City Commission - Regular Meeting

Sorry. Good afternoon. I'd like to call to order a special budget workshop of the city of Hallandale Beach. Today is Wednesday, August 19th, 2026. The time is 4.12 p.m. Could I have a roll call, please?

Thank you, Madam Clerk. Before we rise for the Pledge of Allegiance, I would like to call to mind a dear friend of Powell in this city who had passed away recently, Kenny Cohen. If you're not familiar with him, he's been in front of us a couple times. He works directly with schools. He had passed away. Our prayers go out to his family. and everyone that he's touched here in the community. And we also call to mind the continued war in the Middle East and Ukraine and all our armed forces that are fighting overseas, putting themselves in harm's way to protect people in harm's way. And I've always

Okay. We have anybody signed up for public participation? No, we do not. And we don't have any change of the order of business. No, Madam Mayor. So we will have at it.

Is there a question? No? Okay. We're good. We're good. I have no button for it. On slide six.

Sorry, transportation fund, that difference.

Just to confirm, and I know I asked you, Dr. Earl, about this. This would be kind of putting in place that construction management component of projects throughout the city?

Okay, thank you. Sorry for the interruption, Ms. Messing.

Cool. I don't have any buttons lit at this point. Commissioner Butler, you're recognized.

Thank you. Okay, I have a couple of items I just wanted to get some clarification on if I could. So some of my questions are gonna be focused on these three priorities that I know keep coming back up about traffic, flooding, and beautification. So you mentioned that we're adding additional money to the Department of Transportation. What is that funding?

And so is that intended to improve traffic?

So we increased roadway improvements by $150,000. Did we not also put additional money in the Department of Transportation? Did I misunderstand?

All right, so these are for increased roadway improvement. So that's part of our street repaving program?

All right, so I just wanted to get into a couple of questions about this because Dr. Earl and I shared an email back and forth. It's been going on for quite some time. And I just want to kind of air this out on the city commission so we make sure we're all on the same page here, right? So last November, we were provided an email about the status of the street repaving program. Now this program I think started in 2023, Dr. Earl? All right, so we've had this program now operating for three years. In November, we were sent a list of streets that are being repaved, and my question was, what is the

Yes, ma'am. I know you've asked, and I've even dug up some old records. To get clear and concise, you're really, is it possible, I guess the question is, Dr. Earle, is it possible to list every street that we have paved and just have a program of when the next, a list of what streets are queued in again? Cause I know the original plan had a map. It had all the documentation on it. It was different color coded for different years. You know, it was a single snapshot of that. And, um, you know, I, I don't know if it's just a basis of presentation and this is what it is. Cause kudos. We did all th

is that simplifying your request yeah let me just i just want to i i know if it's not then correct it because that's what i'm hearing let me and let me just say yes and i want to i want to add some additional context to that because you're right that that's that seems like it should be available this is the the note that we had from the um um at the time the dpw director so The note was roadway evaluations were conducted through field assessments by the streets division and documented through the city's GIS roadway inventory and internal maintenance tracking systems. Due to licensing issues, w

Thank you. So, Dr. Earl, I just want to be clear that I am very supportive of the work that the city has been doing and that I fully support, obviously, repaving the streets. My concerns are just that we have a three-year program. This is an item that I requested originally in November of last year. So we're coming up on a full year of asking for information of how we're doing something that we've been doing for three years. So while I fully appreciate all the turnover, and I certainly have been very patient, as you've seen in my emails, I certainly haven't brought this up for the entire city

I don't know off the top of my head, but I'm not going to go into that right now.

No, I don't mean to pry, because I have somebody, too, and I wonder if it's the same one that had the dead-end road that hasn't been done yet. I'm only asking because I keep asking about a road, too, because I keep hearing about it.

So the other thing I just wanted to ask, so we reduced the R&R fund by a million dollars?

So is there anything that we have pulled out of what we're doing? Is there a reduction in what we're doing? What's driving the reduction, I guess?

Thank you. So there are two items that I wanted to bring up. So we had a conversation about the annual commissioner action plan. One of the items that we talked about was the green pathway. I had requested that item seems to have dropped from it. I just wanted to ask if I could now I did send an email asking for an update I didn't get a response so I want to just my understanding during a recent city commission meeting we had brought it up and we were told that it was being added back to the action plan, am I wrong about that?

I think it's CRA. It was discussed. Yeah, CRA, go ahead. So that was a CRA program. That's a CRA one.

That's great news, and I'm glad to hear that, and thank you for clarifying it for me. now where it came up, and it was while we were doing the resident survey, and it was something that the residents indicated that they wanted, so I'm glad to hear, and I don't know if this was Dr. Earle's idea or Director Finn's idea, but it was clearly something that the residents love, the idea of, so I'm glad to hear that it's back on. And I do remember you saying that the cost had gone up and that's why you had taken it back off, but that it was coming back on and I just didn't see it in the action plan. I

And I can remember her also talking about a safe walking area, right? I think that was COVID, maybe during COVID that you... So that's great news. And it actually, if I could go into my next item, right? So I shared an email about the street lighting on... IN THREE ISLANDS, IN THE THREE ISLANDS SAFE NEIGHBORHOOD DISTRICT. AND THESE ARE THE STREET LIGHTS ON ATLANTIC SHORES AND ON THREE ISLANDS. SO I KNOW THAT THIS IS A, THIS MIGHT BE A FUNDING ISSUE, BUT IT IS WITHIN THE SAFE NEIGHBORHOOD AND I KNOW THAT WE ARE DOING A LOT OF SAFE NEIGHBORHOOD. Commissioner Lazaro has brought up several times t

There are programs that, and ironically, just at Florida League of Cities, I think Phillips was there, there was a couple lighting companies that would come in. Now I should have brought the documents with me, but I didn't think about it. I think FPNL has done that. FPNL will do it as well. But then again, I'm not sure what upfront costs they will provide for. And if it's like type of public private partnership where they come in, they'll do it. and then you offset it by paying it out over time. We did that with energy development block grants. We would say, guess what, Siemens, you come in, y

But I just wanted to share that with you. That's why I keep kind of talking about those things and I haven't had a chance to sit down with our purchasing director and discuss some of those opportunities as well and what they're gonna look like. I think it's doable, but I don't know if it's germane that we have to do it today or make a direction.

Well, we're just talking about budget, and it came up during the action plan, the commissioner action plan, and the email that I sent to you referenced the fact that the DPW is already coordinated with FPNL and identified what needs to be done if we want to do it. And now it's just a matter of understandably time constraints on the part of the DPW staff. I just wanted to bring it up for the city commission because I incorrectly identified that they were not in the safe neighborhood. They are in the Three Islands safe neighborhood area. And I just want to clear that up and believe still that it

Well, let me do this. Dr. Rowe. would you like i know we're not probably going to amend this budget right now but so we have a direction maybe it's to make a motion to direct dr earl to work with staff to research viable alternatives to fund lighting within both districts and set that up as a type of project or priority because the revenue stream, if it's being placed in there, the revenue stream would be paid from the district. Because currently, if you want a light, I can go and say, guess what, I want a light in front of my house. They'll put it in, but then I pay for it. It goes on my bill

Okay, so would that work, Dr. Rowe? I think it's a great idea. My understanding of the issue, this isn't a dollars issue, this is a time capacity issue on the part of DPW.

Right, well, companies come in and do it. soup to nuts. It's not. I'm sorry. If that's a way for us to do it, great. Dr. Rowe? You understand the question? Like I know Siemens does it, Phillips does it. Sure, FP&L does it. I don't know what has the best competitive pricing or what it would look like, but they do the construction and I believe all the design of it. Like it's all up-fronted by them.

Right, and like I said, I don't know if, again, it might just be they can do it and then it gets paid out, kind of like an improvement loan or whatever. Okay, do you want it as a form of motion? I don't even think we can because it's a workshop anyway and we don't have the district budget in front of us, so. Go ahead.

Yeah, that was it. I just wanted to make sure that we brought that back and gave it some attention. Solar would be great. I'm all for solar.

Thank you. If you go to a company like that, it might be something even totally different. Some lighting is even low voltage. I think it's not as easy as saying get it done, in other words, and we know we didn't want to pile on, but I think the timing of it would be something to look at.

That'd be great. One of the things I just want to mention that I think, so we have, we are assessing this Three Island Safe Neighborhood to enhance the safe neighborhood and not doing streetlights in the Three Island Safe Neighborhood I think is a gap that we've missed and I think if I were a Three Islands resident and I had been assessed and you forgot to do streetlights, I would be a little concerned and it's, from my understanding, it wasn't an expensive item. relatively speaking, but I think it's important for us to at least identify if we can do it, and I think that would be great, Dr. Ea

That's great. If it's not part of the, I don't think it is, but if it's not already part of the Safe Neighborhood Plan. Okay, so my next question about the budget. On the five-year plan, and I brought this up before, I wanted to ask on this five-year plan, we used 2.25% as our estimated annual property tax increase for every year going forward. 2% all right 2.25% this year and 2% going forward that's correct okay so the taxable value increases in the past years I'm just going to tell you they were 10.72% 17.26% 9.09% 8.17% those are the last few years and then 2.25% this year so the simple fiv

annually going forward. So we're doing 2% annually, go to 4%, go to 6%. And let's just see what that looks like. I think it'll be a little bit...

Is that what you were... Yeah, I'm just curious to see how it looks. So that gives us a conservative, a moderate, and a historical norm, right? So that was one of my other requests. Oh, and then... This one, I want to, I guess I can bring this up later because it's not specifically on our budget.

It's okay, we have time and we can't, well, we're almost into, well, no, we have 5.30, so we have some time. Keep going.

Okay, because this I could bring up during the meeting.

I might cover some things under of or to, so go ahead.

Okay, all right. So one of the questions that I had, and I'm all for us doing stuff at the beach, So I want everybody to know that. And I voted in favor of all the funding.

Oh, my God. Now it's like, no, I don't want it. No, that's not. But you have buyer's remorse, Commissioner.

That's not what I'm going to say. That is not what I'm going to say.

But I just want to be clear. So when we first said, hey, let's do some beach activation, it was in support of this snack bar. And I'm going to say that over and over and over again because the snack bar didn't open and we're still doing the beach activation. Not opposed to it. Happy to do it. I made a recommendation in a very long email to the city managers and my apologies to everybody for my long email, that we get food trucks out there in order to offset the fact that we don't have a snack bar. So I will be very open and share with everybody that this all comes from spending a month with my

You go to the beach, you've got to bring everything with you. Good luck buying anything. So I'm still interested in us doing things that will help us activate our beach. And the $75,000 that we approved for South Beach events, and we have another one coming up, I think very soon we also approved the so far sounds which I think is part of our 100 year anniversary. Preparations and now we recently just approved I think $250,000 for furniture for the North Beach facility. Now all of those are great, as long as they all are leading us to eventually getting a revenue generating tenant into both of

Yeah, no, no, no, no. I'll come and have a cup of coffee. So I won't be there 7.30, but I'm very excited about that we're doing things and that our North Beach facility will actually have some activity. And I even went to the point where I suggest that maybe some of our staff should use the second floor as offices, right? And the only point is in order to get usage out of it, right? So that people are using it on a regular basis, that the elevators are working, that the air conditioning is working, that we have people that are utilizing the facility. So... I can't imagine somebody wouldn't wan

I just had a thought on that. Are you done with that one? Yes, ma'am.

You know, it occurred to me sitting here. You know, we rent out a lot of our facilities. We rent them out. We have been sitting on that asset. It has a kitchen. It has a service area. Maybe we look at it as a rental opportunity if somebody wants to have a party or an event at the beach like we do at the Cultural Center. It has a built-in kitchen. It has built-in access. If we put a little bit more money into it, maybe somebody's going to want to have a party there or a picnic or something and a corporate event. So food for thought instead of worrying about one particular vendor because I certa

We've done that before, I think. We had weddings there, right?

No, it didn't have the kitchen or any of that stuff. But we're sitting on a kitchen and an asset that's been empty for like two years. And if somebody wants to have a party or a beach party or a celebration, have at it.

I was thinking North Beach, too. Okay, go ahead.

I'm like, damn, sorry. Excuse me, this is a nice spot to leverage.

She's got some equipment. Telepathic, that's pretty good.

Now you pique my interest. What are they using storage for their own construction? Beach club?

Oh, it's for security so people don't damage your cars and stuff for safety reasons. So it's about 15 spaces that are gone for a while. You're good? No?

I don't want to slow your roll. Keep going.

Oh my God, I can tell you about that. Please, I want to... Oh, that's what I was going to bring up.

Wait a minute. I want to hear it. This is a gray hair moment. Oh my God. You know... I'm going back to FLC, you know, I'm strolling around and one of the companies that we used to use to do all the water towers was there. And I'm like, you know, another gentleman branched out and did his own company. So I'm talking to him. I go, you know, we've been trying to get our water tower painted for like ages. He goes, I am so well aware of your water tower. that when we had our water tower, we didn't plan our water tower to have all the things around it. And it's an issue. I don't want to have total s

Well, I didn't even realize we had awarded or we allocated money. We didn't award it.

There was not an RFQ awarded? I thought we did.

Well, we talked about lighting, and it was something.

Yeah, they're coming down. No, because I went like. Sometimes we've done so much. I was like, oh, good. I got the card, actually. I was going to give you the guy's card. I don't know what it was. To talk to him about it. But I was like sitting. I am like shocked.

I remember reading the backup about how you have to get into the thing. I was just totally shocked. It has to be upgraded on a regular basis. And I thought we were doing that in conjunction. I thought we were doing that in conjunction with our 100-year anniversary.

Update? Do we want an update? Or when do we want it?

because I'm usually good with numbers, and I'm thinking we talked about 300 and some odd thousand dollars relating originally, and I didn't realize we had executed a line item, and we were already budgeting, and it's in our budget. Oh good, because I got the heartburn. Oh my God, this is never going to end.

And if you want to know all about it, I'll give you the guy's card. Oh my God.

I want to, there's one other topic I just wanted to.

Because I was going to talk about that under other. Go ahead.

Oh, you were doing, okay. So we still have time. So this item, I think for me, is a little bit difficult to open up. So one of the challenges I think that we have is, There isn't a, I don't know how to say this. So we are, the number one, to me, the number one purpose that we have code compliance is for beautification. And I have frankly been talking about this. Bless you, Mayor.

Wow, that was loud. So we've been talking about code compliance and how code compliance can contribute to beautification in the neighborhood, in the cities, in the cities since I think it was a EDAW report. I can't remember the name of the company back in 2006. So this has been a long, long time. I mean, well before I sat up here. We recently had the two resident surveys over a two-year period and the beautification didn't change. We didn't see an increase in beautification. During that time period over the last five years, we've made significant investments in code compliance. And I think, Di

Should have came in my speech yesterday. No, I'm teasing, I'm just laughing. Yeah, we can talk about that on there too, so by the way. No, because I talked about this. I heard good responses from folks. I didn't mean to interrupt you, I apologize.

So this is something that I just wanted to bring up for the city commission to be aware of because I think it's an important item because it's one of the three things that our residents are asking us to do, right? Right. So traffic, flooding, beautification. We've got a lot of money that's going into traffic. Our Department of Transportation has already made real world results and impact for our residents, which I congratulate them for and thank you again for that. I know we have a ton of money going into flooding, right? I don't know how we're measuring flooding because I think it's important

Yeah, I hear it all the time too. So it sounds like such a small thing, but I will tell you an example that I thought was an amazing response. A year or two ago, I had shown some photographs of street signs that the city owned, and they were rusting and falling down, and within a week or two, Dr. Earle, the response was amazing. You had people out there, they painted them, they made them straight again, just little things like that, that if it were in my yard, I would wanna do that, right? I would wanna clean that stuff up, and it made a big impact very quickly. So I don't know what the answer

It's actually like to wrap. And this is how I phrased it. yesterday and thought about it. To me, and I keep saying it's called curb appeal. And while code enforcement is important, it stops when the sidewalk, where the sidewalk ends, that's where it is involved with public property. The idea of even just replacing and getting rid of the clutter on the roadway, cleaning the roadways, I brought up even power washing, making sure that we're doing those things. And I don't know how that translates translates into actionable items. I'll give you an example. When I grew up, the sidewalk was ours to

But you're going through other areas that aren't 100 years old. They're not as urban as us. Or they're a different type of community than what was a planned design community. So it's a difficult thing.

Yeah, obviously our focus should be on the thing.

And homeless, too. Homeless all over the place and the trash and the shopping carts.

We're just talking about beautification. Obviously, what do we have control over and what we can influence? And maybe this should be a workshop. Maybe we should sit down and get somebody who actually is an expert on tying these two things together. We've made enormous investments. I support those investments in code compliance. We're not getting the outcomes that... We wanted.

They're doing better because they're foreclosing again. You lost the component of how our legal department is moving on foreclosure.

I understand the benefit that we're getting out of it, and I'm not opposed to all of those benefits out of it. We just need to figure out how to affect this beautification thing so that two years from now or a year from now when we do a resident survey, people will say, yeah, Hallandale really has improved significantly in that third metric that is so important to our residents.

Yeah, so I'm feeling you. I just talked about it yesterday. Yeah, it's good. So we're good. Yes, ma'am. Talked about the water tower, talked about that. I think we're good. I think we can take a pause for 10 minutes, give everybody a break. Anybody else for budget?

Oh, and great job on the budget. Again, thank you very much to all of you. So I know you guys work hard at it.

Yeah, I usually give everybody props. I'm a little tired today, so. Yeah. Okay.

Thank you very much. Thank you, Dr. Rowe. Good job.

We're going to take a recess. Thank you.