And now say Bokeh is at it again. Since late January, S Bokea has been circulating a new petition that many voters have found confusing. Voters are being told that they must sign the petition to guarantee their right to vote on the redevelopment project. This is yet another petition to drive attempt to save Bokea deceive the electorate. This is concerning because the vote is already scheduled for March 10th and ballots have been already been issued. Every registered Bocertone voter already

has this guaranteed right to vote. No petition is required for this. Statements by say bokeh that voters must sign a petition to preserve their voting rights are misleading and create fear and deception. Based on the structure of this petition, it appears the real purpose is to challenge the lease agreement before voters that have the opportunity to decide the issue at the ballot box. In other words, this effort risks undermining the very democratic process it claims to protect. That was the intent. Regardless of anyone's position on development, we should all agree that voters deserve clear, truthful, and transparent information. Bocratone deserves leadership that is accountable, responsible, and committed to honest and lawful governance, which is the opposite of Save Bokeh. Thank you. Anyone else wishing to speak?

Please come forward.

Okay. Stephanie Rosenwide, 200 Southeast Meisner Boulevard. I just wanted to finish off where I was before saying that what I was really trying to get to and it can apply to the resolutions that are going to come about when you're voting on the uh residence tower for the Boca Raton. um that I am really trying to ask that first can a construction traffic management plan temporarily deem the service entrance to become a construction entrance. That being said or that question out there, I would look to ask that a condition of approval for resolution when they put in for the tower that it ensures that there's compliance with the city's vision zero and complete streets mandates which looks to protect lives. The applicant shall should be required to submit a construction traffic management plan that expressly prohibits the use of Southeast Meisner Boulevard service entrance for any special mobile equipment or construction vehicles as defined by the Florida statute and the Palm Beach County article that I had mentioned earlier. As such, the industrial permit required traffic should be restricted to the Camino Riale member entrance in order to maintain physical separation of highmass vehicles from the highdensity pedestrian zones and traffic stops. I mean, if you look through what you voted in, which was and adopted a great plan under the vision zero using the safe system approach. We want to keep our roads safe. If these construction vehicles come through the downtown corridor and across Southeast Meisner to turn into the entrance, whether they're making a right or a left, there's no way to make it safe. Um there are pillars of this safe system approach, safe roads, safe speeds, safe users. It's this tries to protect people so that if you're trying to force a

40tonon vehicle into a narrow curved geometry of southeast meisner that they could encroach on in on oncoming lanes which is a direct violation of safe road design. It's also putting cement trucks literally potentially in the path of pedestrians crossing the street. There is a pedestrian crossing, a bus stop, plus two additional pedestrian crossings within not even a quarter mile of the entrance. Um, we did have uh actually a dog that is was a resident of our building killed on uh Southeast Meisner within 6 months ago. Had the owner been standing where the dog was on the other side closer to the road, they certainly would have been struck, probably seriously injured and could have been killed. That's what this vision zero was all about was to protect pedestrians and cyclists. And I'm just asking that we circumvent any possible backdoor way that the applicant of from the Boca Raton could get that entrance to be used for the construction because they have said in the previous planning meeting that you're talking at least 30 to 36 months for the tower and then it's probably an additional year for the fitness center. Thank you.

Anyone else wishing to make a public request of the city council? Last call for public request. All right, we'll close the time for public request. Uh, I'll just say a few things. First, and some of the people who spoke left the room, it saddens me that and luckily tonight, you know, some people have amped up the rhetoric, haven't been here and doing that, but it saddens me over the last year to see some things different in this city. rhetoric, misinformation, and I know it goes both ways. I understand. You can put that down, Miss Marorrow. Um, different concerns. We've tried to get out accurate information. I know some people disagree. Uh, I know there's, you know, and opinion comes into information, too. Even the the new factual website, um, that was mentioned earlier has an editorial we say walkable prison. I mean, you know, it's there there there are different ways we look at the same set of facts and different opinions. That's all reasonable. I think we've had a lot of discussion on this and ultimately residents will vote in a few weeks. And because we don't necessarily agree on the ultimate yes or no, doesn't mean that the public feedback hasn't mattered a great deal. I think it has. I think it's addressed a number of concerns and a lot of people have responded differently. Um I think the fact that this council um and this plan went through multiple iterations reflects that whether for some people that's enough. I respect that it may not be. Others have said maybe too much at the beginning. In any case, I appreciate everyone and someone made the comment you know the residents aren't your partners. No, the residents are our bosses and I've always felt that way. And ultimately the residents will have their say and that was again because the

council decided to put this direct question yes or no on the ballot. Not a confusing one that was related to other things, not one that was struck, just a straight up or no down yes or no question. Ultimately, it's yours and people will have it. Um I don't think there were other and then we already covered the concerns about code enforcement but know that our code enforcement officers are addressing these things and have and our code had provisions going back 15 14 years 15 years now um dealing with some of these concerns and it was pointed out uh yes preeemption is an issue that we continue to deal with. That's why we have advocacy at our state and local state and federal levels. Um, we'll now turn to introduction of ordinances and I'll ask Miss Sittens to read the title of ordinance 5778. Ordinance number 5778, an ordinance of the city of Pocaron amending chapter 28, zoning, article 9, single family residential districts, section 28-342, building height code of ordinances for clarity. and article 10 multif family zoning districts division 2 R2 residential district and division 7 R3D residential district code of ordinances to make the maximum building height limitation in the R2 multif family residential zoning district the same as the maximum building height limitation in the single family residential zoning districts and to make the maximum building height limitation in the R3D multif family residential zoning district the same as the maximum building height limit limitation in the single family residential zoning districts providing for severability providing for appealer providing for codification providing an effective date.

Thank you. Who would like to introduce this ordinance? Mayor, I'll introduce ordinance 5778.

Thank you very much. We'll now turn to ordinance 5779. Would you please read the title? Ordinance number 5779, an ordinance of the city of Bocaraton amending chapter 19 building regulations article 4 Division 1 Inspections Code of Ordinances by creating new section 19-163 protection of primary structural elements during extended construction to require the assessment and certification by a third party professional engineer of certain building materials where either the construction materials are exposed to the elements for an extended period of time or where there has been a change of contractor or applicable subcontractor during construction but prior to permanent protection from the elements prior to resuming construction activity providing for severability providing for appealer providing for codification providing an effective date.

Thank you'll introduce this ordinance. Mayor I'll introduce ordinance 5779.

Thank you. And would you please read ordinances 5780? Ordinance 5780's title. Ordinance number 5780, an ordinance of the city of Bocaraton considering for an approximately 1.774 acre portion of an approximately 140.8 8 acre property generally located at 501 East Camino Rial. A universal conditional amendment to the future land use map of the comprehensive plan pursuant to chapter 23 article 6 code of ordinances from recreation and open space PR to residential high RH subject to conditions providing for revisions to the future land use map providing for appealer providing an effective date.

Thank you. Who'll introduce this ordinance? Mayor Singer will introduce ordinance number 40 5780. Thank you. And could you read the title please of 5781? Ordinance number 5781 an ordinance of the city of Boca Raton considering for an approximately 1.774 acre portion of an approximately 140.8 acre property generally located at 501 East Camino Royale. a universal conditional UC reszoning from recreational RECC to multif family residential R5 pursuant to chapter 23 article 6 code of ordinances subject to conditions providing for the appropriate revision to the zoning district map providing for appealer providing an effective date thank you who'll introduce this one

Mr. Mayor, I'll introduce ordinance 5781. Thank you. That concludes our introduction of ordinances. We have no quasi judicial public hearings for variances and appeals today. So, we'll turn to city manager reports and recommendations. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just a reminder, our last uh public, uh, workshop for our police department headquarters is tomorrow, uh, Wednesday, February 25th at 200 p.m. at Spanish River Library. Thanks. Thank you. City attorney reports, Mr. Keller. I have no report. Thank you. Thank you, council member reports. Uh we'll go um counterclockwise today with Miss Ducker.

Um so no movement on um I gave a little update yesterday, Florida legislative update on property taxes. Uh nothing came out in the last 24 hours. Uh we think that the Senate continues to pre-negotiate some of the terms of the plan that they're going to put out um with the governor. So, as I've said yesterday and I said today, I'll be back up in Tallahassee on Thursday, Friday, and if whatever comes out of that, of course, the next meeting, which is not because of the election, we skip a meeting. The following one, we'll have a lot of clarity, but just keep looking at the mail, keep looking at the news and newspapers, and be alert of what's happening up in the legislature and um contact your um your representatives, your house, and your senators. here is Senator Psky, Senator Burman, and House Rep Peggy Gossipman represent the city of Bokeh. Those are those kind of the the the areas. Uh tomorrow I'm headed to Safe Street Summit uh with the MO. It's a one of those big conferences uh that they do here uh Tri County uh for best practices. And then lastly, uh we have an election that's coming up. Everyone knows um to quote some sources, they called me a veteran, which I'm not, but a veteran on the council because after this election cycle, I will remain on the council. As everyone knows, I'm still on the council. I'm not up for re-election at this moment. I'm actually term limited. But in the next two weeks, things get ugly. Having ran two races, I've already ran twice. And all I ask for the city really and for the resident is civility. A lot has happened in the last year. You might not agree with me. You might not agree how I handle things or how I'm direct. I call it bad behavior, but a lot of things have been said by these groups that they have filed candidates that have been incenderary and that have been aggressive and really just not nice. Uh so I caution you all as we progress,

whoever comes up on this dis, I'm going to work with whoever ends up on the dis. My job was to serve the community and I do it very well and with great professionalism and integrity, honesty, loyalty to this council and even sometimes into the detriment of my own family. I've said that before. So, this is not an easy job. This is a job that I chose and possibly chose me and the people chose me. So, I just ask that when you go and you vote that you vote for the candidates that you know are going to represent you well. And it's not one issue. The government campus is one of many, many, many issues that we deal with. We're just not a oneisssue council. We're dealing with issues from the Florida legislature to roads to infrastructure to budgets to preeemptions to just an array of things. So, as you go, I'm not here to tell you what to vote. I always encourage people to vote. It's an important right that we have as American citizens, the right to vote. So think about that when you go out there and whoever ends up on this deis I look forward to working with you in a collaborative informative way. If you come on this day and you don't work that way it's going to be a long 11 months because we need progress and we need to push the city forward and I'm not going to sit up here with stagnation. So please vote wisely. Thank you.

Thank you Mr. Wter.

Thank you very much. Thank you Mr. Rucker. Um yeah, just uh some housekeeping items. Uh obviously, first of all, I'd like to thank uh city manager and obviously municipal services on the hard work that's going on at the Port Lamar Seaw Wall. Uh I hope everyone's familiar with but the Port Lamar seaw wall collapsed uh I guess about a year ago or something to that. Um and it collapsed due to age, it collapsed due to sea level rise, it collapsed due to climate change and you know king tide, high tide. Um and it was getting older. Um a lot of the seaw walls and canals and bulkheads in the city are getting older and have to be looked at. Um this was getting um this was uh seriously deficient and it breached uh about a year ago and I know that uh Zach's team, municipal services and everyone necessary has gone uh you know made serious efforts there. And so last week I went just to to visit it and uh they they the new bulkhead has been inserted. Instead of a small concrete wall, they put in a 35 foot uh into the sill, a 35- foot deep um uh metal barrier that's going to protect the Port Lamar and the barrier island for the next hundred years. So, uh, again, real good investment and I know we're doing that on Jeffrey Street and on 32nd Street. And, uh, a couple other citizens have sent me pictures since we've talked about it a lot. A couple other citizens have sent me pictures. Uh, there's one on Do Street where there's some breaches that are happening. There's one at 11th Street uh, and, uh, East Boca Raton or West Booker Ruton Road, uh, that I know we're working on. I think Zach, uh, just got a permit on that. So, uh, a lot of infrastructure projects going on. So, uh, Mr. Sahini, thank you for that. Um, you know, just briefly, over the last three years, we've hired a new city manager and then another new city manager. We've hired a

new city attorney. We've hired a new CFO. We've hired a new uh deputy city manager. In most corporate organizations, that kind of succession planning, uh, if we did nothing else, I'm sure it would made a lot of those people happy. But if we did nothing else but just that succession planning, that would be critical for any organization that manages 100,000 people with,700 employees, that would be a uh, a laudable goal. And so, I want to thank my colleagues. I want to thank all the new city staff that's here for all your hard work for joining this team uh because uh like I said the city is stronger for it for the next cycle. So again our succession planning for the organization is the most important thing to keep us going and uh and we've done that. So I appreciate it and I want you all to know that. Um in addition again we we passed the city's first affordable housing ordinance. We've extended the CRA. We're fixing seaw walls and infrastructures. As Mr. Structure said, there's a thousand issues that we're dealing with. The city deals with 13,000 building permits a year. 13,000. When we come to a city council meeting, we talk about 10 or 20. Those fine-tune issues that we're talking about, but most of the bread and butter the city staff does so well. Um and again where you know it comes up to city council if there's an ordinance or there's a specific light uh site situation or maybe the land the way it's situated is different to where the trees are something like that right we're trying to make those policy decisions based on specific analysis but most of the things are done by the staff they they don't come up to this uh they don't come up to this level and we've kept tax rates the same and most of us are homesteaded so that the valuations haven't gone up more

than 3% a year. So, the city's managed its budgets without tax rates. So, you know, these are things that I'm really proud of over the last three years. Uh, and I'm proud to work with my colleagues and all the staff here and the people even if we disagree on things. Uh, and uh, I'm I'm hopeful that we can keep doing it. So, thanks very much. Thank you, Mr. Thompson. No report. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Nicholas.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I'm going to echo what Miss Trucker and Mr. Wagner said in that we've spent a lot of time on one issue this year and we have many many many issues. We meet four times a month in front of you but every single day all of us are working hours and hours for you on many different issues and I'm happy to do it. I love doing it which is why why I'm up here. Um I um you know I going forward I want to keep our city moving forward thoughtfully with our exceptional public safety, our infrastructure growth like Mr. Wagner was just talking about infrastructure investment and and thoughtful growth. This is um you know we don't need to save Bokeh but we need to keep protecting Bokeh moving forward. And I think that that's really important and um I've been very proud of the work that we've done and even tonight with the freestanding emergency rooms that was something as as again as a 38y year registered nurse I think it was a use that is important for our city. It's important for us to have some clarity on but I was happy about the discussion that we had up here. Um it was, you know, it wasn't pretty, but we did it up here and and there's a path moving forward. Um that's the kind of thing that we need to do and we need to do more of and I hope whoever is sitting up here is open to that and is not just singularly focused on one issue, but can actually put in the work to take care of all the issues that are within our city. And by the way, I just also wanted to say in um section 3.4A 4A of the master partnership agreement. It provides for a $7.8 million contribution towards pedestrian connectivity improvements and

one of the identified options in section 3.4A remains the construction of a pedestrian bridge. Um that's from an email from deputy city manager Andrew Lucas. So I just wanted to make that clear as well. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you. Uh I'll close with some thanks uh because uh I only have one more regular meeting after this and it has been the honor of my life to serve as mayor and city councilman for nearly 12 years and I've been honored to serve with colleagues who have dedicated so much time. Everyone on this day is and I think everyone I served with before had served on a city board and volunteered before this quasi volunteer job. I think that's important. I think that dedicated record of service matters and I think it reflects the the cordiality and the collegiality we have. We are a model for an envy of other cities where there's constant sniping on the deis and on rare occasion we'll disagree on issues and sometimes it gets a little chippy and elections can bring that out more but the level of decorum here um reflects I think a desire to serve. Some others said it's important that we have people who, you know, have shown that record of service or have long-standing ties to the community. I agree and I am alarmed that, you know, some people, again, I agree with Deputy Mayor Nacklas. We spent a lot of time on the downtown campus because it's related to a lot of goals and it's a bigger idea that's really not just this year, but the culmination of eight, seven, eight, nine years of examination. Bold ideas are challenging and you know we have a challenge in front of us. But by no means is this the most uh is this a singular issue in our city. Our dedicated employees work every day to provide the vital services we can often take for granted. Police, fire, water, sewer, sanitation, parks, recreation, libraries, and so much more. We've had a number of wins from streamlining 20 different things. um to crime decreasing 25% over a seven-year period, which is tremendous in a city that had low crime to dealing with issues even when residents, you know, express some concerns. We're working on it. And I'll continue to ask everyone who's got concerns to work on them. We're not always going to see eye to eye, but I think it's important that with an

election, people do come out to vote and I hope people consider uh people who are going to continue to listen um to residents. Uh, I think anyone looking to serve should be putting themselves out now and I hope that they will and I hope that after anyone's elected or volunteering on a board that they'll be there and I appreciate everyone coming out. I want to close with some fun events because the they bear mention uh the Festival of the Arts Bokeh kicks off this Friday with the postmodern jukebox which is an amazing group. Uh they'll have other events throughout the week festival of bokeh.org Patty Lupon. Uh this Saturday will be a presentation of Jurassic Park with Symphony Orchestra. A lot more fun coming. The following week, we have the James Hardy Pro Football Hall of Fame Invitational, a PGA Championships, PGA Champions Tour event that features not only 78 of the world's best golfers of the senior class, uh but more than two dozen Pro Football Hall of Famers. And there's a whole range of events as we go through March. will conclude with our Bokeh Street Fest and the state of the city and uh a lot of more reasons to get together. So, thank you for being a part of our community. Thank you for toughing it out through this meeting tonight. And with no further business to come before us, we are journed at 10:30.