City Commission - Regular Meeting

Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to this workshop meeting related to the discussion, clarity, and direction regarding the development services related approval process this September 22nd. If the clerk would please call the roll.

Here. We have a quorum. Great. I'm just going to make a brief remarks to start us, and then I'm going to be turning it over to Commissioner Mollica, whose idea this was. The first portion of this meeting is going to be public comment. And this is where we really expect the public to come in and give us their ideas. I'm not looking for people to come in and say, it took me this long to get this done, this permit done, or this done. That's not what this is about. What we're trying to do, unless it's in context of a proposal that you're going to be making as to how we can improve the process, bec

so with that in mind i'm going to turn it over to commissioner malika whose idea this was uh and if you would like to have the city manager say anything well yeah but i was going to have you just introduce what you're trying to achieve and then we're going to have public comment hi and if you'd like okay hi judy malika so the spirit of this meeting is to help get us to the best place possible for the consumers of our services and for all of the employees nothing said or done here today is for the purpose of blaming Anyone for anything. Nothing said or done here today is for the purpose of comp

Thank you very much. I'm sorry, I'm eating my Fritos here. Thank you, clerk. This meeting is now going to be open to the public. Any members of the public wishing to address the commission on this subject, please come to the lectern, give your name and zip code for the record, and you will each have three minutes. Now, the staff will go after. We have public comments. Okay, so the podium is open for public comments for anyone who wishes to address the commission on this matter. Surely some of you have something to say. Now's the time to say it. Don't be shy. We want your input.

Can I just summarize quickly what you're saying?

May I ask him a question before you summarize and you tell him to keep going? No, Mr. Markert said keep going. Some of those comments seem general and some seem specific to an application. Can you tell me which application you're referring to because I don't know even which.

I thought it was permitted. It's not permitted.

You know what? Let's let the staff answer that later.

Respectfully, I really, I'm trying to stay away from individual applications and individual responses. We've been through 120 comments. I'm trying to encapsulate a little bit what you were saying. And if what you're saying is that there needs to be a better process after a review is done to not bring things back to a board or something or resubmission and that things can be done administratively, is that what you're trying to push? Administrative.

I don't want to get into a specific application.

Okay. Mr. Covelli, I've heard you a number of times saying, I wish they did this, I wish they did this. You have nothing to say? Because this is the moment. This is the moment. I want you to, yes, I want you to offer suggestions on how you think the process can be improved. I guess I'm done. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Michaels. And I'm coming to Roger Cope next. Okay.

Thank you very much. I see people who represent builders in here. They're not saying anything. So if you... Don't be afraid.

Can you get closer to the mic? Yes. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Thank you very much. You left out you were also on the city commission during that time.

Are you saying that as a constitutional option? Yes, yes. So we have to say yes?

Ann's on our agenda today, too. She's on our agenda today, too.

May I pass the, Rick Castor emailed me. I don't know if he emailed everybody.

If you would like to read, you would like to read?

It's a long one. I'll let you read it. But I got a copy for everybody.

I got this. He emailed us. You printed your own? Give it to the clerk, yeah. You may have more than three minutes if you need.

I didn't save myself a copy, so it's all yours. No, here you go. Did Alexis get one? Yes, she did, for the record.

I think as long as Anthea has a copy, we're good.

I mean, I'm sorry, it's in the record, and if you need to highlight, did you want anything, you wanted to synopsize it or something?

No, it's all good ideas, and it's in the right hands with Anthea.

Because I got a number of emails also on this subject, which I was going to, and it's our turn, kind of discuss. know share with what some of the ideas were so anyway so are there any other members of the public wishing to speak okay public comment is closed to the city well i guess mr moore would you like to introduce um sure thank you so appreciate the opportunity and quite frankly since commissioner malika

Great. Thank you very much. I have a lot of different comments that I'm going to make, but I'm going to – I know Commissioner Malika has been calling around and talking to a bunch of other people. I know that because when I would call them, they'd say, oh, yes, I've already spoken to Commissioner Malika. So I know you've been making these calls. But you have a variety of comments you'd like to make because you've done a lot of research on – First of all, thank you very much for the presentation. I mean, it was very enlightening to see all the numbers. And I do agree with all those numbers. I d

Actually, I don't really have a lot of comments that I've Collected from everybody just sort of a general thing and everything that you've just shown me well first of all I don't know anything about buildings, so thanks for the education, but like I'm exhausted right So really quickly. I mean do you have requirements for? timeframes for returning phone calls and emails Is there any guideline that you implement? And I know especially Mondays. Right.

So you do have those. I didn't know if you had any guidelines in it or not. It was a system that said if you want a callback or they were on hold for two days.

I love being able to get metrics, because if you can measure, you can manage, right? And you probably don't have time to look at it, but if you had some system, whoever your IT person is, that can run it every week, then you as a supervisor can go, uh-oh, or yay, or whatever. Mostly yay, right? Who is in charge of that stuff? In charge of the technology, the, what's it called? Project Docs?

I know that when there's some comments or whatever, that it sends out an email to the client. First of all, I want to make sure that it's not just the architect, that it's also the owner. Because I know that the development services subs, well, the architect isn't responding to the owner. And I know that's probably captured application. But do we send a text also or no? Are you able to?

I mean, we can change anything. We can make technology work the way we want it to. Right, Jay?

And I love the text idea, because the emails, because it's a do not reply, might kind of get lost somewhere. I don't know.

Yeah. Yeah. That'd be good for you, because then when the architect messes up, the owner can find out, right?

That was one of my questions. And then I think that was it. Also, I know that the employees or the staff or whatever that's working through this process might see some kind of bottlenecking within the, do you have a place where they can make suggestions or that their observations can be maybe improved? We do.

Yeah, because the boots on the ground is what knows the problems are, right? They know it much better than I do, yes. Yeah, I'm sure the public might have some rubs that they run into, but okay. Okay, that's what I was asking. Dependency with a text, conditions email and text. Oh, one more thing. With your inspections, I have heard that other cities give you, like, I'm going to come Friday 2 to 4, and that Delray goes, I'm coming Friday. Do you narrow those windows down? Do you know that?

Okay good enough. They should quit whining What's that But it's not guaranteed, but we aim for it. No obvious and we should be able to measure that too So we're gonna work on that and maybe give them the inspector cell phone so I can check with them or something good. Yeah, I

Can I tell a quick story? I shouldn't, but I will. I was getting my door inspected, my windows and doors inspected, and I didn't even think about it, but I answered in my nightgown, right? And of course I passed, right? And my husband's like, what? Did you wear? I'm like, hey, we passed.

Sure you did. Sure you did. I know that rule. It doesn't work for me. I wear my nightgown and they deny me. They run.

no i mean i just i'm gonna sort of readdress your needs because it was a big things but please no no i just have a few things i want to i mean god because i'm the only one actually up here that's actually sat over there and talked to you while you were up here and and tried to get stuff accomplished and mr tobias you and i have worked together for i don't know 20 years or so um um There's one of the complaints we hear that I experienced personally is that there's an awful lot of hands. They'll send the document out, and I'll look at the email, and there's like 25 names on it. And this departme

Mayor, did we do a study? Didn't we have practice?

We need to better explain the risk factors that you may not get approved when you do your application fee without going through a pre-app meeting. Right.

I just want to give you feedback. Do what I do. I play it back the next day.

Yeah, I mean, yes. I think that a de minimis charge before someone files an application, most of your builders would like to come in and understand that what they're going to propose or architects would be, and it doesn't need to be an onerous amount, but it should be covering the time of the person, because it requires you to do, I mean, we charge for these zoning applications, the zoning letters, at $275. It would probably cost us $500 to do in terms of time. So, I mean, I think that I'm not trying to make you a profit center, but I don't want to make you a loss center either.

I think that we need to consider that because it is your time. And trust me, when I have done these projects, it's really great to come out of the application meeting and say, they said I could do this, this, this, and this. And was it worth the time? Because I assure you, my client got billed for the time. So, well, they did. That's the reality of it. So we should be trying to, as I say, I don't want to make you a profit center so much, but I don't want to make you a loss center.

Well, the pre-op meetings, my average pre-op meeting took about an hour. They will have circulated the idea that this is required, what kind of that is required, and it gives a very good idea of the person leaving there to apply for the aptitude to make the application fee which I think in some respects it's also light in some areas because some of the applications are far more complicated and I know you have a staggered payment schedule but I'm just saying if I look at if I go to Boynton for example and I love point But they have that Sage application process. I don't know how good that is. I

That was going to be one of my points, yeah.

My quick question was with regard to the several different disciplines making comments, let's say fire was beautiful, they don't need anything. When it comes back around again, is fire omitted from that, or does somebody have to look at fire and go, oh, they got to meet me? Or is it blocked from that?

Not routinely, but only if it's going to affect them.

Number of meetings. Some of these projects are big projects. I know our boards are volunteer, and I know it works staff and everything, but my view is the faster I get things approved, the faster they get built, the faster they get on the tax rolls. It's a real simple equation for me. Do you think that planning only meets once a month? Should we have it twice a month? I mean, is there a reason why it used to be twice a month?

Which is why I think there should be greater administrative things. And by the way, in the approval process, when you go to your first set by your second set of comments, I really think that if the issues have not been resolved at the second set of comments, the application should get moved on to these committees and make them as conditions of approval. Right.

We're actually talking about two different things. We're talking about if you, if I'm talking about creating in your application to speed up the application so that people don't have to go through a third and fourth set of comments.

Look, I agree. I mean, I was like pulling teeth to get you to get administrative review for these lots where the pin would have moved an inch, and instead it was 49 and 11 and a half inches, and you would have to end up coming in because it wasn't, you know, 50 feet. You know, I mean, we finally did it. But there are other situations like that where some of these stuff are de minimis, or they are routinely approved. They're not a matter of public safety. You know, utilities is happy with them. Everybody's happy with them. that it would speed up the process. I'm just trying to speed up the proc

It's okay if you're not. I didn't limit it. I wasn't discussing historic per se. I was discussing general application. I mean, you know.

I'm going to ask the idiot question here, which I'm good at. If we make these things you're requesting, these domineous changes, and all of a sudden, aren't we thereby just telling everybody the code's changed, and now instead of being 11 inches from X, you can now be 8 inches from X? Is that not what happens when you do that?

Because Commissioner Marker is correct. I mean, I'm not trying to change the code here. But I'm going to say sometimes with the design, because you already know that it's an irregular shaped lot. We already know it's this. We already know it's that. that the whole thing lends itself to that waiver because of the particular circumstances of the property, as opposed to just a blanket thing where we're giving waivers willy-nilly, so to speak. That's a good point.

Could you make that clearer? So you need an IT front desk person. Which can be paid for by building. Yes. You need two planners. One's already paid for or one's already budgeted.

What's a BTR? I mean, what does it have to be? I know, but like what's their qualifications? Is that a planner?

He's on his phone. So thank you for the presentation, but it's nothing surprising. I think the gentleman, the lovely gentleman in the plaid shirt who got up here and said we need to hire more people, we could have ended the meeting then, because you gave us this report, 2425 accomplishments for the fiscal year, and it's quite an amazing amount of work for 78 total employees. It's almost shocking. And at the end of the day, with the mayor, we started making some of these modifications to speed the process up, like the lots that were slightly smaller than 50 foot. I think it was a foot or less.

May I ask one quick question? Are we allowed to charge expediting fees? Do we? I know other cities do. I mean, I'm just thinking of another way that perhaps you could fund your positions.

No, I know, but I know people, like these builders or whatever, they hire expediters. And so instead of them, I don't know, I just toss in an idea. I'm trying to think about it. Yeah. What?

No, they do. They have these concierge type services where they speed up the process. We need to talk about that at another time.

Commissioner Casale, were you asking for a consensus?

Yes. We don't do that at a workshop, but no, no. We did turn it over to the city manager, and I think if you, for a show of hands, I think we need to hire the people on that slide that are necessary, especially immediately the building fund people, because we have extra money in the building fund.

Ladies and gentlemen, I haven't had my turn yet, so before you make the... when it's my turn.

So I've been to this meeting before in the corporate world, and I did my preparation before the meeting. I met with a lot of the developers. A number of them yelled at me over the weekend. It was fine. I've also had a chance to meet with Anthea's team and listen. It was good education for me. And without a doubt, what's missing for me here is we do not have good information flow back and forth just yet. I think that's apparent. We just saw Anthea present a lot of data. I think a lot of the folks that I met with last week and over the weekend weren't aware of some of that data. And I'll be curi

Along those lines, I got my email for 318 from Steve Miner, who's the mayor of Miami Beach, on his whole AI thing that he just approved the other night. I'm going to forward it to we all so we can start looking at it because you're absolutely correct. Look, it's an investment. No question it's an investment. But they say it will pay. It's one of those things that will pay for it, not just in time to response, customer service. But it will get things moving. And so I am going to say that.

I think Worth is looking at sort of a plug-in, which reviews it, kicks back what it needs. Then the real people get a look at it.

Yeah, I mean, it just will speed up that. But you know, and one of the reasons I talk about these fees and things is because we, and I've said it's about parking. I've said it about every single thing I talk to you. We should be happy. The little old lady in Lake Ida should not be paying for the thing. So we need to be pricing our applications based on the amount of time that it takes. And we haven't been doing that. We've been very good for a lot of years. We did raise them. I know we raised them a couple years ago. We did that to help offset some of the stuff. But we do need to reflect. on w

So this is what I'm saying. This is the review that I'm looking for. We can't afford to be so magnanimous these days. And we can measure the time now. And I tell you, someone's building a $3 million house. They'll pay a couple hundred dollars more, you know, because really it's not going to affect anything. I mean, you know, they'll pay it. So let's get it. Let's get it. And I know the developers back there are saying, I can't, Steve Michael's saying, you can't charge me $200. But I am going to charge you that $200. So, anyway.

Yes, one real quick question, because I know we're out of time. First of all, thank you so much for everybody for being here, and Thea for, like, going through all that. I appreciate it very much. Do you find a value in the black belt process mapping that Ann Gannon spoke about?

I thought about letting the auditor come in and take a look at the problem. But I don't want to hinder. I want to help. I just need to see what it is.

I know a lot about that. There's people that have a specific skill set. She's right. And they can come to bear on almost any kind of issue. They have a skill set and they can do it. And it would be helpful. I agree.

Thank you all for participating today and listening to us. This meeting is adjourned. We will come back at 5.15 to start the regular commission meeting. We are adjourned.